'Who Wrote The Bible?'

Anybody in the UK catch this today? It was on 4.

Just like to hear some thoughts and feelings if perhaps anybody has some....

I didnt catch the show. I did meet one very religous man who read every wakeing moment of his life. He reread the bible as if it ment life or death. In his mind every single last word was true and it all came from god. I have a friend at the moment whos a very nice guy, and believes nearly the same. Luckly we dont talk about religon so usually I dont atempt to rip him apart.

King James.

I recorded it and i plan to watch it later

Naaah it was that Gutenberg dude.

?????

There are these bibles in the student union of my school where it has an "About The Author" section that reads sort of like "The author of the greatest book ever written, God, resides in heaven with his son, Jesus Christ... etc. etc."

I wouldn't mind watching that show. Too bad I am too... American...

Bahah! I like that.
The History Channel covered the footsteps of Jesus yesterday, and the history of God today. I only saw bits and pieces.

For some reason I have that "Who wrote the book of love" song stuck in my head now... argh.

Just look to the history my fellows.... Council of Nicea

The bible was more compiled than written...its nothing more than Edith Hamilton throwing out 'Mythology'..... obviously written from stories of people that either knew or kinda knew Jesus...but then later on compiled....but I'm rambling. I dont know, check it out for yourself.

This should be a section in the MLA Handbook. How do you cite the Bible in your bibliography?

I missed that show does anyone know when the rerun is?

From my understanding, many gospels were written and only a few were selected to be put into the final master copy. However, these other gospels still retained followers. These deviate Christians were deemed "Heretics" by the larger group and were, for the most part, killed over a few decades.

One of the things I find interesting is that the dead sea scrolls are supposed to be the gospel according to The Big Guy Himself yet the catholic church says they are heretical

The Bible has many authors, many of whom are unknown. The Old Testament has several authors that are identified by the different terminology they used. Among them are “J,” “E” and “P.” There is extensive research into the origins of the Old Testament.

The New Testament also had several sources. The more notable ones include the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel Q, the writings of Paul and the books of the Apocrypha. The Gospels were written after Jesus died by several people or groups of people who were connected to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These sources were later edited during various councils, the most famous being at the Council of Nicea (325 AD), the Council of Constantinople (381) and the Council of Chalcedon (451). The result is the “Canon” which is used today.

There also sprung up several religions/cults/philosophies around the life and teachings of Jesus during the second and third centuries as Christianity slowly emerged from Judaism. These other schools of thought were declared “Heresies” at the various Councils.

A big influence was Constantine, emperor of then pagan Roman Gaul, who claimed he had a vision of a Christian symbol on the eve of invading Rome or Italy in 312 AD. Heavily outnumbered, he ordered the symbol painted on the shields of his soldiers to ensure the victory that followed. He then changed the Roman policy from persecution of Christianity to promoting it.

He then conquered the other pagan parts of the Roman Empire and executed pagan Roman leaders in the name of promoting Christianity and perhaps for political reasons. So basically, the reason Christians emerged from a persecuted minority to a persecuting majority was so that one guy could use the name of Jesus to grab land. Those silly Romans; that could never happen in today's world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

The Public Broadcasting Service in the US aired several programs documenting the emergence of Christianity from Judaism called From Jesus To Christ. PBS is bleeding heart liberal/non-partisan depending on your US political affiliation.

The Jesus Seminar, begun in 1985, attempts to distinguish what Jesus actually taught from what the Church teaches. Marcus Borg, Distinguished Professor of Religion at Oregon State University is another. He is not the first. Thomas Jefferson edited the Jefferson Bible back when science and reason were important to America’s leaders.

Thank God there are people in the world willing to try to restore some sanity to Christianity.


[Edited on Dec 25, 2004 by plia]

"I'm the little Jew that wrote the Bible."

Leonard Cohen

i met this guy on the CTA last week who said he wrote the bible. i talked to him for like an hour... i missed my stop and had to ride around the loop again, but it was worth it.

This is the channel 4 site for the show: http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B/believeitornot/bible.html

It's got quite a lot of info about the programme on there for anybody that doesn't live in the UK or missed it, if there is a repeat planned, details of it should probably be around there somewhere too...


Did anybody else find themselves shouting at the TV during the final few minutes when that 'presidential preacher' Dr Richard Land said that questions as to wether the bible was in fact the true word of god were 'dangerous rubbish' and was then shown making a speech about America having no responsibilty to the UN and how he would have 'flooded' Iraq with 500, 000 US troops if he was in charge? It ended the programme on a bit of a strange note for me...




[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 by glassmachine]

[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 by glassmachine]

"who's your daddy"

[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 by thunderboltz]

I saw this or a similar show here in the states not too long ago on and they essentially went over everything covered in plia's post.

Just the other night, CNN Presents episode on Jesus talked about The Gospel of Thomas at some length.

Supposedly, this gospel, which was not cannonized, refers to Jesus in more secular terms and never mentions the idea of his divinity. It is uncertain if this was a pre-text to the Big Four, though there is speculation that it might be, and it was definately around when the current "draft" of the New Testiment was set, so the fact that it was not included raises a lot of eyebrows.

To me, this sounds like a Jesus that I might find myself more interested in than the divine Jesus we meet in most churches.

I want some humanity in my Christ! I am not the only one, it seems...

Who wrote The Bible? Politicians, essentially... At least when it came to it's final edits.

[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 by mastvam]

at the time the oral traditions were written down to become the literary fragments that eventually became the new testament

the individual churches that compiled these fragments each had their own ideas about the meaning and significance of jesus

for example the group that compiled the gospel of john were more gnostic

while the church of the gospel of mattew was more hebraic and messianic

there are i believe seven letters that are generally recognized with some consensus to have been actually written by Paul

these are probably the oldest books of the new testament and again it is quite likely that these individual new testament letters are composits of numerous letters actually written by paul

but for the most part authorship of the new testament is untraceable

but it is an interesting phenomena that the early christian writings were commonly attributed to persons of great histroic/mythic stature like Paul Peter John etc.

the actual writers perhaps considered themselves unworthy of any recognition and lacking in sufficient authority to validate their own written words

the appointed scribes perhaps for indivdual sects that had coalesced around the mythic images of various early christian heroes










[Edited on Dec 26, 2004 by zenhell]

I think it comes down to which version you're refering to. From what I recall reading about early Christianity is that there were numerous interpretations of the Gospels in the begining but as various sects seized political power they branded opposing sects as heretics and suppresed their interpretations.

edited because I can't spell at 4 in the morning(yawn)

[Edited on Dec 27, 2004 by YAWG]

A very basic read would be "The Christian Conspiracy: How the Teachings of Christ Have Been Altered by Christians," by L David Moore. He goes over the Councils of Nicea, the dispute over the selection of the Gospels, and some writings of early church fathers. It is interesting to read selections of some pre-Constatine church leaders, as they were under the threat of Roman persecution, but also trying to bring about uniformity within Christianity.

On the inclusion of only four Gospels: "Just as there are four directions of the compass, and just as there are the four elements of water, wind, earth, and fire, so, too, must there be four Gospels acting as the four pillars of the church." I could be wrong, but I believe that Irenaeus wrote that. He was Bishop of Lyons in the mid 2nd century.

wansn't it J R Hartly

According to my Bible--The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation R. 15.7(f), at 114 (Columbia Law Review Ass'n et al. eds., 17th ed. 2000)--you do it like this:

2 Kings 12:19 (King James)

But it doesn't really tell you how to cite the Bible as a whole. And it's only for legal stuff. Okay, really I just wanted to cite the Bluebook in a post.