The bible is not a history book. First off, you say that the gospels were written 40 some-odd years after Christ's death. Back then, most people didn't llive to be 40 years old, so anyone that might have seen Jesus alive would have been very young at the time.
Similarly with the Bible. There were still thousands of eye witnesses of Jesus Christ, after he had risen from the dead. So if someone were to write a book on the events and teachings of Jesus' life, and these events were all fiction, highly exagarated and false. Then those eye witnesses would have spoken out, and not taken those books seriuosly.
Not if they were all dead and/or illiterate they wouldn't have. Which they pretty much all were. Also, thousands of people report seeing UFO's all the time! QED UFO's must exist!
Now the church, hungry for the truth, wanted to know Jesus' teaching, so they ordered heaps of copies, so that each church could have their own. Now being reasonable human beings, wanting to know the truth, they did not twist the word in the original manuscripts, rather made sure the copies were exactly the same.
Prove it. You believe the Church seeks the truth, I believe they seek
their truth. The church changed the writings drastically from their original manuscripts. I don't know why, possibly a power thing, but they did. The church is an organization, and no organization is free from corruption. I actually saw a documentary taday that spoke about the church and how they would do that, especially to the roles women played. Especially that of Mary Magdelen. The church removed a few of the books speaking of her, but Muhammed Ali found them.
Now ofcourse, for each english version of the Bible, the translators go back to the original greek and hebrew manuscripts, to ensure accuracy, and to ensure that nothing in the Bible has been twisted or is fake.
And who's to say those are the originals?
One thing you have to remember also, is that even if they were accurate accounts, people would do two things: they would write about what they saw, and they would exaggerate. The problem with the first is the limited scientific understanding that these people had. For example, new evidence has come to light that there was a massive cold front that swept across the area around the time Jesus would have walked on water. Living in an almost desert-like environment, how many of them do you think knew about or ever saw ice, let alone knew that it was frozen water. THey saw Jesus walk on it and thought "Wow! HE walks on water!" which is technically true. When whats-his-face tried and fell into the water, nearly drowning, it could easily have been a thin patch that he fell through. Someone who had seen all this and didn't know what ice was would easily interpet Jesus's act as a miracle.
Then there's the second point - exaggeration. This era was before books or plays were common and used for entertainment. People would amuse themselves by telling stories. Which do you think is more entertaining:
A) "I saw the Romans kill this rebellious Jewish guy for believing too much in his God."
or
B) "And the Son of God was crucified for our sins, shouting out with his final breath "Father! Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing!"
Obviously people would pay attention to the latter, no? Both of those alone can easily refute the literal validity of many of the passages.
Next, your argument for the bible encompases the New Testament. What about the Old Testament? Who was still around from THOSE events after they were written? Did Cain and Abel write stories about their parents' early lives? Practically all of the anti-gay passages I've seen were from there. What time frame were THOSE written in? Did people still have accurate accounts of what happened when they were written? Probably not
One finally thing I really have to say is that your charts are almost irrelevant. They compare the bible first to the Illiad. It seems to be so unreliable! May that be because it's meant to be a fictional tale? What does it have to do with the Bible? Answer: nothing. The same goes for the other chart. Maybe if you replaced Caesar, Plato and Aristotle with the Talmud, the Torah and the Koran we'd be in business. However this is not the case. Those charts make the assumption that the Bible is fact, when there is no conclusive proof that it is actuall completely so. Oh, and also the math is somewhat wrong. The timespan assumes that all the earliest copies were obtained of texts written at the end of the time period from which it would have been written. In reality, it should go fro mthe start since if our earliest copies of the New Testament are from 125 AD, who's to say they weren't from the originals written in 40 AD rather than 100 AD. This gives a new timespan of 25-90 years. First of all, not only is there ample time within since 40 AD to exaggerate the event unnoticed by anyone since they would all be dead or illiterate up until 100 AD, but then there's a possibility that someone had at least 90 years to change things. Most people TODAY don't live to be 90.
You have no proof besides a belief that the church has never changed, added or removed anything from any of the Biblical text to suit their needs. In fact, it would be almost foolish to believe that it wasn't the case. I'm not saying that what you believe is wrong, jsut that you have no proof of anything. I personally believe that Jesus lived. I think there's actual archeaological evidence of that. In my opinion though, he wasn't actually the Son of God. He was just a very religious, jewish man. After all, did he not say that we are all God's children? It wouldn't be odd for him to call God "Father" if he truly believed that. I also believe that he was a genius, able to observe his environment and make quick conclusions. This would allow him to understand the behaviour of people very well, and he would be able to formulate wise "teachings" based around these observations. There's no doubt his "teaachings" were quite profound and usually worth following, they just weren't exactly "holy". Thanks to his genius and his acute powers of observation, he could easily have become a great healer as well, figuring out what sorts of herbs and remedies could cure various illnesses. HE could have also, in the previous "walking on ice" example, have assessed the nature of ice and figured where it was safe to step. Today, if you step onto a frozen pond, you'll know "Ok, i can step here, but it's cracking here so I won't go there". Why couldn't Jesus have been able to figure that out?
So, unless you can come up with tangible proof that everything the Bible says is completely and totally true, especially that which it says about the "evils" of homosexuality, then maybe you cuold use it. Until then it is off-limits and a basis for anything but the reason of your beliefs. Facts cannot be drawn from it.
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Topic: Homosexuality (Read 14079 times)