NationStates Jolt Archive

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.
Why, you need divine inspiration, of course. And you need a large number of denominations to recognize that. After all, not everyone uses the same bible ...

They were all relatively recent.
Don't think you have much chance 2000 or so years after the fact.

Why, you need divine inspiration, of course. And you need a large number of denominations to recognize that. After all, not everyone uses the same bible ...


Well, how would i "prove" to be divinly inspired?

Joseph Smith managed.

That is not to say that every christian will accept your new and improved version however.

Well, how would i "prove" to be divinly inspired?
AHAHAHAAHAHAH .... that, my dear boy, is a good question. :p

Joseph Smith managed.

That is not to say that every christian will accept your new and improved version however.
His additions are separate from the commonly accepted christian bible. He failed to inject his scribblings into the bible itself.

His additions are separate from the commonly accepted christian bible. He failed to inject his scribblings into the bible itself.

I think the mormons would disagree. I think they think that his scribbles are absolutely part of the bible.

You can't please all the people however.

There's a verse in one of the last books of the Bible, I'm not 100% if it's in Revelations but it's likely, that says that nobody can add anything to it, so that's the 'why'. If you want to know the 'how' then yeah study John Smith and the catholics for inspiration on how to add rules and rituals and stuff.

"A curse on he who adds or subtracts from this book" -last verse of the Chrisian Bible

There's a verse in one of the last books of the Bible, I'm not 100% if it's in Revelations but it's likely, that says that nobody can add anything to it, so that's the 'why'. If you want to know the 'how' then yeah study John Smith and the catholics for inspiration on how to add rules and rituals and stuff.


I think that verse in revelation was referring to the book of revelation, meaning that one shouldn't add into the book of revelation.

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.
Because you touch yourself at night!

There's a verse in one of the last books of the Bible, I'm not 100% if it's in Revelations but it's likely, that says that nobody can add anything to it, so that's the 'why'. If you want to know the 'how' then yeah study John Smith and the catholics for inspiration on how to add rules and rituals and stuff.
Right, but the bible we know today was compiled relatively recently, if we take into account the dates at which some of the books were written. There are many other books that had the potential to be in the bible (e.g. Gospel of Thomas) but were not added. If some scrap of writing comes up that enough people think belongs in the bible, it might be added ... although it might make more sense to stick it in the sequel.

"A curse on he who adds or subtracts from this book" -last verse of the Chrisian Bible


Actually from what i am reading right here in my bible.. it says "The grace of our lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen" verse 21 of chapter 22 :)

Because you touch yourself at night!


:( Yeah, I heard that everytime i touch myself an angel will try to kill me,.

Joseph Smith managed.

That is not to say that every christian will accept your new and improved version however.

Actually Smith Added other seperate books and his predecessors edited these.

As for the question posed by the OP goes pretty much every editor and every translation of the bible has added to it deleted from it and changed the meaning of it. Print up a Bible call it a modern translation and you can edit at will. King James, Gideon, Gutenberg and everybody else did it why not you too?

:( Yeah, I heard that everytime i touch myself an angel will try to kill me,.
Whenever you touch yourself, an angel kills a fluffy bunny rabbit.

Please, think of the fluffy bunnies! :(

Whenever you touch yourself, an angel kills a fluffy bunny rabbit.

Please, think of the fluffy bunnies! :(


Good. I hate fluffly bunnies.


And in reference to the OP: Gather an insanely huge Christian following through your charisma and native wit. Tehn print your own bible, with your writings added in.

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.


because the church decided about 100 AD to compile what they see as the bible. In fact there were acutally loads more 'bibles' if you will but they gave a different storey than the was wanted. So add away and I'll add your bit to the end of my bible!

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.


The authority you would require is the Holy Spirit.
haRuach haKhodesh.

No the Holy Spirt isn't actually that Holy. My word is good enough.

Here is a historical timeline of the writing and discovery etc of most bits of what is considered the new testament and some comparable bits that are not..

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/timeline.html

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.

While it's not actually obligatory it helps if you get yourself martyred in a painful way.

dude, just write a book.

People in general can't seperate religious-themed texts from the actual Bible (or that's what I get from my own experience with people) they think Dante's Inferno is the Bible, they think the "Left Behind" books are the Bible, all you gotta do is throw in some common theme and then write whatever you want on top of it, make it interesting, and all the idiots of the world will follow you anyway.

*not that I condone that type of thing.....

The books in the Bible are 'God-breathed' meaning that they are divinely inspired, or come directly from God, as written by man. As such they will do several things, such as proclaim the glory of Christ, and won't contain any heretical nonsense etc etc. Books like the Apocrypha, the Gospel of Thomas and all that malarky fail to meet those criteria and therefore aren't in the Bible.

And besides which what more is needed in the Bible? Everything we need is right there already.

(Sorry for actually posting a proper reply btw :) Just got back from my CYFA camp and am therefore feeling rather spiritual at the moment).

The way the bible came about is very interesting and hard to study because few good sources are available. Conservatives don't want to confuse people with the facts. The cannon of scriptures came about almost by accident. Both the New and Old. Interestingly, the NT was cannonized before the OT. There were many books that were considered cannon at one time or another by one people or another. Books were put in, books were taken out. Some were in almost every list, some were in few lists. At the end, a Pope had a list made by a committee. The committee didn't agree so basically voted. Books such as Hebrews were almost left out because there were no Hebrews in the church. Other books were left out by a close vote. Revelations was left out until the last day. Then someone said they should put in one apocoliptic book just as an example of the many apocoliptic books available. So Revelations was slapped on the back, giving the "don't change this book" verse at the back. Martin Luther then chose books he liked and left out some of the committee books. About this time the printing press came about and the public got the books Luther had decided to include. So these were froze in the mind of the masses.

The Mormon thing is also interesting. Joe Smith wrote notes in the margin of his personal Bible. After he died these notes were placed in the Bible as part of the script. Thus came about the "Inspired Version" used by Mormons.

As I said above a very similiar thing happened with the OT. Over time books were accepted and books were rejected. There are actually books mentioned in the OT as scripture that are no longer in the OT or scripture. After the destruction of 70 AD there was an effort to select cannon for all Jews. It took many years to do this. Finally there was a cannon, but it was a different list than was selected by the Christians for the OT. This caused quite a few problems. Finally most of the Christians and Jews came to a compromise.

"A curse on he who adds or subtracts from this book" -last verse of the Chrisian Bible
Good thing he was talking about the "Book of Revelation" as so astutely printed in the beginning of that horrible syphilis-inspired fever dream of a cliffhanger chapter.

Whenever you touch yourself, an angel kills a fluffy bunny rabbit.

Please, think of the fluffy bunnies! :(

For this, I will take up full-time masturbation.

Whenever you touch yourself, an angel kills a fluffy bunny rabbit.
What if he requires the "touch" of the Holy Spirit in said fashion in order to pen something truly divinely-inspired!
Indeed, what do we usually yell when we go screaming across THAT tactile finish line? :D

EDIT: See above, for elucidation :

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=11482052&postcount=28

The reason is that "the bible" as we know it, was just a bunch of separate Gospels, until around 1080 AD (give or take, I cant remember exactly).

The reason for this was that the texts we are familiar with "Matthew, Mark, Luke, John", were chosen becauuse they represented the story that the Church wished to portray to all, as the popularity of its cult grew.

This is why older, or contemporary texts like Thomas, Peter, Mary, and others were not chosen, and indeed, these books are still touted as "evil" even today.

Well, how would i "prove" to be divinly inspired?
Step 1: Simply Claim to be Divinly Inspired. Preferably in unnesecarrily flowery or theatrical prose. Such as insisting people refer to you as "The Word of God"
Step 2: Start Cult
Step 3: Typically involves buying Nike's, plotting comets, poisoning some foodstuff, or cloistering and raping children. But ultimately it's not part of the "proving" so much as it is the sprinkles on the well made crazy cupcake.

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.

Christians only believe in things that are written thousands of years ago, so if you start writing something now and paste it in a bible that you buy, then maybe in a couple of thousand years (if there still are christians) the christians will put it in every bible.
But it has to be anti-homosexual or anti-women or against the ability of people to think for themselves.

dude, just write a book.

People in general can't seperate religious-themed texts from the actual Bible (or that's what I get from my own experience with people) they think Dante's Inferno is the Bible, they think the "Left Behind" books are the Bible, all you gotta do is throw in some common theme and then write whatever you want on top of it, make it interesting, and all the idiots of the world will follow you anyway.

*not that I condone that type of thing.....
Too true...I was surprised when we read the Bible as part of a literature course I took, because so much of the "Christian" mythology I had been told of was not at all present in the Bible. And I'd learned most of my Christian mythology from Christians!

Of course, none of this actually answers the real question of the thread, which I find to be a very interesting one: why can't a modern person be inspired and add a book to the Bible? How would a modern person go about establishing that she had received true inspiration from God? Or is it believed that God no longer has such dealings with human kind?

The books in the Bible are 'God-breathed' meaning that they are divinely inspired, or come directly from God, as written by man. As such they will do several things, such as proclaim the glory of Christ, and won't contain any heretical nonsense etc etc. Books like the Apocrypha, the Gospel of Thomas and all that malarky fail to meet those criteria and therefore aren't in the Bible.

So modern-day humans cannot be divinely inspired, cannot proclaim the glory of Christ, and will always include heretical nonsense in their writings?


And besides which what more is needed in the Bible? Everything we need is right there already.

I could think of quite a few helpful bits. For instance, God could clarify His stance on homosexuality for everybody. God could inspire somebody to put an end to the debate over stem cell research (for Christians, at any rate). God could address modern issues like animal testing in the sciences, the morality of universal health care, polution and related environmental topics, and possibly offer some wisdom regarding the ever-threatening nuclear realities of the modern world.

I think it's a bit odd for us to think we have everything we need in a book that was penned centuries ago. Few of us are concerned with the appropriate procedures in the event that our oxen are stolen by our neighbor, yet it is to such problems as these that the Bible dedicates many pages. We could use more up-to-date suggestions and helpful guidance, and a modern author would obviously be well equipped to address these issues.

for christians or those familiar with the faith. Why can't something i write be added to the bible? What gives paul, luke, mark, matthew, john and so forth the right to have their work added, but say not mine? What authority do i need to get? Just a question I haven't been able to have answered.


Cos your words of wisdom weren't around when the bible was being put together. Solution:Write a new bible.

But the bible was compiled from different works originally, and some that was off message, like that Judas gospel, was left out. it cant claim purely divine inspiration when a committee decided what went in and what went on the cutting room floor.

But the bible was compiled from different works originally, and some that was off message, like that Judas gospel, was left out. it cant claim purely divine inspiration when a committee decided what went in and what went on the cutting room floor.
It can claim whatever it wants, apparently, since so many people are more than willing to go along with it. :)

Too true...I was surprised when we read the Bible as part of a literature course I took, because so much of the "Christian" mythology I had been told of was not at all present in the Bible. And I'd learned most of my Christian mythology from Christians!
I know. When my husband was a youth minister we would have Friday night Bible study, which was where all the teens would meet up at our house and talk, it was something they would bring their friends to, and it was very clear that it was a "question anything" night, so we would go deep into the night debating with atheist teens sometimes, it was tons of fun. However, it would seem that a LOT of them seemed to get their idea of theology from movies (yes, even the "Christian" kids that would show up) it was pathetic. All I would ask was for scriptural backing and they would say "but in the Devil's advocate Keanu said" and I would reply that there are those who think Keanu is a god, but he isn't actually "God" :p

Of course, none of this actually answers the real question of the thread, which I find to be a very interesting one: why can't a modern person be inspired and add a book to the Bible? How would a modern person go about establishing that she had received true inspiration from God? Or is it believed that God no longer has such dealings with human kind?
they can. There are various cults around who have re-translated the Bible adding their own slant, adding "companion books" ect. he isn't going to have a big hope of every Christian ever believing him, but that doesn't stop him from doing it, surely if he slaps enough sugar coating on it he will get a large following. He is going to have to be pretty charismatic though.