Please note that this thread is about the opinions of the earliest Christians and authors of the Tanakh; to discuss how they viewed their evolving religion, not to attack Christianity - there's plenty of other threads for that.
- Hi Roger and welcome to the forum
There's no particular orientation to the forum as a whole - we've got folk from all sorts of Christian denominations as well as from non-Christian religions, non-religious theists, atheists, ignostics, agnostics, agnomists and probably everything else in between. I myself haven't been a Christian since more than thirteen years ago, but I think it's more educational, enjoyable and constructive to look for ways in which traditional religious beliefs might be tweaked into more modern, rational understandings; rather than just crudely and (in the case of this thread) rudely bashing on traditional beliefs using an equally fundamentalist mindset.
On your point specifically, many Christians don't share the idea that the bible is a perfect Word of God - Jesus is the Word of God, after all - and in fact that doctrine is seemingly contradicted by the bible itself as merely a relic of the old covenant, when God's people did not want his direct spiritual guidance. And even from that old covenant perspective, there's a pretty stern warning in Deuteronomy against considering things to be the word of God when they are not spoken in his name (as most of the bible is not) or are seen to be untrue (which some such as these gospel contradictions obviously must be):- Deuteronomy 18:15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him. 16 This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’ 17 The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. 18 I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him. 20 But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ 21 You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ 22 When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.
Jeremiah 31:31 “Behold, days are coming,� declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,� declares the Lord. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,� declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,� declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.�
2 Corinthians 3:1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? 2 You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, 6 who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?
- Deuteronomy 18:15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him. 16 This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’ 17 The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. 18 I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him. 20 But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ 21 You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ 22 When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.
