It would appear that at some point the erroneous belief emerged that the words of the Quran had been directly dictated to the prophet by God. This prevented serious study of the language and subsequent translations to remove errors and develop more evolved understandings. It fucking explains a lot regarding the obvious differences between Islam and Christianity/Judaism in so much as how they are acted out in the modern world.
Catholicism was a warping of Christianity that almost rendered it inert by forcing a human intermediary between the faithful and God. But even Catholic clergy knew that the Bible had not been dictated directly by God - afterall the new testament is clearly a series of eye witness accounts and letters between early leaders of the church, plus likely a bunch of stuff added in the centuries leading up to the Roman conversion.
Comments
(Old Spike)
Here's a smarmy Christian presenting some other surprising things about the Quran, and demonstrating how different versions of the Christian Bible carry different meanings and omissions (I think - just started it). Okay one comment after having watched it - truth is there are Christians who think the Bible was literally written by God, but they are considered to be a small number of hapless ignorants; like those people you see yelling racist things in a WalMart. They have zero purchase within the religion as a whole.
(Long Spike)
If the Bible wasn't divinely inspired then it has the same value as 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It can be ushered to the bin of a billion other self-help books and can be equally ignored as it features crazy bullshit fables on top of outdated thinking.
(Old Spike)
That's a statement about the Bible born out of hostile emotion. From a purely cold and clinical perspective it documents historic events through the lens of the experiencers and subsequent interpreters, and offers an endless bounty of data to compare against acheological knowledge to help figure out our past. If at one time you followed it literally and as though each word were the perfect touch of God, and that caused trouble, I don't think you should advocate the complete dismissal of its value.
I followed a link in the description to this interesting talk about the various versions of the New Testament and how they evolved throughout history:
(Long Spike)
Okay, my bad. We can put it with the thousands of other texts that detail events 2000+ years ago. Now we know about Greek megalomaniacs who were against other Greeks getting circumcised. What a wondrous wealth of irrelevant trivia.
(Old Spike)
Wouldnt be sure if it documents anything at all Skeptoid. As far as i know, outside of the new testament, there is no historical reference to Jesus at all. The first mention is by some Roman around 100AD referencing Christians. If Im wrong Im wrong but even if I am this 'historical document' has many contradictions and speaks of magic and unscientific happenings that throws doubt over the trustworthiness of the rest of the books/letters/documents.
(Old Spike)
Go to 1:00:40 in the video immediately above and watch one of the greatest critics of the historical accuracy of the New Testatment admit we have much earlier attestation than for any other book in antiquity. You mentioned a Roman historian - his very works are less authentic than the New Testament in terms of there being proof that the Roman document was actually written by that dude. So it begs the question: what prompts trolls to say "Christ never existed" or what makes it so easy for certain people to be duped by that?
I've met a lot of folks who actually think Jesus was a fictional character. There is no disagreement amongst the majority of scholars, including Atheist scholars, that Christ was a real man who walked around and did stuff. All historic documents, including those written as pure records detailing empire struggles and wars, contain contradictions and exaggerations. What do you think the study of history is all about - it's an exercise in remote speculation based on past records and current knowledge/evidence. That's what makes figuring it out so much fun - it's a grand mystery of the highest order. One hundred years from now historians will be combing through records attempting to look past the disinfo to determine what was ACTUALLY going on. We do it today - see JFK.
The earliest fragment of the New Testament that exists is from the Gospel of John and dates to 70 years after the cruxifiction of Christ. It is a discussion between Christ and Pilate about the nature of truth, and is still contained word-for-word in New Testament today. The earliest non-canonical piece of writing about Christ is argued to be the Gospel of Thomas, which dates to between 7-20 years after Christ's cruxifiction and contains mostly just "Sayings of Christ" with little to no narration. The whole subject is a fascinating area of study.
(Old Spike)
ok fair enough i see where you;re coming from there..im not saying he never existed..probably was a guy who did something special back then but i personally dont think he was feeding 5000 with a few loaves of bread or rising from the dead..but thats just me..
(Long Spike)
Most of Christ's miracles were low enough on the totem pole that they didn't attract attention from the main actors of the time, that being the Romans. It wasn't until the Pharisees (a priest class of Jews of which Jesus was probably a member which is why they engaged him so often) got pissed at Jesus that they convinced local higher up that Jesus was making the other Jews angry so Pilate was like, "sure, kill him."
The only exception to the "lesser miracles" is the story of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus, which is only recounted in the book of John, chapter 11. Considering that raising someone from the dead is by far the most impressive of Jesus' miracles (which doesn't include his own self-resurrection), it seems as though the other three Gospel accounts would mention that but apparently fake news ran rampant 2000 years ago as well as the rest of the Gospels didn't think that was important enough to mention for some reason. This alone shows how the New Testament account are steeped in myth.
(Long Spike)
The earth is 5000 years old. Deal with it.