Who Wrote the Bible? (My title)

(Note by the poster: I realize I am taking a chance in posting the following, but I am trying to make a point. I beg all of you, before hitting the "abuse" button to please first read the article in its entirety and then to please read my comments below it. I believe even those who disagree with the theology of the article will recognize the point I am trying to make by posting this here. Thank you.)

NOTE: We're still working our way through a long list of letters that have arrived in recent weeks. If you've sent us a question or comment, please be patient; we hope to get to it in the coming weeks.

• (In response to our May 7th issue, where we answered the false charges of the Christian Church against King David):
"…you… rely on such 'man-made' books as the Talmud and Kabbalah to excuse King David of his sins… It seems very plain from G-d-inspired scriptures that Uriah never meant or wanted to divorce his wife and some rabbi coming along a thousand years later and writing in the Talmud that he did doesn't make it so…" — DJ.

Our response to this letter, part 2: Before we revisit the issue of what sin(s) King David did or didn't commit, there's a critical underlying issue here in referring to G-d's Spoken Word in His Holy Talmud and Kabbalah as "man-made" while simultaneously describing G-d's Written Word (Hebrew Scriptures) as being G-d-inspired.

As discussed in the last issue, G-d's entire Word has been guarded and preserved since Mount Sinai by the Jewish people collectively. That Word has two components: Written and spoken. Other religions, which try to wrap themselves in clothes of imitation "holiness" without, in fact, yielding to G-d's Law, extract only those parts of G-d's Word they can use for their own purposes. Christianity adopted the written component and some pieces of the oral component while surgically removing the rest; Islam absorbed more of the practical content of G-d's Word than did Christianity, but rejected the written Scriptures.

It's one thing for Christian leaders to reject G-d's Spoken Word; any atheist does that, with plenty of rationalizing excuses. But how can those same leaders turn around and declare G-d's Written Word to be holy? At least the atheist is consistent in rejecting both.

As far as I've ever been able to glean, it seems that Christians try to justify the distinction by attacking the rabbis and everything they wrote — thus attempting to smear G-d's Holy Talmud while holding on to the Hebrew Scriptures (and, of course, reinterpreting them according to new doctrines).

What most Christians aren't told by their leaders is that the Bible was also compiled, and even partly written, by those same rabbis!

The ancient oral traditions of G-d's Spoken Word were preserved by the rabbis (the judges of the Sanhedrin established by Moses) and survived the 70-year exile of the Jewish nation in Babylon through a grand council of rabbis known as the "Men of the Great Assembly." Some affiliates of the Great Assembly, such as Jeremiah, also functioned as prophets, but most were simply rabbinical judges operating on their G-d-given authority (see Deut. 17, for example).

The Men of the Great Assembly decided to create a complete Bible of Hebrew Scriptures. They carefully sifted through numerous writings to decide which had the proper degree of holiness for inclusion. They incorporated the Five Books of Moses, of course, and ended up selecting 19 other volumes (written over the 1,000 years following Mount Sinai) to be attached to the Five Books. Many other books weren't included; there are references in Scripture to various "Books of Kings and their Wars," for example, which were deliberately left out (others, like Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, almost didn't make it). Upon finishing their selection process, the rabbis sealed the Bible (about 350 BCE), declaring no further writings (such as Maccabees, which came later) could ever be added to the Written component of G-d's Word (as opposed to the Spoken Word, which would be written down in stages in future centuries).

Among those 19 additional books chosen for Scripture by the rabbis were some written by the rabbis themselves — basically, all the later books, including Esther, Ezra/Nehemiah, Daniel, and the Chronicles (I & II). Portions of Ezra/Nehemiah and of Daniel were even written, not in Hebrew, but in Aramaic (an earlier dialect of the same language as the Talmud).

So, ironically, Christians are brainwashed to reject the rabbis (the judges of Israel) and their works — while simultaneously accepting the Bible that was chosen and compiled by those same rabbis, and even including several books written by those rabbis!

The bottom line is that the only basis on which anyone can (properly) conclude the written Bible is, in fact, G-d's inspired Word is that the rabbis say so. By accepting the Bible of the rabbis, Christians are unwittingly embracing the core teachings of the rabbis as to what constitutes G-d's Word. Yet they simultaneously embrace the Roman selection of various Greek writings as a "New Testament" of bogus "scripture." The average Christian has no idea of the contradiction.

As the cloud of deception by Church leaders dissipates, we will see Christians flocking away from the Church by the hundreds of millions to embrace G-d's complete Word, Written and Oral, as one indivisible Truth — while rejecting the Roman-compiled "New Testament" as an uninspired fraud.

Until the return of Israel from the Babylonian Exile, the "Torah" and the "Haftorah" did not exist in any written form. It was completely oral. Neither did the position of "Rabbi." The decision of what was cannon (to be written and included in what came to be called Torah ahd Haftorah) was, perhaps, arbitrary. For me. it is still representative of compelling history and spiritual guidance.

In the early years of Christianity, even before there was clear split between the "Christians"(converted goyim led by Paul, who took "Jesus as the Messiah to the gentiles because he had no other place to go)and Jews (those born and racially Jewish, led by James, the brother of Jesus, whose existence has been denied by Catholics because Mary had to be a perpetual virgin) there were numerous books that were considered as sacred to the followers of "Jesus the Messiah." Most, particularly those written by Gnostics, were rejected when the Christian cannon was solidified.

The parallel in worship (reading the Torah and Haftorah in Jewish worship) and the Gospels and minor books such as the letters of Paul is telling. So is the very important difference between "Rabbi" and "priest." Protestants rejected the institution of "priest," an intermediary between man and G-d, returning to a direct relationship between G-d and the individual.

The New Testament is not "bogus" Scripture.
2Tim.3:16 (From the NEW Testament)

[16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

I would like to explain to non-Fundamentalist Protestant readers of this thread why it is that FP's response to people who don't believe in chr*stianity is to quote the "new testament" and expect the quotation from a book the unbeliever doesn't even recognize to automatically prove the claims of chr*stianity.

When chr*stianity first began all its converts were, of course, adults, and all were converted by being taught, and accepting, the teachings of chr*stianity (intellectual conversion). But as time passed a chr*stian community came into existence, and children were born to them. Of course, the new chr*stian community brought up its children in chr*stian doctrine from birth, as all religions do (eventually chr*stians would even baptize them as infants, creating "chr*stian children").

Radical Protestants, however, reject infant baptism because it isn't mentioned in the NT. In the NT, all chr*stian converts are adults. Therefore, according to radical "Bible chr*stians," in order for anyone to be a chr*stian, he must be converted as an adult. But this creates a difficulty . . . even the most radical "Bible only" chr*stians bring up their children in the intellectual doctrines of chr*stianity. What is the status of "cradle fundamentalists?"

It is precisely in response to the need for an adult conversion experience for people who have believed the intellectual doctrines of chr*stianity all their lives that the "new birth" developed in radical Protestantism. Being born into a chr*stian family doesn't make one a chr*stian (otherwise chr*stianity would be a mere ethnicity). Believing the doctrines of chr*stianity doesn't make one a chr*stian ("the devils believe and tremble!"). In order to become a chr*stian "Ye must be born again." It is this instant when one accepts J*sus as one's personal savior that one "passes from nature to grace" and "converts to chr*stianity." All Fundamentalist Protestants, even if they are born to families who have been Fundamentalist Protestants for generations, regard themselves as adult converts, in no way different from a member of an exotic tribe halfway across the world who, never having even heard of chr*stianity before, accepts and assents to its intellectual doctrines.

Both the Polynesian chieftain who hears about chr*stianity for the first time ever as a seventy year old and who accepts it and believes its doctrines and the Georgia boy brought up believing Fundamentalist Protestant doctrines from the cradle who "accepts J*sus as his personal savior" once he reaches the "age of reason" are, in Fundamentalist Protestant thought, adult converts to chr*stianity--one no more nor no less than the other. Again, this is simply because in the "new testament" there are no cradle chr*stians--everyone is an adult convert.

Since people born and raised in the Fundamentalist Protestant beliefs are just as lost as everyone else and must be converted (via the new birth) most Fundamentalist Protestant sermons are "missionary" sermons trying to save these lost cradle Fundamentalists. However, since the prospective converts already believe implicitly all the claims and doctrines of chr*stianity, an intellectual conversion is unnecessary. And since the prospective converts already believe in the inspiration of the "new testament" there is no need to prove it. All that is necessary is to quote it.

For these reasons--because most Fundamentalist Protestants can recall the time before their own conversion, and because they have never had to confront people who have never heard of, or reject the claims of chr*stianity and the "new testamant"--Fundamentalists have one and only one way to prove these things: by quoting the "new testament." They are completely, totally without any other "ammunition." This is frustrating even to me, but at least I know where they're coming from and why they do this.

If a person says "I don't believe J*sus is the messiah" or whatever, the Fundamentalist Protestant simply quotes the "new testament" text where the claim is made, and this is supposed to "prove" it, and if the person doesn't believe it, well, that's his choice (after all, they spend most of their time converting people who already believe everything).

Now nmh, this is for you:
In order for a quote from the "new testament" to prove something to another person, that person has to already believe the "new testament" is the word of G-d. If the person doesn't already believe it, then quoting it does no good. If you tell a moslem "I don't believe Mohammed was a prophet" and the moslem then "proves" you wrong by simply quoting the "holy qur'an," has he really proven anything to you at all? No he has not. Before a quote from the qur'an is enough to prove anything to you, you have to already believe in its authority. To prove that authority you have to go elsewhere. You cannot prove the qur'an merely by quoting the qur'an.

The exact same thing applies to chr*stianity and the "new testament." Quoting the "new testament" only proves something to someone who already accepts the authority of the new testament. It proves absolutely nothing to the person who doesn't already assume its authority. And you cannot prove the authority of the "new testament" merely by quoting it. You cannot prove any holy book by merely quoting its claims. That is no different from me "proving" that I am George Washington merely by saying I am. Before a "new testament" quote proves or disproves anything, you have to first get the person you are talking to to accept its authority, and you have to go elsewhere to do this.

Does this make any sense?

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