Right i'm bound to get some bad reaction for this, from people that heavily believe in the Bible.. but..

how did the bible come about?! Did jesus have a servent that wrote down all his famous quotes on a rock with a sharp.. er rock? Or did "GOD" write it?? The reason this came up is that i was on the bus earlier and past a church that said Jesus Said " I came that they may have and enjoy LIFE, and have it in abundance, to the full, till it overflows ".

Now call me naive and yeah i didn't do well in R.E back in the school days.. but really who actually can quote some-one when no-one, absolutely no-one can prove this was said?! Oh except the Bible can...apparently!

Help me out?

Scribes wrote on papyrus paper with some kind of ink they made with charcoal and water, I think summat like that anyways. There is still enough intact to know what was written.
No different I would imagine if someone found a current newspaper in say 2000 years time and people will say "Can you believe this crap?!"

If this gets good I may wade in, too much potential for Vicky Pollard's remedial theology so far.

i'm not a vicky pollard bit harsh

the old testament was written before christ

the new testament was written over the the hundred to two hundred years after christ, the gosples were the first bits to be written and the first one of them, mark's, was written approximately 30-40 years after christ's death.

in essence fuck all of the bible we read today, that was written about christ, was actually written during his lifetime or even within a few decades of his death.

Right, I should point out that even the 'contemporary' accounts of Jesus' actions are a bit shaky. For example Luke's gospel was apparently written decades after the events occurred. So the analogy with a newspaper isn't quite right. More like me doing an essay on the Falklands War. Then of course the bible comes in different versions with slightly different translations, and various bits and pieces have been cropped out over the centuries if a certain pope or other bigwig took the hump at them.

The sources for the Old Testament are even shakier.

All comes down to Blind Faith. Whoever she was

[center]Oh and the new testament was put together by Constantine the roman emperor a few hundred years after Jesus. They decided what went into the bible and what stayed out. So thats why Romans get a good deal in the Bible and the Jews don't.

Some people knew him when he was alive, and stories got written down and re-told.
I would imagine that like all 'family stories' that get handed down the generations end up not exactly accurate, but some surely could be almost correct if people were actually there.
But who knows? I think the whole point of any religious belief is that each person believes whatever they want to believe, regardless of accuracy and 'proof'.

the essence of the above four posts is that while there are some contemporaneous accounts of christ none of those got in the bible and the accounts of christ that did get in were written well after his death and not all were written by people who knew him

I guess that means we shouldn't believe what we read in biographies about old film stars either.

I think the people who wrote in the bible "this is His Word" believed this to be true, whether gotten first or third-hand, and the people who 'religiously' read the bible (no pun intended) believe those beliefs to be correct.

it is my opinion that the bible is useful for morals but not as a factual account of christs life

good for morells - rot it down and the little lovelies sprout right out.

Good for propping up wonky tables

Good for keeping the door open

Good for hiding listening equipment




The Bible is great!

and its great for flower pressing