@mordant I was referencing how the stories were passed down the generations over time. The Bible was written several thousand years after the events of Jesus supposedly happened. Over those millennia, the stories changed. Like, when I was in school and we played the "phone game" to represent how rumors change from person to person. I tell you something. You tell your neighbor. But, in telling, you forget or embellish or tweak a few things here and there to make the story "better/juicier." Imagine that happening over so many thousand years before anyone ever wrote it down. Then, there's the fact it was originally written in Aramaic and scholars today still have difficulty in reading Aramaic. Then, when the scribe wrote it down, they chose to delete this or add that. Then, it was translated to Greek or Roman or whatever but that language didn't have a word equivalent to the Aramaic word. So, let's use this word instead. That's not even getting into when the rulers of the land i.e. the early church, chose to remove this or that book from the Bible but keep this group over here.

And, as I said in another comment, I went to a conference by a renowned Methodist author who's name currently escapes me. He dissected that quote word by word. If I remember correctly it was the word translated into "lie with" which was actually something about them being brother's or something. I need to talk to my mom and ask the author's name.

@Melbates I somehow missed your comment about the Bible having been written several thousand years after the events of Jesus. It's only been two thousand years since the alleged events.

The Old Testament books go back arguably a "few thousand" years but the New Testament was written between about 52 AD (the earliest of Paul's letters) and 90AD (the Gospel of John and The Revelation). Apart from a few small fragments. the oldest manuscript copies of those documents are from a couple hundred years later.

What you are probably referring to concerning "the stories changed" was the natural evolution of the stories in the oral traditions before they were committed to writing. And that is entirely true based on what we know of how oral traditions work. In people's minds, often, there's the notion that oral tradition is preserved basically intact, but in fact it's typically told a little differently even by the same teller depending on the audience and the point they're trying to get across.

So although we can be reasonably confident that the Bible is substantially as it was when originally put to papyrus, particularly in the case of the Old Testament they would have been capturing a particular version of a very fluid oral tradition that had probably changed a LOT from the original telling (and often, don't represent actual events -- there is no reason to think the creation or flood or the legend of the fall are literally true, there is no basis to think there was actually a person named Moses or an actual enslavement of the Jews in Egypt or all the rest of it).

As for the NT, as mentioned above, there is just under 20 years between the alleged crucifixion / resurrection and the first writings about Jesus, and nearly 60 years between that event and the last writings (basically, the Gospel of John). Add 33 years to that for the time elapsed from Jesus' birth and associated events. This is why the gospels are NOT eyewitness accounts or even credible interviews with eyewitnesses. Most scholars think that two of the gospels are based on a now-lost "sayings of Jesus" style document which they refer to as "the Q document" with some third-hand campfire stories to provide a narrative thread.

Yes the original language of Jesus and the disciples would have been Aramaic, but the NT was written in koine Greek. So as with all translations, something would be lost there. This of course assumes Jesus and the disciples were actual people rather than invented or composite characters, and that any of these events were even written in Aramaic to begin with. Given that Greek was sort of like English is now, more of quasi-universal language, it is quite possible that the first written accounts were penned directly in Greek, based on a relatively short oral tradition, but an oral tradition nonetheless.

@nevermind345 No, I'm not looking for a personal answer. I'm actually quite confused by your comment, honestly.

@rsmeagle every Christian I know would try to use the Bible as their fact checker and I'd become so infuriated and frustrated, I'd turn into a bumbling idiot.

@humanity4all I was trying to simplify it down into it's purest form instead of going off on a tangent about how it was told verbally for thousands of years, changing drastically from one storyteller to the next (like the telephone game) then written down then edited then destroyed etc. I attended a conference once where an author broke down that passage in it's original language and pointed out the words had been mis-translated and a couple have dual meanings but the early church used the version that fit their views.

People don't realize how languages have evolved and weren't even canonized when many of these things were written down. Things like grammar, punctuation and what literary rules were used. Like you say dual meanings. For example in the Letters of Paul, he uses words and phrases one way and other words and phrases when he is talking about something else even though both translated literally can mean the same thing. Things like consistency have to be taken into account when making translations.

@Humanity4all oh, and another thing the author pointed out... Your mention of punctuation/grammar made me remember.... When they wrote it in the original Aramaic. Theywroteitwithnospaces. Or capitalizations. You didn't know where one word ended and the other started. That could easily change a lot of things. Adding one letter to the beginning or end of a word makes it a wholly different word altogether.

@sergeycornwall You knew I'd request clarification the moment you typed your comment. Please explain.

It was just a silly comment but half serious though. If Christians find all their answers in the bible, why can’t I find mine in the Simpsons!

@chrisjones An ex-neighbor insisted she didn't need to go to the doctor for her ailments from just plain getting old. She said God would heal her. I wanted to reach across the patio and slam her head into the railing.

In another religious conversation, she swore up and down the Bible was written by God himself. I said, no, it was written by man. Her response, "Well, doesn't God guide the hand of man? So, God wrote the Bible!" I clapped back, "Then God is guiding the hands of your doctor's. Go to the fucking doctor!!!" She sat there stunned.

@sassygirl3869 Is that a good thing??? LMFAO!!!!