A Book You Can Trust

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Over the course of seven months I assembled this from the pages of the Awake.

http://www.kxmode.com/JW/A_Book_You_Can_Trust.pdf

"The Bible was written over a period of some 1,600 years. Its history and prophecy are linked to seven world powers: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and Anglo-America. Each of these will be considered in a series of seven articles. The objective? To show that the Bible is trustworthy and inspired of God and that its message is one of hope for an end to the suffering caused by human misrule."

Read it for the historical information. Read it for the biblical context. Read it to inform yourself about the past, present, and future.

but please take the time to research all the information pertaining to the "historical authenticity" of the bible.
also bear in mind that even though some parts may be true they do not automatically validate the rest.

Anglo-America? How so?

The Bible is a book of Bronze Age Stories, some of them rather far fetched.

ruveyn

Read it.

The information about Anglo-America is four pages starting at page 23, though I recommend reading all pages to get the full context.

No.

This is just one more of your attempts to proselytize WP members into the JW cult.

In regards to your statement about the Bible being nothing more than a book of Bronze Age Stories. Consider that in ancient times humans generally believed the earth was flat. As early as the sixth century B.C.E. Greek philosopher Pythagoras theorized that the earth must be a sphere. Still, two centuries before Pythagoras formulated his theory, the prophet Isaiah stated with extraordinary clarity and certainty: “There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth.” (Isaiah 40:22). Nearly 3,500 years ago, the Bible stated with extraordinary clarity that the earth is hanging “upon nothing”. (Job 26:7) How could simple people, without any equipment, know the earth was a "circle" and that "it hung upon nothing" thousands of years before man could see it for themselves from space? Second Timothy 3:16 reads: "All Scripture is inspired of God". Only Jehovah God would be able to divinely tell these truths.

In Genisis, the Four Corners of the Earth are mentioned explicitly. Flat earth. Spheres do not have corners.

ruveyn

I'm chuckling and sighing at the same time... with a little bit of facepalming thrown in for good measure.

I try...

Edit: I did some personal study and I found no scriptures in Genesis with "four corners". Actually I found no scriptures in the entire OT where "four corners" is explicitly mentioned with earth. Could you provide me with the verses in Genesis that have these words?

Further study shows that Revelation 7:1 and 20:8 are the only places where those words are found in connection with the earth. In both cases the "four corners" denotes quarters or extremities. This would indicate complete coverage. Ezekiel 45:19 reads, "And the priest must take some of the blood of the sin offering and put it upon the doorpost of the House and upon the four corners of the surrounding ledge belonging to the altar and upon the doorpost of the gate of the inner courtyard." In other words completeness.

You've probably heard the expression, "I'm traveling to the four corners of the earth" by travel junkies. It means they're going to travel to many, many countries in an attempt to get as complete a coverage as they can.

Ah, so, moneke, but note that "ends of the earth" showsreasonably frequently in Psalms and prophets, and a sphere has no ends even more than it has no corners.

And of COURSE it is idiom - but do not expect ruveyn to honor any non literal interpretation.

There is a massive problem with the whole "Isaiah stated with extraordinary clarity and certainty".... above the circle of the earth".

The argument goes something like this. The bible is the true word of god, Isaiah states the god has told him that the earth is a circle. the earth is actually spherical. See the discrepancy, something a relatively intelligent 7 year old could work out.

Before you go shouting that the word circle has been mistranslated from the Hebrew word for sphere, don't, that line of argument has been completely discredited. Lets also not forget that Eratosthenes accurately calculated the circumference of the earth around 200bc and Pythagoras suggested it was a sphere around 600bc, it is far from improbable that an intelligent person 200 years earlier could have deduced the earth might be circular.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 02 Jul 2011, 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Pi is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius.

In the Bible, the value for Pi is given as an integer value of 3, as in:

"And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." - 1 Kings 7:23

... and...

"Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." -- 2nd Chronicles 4:2

30 cubits in circumference, divided by 10 cubits across, yields the value of 3.

Not 3.141593 ( = Single-Precision Value, rounded off )

Not 3.14159265358979 ( = Double-Precision Value, rounded off )

Not 3.1428571428571428571428571428571 ( = 22 / 7 )

Not 3.1415929203539823008849557522124 ( = 355 / 113)

Not 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 ( = the value returned when I press the Pi button on my calculator )

3. Only this, and nothing more.

The Bible is in ERROR, and is therefor not to be accepted as literal truth on any topic whatsoever.

Bloedig Ell. How long.

Nobody but an idiot [I do not suggest there are no idiots in the world] would suggest that the Bible is a math text.

Nobody but an idiot [I do not suggest you are not one] would suggest that an inaccuracy in the value of pi - which in any case cannot be stated without rounding, and who are you to decide to how many places the scriptures should round a number - invalidates any book.

AND nobody - not even those who claim it - reads the Bible literally anyway.

You are yet another mooncalf, and I stand in amaze that you throw the troll label at others.

Naughty naughty naughty. You are drooling and spitting. And your adulation of inaccuracy is showing.

You can't even begin to understand the meaning behind "circle". It was all Isaiah needed to know to comprehend the shape of the planet. But he was a simple prophet. You equate people who have degrees with those who have an inner working of our earth and its "actual" shape, and so forth. But all of this information didn't occur in Isaiah's mind because he lived during a time when something as simple and profound as "the circle of the earth" would have been hundreds of years ahead of its time. And yet this is not the point of his work. His goal in life wasn't to provide accurate scientific discoveries but to act as God's spokesperson for the nation of Israel, and to also divinely write down God's predictions.

Jehovah God didn't flood the authors of his Word with scientific knowledge or epiphanic mathematical formulae, no, nor would he for "his invisible [qualities] are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable." (Romans 1:20) Instead he told them just enough for comprehension. When he provided John with his revelation it was provided in metaphysical symbolism so that John could comprehend. Had Jehovah shown John the truth of his domain it would have gone over his head. Even after everything we know about science, nature, math, the bible, and so forth we are obliged to admit, "Look! These are the fringes of his ways, And what a whisper of a matter has been heard of him!" (Job 26:14) We really live on the fringes of his ways. And Ecclesiastes 3:11 states that "Everything [God] has made pretty in its time. Even time indefinite he has put in their heart, that mankind may never find out the work that the [true] God has made from the start to the finish." Even if we lived forever we couldn't even begin to understand everything God has made.

After Satan is let loose and allowed to mislead mankind for one final test, and then he's brought to an end, beyond that final judgement period we don't know what Jehovah has in store. It's not for us to know these things now much like it was not Daniel's time to understand the divine words when he wrote, "as for me, I heard, but I could not understand" after the angel tells him to "make secret the words and seal up the book, until the time of [the] end." (Daniel 12:4, 8)

Because Jehovah God provided the blueprints by telling them exactly how to the build the temple. They didn't need to know that what they were using would be something called Pi. Only an academic would look at the Bible and see something like this...

The problem with revelation is that even amongst Christian scholars there are a lot of questions about it's validity, and (apparently) there is the theory that John might have been a bit high at the time (although I was told this and haven't seen it documented anywhere). I don't think the argument "God told them as much as they could comprehend" holds water; it would be better to say that God gave them as much detail as they needed to complete the task he'd set them. God could have simply written it all out and handed them a big pile of documents explaining it all, with diagrams and graphs and everything, which in some ways would be more helpful than what the bible has in it at the moment. Even then, I have to wonder why he didn't build the temple or the Ark of the Covenant himself since he'd obviously do a perfect job every time.

As for the issue of the value of pi. Does it really matter that they didn't go to significant figures? Even the definition of a cubit is imprecise: the distance from the elbow to the wrist...or from the elbow to the fingertips. Then you have to wonder who's arm it was that was being used as the standard and how long that was in centimetres or inches. If you start nitpicking like that it becomes a complete waste of time and the message is lost. Since the value of pi quoted will always be approximate anyway, and since 3.14 is pretty close to 3, it's not unreasonable for the scripture writers to simply round down and stick with 3 as the value of pi.