Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Our Holy Bible

The Word of God!
Have you ever wondered what the actual
process was and how we came to have
the bible as we know it today?
I know a lot of you are going to say why
question what's worked for centuries.
Well, this is the year of judgement,
the year of new understandings,
the year to come unto new wisdom.
If you ask him and are able to understand
he will tell you the truths of the world today.
I've been told by someone recently that
we don't need to hear from God today
because we have the bible as our tutor.
There is a verse in the new testament
that says that the old testament was given
to us(the people of the new testament)
for a tutor and since we have Jesus to guide
us we don't need to adhere to the old
testament anymore. So then what do we
have the old testament for if not to learn from?
Well, I don't know....
I think we can still learn alot from the old
testament and it's many truths and stories
of other peoples mistakes and trials as well
as there triumphs. We can be uplifted by it
and guided by it in ways that don't have to
be the laws in it.
This brings me to a new question.
Who decided what was left out of the bible
when it was put together and what influenced
there decision. I've been told there over 80
gospels alone that were left out of the bible
and only 4 chosen, one of which I question
the author stated. Why do we need 3 gospels
that repeat the same thing almost word for
word over and over again? Why not put
something in there that is different or at least
showed a different viewpoint? What happened
to all those others that weren't put in the bible?
Where are they now? If we were to find them
and read them could they be considered the
Word of God as well? Were they not also
inspired by the Holy Spirit? What about the
dueterocanonicals/apocrypha? This was some
12-15 books that the Catholics still use today
that I don't have in my Holy Bible. Why were
they taken out? Why does the new testament
only speak about those churches that Paul set up?
What about those others that the other apostles
set forth and kept? What happened to them?
What about all those other gnostic texts that
were discluded?
One last question/comment... The book of John.
I mentioned earlier that I question the author
of one of the gospels. Did John tell stories about
himself in the third person? In John 1:15
it says: John spoke about him. He cried out,
"This is the one I was talking about when I said,
'He comes after me, but he is greater than I am,
because he existed before I was born.'"
Why would John, who also wrote of course 1st
2nd and 3rd John not in the 3rd person, talk
about himself in such a way. This doesn't seem
right to me. And it goes on and on through the
whole book where it talks about John as if
someone else is telling the story.

I don't expect that any one person can or ever
will be able to answer all of these questions.
If you have comments or other questions
please add them.

2 comments:

Rick Northup said...

Beth, you have a significant error here although I agree with your primary statement, that it appears the Gospel of John was written in the third person, and may not be written by the one who is known as John, The Beloved by many. The problem being, you quoted from the 1st Chapter, vs 15 "John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me." This John is John the Baptizer. All the mentions of John in Chapter one are to this John who was born of Elizabeth, who is Mary's Cousin. John was born a little before Jesus, in fact he leapt in the womb when Jesus was conceived. Luke 1: 41 "And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:"

Otherwise your Blog has a lot of Truth to say about the Authorship of the Book of John.

Beth said...

This was assuming that John(Yohanan)the baptizer is who wrote the book of John. This is what I was led to believe growing up. It is also assumed by the Catholic church that John of Zebedee may have written the book. The book itself leaves one to assume that which is called the beloved disciple wrote the book and it was ended by someone after there death. If you look into other gnostic texts that were discluded from the canon you will see that Mary Magdalene would fit this position very, very well.