How can we believe and trust censored Bibles?

Vanth , 19 hours ago

By “original Bible” do you mean the Masoretic text, which is in the Hebrew language and finalized in about the year 1100 A.D.? Or the Septuagint text, the Greek translation of the Torah dating around 300 B.C.? Or some other “Bible” from some point across that 1,400 year stretch?

You don’t know. Or you say “faith” and put the contradictions out of your mind.

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

I mean the original bible that written by collection of texts written in different languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) over a period of 200-300 BCE.

Vanth , 14 hours ago

So over the course of 100ish years and translation through multiple languages, what version is the original one? Like, where is this Bible physically located? Stored in a museum somewhere? Available for study so that translations into modern languages can be checked against it?

gramie , 2 hours ago

There are estimated to be between 200,000 and 400,000 significant deviations (i.e. not just spelling mistakes) in the New Testament manuscripts we now have. Scholars make educated guesses about what the correct wording is, but those are still guesses.

You know the story of the adulteress who is going to be stoned? That was added at least 100 years after the rest of the Gospel of John was written.

The oldest surviving manuscripts of the Book of Luke, which was the first gospel written, ends with the women running away from the empty tomb and not telling anyone. It is believed that the resurrection story was added later.

Bart Ehrman does a very good job of explaining these issues on his YouTube channel.

anarchoilluminati , 18 hours ago (edited 16 hours ago)

First of all, as others said, the Bible is a book composed of many books and letters written by many people over an incredibly vast span of time. Consistency is almost impossible. But, for what it’s worth, where does the Bible say “that no one should make a dare to edit or correct” it?

I believe you are referring to Revelations which is, arguably, one of the oldest youngest if not the oldest youngest book in the canon (I don’t remember for sure but I believe it is) and also not universally appreciated. Luther famously criticized Revelations, and I think rightly so. There was also some contention at the time of canonization in Nicea around Revelations. So, just because one book says it, doesn’t mean it’s the final word on the issue. There are Christians that don’t see much weight or value in Revelations. I certainly don’t, I don’t believe it’s an eschatological text revealed by God. I think the only way Revelations makes sense is to read it as an historical text and critique of Nero that was written post hoc to rationalize and comfort Christians for what they suffered by explaining that they will soon be rewarded for their faith because they are in “end times”. Of course, we now know, thousands of years later, that they weren’t.

Besides, I’m not entirely sure I know what you mean by “edited” or what “life” you’re referring to, although I’m assuming you’re talking about Jesus. Have you read the Scriptures in their original languages? I have at least read and translated the Christian Scriptures in and from Greek, and they need editing. It’s not possible to have a transliteration of it that reads well, it takes some finesse and art. Even the Scriptures in the Greek are compiled from different manuscripts and codices because there often are errors or damages in manuscripts so you can’t just find the one “Gospel of Marx” manuscript, for example, and use it to translate it perfectly. You need to find several to get the whole story of one gospel together and then translate them into a single text, so you’re using several sources to put the story together in Greek and then translate into a different language thousands of years later. Naturally, this creates issues and makes it so that the Bible isn’t an unaltered text in its final form. Unless you read it in its original language, this is unavoidable—and, as I said, even if you do read it in Greek, you will still have an “edited” text.

Does it matter? I think it creates issues and one should be able to critically examine these textual criticisms in order to form a better picture of the origins of their belief and better parse what and how to believe, but I don’t think editing or inconsistencies inherently invalidate Christianity nor Judaism.

anarchoilluminati , 17 hours ago

I meant Gospel of Mark, but I’m not going to change it and no one better dare edit or correct it or a spectre will haunt them.

SLfgb , 2 hours ago

Ok Marx

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Thank you for replying…

By edit i mean this verse in Revelation 22:18-19, which says:

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

I believed that doing so can change the entire meaning on bible.

And by life, in my personal opinion i believe the bible is a guide to live life and only god have the quality to guide us among life and no human should never try to manipulate his true words.

Also i was very obsessed about thinking all of this censorship thing.

Actually i didn’t readed the originally written bible, probably nobody could.

Most of the things you said make sense and gives me a clear picture about the reality of my worry.

anarchoilluminati , 14 hours ago

Of course.

Well, if it helps, and I hope it will, the author of Revelations wrote Revelations before there was canonization into the Bible we know today. In other words, when Revelations was written it was a stand-alone “book”. The Bible didn’t exist at the time.

So, when the author of Revelations says ‘don’t change anything in this book’, they mean and are talking about the Book of Revelations—not the Bible as a whole which didn’t exist.

In terms of the ethical value of things like the Gospels, the value is still there. The teachings we have are the teachings we have, if they are valuable to you then that’s great and you should follow them! Jesus says a lot of things which are great to practice. But it’s ultimately up to you to decide whether to believe in the teachings, and then it is up to you to struggle to put them into practice. That doesn’t change.

If you found out there were some changes to the Bible, would you stop believing in “love your neighbor as yourself”? No, because it still has value as an ethical teaching. If you want it to be the direct word of God, then that might be more difficult to prove as fact. But I choose to believe that what Jesus says sounds like what I would expect from a God anyway so I don’t personally have an issue. I hope it helps you though, it is ultimately your decision to choose what, how, and why to believe in something.

sndmn , 20 hours ago

The Lord of the Rings is more believable.

JackGreenEarth , 5 hours ago

Well, it was made by a single person and is mostly consistent throughout. So it’s at least not self-contradictory, which is something.

SoleInvictus , 3 hours ago

And far better written.

I remember reading the Bible for the first time as a teenager, after years of hearing about how great it was from Christians, and both being severely disappointed by its immature writing style and losing a lot of respect for the literary standards of many Christians.

sanguinepar , 3 hours ago

In the Bible, it says clearly that no one should make a dare to edit or correct the Bible by any words.

Not trolling here, but where does it say that?

It would have to be from a time when people were already conscious of this collection of writings being considered “The Bible”, so I’m assuming New Testament somewhere? And would any writings added after that not be considered to have flaunted that rule?

I’m not religious at all, but I’m very interested in how the Bible came to be The Bible.

Lettuceeatlettuce , 18 hours ago

There is no “original Bible.” Different sects of Christianity have different canons that they consider “scripture.”

Most Protestants adhere to 66 books divided into the “old” & “new” testaments. Roman catholics include several more books commonly called the “apocrypha” or “deuterocanonical” books.

Various traditions in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox sects such as the Syriac Orthodox church or the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church include even more books and depending on the specific tradition, don’t even have a closed canon of official scripture. They don’t really think of scripture in terms of being officially canonized, it’s more of a spectrum from “more authoritative” to “less authoritative.”

There was no defined canon for any of the early Christians for several centuries. Early Christians circulated many different epistles, religious poems, stories, legends, sermons, and parables, often just by oral tradition.

Some, like the gospel of Mark, are considered fairly historical by many scholars, others are more fantastical or don’t have as solid historical attestation.

There is active debate amongst scholars about authorship of the now canonized Biblical corpus and the level of historicity.

Take the Bible for what it is; an impressive and important historical work, really a small library of ancient literature. It’s not a magical text though, it was written by people in very specific sociological and historical contexts and should be studied and examined with those in mind.

If you find it enlightening and inspiring to your life and it helps you be a better person to others, that’s great. And if you attach special spiritual or religious meaning to it, that’s your call. But that doesn’t change the nature of what the Bible is and where it came from.

PiecePractical , 4 hours ago

And on top of that, different translations can effectively make different stories as well. Just look at the story of Dinah. Most translations day that she was assaulted but some would suggest that she just had consensual sex. That’s a distinction that effectively makes it a different story depending on who did the translating.

Bonifratz , 19 hours ago

What do you mean by censored? Do you have examples of censored “chapters and contents”? And what do you mean by the original Bible?

sorghum , 19 hours ago

King James notoriously removed mentions of the word tyrant in his English translations.

It’s why I like the NET translation as it includes translation notes from the original languages

Bonifratz , 19 hours ago

King James notoriously removed mentions of the word tyrant in his English translations.

AFAIK this is an urban myth. But even if true, it’s hardly a case of “censoring”, but more a (questionable) translation choice. (Because “tyrant” is not a word that appears in the original Hebrew or Greek, so it can’t have been censored in that sense.)

sorghum , 14 hours ago

From the translation notes on Job 6:23

The עָרִיצִים ('aritsim) are tyrants, the people who inspire fear (Job 15:20; 27:13); the root verb עָרַץ ('arats) means “to terrify” (Job 13:25).

The NET translation

Or ‘Deliver me from the enemy’s power, and from the hand of tyrants ransom me’?

It’s exactly why I really like the NET translation. Getting context for why or how the original text gets translated to English is incredibly valuable to me. Here in this context I’m sure aritsim doesn’t literally mean tyrant, but the people became synonymous with the definition like “Shaka, when the walls fell” means failure.

Bonifratz , 5 hours ago

Yes, I very much agree that such explanations are helpful.

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Dude, are you serious ? 🙄😐

Bonifratz , 5 hours ago

Yes, of course.

Both of these things need defining before anybody can answer your question.

“Censoring”, the way I understand the word, means that there’s some kind of institution charged with overseeing and removing parts of a text. So I wonder at which point in the development of the Bible you believe this has occurred.

I’ve argued in a different comment that it’s no secret that certain texts were picked and chosen by the early church as part of its canon, but that (in my opinion) is a very different thing than censoring. To give an analogy: If I was an editor and had to choose the “100 greatest novels of the 20th century” for a book, I would not be “censoring” those I didn’t choose. Therefore I’m asking you what exactly you mean by censoring, and if you can give examples of censorship happening in the development of the Biblical texts.

Secondly, “original Bible” is not at all easy to define. The (Christian) Bible is a collection of texts of diverse genres, by a multitude of authors, in three languages, spanning at least seven or eight centuries in their development. None of the original manuscripts have survived. Instead, for every part of the Bible, there exist different copies which sometimes differ slightly, sometimes starkly. This is the reason textual criticism of the Bible exists as a field of scholarship. Most notably, the (older) Septuagint version of the Book of Jeremiah is about one eighth shorter than the (later) version of the Masoretic text.

All of this means that if you’re going to talk about the “original Bible”, you have to tell us what you mean by that. Do you mean

• the original manuscripts of each individual book or passage, all of which are lost?
• the oldest surviving copies of each passage, respectively?
• the Septuagint (and if yes, which version of it)?
• the Masoretic text (and if yes, which version of it)?
• the current scholarly consensus on the most faithful manuscripts, as collected e. g. in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the Novum Testamentum Graece 28?

Iapar , 14 hours ago

This one comes to mind:

“*** ***** **** ******** *** ***** ****** *** ***** **** ***** ****** ** *** ***** ** ******** ** **** *** ***** ** ***** ******”

Always brings a tear to my eye.

Bonifratz , 6 hours ago

Hehe

richieadler , 16 hours ago

You shouldn’t trust any Bible. They are myth books that should not be considered other than as very peculiar literature.

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

You said so because of the censorship, or just because you are an aethist?

Thavron , 7 hours ago

You seem to consistently spell atheist wrong. It’s not with an e.

Mr_Fish , 10 hours ago

Don’t fully trust the translations. There are some that are pretty good, but none are exactly perfect. You can get the original language and wording (or the closest we have) with a quick Google, so use that if you ever think the translation is borderline.

jbrains , 19 hours ago

I’m curious about what you think. How do you react to this?

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Who react to what ?

jbrains , 14 hours ago

How do you react to this?

In the Bible, it says clearly that no one should make a dare to edit or correct the Bible by any words. But many chapters and contents are extremely censored from the original Bible.

scrubbles , 20 hours ago

Ah you’re starting to see the cracks that finally gave me the distrust to leave the church. The church has thrown out entire books of the Bible because they didn’t agree with the messaging. How can I go to a church to where they literally threw out gospels just because they didn’t like it?

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Same. This is where am standing right now.

scrubbles , 14 hours ago

Welcome to the path my friend. I was extremely Christian, but I was shocked that the church would do that. I mean how dare man edit the word of God at all?! I’m not sure what I believe, but I know the church was corrupted

unmagical , 19 hours ago (edited 19 hours ago)

The Bible doesn’t say that you shouldn’t edit or correct the Bible because the authors of the Bible didn’t have the rest of the Bible.

Moses gives some explicit commands to the Israelites to not modify the commands he gives in Deuteronomy, but that doesn’t really apply to the other books.

Likewise, some guy named “John” warns against anyone adding or removing from the account of his acid trip in Revelations, but that doesn’t really apply to other books.

The “Bible” was constructed over a long process and while what many think of as the “Bible” was finalized by 400AD there are still disagreements today (See Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, Mormonism, and many other smaller sects).

The original authors wrote disparate works for distinct purposes at distinct points in time. They were not writing with the goal of manufacturing a multi-thousand year story bound as a single volume.

How do we know the full story?

We don’t. We use archeology, biology, anthropology, and other scientific disciplines to determine a likely path of the story of humanity as a whole. Some disciplines use the books of the Bible and other contemporary accounts to guide areas of future study, but if you want a single source for the history of the earth, humanity, or even the Israelites the Bible isn’t going to offer an honest perspective.

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Revelation 22:18-19, which says:

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

This is what mean by nobody should edit/correct the bible.

unmagical , 14 hours ago

Which applies only to the Revelation of John.

johnefrancis , 20 hours ago

which version of which bible?

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Everything

JimmyBigSausage , 19 hours ago

How can you believe an uncensored one?

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Because the life itself doesn’t have a meaning itself. I belive in god and without god its hard to live the life. Otherwise we can easily get into sins. There are more beyond some myths.

And the unavoidable truth is death.

mindbleach , 15 hours ago

OP is on step two of a really short journey.

midnight_puker , 19 hours ago

How can you believe and trust the bible at all?

Alb087 OP , 15 hours ago

Isn’t the bible itself a precious text ? I believe the issue is humans manipulating all those that said in it for their personal or religious benefit.