The Bible and why do you believe it

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I am struck by the number of people posting on this forum who believe the literal interpretation of the Bible. And I am curious why, or how you can come to the conclusion that the Bible was written by man at the behest of God.

If true then it is reasonable to assume that at the very least it should be accurate, should have no contradictions and should have a degree off unambiguous clarity. Instead it appears we have the opposite. Postulates within it have been shown to be demonstrably false, it is laden with contradictions and it is as clear as mud. Rather than being divinely narrated the bible bears all the hallmarks of a collection of stories, written by man, collated by man, for the benefit of, well whom, some would say humanity I would say a controlling few.

Then we have those amongst us who say the bible is but apocryphal, ok, then by whom was it written and collated, and what is its worth.

What gets me more is those who say that the Bible supports evolution.

I think the bible is a compendium of stories that were presumably told vocally by people for years before writing was invented. Then it seems some people decided to write down as many of these stories they could. Then later someone decided to slot all these writings into one book. Then some religions decided to take ownership of this book and use it as 'evidence' of their religion. During translations it will have lost and gained a lot.

Anyone who believes it literally has probably not read it.

I think its a book that belongs to everyone and should not be seen as a religious text but as ancient literature that we are all entitled to read and speculate on.

I just like to hear a nice story me.

Believing that the bible and other historical texts have profound spiritual truths loaded into them vs. believing in the 'documentary hypothesis' of nondenominational evangelists and other similar thinkers who read every word as if it were written with a German engineer or technical writer's mindset - two very different things.

Where I tend to differ from mainstream Christians - I'd see the bible as being loaded with esoteric knowledge, really being a compendium of Egyptian and Babylonian mystery thought ('mystery' being another way of saying that it's built around symbolism of experiences that just don't translate into worldly language, far to complex and with no working analogy to the five senses, and about all you can do is show such a thing to a person and that they'll understand the context of the words once that particular ontic cherry has been popped). I'm still learning as I go along, however there are several authors I've been checking in on who really seem to have something going in their write-ups on this stuff and I say that from doing my own research into historic Catholic mysticism, Hermetic Qabalah as well as Jewish Kabbalah to some lesser extent, and seeing as well what the more prominent Freemasonic authors had to add, ie. it all seems to come to very similar points of conclusion. Much like the bible has the hidden hand of Hermeticism everywhere (Catholicism in a HUGE way) the more I learn the less it would shock me, at all, to get continuing edification that Jesus as the 'true vine' or that there was no other way to heaven but through him was him speaking as higher self or spirit incarnate and that the only way to God was through higher self as he spoke for it as a unity - not a technicality of salvation perdition based on whether or not a particular person ascribed to early Romish Christianity or not.

I have many different reasons for accepting the Bible as history rather than fantasy, but you'd have to point to a specific example for me to elaborate.

That's a very good link.

I don't personally have a literal faith in the old testament, many parts of it appear to me as parables, but I do find the new testament compelling.

I think it starts with a belief in Jesus. For me, I found the evidence for this hard to dismiss.

I think part of the reason it may be so confusing is it has been translated from language to language over a long period of time.

People today still aren't perfect at translating things. Try using Google Translate to go from African to English. It is definitely not perfect, but it still gets the base message across.