Inspiration, how the bible was written...

[cnystrom]

And by the way, plural families are for everyone. My reference was more towards hoping we could talk more about that subject.

Some here have been kicked out of traditional churches and one of the reasons for this ministry is to provide Christian fellowship for those people and they like to kick around various Bible topics that have no direct relavence to polygamy. And everyone is a patriarch with direct access to God but all come from different backgrounds and so Biblical polygamists tend to disagree on everything except that the Bible supports polygamy.

Anyway, the bottom line is why not do what I do? If the thread is not a thread you are interested in then just pass on to the next one.

And if none of the current threads interest you there are years of old ones to dig up and resurrect, which happens all of the time here.

 

[IshChayil]

I'll tell you what I think: This doesn't concern me a bit. One of the things they taught us in law school is that minor errors in recollection in testimony actually support the veracity of that testimony, because that's what people who are telling the truth do. And you don't have to go to law school to have enough dealings with people to understand the wisdom of that. Real people telling the truth as they understand it and remember it are subject to ordinary glitches of memory or perspective; a story that is too polished starts to ring false.

This is a very interesting contribution to the topic; I'm going to file that away in my toolbox in case I ever need it.
Something which supports your take on this "misquotation" in question, and which adds to the mix of this thread, is that the New Testament authors often quoted the Septuagint, even when the Septuagint diverges from the Hebrew originals (which we have at least). This makes you think, "so which was right, the Hebrew originals or the Greek tanslations?"
The answer can be "yes". For the purposes of the new testament writing in question, the LXX was sufficient to get the point across and was the version any Greek reader would have been familiar with.

I think I fall somewhere in the mix, and where I am momentarily is not guaranteed to be where I’ll be in 6 months. I definitely am not where I was 10 years ago, and though that might cause some to look at me funny, I wouldn’t trade where I am for where I was for anything.
I like Steve’s mention of the Big Ten. That was obviously God speaking from the mount where everyone could hear it. Then you have the rest of Torah that God gave to Moses as well as whatever it was that God gave Moses that he uttered in “dark speeches”. Obviously, some of Scripture is simply a historical record of events requiring limited inspiration? while others parts are “Thus sayeth the Lord” and are more along the lines of “holy men of old, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”.

I like the direction this is going.

When I wrote that I figured someone would ask me that, haha. No, I am not a Calvinist. I see predestination very clearly in Scripture, but I also see free will clearly in Scripture. I believe in both. I don’t understand it, but both are there, and apparently are not mutually exclusive... somehow. I’m quite alright with not understanding it. If I could easily wrap my mind around and completely understand everything in Scripture I’d be a little nervous that human beings came up with the whole thing, haha!

Divinely Inspired
If G-d dictated verbatim then there would be no difference in the Synoptic Gospels. So yes there own style of writing nudged to reveal the narrative Elohim wanted. Their hands stayed if they were going to write something embellished.

@steve 's big ten mention...

Where we are heading with these notions...
Seems we have an understanding among many of us that the process of creating scripture is a combination of G-d at times dictating directly (10 commandments),
at times stirring up a writer to recall events (with the possibility of unimportant cross-references being off due to the human element), jotting down historical issues (perhaps very low level of inspiration at times as these were just court records), all with an overall watching to make sure the "big stuff" made it in there and wasn't messed up.
I would add to this conglomeration of ideas the notion of "holy editors" I've been mulling around. This is where you can get something like the beautiful story of the adulteress left out of the oldest manuscripts but added in later. I don't see any problem with G-d sending a sacred editor to "fix" the text from time to time were human copying had damaged or led it to far astray from the main message. If the "holy editor" is too much I'll retract that.
What do you guys think about where we are ending up on this so far?

There's still room for additional perspectives, most of what people have written seems to fit together fairly well. Even without the "holy editor" bit these compatible perspectives give us a wide latitude in how we approach the scared books .

 

[andrew]

@andrew I concede that unlike you and Vv76 prophecy is not my strong point besides it's been 2 months we're due for a disagreement.

You're right, it's about time!

alludes to Jeremiah 32:6-9, which refers to the potter’s field

Can you point to where in that passage it refers to "the potter's field"?

Although the first quotation in Matthew 27:9-10 is somewhat similar to the passage in Zechariah

"Somewhat similar"? The passage in Zechariah actually refers to a potter's field, 30 pieces of silver, the "price", and the "casting" of the silver. The passage in Jeremiah refers to . . . wait for it . . . none of the above.

So we can agree to disagree, but so far I'll stand by my explanation.

 

[IshChayil]

... The view here is more Jewish than I'm comfortable with anyway.

I guess we gave you the HEEBIE jeebies

 

[Verifyveritas76]

I’d tend to agree more about Jer. 19. It tends to be a much better match to Matthew though it doesnt really equate Tophet with the potters field. Additional study would most likely confirm that I’m sure.

However, the Jer 32 passage clearly begins by describing a piece of property some distance from Jerusalem that is being redeemed.

Jer 32:7. Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth: for the right of redemption is thine to buy it. . . . . . . Buy my field, I pray thee, that is in Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin: for the right of inheritance is thine, and the redemption is thine; buy it for thyself.

From Strongs FWIW
3. a city of Benjamin allotted to the priest; located approximately 3 miles (5 km) from Jerusalem; birthplace of the prophet Jeremiah

 

[Nikud]

Matthew said:
Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,

"And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me."


Zechariah 11:11-14
11 And it was broken in that day: and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord.

12 And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

13 And the Lord said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord.

14 Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

No potters feild, it's a reference to casting the silver down in the temple
Where is the betrayal of innocent blood
Yes there is the 30 peices of silver and it being castd at the feet of the preist in the temple but where do we find the rest of what Mathew was saying. In Jerimiah.

Jeremiah 19:1-4

19 Thus saith the L-rd, Go and get a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests;

2 And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee,

3 And say, Hear ye the word of the L-rd, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the G-d of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle.

4 Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents;

Jeremiah 32:6-10

6 So Jeremiah said: “The word of Adonai came to me, saying: 7 ‘Hanamel, son of Shallum your uncle, will soon come to you saying: ‘Buy for yourself my field in Anathoth, for the right of redemption is yours to buy it.’” 8 So my uncle’s son Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard as was the word of Adonai, and said to me: “Buy my field, please, which is in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours and the redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.” Then I knew that this was the word of Adonai. 9 So I bought the field that was in Anathoth from the son of my uncle Hanamel, and weighed him the money—seventeen shekels of silver. 10 I signed and sealed the deed, called in witnesses, and weighed the money on the scales.

Can you point to where in that passage it refers to "the potter's field"?

Ok maybe I'm the only one who sees a feild representing redemption bought from preist as a potters feild

 

[Verifyveritas76]

I would add to this conglomeration of ideas the notion of "holy editors" I've been mulling around. This is where you can get something like the beautiful story of the adulteress left out of the oldest manuscripts but added in later. I don't see any problem with G-d sending a sacred editor to "fix" the text from time to time were human copying had damaged or led it to far astray from the main message.

I’m not sure where I am on this, Ish. My flesh prefers to have a uberpredictable God, that says something perfectly, preserves it immaculately to all generations, and makes it so simplistic that a child can understand it. Unfortunately, I have found that to be an ideal that is almost “creating God” in an image of my preference. Rather, I have observed that God often uses imperfect people in imperfect situations, to present a very perfect, yet complex message in parables or dark sayings that a child can often understand, yet the full meaning often takes years of study to fully understand.

On the one hand, I believe that the word of God is as pure as silver tried 7 times in the fire, from inception, not that it requires 7 times in the fire (revisions) to become pure. On the other hand, I have noticed that the canonized Genesis, compiled from possibly as many as 10 different writers, seems to be edited/abbreviated from the original writers. Can an abridged edition (if that’s what it is) possibly be “God breathed”? I have come to believe so in very limited instances, like in this case where the purpose of the Canon seems to be the focus on Christ and Redemption, past, present, and future and where Genesis provides the foundation and theme for all of the books to follow.

Does this make Moses one of those “holy editors”?

 

[Verifyveritas76]

Ok maybe I'm the only one who sees a feild representing redemption bought from preist as a potters feild

The redemption was from a cousin/uncle. Due to the customs of the day however, it had to be done before witnesses (the priests). At the time, Jeremiah is actually in prison, (though not in the pit yet) Nebuchadnezzar is apparently in route, and it makes no sense for Jeremiah to turn loose of the money for a piece of property that will obviously be occupied territory in just a short time.

In the Jer 32 account, the only mention of pottery is when the title deed is sealed in an earthen vessel. This does not correlate to a potters field, rather it was a means of preservation of documents like we’ve seen in recent days with the Dead Sea Scrolls being preserved for 2200+ years. Incidentally, some of the scrolls recovered were actually records of financial transactions.

 

[Nikud]

the only mention of pottery is when the title deed is

I was going to draw the parralel that only potter was mentioned in Zechariah but changed my mind and for got to unhighlight that part.

The redemption was from a cousin/uncle. Due to the customs of the day however, it had to be done before witnesses (the priests). At the time, Jeremiah is actually in prison, (though not in the pit yet)

Noted. Either way this prophecy of redemption came to fruitation after it was bought and paid for with the blood of the innoncent, Yeshua.

 

[Asforme&myhouse]

I don't want to disturb anybody here, but I'd like to know if anyone has a credible explanation for the following that is better than mine.

At the close of his gospel, Matthew describes the miserable end of Judas:

A well-known story, with a catch: Jeremiah doesn't say anything of the sort—Matthew is citing Zechariah 11:12-13:


I'll tell you what I think: This doesn't concern me a bit. One of the things they taught us in law school is that minor errors in recollection in testimony actually support the veracity of that testimony, because that's what people who are telling the truth do. And you don't have to go to law school to have enough dealings with people to understand the wisdom of that. Real people telling the truth as they understand it and remember it are subject to ordinary glitches of memory or perspective; a story that is too polished starts to ring false.

So one credible explanation is that Matthew was just doing what truth-tellers do: Writing down his story as he recalled it and accidentally misremembering a chapter-and-verse citation because he relied on his memory instead of pulling out a scroll and fact-checking his essay before he published it. Nothing to see here, move along. If somebody's got a better explanation, I'm all ears (or all eyes, in this context). Or as they say on social media these days, "Prove me wrong".

What this has to do with IC's inquiry is that I see the Holy Spirit working around me all the time, through ordinary people ("treasure in earthen vessels"), and I see God at work in and through the foibles and failings of the people he has to work with. Sometimes that's experienced as a direct word from the Lord (but there's still the issue of getting the language right as that person retells whatever the word was), sometimes it's just a matter of saying what's on one's heart (or as John Osteen (not Joel) used to say, "preaching out of the overflow"), trusting that God has brought everybody to that point in time on purpose and is moving in the situation. I believe 100% that "all scripture is God-blown" and "profitable" for our use. I think the "how" of that varies with the context—for example, the obvious difference between a prophet or apostle saying "thus saith the Lord" and any writer simply chronicling historical events—but I don't see any reason to distinguish the way we think of "inspiration" now from the way we think "inspiration" might have happened back then.

This may lend credibility to the idea that the Aramaic gospels may have been the originals from which the Greek was translated. The Aramaic reads “the prophet”, but doesn’t specify which one.

 

[PeteR]

I'm late weighing in on this topic. Fascinating and likely reveals degrees of faith...

My struggle with anything outside of a very verbal (word for word) inspiration of at least the Torah is that computer studies now through Equidistant Letter Spacing (think: Bible Codes) indicate a very specific textual code that has been well preserved for millennia. Then to understand that for it to work on the most complex scales yet imagined, ELS has to account for even the textual oddities where the same word might be spelled with and without a vav... That single letter change in one place damages the the ELS. So, in my mind, at least the Torah is given in even more detail than word -for-word but at the letter-by-letter level of inspiration.

Yes, parts of the Torah are historic, parts poetic, but the whole is extremely detailed!! Did that "just happen?" I think not...

So, how did Moses 'hear' it? Personally, I'm thinking that when he was out in that tent writing the Torah that the Angel of the Lord (Yeshua) was literally sitting there quoting it to him.

For the rest, I think Yah's hand was involved almost to that level with some, some, stylistic flavor allowed to the various authors.

@Cap , I understand 'Living Word' to mean that being 'God-breathed' it has an eternal nature and value that stands outside the bounds of space and time, not that it can change from culture to culture and genertation to generation. Application, may vary, but the Living Word does not. And, another view of 'Living Word' is that contained within the Torah, encoded by ELS, in three or more dimensions, is every one of our lives and stories. We have just not been allowed to see to that depth... yet.

My 2¢

 

[IshChayil]

This may lend credibility to the idea that the Aramaic gospels may have been the originals from which the Greek was translated. The Aramaic reads “the prophet”, but doesn’t specify which one.

Or that the Aramaic translator was aware of the oversight and didn't want to use a "heavy hand" in his correction...

 

[Asforme&myhouse]

Or that the Aramaic translator was aware of the oversight and didn't want to use a "heavy hand" in his correction...

It’s possible

 

[IshChayil]

I'm late weighing in on this topic. Fascinating and likely reveals degrees of faith...

My struggle with anything outside of a very verbal (word for word) inspiration of at least the Torah is that computer studies now through Equidistant Letter Spacing (think: Bible Codes) indicate a very specific textual code that has been well preserved for millennia. Then to understand that for it to work on the most complex scales yet imagined, ELS has to account for even the textual oddities where the same word might be spelled with and without a vav... That single letter change in one place damages the the ELS. So, in my mind, at least the Torah is given in even more detail than word -for-word but at the letter-by-letter level of inspiration.

Yes, parts of the Torah are historic, parts poetic, but the whole is extremely detailed!! Did that "just happen?" I think not...

So, how did Moses 'hear' it? Personally, I'm thinking that when he was out in that tent writing the Torah that the Angel of the Lord (Yeshua) was literally sitting there quoting it to him.

For the rest, I think Yah's hand was involved almost to that level with some, some, stylistic flavor allowed to the various authors.

@Cap , I understand 'Living Word' to mean that being 'God-breathed' it has an eternal nature and value that stands outside the bounds of space and time, not that it can change from culture to culture and genertation to generation. Application, may vary, but the Living Word does not. And, another view of 'Living Word' is that contained within the Torah, encoded by ELS, in three or more dimensions, is every one of our lives and stories. We have just not been allowed to see to that depth... yet.

My 2¢

Interesting point about the Torah.
I'll share so the others follow a bit more, that in Jewish understanding, there is a hierarchy in levels of inspiration.
This is why we call the Old Testament TaNaCH - torah prophets writings, the order of the words in the acronym is in line with the level of inspiration.
So as brother @Ancient Paths indicates, torah is seen to be on a very high level of inspiration, even so much so that the bible codes as it were are often run against the text.
Now I've seen some really interesting things come out of this, read a book on it years ago, and was fairly convinced.
Now I'm not totally sold any more. One of the issues I have is the sheer number of variences we find even among different copies of torah (mostly spelling issues like you called out) but that breaks equidistant algorithms, like you said. DSS (Dead Sea Scrolls) have some significant variances in the text, some of which actually corroborrate the Septuagint translations
where they differ from the MT (Masoretic Text). Even Masoretic text have variances within itself. Then there are issues like what @Verifyveritas76 brought up regarding certain sections of torah appearing to either have later authorship or updating to later language. I tread carefully here because like you I also revere the text and the torah above all of it but learning about these things has chinged a bit my steadfastness on bible codes. Another issue is that when only dealing with consonants it's much easier to discover interesting things.
So the equidistant skipping say I come across daleth - beit - reish every 50 skips. So wow, that is "davar" word, and maybe it fits the narrative I'm looking for like maybe it's about Yeshua, "the word" or it's the very word I needed in the message I'm uncovering... but it could also be "dever" pestilence, or the name of an Ugaritic god "Dever", or it could be "d'vir" spelled defectively meaning the "holy of hollies" wow now I really got something neat.

I'm not saying it can't be true or even it isn't real; just saying ... the other issue is the Muslims do this with the Koran in Arabic as well. They are new to it and the Koran is smaller so they don't have as much to work with but they have produced patterns and codes and stuff ... maybe it's imitating the truth.
If, however, you are right about the method being sound (not sure if you were stating that or just throwing this out there), then this could be a very interesting point to make about at least some portion of scripture having more hands on attention than other portions.

 

[andrew]

Kevin, we can go back and forth a few more rounds, but I still think Zech is (obviously, imo) a better fit, and Jer is the force fit that produces the desired outcome. I didn't expect anybody to change their mind on this (this crowd?... ), was more interested in using that example as an illustration to see who would say what about it. Betwee you and me, let's agree to disagree.

 

[PeteR]

Like you, @IshChayil , I am not as convinced of Bible codes as I once was, however, there may be much more to it in the very original copy if our elohim is as high above us as I think He is... It is an issue that will be resolved when the Mashiach comes. Still, it is to that level of reverence and letter by letter inspiration I tend to hold, particularly for the Torah. So, you read me correctly.

 

[cnystrom]

This may lend credibility to the idea that the Aramaic gospels may have been the originals from which the Greek was translated. The Aramaic reads “the prophet”, but doesn’t specify which one.

So in this case the error would not have been Matthew's, but rather a "helpful" later copyist who got it wrong. Not that that would make a major difference in the point either way.