{UAH} Problems with the Bible: Part 2

Problems with the Bible: Part 2

15 October 2013, 09:43

Does the Bible represent all the knowledge about God that we have?

When Christians cannot answer a question, they revert to "Read your Bible and you will find the answer there". However, it is not always that simple. Why is it not that simple? Well, because of a lot of reasons, the main answer being simply because it is not written in the Bible. To keep the Bible at a reasonable length, the people who assembled the Bible had to cut from the Bible. Yes, they did not include all the source material they had. If they did not do that, then you would not be able to carry the Bible as it would be much too heavy.

What they also conveniently forgot to tell you is that large portions were changed by humans and a lot of the originals lost. For example, we do not have the originals of any of the Gospels namely Matthew, Mark ,John and Luke. We do not even have copies of them. We only have very late copies of copies..of copies.. of copies of them. The copies are hand written so the scribes that made the copies made a lot of errors in copying them. Of only 100 compared translations there were hundreds of thousands of differences between them.

You can read more about Bart Ehrman who wrote more than 25 books on the bible at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Ehrman

In this part I am going to assume that by using the word God it meant Yahweh (YHWH), the God of Israel.

Does God sit?

On October 10, 2013 at 12:55, Chad Massala wrote
God is spirit and didn't need as sit, nor anything.

Christians say that God is Spirit and does not sit, however the Bible and various other sources dispute this

Numerous places in the Bible e.g.
Psalm 47:8
God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne.

You can find a Ras Shamra stele showing El (in later history associated with Yahweh) sitting
http://www.ancientskyscraper.com/330712.html


Did God have a wife?

Christians would say no but delve deeper into the evidence and it emerges that he might have had a consort (wife).

Asherah, a powerful fertility goddess who may have been God's wife
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/22/fertility-goddess-asherah-was-gods-wife-edited-out-of-the-bible/#ixzz2hldc1U00

In the 1975 excavation of Kuntillet Ajrud, a site dated to the 8th century BCE, pottery was found covered with amazing and revealing scripts.  Asherah's name was associated with Yahweh as if as his wife.  "I have blessed you by Yahweh ... and his Asherah".
http://somethingsurprising.blogspot.com/2011/07/asherah-wife-of-yahweh.html

So, if God did have a wife, was Asherah then Jesus's heavenly mother? And did God create her or was she also always there?

And what happened to Asherah?

To find out more..Google "asherah"


Did God have a father?

Christians believe that God was the first and the last, that he was always there and allways will  be there.

However, it appears that El might have been Yahweh's father.

In the earliest stage Yahweh was one of the seventy children of El, each of whom was the patron deity of one of the seventy nations. This is illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint texts of Deuteronomy 32:8–9, in which El, as the head of the divine assembly, gives each member of the divine family a nation of his own, "according to the number of the divine sons": Israel is the portion of YHWH.[43]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

Deuteronomy 32:8-9 makes it quite clear that there was a 'Most High' god above the 'Lord':
8 When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
9 For the LORD's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
http://somethingsurprising.blogspot.com/2011/07/yahweh-and-el.html

Combined with Psalm 82 (see previous post) these passages are seen by many scholars to indicate that Yahweh was originally a god of lower status in an assembly headed by El.
http://somethingsurprising.blogspot.com/2011/07/yahweh-and-el.html

To find out more..Google +yahweh +el


Conclusion

It seems like there is a lot we do not know and a lot that has been hidden from us. Does that mean we are not allowed to ask these questions because they are embarressing or are they scared that we might find out the truth?