Determining a book's truth.

Not at all. The fact that two stories agree with one another does not necessarily show truth.Let me try to explain.Often the police suspect that several people were involved in some crime. To try to determine the truth, they interview the people separately and then compare their stories.Often they find the stories match, sometimes even word for word. When that happens, the reaction is "Too much match, they got together and agreed on a story."Well, believe it or not, that is exactly what we find when we look at the Bible, particularly the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke.Those three Gospels are referred to as the "Synoptic Gospels" and based on the similarities, it is possible to say that Mark was written first, and that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source.There are many other areas of contradiction.None of these though have a great bearing on the "Truth" of the Bible. I don't doubt that you hold that opinion, but what you are doing right now is called the "Gish Gallop", named after the favorite debating tactic of the Biblical Creationist Duane Gish. You are not addressing issues raised but instead galloping off to yet another unsupported assertion. But we find that is true from the very first Books of ALL Bibles regardless of the Canon.The God described in Genesis 1 is entirely different than the God described in Genesis 2.I have got to ask you, because we seem to be jumping all over the place.Have you ever read the Bible? Have you actually read the whole manual?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That is because those books are part of the Western Christian Communion, Roman Catholics and Protestants.Of course they refer to the Books of their Canon as "The Bible". But the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has different Canons. They in fact have two Canons, a broad Canon that has over 80 books and a Narrow canon.But even in the Western Canon, there are variations. There are a group of book that most Protestants consider the Apocrypha while the Roman Catholics call them Deuterocanonical. As you can see, that means a "Second or Secondary Canon".You refer to your adopted Canon as the Bible, but other people, belonging to other equally old (and in the case of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, likely older) churches would refer to their Canon as the Bible.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

If you will look in Message 224 you can see where I addressed some of the differences between the God of Genesis 1 and the God of Genesis 2.One thing you need to remember is that the Bible, regardless of which translation or Canon, is simply the product of man. I am still not sure that you understand what I was saying, because you have a habit of using terms like "them" without making it clear who "them" happen to be.If you mean the Roman Catholics putting the books that many Protestants place under the heading of Apocrypha in their "Secondary Canon", then sure. But the Protestants do the same thing, just calling them by a different name.This is an old tradition, you can see it in the Torah where traditionally the Prophets were divided into the Former and Latter Prophets and the Later Prophets including the Minor Prophets.But you are still galloping.There is no difference between the Protestant Canon and the Roman Catholic Canon other than the naming of certain sections.The key feature of the Apocrypha is that they are of unknown authorship. That was particularly true about 1700 years ago when the Western Canon was first formalized. Since then though we have learned that many of the books we originally thought had known authors, actually too are of unknown origin. This is particularly true of the Synoptic Gospels and many of the Epistles.Remember as you read the Bible, you are not seeing God described, but rather you are seeing "how peoples of a given age, era, milieu and culture saw God".

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Jesus was born a Jew, lived as a Jew and died as a Jew.One of the big problems with much of modern Christian interpretations of the Bible is that they ignore the fact that it is a Jewish book. The authors writing it were Jews. The author of Mark, of Matthew, of Luke, of the Epistles were all Jews.This loss of context obscures much of the significance of the stories and parables. A good example is the tale of the first miracle.Too often the importance of the story is simply not taught to Christians. Instead, they concentrate on the late night beer run and the quality of the brew.To the people hearing that tale, those would have been among the very least important parts.For example.The reason there was so much water present to be turned into wine was because a Jewish wedding was filled with tradition, each requiring ritual washing. The water was essential to the wedding, more important even than the wine.When Jesus turned the water into wine, he placed a total halt on the rituals. The message is NOT in the wine, it is in Jesus saying that ritual and belief is unnecessary. He is saying that the ceremony is not what is significant, that living the life is.There are also several other major threads that run through that story, ones almost never touched on in Christian ministry, parallels and sub-texts, hints of things to come in the story.The whole tale is a plot device used to set up later events in the narrative. I will leave those as an exercise for you to find. Surely you jest. Have you taken first year geometry yet?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Irrelevant. In fact back when I had first year Geometry we were taught that it was very likely that many others had developed the theory. We knew for sure that the Egyptians had calculated complex geometric shapes including truncated pyramids (which shows they could also handle untruncated pyramids) long before Pythagoras using only fractions and considerably earlier, by at least 4000 years ago.But it was still the "Pythagorean Theory".However that was but a byline, a throw away of the response. The important things were in the parts above that throw away, and that Pythagoras name has lasted even longer than Jesus'.Edited by jar, : add er

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That actually happens all the time. A couple examples can be found in Jude and also in what is attributed to Jesus himself.Jude references material from 1 Enoch which was rejected in most Canons (but not all) as well as the Assumption of Moses which was also rejected.The author of Matthew has Jesus asserting that David was the literal author of Psalm 110 and the author of Acts does the same with Peter.The only connection exists in the Psalm Title, but Titles were not added to the Psalms until long after they were written. If you read the 70 some Psalms attributed to David several incongruities jump out. Psalm 5 has a reference to the Temple when it did not yet exist, and not as prophecy but rather fact and Psalm 139 is in a Northern dialect and David was a Southern King.Now it is possible that David actually wrote the Psalms attributed to him, but it was also common during the period to write things and attribute them to some well known character. We do know that the attribution and Titles though came long after the fact.The important point is that "Scripture" does not refer to what anyone knows as "The Bible', it refers to inspired writing. And the value of inspired writig is not whether it was at some time Canonized, or who the author is, but in the lessons that can be learned.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No, the author of Acts has Peter claim that David wrote it. Irrelevant. The point is that the Titles, like current chapters, verses or even punctuation are things added after the fact. Well, not unless you are going to use theology by anything that can be imagined. The actual reference is pretty clear that itis refering to the Temple. That males little sense and also makes God pretty wishywashy and indecisive. In one Canon God wants 1 Enoch excluded and in another he wants it included but it is perfectly fine for Jude to include references. Sounds like somebody who can't make up his mind. Sorry but the KJV is not a Canon, just one translation. It was also designed to be politically correct even over accuracy.To say that the Bible is needed is also a pretty lame excuse. Christianity grew from being a small Jewish Sect to being the State Religion over a significant portion of the Western World without need of a Bible.In addition, what makes you think that the Western Canon is the correct one? Just because it is the most popular one right now is not a good indicator.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Depends on which sections you quotemine. He is also depicted in the Bible as being selfish. I could be for the same reasons that folk today follow other liars and conmen. Look at all the folk that send money into the Televangelists.Also, there is no evidence other than tradition on the deaths of any of the Apostles. That also does not stand up to examination. Crazy people are not always self-centered, Charley Manson knew he was the Messiah too. So did Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite and David Koresh. Again, there are examples of that throughout history. People gave their lives searching for El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, the Holy Grail. If you are going to make that claim you will have to back it up. So far many have tried but not one has succeeded. Pick whichever of the Prophecies you think you can defend and post it so we can examine it in detail. Sorry but that is simply false and a logical fallacy to boot. Anthologies fit together nicely, even when written by many different authors, because the editors and redactors select material that fits together within the theme.I point these things out to you, because what you have posted is the typical pastoral message from the Christian Cult of Ignorance. The Pastors that put out such trash work to make sure you act like a nice little bobble-head and just sit and nod, never thinking, never questioning what they say.That is NOT the way to actually learn about GOD or about the message of Christianity.Think.Question.Stop being a bobble-head.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Do you know actually know of any such records? Or is this just another example of repeating what folk have told you without question?Even if there was any evidence anyone died for their beliefs, did you not see where I pointed to modern examples of people who died for their belief?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion