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How can we believe and trust censored Bibles?

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. How is this acceptable, and how do we know the truth and full story about the entire life?

(Finally, some of the replies and trolls I received made me more confused. But thanks a lot for the reference replies.)

CanadaPlus ,

Lemmy is, like, all atheists. You’re going to get a lot of “we can’t” answers.

jsomae ,

The orthodox would agree.

xmunk ,

So basically Predator handshake meme of religious extremists and atheists?

CanadaPlus , 

<span style="color:#323232;">     The Bible is lies
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Atheists   -o-   Christian revisionists
</span>

I don’t know if that’s what OP meant, though.

CanadaPlus ,

Yeah, Biblical inerrancy is specific to a subset of Protestants. They’re just loud about it. The Catholic church has also flirted with it, but their stance has always been that the church itself is the final authority on all matters, and in Vatican II they soften their endorsement of it with something like “inerrant for the purposes of salvation”.

It’s possible lay believers of other denominations sometimes take the same stance out of confusion, though. I’ve never personally heard someone say “I’m a Christian that doesn’t believe the Bible is all authentic”.

anarchoilluminati ,
@anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net avatar

You haven’t met a single Christian that knew anything about their religion then.

Sad truth.

CanadaPlus ,

Well, I know a lot of evangelicals too, so that skews it.

anarchoilluminati ,
@anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net avatar

Yeah, that’s definitely a skewed demographic. Haha

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

I have to consider both aethist and believers opinion in order to get a clear picture. So it doesn’t really matter.

DmMacniel ,
@DmMacniel@feddit.org avatar

As religious people most often just pick and choose from scripture to make their point, it doesn’t matter to them that their version of scripture is edited/corrected/censored.

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

But can’t it negatively affect us all, expecially if we born in a religious family who take all these things seriously without sense. They used to believe everything said by pastors and priests without using common sense. Anyway they will repeat all the sins, then say my god will forgive me. But how much time ?

LaGG_3 ,
@LaGG_3@hexbear.net avatar

IDK, convert to Islam if you’re that worried about reading your holy texts in their original language?

CanadaPlus , (edited )

It does have the nice feature that the holy book as it exists is definitely a faithful copy of the one dictated by the known, independently attested historical figure.

Of course, most of the actual practices derive from the Hadiths, lol.

anarchoilluminati ,
@anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net avatar

That won’t help. Qur’an was also edited and altered over time.

Personally, I don’t see a need for Christians to covert to Islam, especially for something so trivial. The religions are so similar already, and Muslims already believe that Jesus was a prophet and other aspects of Christianity. If a Christian has some deviating opinion from mainstream Christianity, I am willing to bet good money that there was already a sect or group that had the same idea a long time ago. There’s no reason not to just consider oneself part of that group without having to convert religions and still hold Islam in high regard.

I know too many people that converted to Islam from Christianity for silly reasons like this that were already addressed by some other Christian group or whatever, in my opinion. I understand if someone is coming from a totally different religion and wants to be Muslim, that’s okay to me I guess. But Islam and Christianity are already so similar, there’s almost no point. I think some people just got caught up in the anti-Islamaphobia wave (good thing) and then fetishized Islam as the better or politically acceptable religion among Leftists that doesn’t have similar issues to Christianity (not good, in my opinion).

LaGG_3 ,
@LaGG_3@hexbear.net avatar

I’ll admit that I was making a bad faith suggestion lol. OP’s concern over censorship and Lemmy profile makes them come off kinda reactionary. Plus, the question seems kinda goofy.

anarchoilluminati ,
@anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net avatar

For sure, I do think it’s either a bot or a troll fishing but it’s a subject worth discussing. Haha

jsomae ,

Which bible is censored?

sndmn ,

Everybody Poops

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Pretty much any version we know now has taken very liberal translations to change the meanings. Most scholars agree that the translations were not accurate. Then on top of that entire books of the Bible were debated and thrown out, the gospel of Mary magdeline is the most famous. They picked and chose what message they wanted.

skullgiver ,
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

There are different translations for this very reason. Very few people can read the original Hebrew and Greek originals, let alone understand the classical poetic customs.

It’s not exactly written to be read easily, either, large parts of it were written using text complicated even for the native speakers back in the time.

There are plenty of mistakes in the translation, the funniest one being the translation mentioning unicorns, and some of them try to hide the sea monsters from the old testament and use flowery language to talk around the vile things described on the old stories.

Bonifratz ,

Pretty much any version we know now has taken very liberal translations to change the meanings.

That’s not true. Bible translations differ wildly on the approach they take, but there exist many (at least for English) that are focused on offering a rendition as close to the original meaning as possible. Also, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Koine Greek have been deeply studied over centuries and are well understood, so accurate translations are possible with the exception of a small percentage of rare vocabulary. Obviously, perfect translations aren’t a thing, but that’s a moot point and not exclusive to Bible translations.

Most scholars agree that the translations were not accurate.

Which scholars? Which translations? These blanket statements make no sense. Again, many translations have been made or reviewed/proofread by scholars of the Bible’s languages, making your claim dubious at best.

Then on top of that entire books of the Bible were debated and thrown out, the gospel of Mary magdeline is the most famous. They picked and chose what message they wanted.

It’s no secret that settling on a canon was a process that took centuries both in Judaism (for the Tanakh) and in early Christianity (for its New Testament), and was never really finished in the latter case, considering the different canons in use in the major Christian churches even today.

That said, I think this process was a necessity. In early Christianity, there were hundreds if not thousands of Jesus-inspired texts floating around, so if the new church was to have any sort of guiding document(s), they had no choice but to pick and choose. Of course, if you think a text (like the Gospel of Mary you mention) is an important witness of the early church, or a more accurate reflection of early Christian thought than are the New Testament writings, you have every right to make that argument. But I don’t think it’s fair to hold it against early Christians that they “picked and chose what message they wanted”, because that’s kind of the whole point of founding a new religious movement.

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

Everything available today 🤥

sndmn ,

The Lord of the Rings is more believable.

JackGreenEarth ,

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 ,

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.

MentalEdge ,
@MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz avatar

You don’t.

Better yet, how do you know any modern religion is anything like what it should be like, generations later?

Religions seem very sure about their own teachings, even as they change. Within your own lifetime you’ve probably noticed that a priest or simply a believer you know has ended up changing their mind on something. Just a generation or two of believers and the current ones won’t be thinking and saying the kind of stuff the first ones were, and vice versa.

One pope says nay, next one says yay. If god is speaking through them, did god change his mind? If he is, why didn’t he just get it right from the start?

Religion isn’t like logic, which states 2+2 will always be 4. The simple passage of time and the broken telephone that is human word of mouth, means religion is incapable of staying consistent for more than about a decade, if that.

What’s more, the religions that exist today are the ones that were the best at spreading. If a religion isn’t appealing, people don’t stick with it. So religions tend to morph and splinter, evolving into whatever is just nice enough that a bunch of people will sign up.

They are the original meme, in the scientific sense. An infectious idea that gets recounted over an over, each person changing it slightly to be more appealing during a re-telling, empowering its spread.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

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 ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

Same. This is where am standing right now.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

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

johnefrancis ,

which version of which bible?

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

Everything

jbrains ,

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

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

Who react to what ?

jbrains ,

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.

Bonifratz ,

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 ,
@sorghum@sh.itjust.works avatar

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 ,

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 ,
@sorghum@sh.itjust.works avatar

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 ,

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

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

Dude, are you serious ? 🙄😐

Bonifratz ,

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 ,

This one comes to mind:

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

Always brings a tear to my eye.

Bonifratz ,

Hehe

Vanth ,
@Vanth@reddthat.com avatar

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 ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

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 ,
@Vanth@reddthat.com avatar

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 ,

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.

CaptainBasculin ,

An answer for this in Muslim’s book Quran is that all the previous books god itself sent were edited by humans as time went on.

Though its defence on whether Quran would be edited by humans is that god will not let it happen, there’s the argument that which in that case why did God let the previous books get edited in the first place?

JimmyBigSausage ,

How can you believe an uncensored one?

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

conciselyverbose ,

There is no original Bible.

The Bible is an assortment of works from a variety of authors arbitrarily selected by the Church, then made into a whole bunch of translations that aren’t super consistent with each other and aren’t all that faithful to the original works.

midnight_puker ,
@midnight_puker@sh.itjust.works avatar

How can you believe and trust the bible at all?

Alb087 OP ,
@Alb087@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

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