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PressingForward said: “I can’t help but think of a scripture… hmm. not sure where.. Isaiah maybe?? (my scriptures are 2 arms lengths away from me, thats one extra arm length i’m not willing to take at the moment lol) that speaks about the Word of God lasting forever. How can this be with so many different versions? Or it could not be referring to the Bible at all, but then, to what?”
The 1st Chapter of John starts off with:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Yep….pretty confusing…..
Some scholars believe the Gospel of John has Gnostic tendencies, and could be a Gnostic Gospel. For those of you who have never heard of Gnosticism, it is a competing form of Christianity. Gnostic Christians believed Jesus was divine, but they reject the resurrection as important. They believe the teachings of Jesus and secret knowledge (“gnosis” means “secret knowledge”) were much more important that trivial things like the Resurrection. 😳 Frankly, the reason the 4 Gospels were chosen was because they wanted to unify many competing forms of Christianity. If a gospel didn’t have a resurrection story, it was tossed. (Here’s more info on Gnosticism:http://www.mormonheretic.org/2008/06/13/early-christian-heresies-gnosticism/ The Gospel of John is written from a much more philosophical point of view. As Bruce in MT says about the intro as Jesus being the Word, that whole first chapter is very symbolic, and frankly is a bit hard for Western minds to understand, because it has a more Eastern Oriental way of thinking.
As for the Apocrypha, all you need to do is pick up a Catholic Bible and read all the books in it that aren’t in the KJV, like Maccabees. I’ve heard the Catholic version of the Book of Esther is much longer than the KJV version. I plan to do a post on the different Esther’s when I get around to it.
SamBee, I think the KJV New Testament is pretty bad too in places. Revelation, Hebrews, Romans, Corinthians, and many letters from Paul are not easily understood by most LDS Sunday School students, so I disagree with you that they are “well rendered in modern English.” Hebrews can be especially difficult.
mormonheretic wrote:I think almost any modern Bible is better than KJV.
Agreed completely. Also, I have no problem admitting that the Bible is not absolutely divine. How on earth could it be (unless God authorized the some 30,000+ problems and errors in copying, translation etc.)😆 😆 KJV is based on a poor quality Greek version of the NT. I like KJV for the reasons described above, plus growing up with it, there is just familiarity with it that makes you feel at home.
I think that it’s misguided to get hung up on it being the one and only truth. That’s not new however, just the latest iteration with a new twist.
Bruce in Montana wrote:The 1st Chapter of John starts off with:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Yep….pretty confusing…..
Hows that for enlightenment! lol!
It’s all kind of frustrating to me… I have a strong desire to know and be 110% in the “loop” of Christianity and Mormonism.. If I chose to believe in these scriptures, should I not for the same reasons take in other gospels by other religions? I think I should.. I feel like I should learn and find God in everything.. but the more I delve into things… the more confusing it seems to become sometimes.
Do most Christians know this stuff?? lol… It seems like with knowledge comes a test of faith. The more you learn about the BoM and its origins, the more likely it is for your faith to be shaken. Can this not also be true for mainstream Christianity… the more you learn about the Bible, the more likely your faith to be shaken? The whole Nicene creed.. King James.. its enough to make you question what the heck you’re reading! I wish it was point blank out there for me, its tough to dig and study when I don’t know. One of the reasons I am really enjoying the forum, I’m learning a lot from everyone, and it gives me areas that I can research and learn for myself. It gives me a starting place.
Anyway.. enough of that… Why is the apocrypha so shunned amongst many religions if it can only continue to teach and enlighten? I’ve noticed all the books mentioned in the Bible (Book of Enoch, etc..) and I’m sure other preachers and pastors know that they are referenced, but don’t use it? I’m at a loss for this… Makes me want to thump someone on the head! Its so easy to see that the Bible (well, for me at least) is not a completely divine reference, as it has been handled so much by man. The same with the BoM.. just because it hasn’t been around for quite as long, or doesn’t have a lot of different versions.. doesn’t mean that man hasn’t to a certain extent ‘perverted’ (for lack of a better word at the moment) the document. Where are we to find truths?
Well, an old theological chestnut here… the word used in John 1 is “logos”. This can technically mean “word”, but it has a lot of other meanings that the word “word” doesn’t have in English. A good way to get the sense of this, if you don’t know any Greek, is to remember that the English word “logic” derives from logos, and is clearly to do with thinking and mind, rather than what we’d understand as a word. “Word” in English is actually a very narrow and specific translation of the Greek, and doesn’t have the sense of “action”, “mind”, “idea” etc On the other side, there are certain senses which the word “word” has in English that the Greek doesn’t AFAIK. “Word” can mean promise (you have my word), or an order (give me the word), or rumor (word on the street).
PressingForward wrote:Where are we to find truths?
Here’s my view.The scriptures we have are the result (at best) of inspired people trying really hard with limited language symbols to convey the gist of the highlights of revealed ‘truth’ that they received, to other people, and maybe to the public at large (not so much, really, by and large). At worst, they are the biased and polemic viewpoint of corrupt ‘religious’ people trying to get people to do certain things, for better or for worse.
Now I think that this is *really* important. The temple tells us that all the teachings we get, in or out of the Church, are the “philosophies of men, mingled with scripture”, influenced by ‘satan’. And that’s the best we can do, unless we give heed to the temple instruction. Which is, how we are to ‘connect’ with divine messengers, who alone can provide us with “further light and knowledge”, since they speak via the power of the HG (see Nephi 32). This is why the temple is a ‘mystery school’. The key is to accept the Holy Ghost as our instructor, and anyone through whom the HG teaches us.
The key to the key is faith. The Alpha and Omega of everything spiritual.
HiJolly
What HiJolly said. 
Fwiw, I like the KJV specifically because it’s the book of my childhood. Since I don’t believe in interpreting anything in it as literally the inerrant word of God, I don’t worry much about translation issues. I like to see various translation differences, but they are FAR more academic than spiritual to me.
HiJolly wrote:The key is to accept the Holy Ghost as our instructor, and anyone through whom the HG teaches us.
Awesome, this is something I’m learning to do more and more. Thanks for your great reponse
In keeping with the original 1611 KJV… How are we to learn more about the history behind documents, and then trust that resource? I find things that at times seem to contradict each other.. and don’t know which is accurate.
HiJolly wrote:The key is to accept the Holy Ghost as our instructor, and anyone through whom the HG teaches us.
Awesome, this is something I’m learning to do more and more. Thanks for your great reponse
In keeping with the original 1611 KJV… How are we to learn more about the history behind documents, and then trust that resource? I find things that at times seem to contradict each other.. and don’t know which is accurate.
PressingForward wrote:
In keeping with the original 1611 KJV… How are we to learn more about the history behind documents, and then trust that resource?You’re talking biblical criticism (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_criticism ) — and my favorite author is Bart Ehrman. Look him up on youtube.com, and I love his courses onhttp://tinyurl.com/y359a4v Of course, this is feeding the left brain only, and as such you can overdo it, which I don’t recommend. Listen to someone like Neal A. Maxwell or David B. Haight to give it a right-brain spin for balance…PressingForward wrote:I find things that at times seem to contradict each other.. and don’t know which is accurate.
Sometimes I see this, but often it is not a contradiction, but rather a paradox. Understanding the real meaning behind the words is not possible without dealing with paradox. The Hebrews saw all scripture as having 4 levels of meaning, all at the same time. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardes_%28Jewish_exegesis%29 HiJolly
Thanks for the advice and references HiJolly… should be a fun couple of weeks for me! HiJolly wrote:PressingForward wrote:
I find things that at times seem to contradict each other.. and don’t know which is accurate.
Sometimes I see this, but often it is not a contradiction, but rather a paradox.
The paradox in scripture I am understanding more and more as I grow, and I love the reference on Pardes. Exegesis and meaning of scripture is different for everyone and I like learning about this Hebrew method that gives some method to my madness..
What I was meaning though when I said “at times seem to contradict each other” I was speaking on peoples observations on history, and the sources that are used. For example on speaking about King James and a possible alcohol issue… some historical scholars might say this is true, whilst others will disagree (not that I’ve researched this, just an example) How then do we learn which sources are accurate?
PressingForward wrote:
What I was meaning though when I said “at times seem to contradict each other” I was speaking on peoples observations on history, and the sources that are used. For example on speaking about King James and a possible alcohol issue… some historical scholars might say this is true, whilst others will disagree (not that I’ve researched this, just an example) How then do we learn which sources are accurate?
Any truth-claim falls into this question. Did Brigham Young really teach Adam was God, the Father of our spirits? Was Joseph Smith really just making up his spiritual experiences as time passed and as he needed to bolster his claims to authority?**There are a number of approaches to resolve the question of what to believe, of epistemology. The two basic schools of thought are (A) secular and (
faith-based. In the secular world all ‘truth’ has to pass the criterion of a world view where there are not ‘truths’ as stand-alone, self evident absolutes, but rather all truth is a function of probability in relation to known evidence. Therefore all miracles are by default NOT true. This is an excellent defense against being deceived, but leaves much to be desired in terms of the complexity of human nature.
I mean, I know it’s a miracle that my wife loves me. How do I know she loves me? Due to all the evidence, ultimately this question can be answered if I accept the evidence as demonstrating that her love for me is probable. But that’s not very satisfying to come right out and say, you know? “Honey, I love you!” “Yep, I reckon that’s probably true… Ouch!!”
In the faith-based world view (some would call it a “magic world view”) we choose to accept subjective experience and evidence as valid, with controls. This necessarily includes a higher probability of deception, which is why people like Alma (chapter 32) and Paul (Hebrews 11) and include in their definitions things like “which are true” and “evidence” and “substance”. Saying that these things are “not seen” is acknowledging that all this is in the arena of subjective ‘truth’.
As far as claims that are made about things that happened in the past, and probably where we were not present, then we see that the interpretation and understanding of the event must be conceeded to be essentially subjective, since we simply don’t have all teh facts. And so the answers have to come from within us, since there is no proof available to us whatever, and the only thing available at all is interpretation of sparse and spotty evidence. FWIW. This is what we find with almost every single historical claim that is made.
Bottom line: we either decide we’ll not trouble ourselves to do our own research, for whatever reason, and so we choose who to believe based on our pre-conceived biases, or, we investigate all the available evidence personally, and then make an informed decision. Either way, we can be wrong, regardless of whether the guiding world view is secular or faith based.
“A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking”
— Arthur Bloch
This is where testimony, or to say it in a secular way, certainty, can really help us. But we need to realize that all certainty is essentially subconscious in nature, just like any conclusion or decision we make is subjective. Do you want to always be ‘reasonable’ and ‘logical” in your decision making? Good luck. You can improve your thinking and decision making by using various tools of philosophy or science, but ultimately, there’s no way around the fact that our minds are physically incapable of complete rationality. This is one major reason I’ve decided to be happy with subjective reality. There’s really nothing else.
HiJolly
**BTW, the answers I have come to rely on to these questions are, in order, yes and no. Subject to revision.
I like the KJV because it most closely matches my Book of Mormon … especially that 2 Nephi stuff (is that a coincidence? 😈 ).I also like the footnotes.
Add the footnotes and index system to another version, and I might enjoy another version better.
PressingForward, How do you tell which historians are best? Hmmm, you listen to their arguments and decide whether you agree with them. Some scholars have better reputations than others, but that still doesn’t mean they’re right. I think you just need to study issues you are interested in and decide if you agree with them. You can try to rely on the Spirit, but with history, I’m not sure how often the spirit tells you that historian A is correct and historian B is wrong. Just study it out in your mind.
Are there any particular issues you’d like like to know which scholars are better? I often post about history on my blog, and may be able to direct you to some historians that I like.
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