Bible obfuscation

[jasedm]

Imagine a book had been created which caused (following its publication) vast disagreements amongst its readers over thousands of years, and which engendered a huge disparity of belief in the interpretation of its actual words.
Its various translations were directly responsible for untold violence, civil strife, murder, war, the stifling of science, and intolerance, very ofter due to gross ambiguity on critical issues of life and death, and of eternity.

Might those of a spiritual persuasion rightly conclude that the book had been put together by the Devil to confuse man as to his righteous path?

The Bible is such a book. Different languages we are told, were a result of God's works:

"because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth" (Gen 11 1-9)

So God is responsible for the fact that there is often a vast disparity in agreement between people with access to the same text.

This would not be too much of an issue if the Bible were a manual on how to build a mud hut - there would be a great and pleasing variety of homes across the world, but no-one would have to be nailed to anything or have thumbscrews applied due to their insistence on the door opening to the left or right.

But this is a book allegedly divinely-inspired, and the issues are of life and death.

Surely it's more logical to conclude that the Devil inspired the book, as it is so given to mis-interpretations that have caused such ills?

With God being all-seeing and all-knowing, one would have expected that He would have guided the scribes much more effectively to make His requirements known to simple people through the ages in a straightforward text.

Jase

[OnceConvinced]

With God being all-seeing and all-knowing, one would have expected that He would have guided the scribes much more effectively to make His requirements known to simple people through the ages in a straightforward text.

You would have thought so, wouldn't you? But some Christians insinuate he deliberately made it confusing so that you would need the Holy Spirit to decipher it.

You raised some great points. I never thought about the whole tower of Babel thing and the chaos it's caused, but it has, hasn't it? It's resulted in miscommunication, it's resulted in mistranslations of scripture and you could even argue it's resulted in a lot of racism.

Seems God made a dodgy decision with the entire tower of Babel fiasco. What really is crazy is that God would be so offended that man would create such a tower. As if the tower was ever going to reach him. And so what if it did? Whoopdedoo! Oh what a terrible insult to God. Another example of God flying of the handle and unleashing his wrath at the silliest little thing.

Of course my real opinion is, it's simply an entertaining story to explain why there are many different languages in the world.

I don't believe the story teller ever believed it to be true. (I'm confident our Jewish members like Cnorman and Goat will concur)

[JoeyKnothead]

Excellent post. I agree with you, the Bible is so convoluted, you can make any point you wish to make with it. It has the hands and mind of man all over it.

[Fisherking]

Surely it's more logical to conclude that the Devil inspired the book, as it is so given to mis-interpretations that have caused such ills?

The devil didn't speak very highly of himself if he inspired it

[Goat]

Surely it's more logical to conclude that the Devil inspired the book, as it is so given to mis-interpretations that have caused such ills?

The devil didn't speak very highly of himself if he inspired it

The devil is very rarely mentioned in the bible, and often in such code and symbolic language, it is hard to identify WHO/WHAT the devil is.

[OnceConvinced]

Surely it's more logical to conclude that the Devil inspired the book, as it is so given to mis-interpretations that have caused such ills?

The devil didn't speak very highly of himself if he inspired it

Many would say that God didn't speak too highly of himself either.

[Fisherking]

Surely it's more logical to conclude that the Devil inspired the book, as it is so given to mis-interpretations that have caused such ills?

The devil didn't speak very highly of himself if he inspired it

The devil is very rarely mentioned in the bible, and often in such code and symbolic language, it is hard to identify WHO/WHAT the devil is.

If the devil inspired the book as jasedm claims, the devil rarely mentioned himself in the bible and when he did it was code and sybolic language making it hard to identify who/what he actually was (in your opinion). Like I said, if he did inspire the bible, he didn't paint a very good picture of himself or his future.

[Goat]

Surely it's more logical to conclude that the Devil inspired the book, as it is so given to mis-interpretations that have caused such ills?

The devil didn't speak very highly of himself if he inspired it

The devil is very rarely mentioned in the bible, and often in such code and symbolic language, it is hard to identify WHO/WHAT the devil is.

If the devil inspired the book as jasedm claims, the devil rarely mentioned himself in the bible and when he did it was code and sybolic language making it hard to identify who/what he actually was (in your opinion). Like I said, if he did inspire the bible, he didn't paint a very good picture of himself or his future.

What better way to hide oneself?? Of course,there is so much symbolic language in the bible,who know what it really says..Revelation is the perfect example of obtuseness.

[jasedm]

Thanks all for your responses.

Apologies - my mention of the Devil was merely to underline the difference between God and Satan. God's way is supposed to be of truth and light, and the Devil's darkness and confusion.

The Bible is obviously very confusing to all who study it, or the various sects and denominations which fight over its meaning would not exist.

The main point I was trying to make was that the supposedly inerrant, God-inspired words of the Bible should constitute an unarguable, crystal-clear 'manual' of how mankind must live their lives in order to attain heaven.
That it very demonstrably is not, is evidenced by the endless schisms, decrees, councils, wars and lost lives over many centuries, due to disagreements as to what the words actually mean.
The space in the Bible given to endless genealogies of who begat whom, and pointless repetitions, would have been better given over to the specifics of what is wrong and what is right - after all our eternal souls are at stake.

The 'greatest story ever told' has 66 books, and yet it fails very badly for example to be specific over whether it is a sin to kill, or just to murder. God, It could be argued, knew this would be the case, and helped the confusion along by scattering our languages. This is not the action of an entity seeking to make its edicts clear.

If God did not inspire the Bible then perhaps the Devil did, or maybe it was distilled from various superstitious myths by various people struggling to scratch an existence and live together in an unforgiving environment.

This is a clearer version of the sixth commandment written by a fifteen year-old boy as an exercise at school:

"Thou shalt not kill, murder, cause to be deceased, or end the life under any circumstances of yourself, or any other man, woman, child or foetus.

Most would agree that this is much clearer (if less succinct) than the Bible version.

Had this injunction been brought down from the mountain, it would at a stroke have obviated the need for Christians to wring their hands endlessly over questions such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, capital punishment and war.

How can multiple lists of generations and begats, and ages at death be more important than one of the prime commandments for our existence together, written in stone by the finger of God?

To return to my poor analogy of a hut-building manual, if I as a supreme being wanted all huts to be built the same, and suggested that a failure to do so may result in eternal souls being cast into the wilderness, then I would be very very very careful that the ones I love above all else understood categorically my instructions.
I would specify very clearly the timber to be used, the correct and immutable dimensions I required. I would give recipes for mortar and roofing material, I would talk of the number of windows and doors, internal rooms, heights of ceilings, flooring requirements and so on and so on.

What I would not do would be to use terms that poor peasants might be confused by, and I wouldn't write the manual in a language which had to be translated from the language of a far-off foreign land by someone who lived dozens and dozens of generations ago
Following this, should my instructions be found by my imperfect and ignorant subjects (whom I created) to be in any way ambiguous, then I would have failed them unforgivably, and the fault would be mine.

That the Bible is woefully inadequate as a clear set of requirements for how one is to live one's life, is majestically evidenced by the discussions on this forum and many others like it. Were it not obfuscatory in hundreds of respects, we would all agree on the requirements whether we choose to follow them or not.