  |
|
|
|
Bible's Authorship: Was it God?Could God Inspire the Most Unfair Rules in the Bible?
There is a growing movement of scholars and religious leaders who think that the Bible is the work of men, not the work of God.
At present and following the Declaration of Human Rights and the legislation of western countries many of the regulations contained in the Bible could be deemed cruel, unfair and in some cases completely out of place. Are people really prepared to follow unfair laws? Interpretation of the Bible The translators of the Bible were always members of the Church who ensured that the official doctrine was followed or included in the Book. Why, in the 21st century, do believers who read the Bible regularly not pinpoint the huge amount of contradictions between the Sacred Book and the ethics of society? What the Church InterpretsHomosexuality was forbidden even before the concept of it, as it is known today, existed. The word, a hybrid between Greek and Latin, was first used in the 1860s to identify a person with sexual desires and affection for another person of the same sex. Since the Middle Ages, the majority of Christian churches have based their attack on homosexuals on just a handful of passages from the Bible. In Genesis (Gen, 19:1-11), Lot shows very poor parental skills when he offers his own daughters to be used as wished by the men from Sodom so that they may spare the strangers who took shelter under his roof. This is the only place where sex between men is condemned as being the reason for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There are many more passages in the Bible where the destruction of these cities is blamed on other sins: idolatry, murder, greed, theft, rebellion, mistreating the poor, arrogance, adultery, lying by priests, pride of the heart, cruelty, failure to care for the young and the poor. Leviticus and the LawIn Leviticus several activities are banned, among which is sex between men, although not between women. Some of the activities forbidden are: eating pork, cutting your hair, shaving yourself, touching corpses, eating shell-fish or wearing clothes of different fabrics at the same time. Interestingly, the Bible permitted certain behaviour that it is not deemed proper today: prostitution, polygamy, concubinage, treatment of women as property, very early marriage (for the girls the age was 11-13) and sex with slaves. The mention of slavery being accepted by the Bible should make believers question its authorship. God could surely not have condoned such a practice? There are a myriad of rules in the Bible that people cannot accept and are old fashioned, impractical or against the ethics of a healthy society. Imagine if present societies started to follow some of those old rules:
If these laws were enforced, the outrage would be cataclysmic. Yet today many people still allow a couple of specifically selected verses in the Bible to condemn the union between two people of the same sex who love one another and live in a committed and loving relationship. References: The Holy Bible; Oxford, New Revised standard version anglicized edition.
The copyright of the article Bible's Authorship: Was it God? in Catholic Practices is owned by José Luis Rodríguez-Olveira. Permission to republish Bible's Authorship: Was it God? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
|
|
|
|
