I recall saying in one of my articles that, even after 8 years of Obama, it’s still not cool to be anti-American. Similarly, even after 8 years of Obama and horrible Leftist media making up the mainstream of society, it’s still not cool to attack the Bible. It’s one thing if you don’t believe what it says. It’s another to flat-out bash it, especially as poorly as these Leftists did. Last Sunday, Leftist media publication Salon was forced to delete an article published on their site. The article was originally written on AlterNet, another far-Left publication. The article was titled: “Why Is The Bible So Poorly Written?” Now, while this doesn’t directly attack the claims made within the Bible, it does attack it by trying to make it literally irrelevant. And I mean literally as in the terms of literature. Although, I suppose the other meaning works just as well. The article reads: “Millions of evangelicals and other Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible was dictated by God to men who acted essentially as human transcriptionists. If that were the case, one would have to conclude that God is a terrible writer. Many passages in the Bible would get kicked back by any competent editor or writing professor, kicked back with a lot of red ink – often more red than black. Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact-checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey. This doesn’t sound like a book that was dictated by a deity.” Without a doubt, this article received a lot of negative attention and Salon was forced to delete it from their website and sent out this message on Twitter: “Thank you for your feedback. We heard you. Upon further review, we determined that this article, which was republished to Salon from a partner website, did not meet our editorial standards.” Here are some of the negative comments the article got: “It’s a book only smart people can read. You should just stick with Harry Potter,” one user wrote. And one person even replied to this user by saying: “Salon writers only read books with pictures in it. Harry Potter is beyond their mental capacity to understand.” This next user brings about a very good point: “Your article decrying a ‘badly written’ book can’t even bother to quote or cite any scholarly evangelical definitions or defenders of inerrancy or inspiration.” “Was this article written by a fifteen-year-old who just discovered atheism?” wrote another. “Frontiers in Theology By 12-Year-Olds,” mocked another user. This other user also brings up another valid point: “The fact that it is still amongst us after almost 3000 years shows it has the relevance of Shakespeare and all the other things. How many thousands of religious texts have been lost? Yet, the Bible remains. And will long after the factually laughable writing of Salon dies.” I would argue it has far more relevance than the 17th century writer, but I understand his or her point. It’s truly significant that the Bible remains as massively popular today, perhaps even more so considering the multiple periods of time when copies of the Bible were either forbidden from being sold or simply burnt. Now, I would like to add my own two cents on this matter. You’re telling me that just because the Bible is difficult to understand that means there’s something wrong with it or that its contents are irrelevant? The books “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” by James Joyce are among a lot of people’s choice of most difficult books to read. But just because a book is difficult to read doesn’t make it a bad book at all. To believe difficulty means quality is to have the mindset of a moron. And I mean an actual moron. I don’t mean it to be offensive. I mean it to be a description. If someone believes a book is bad because they don’t understand it, that person is an actual moron. To not like it is one thing, but to say it’s objectively bad is ridiculous. The writer then says that God must be a terrible writer due to the Bible being so difficult to understand. I refer you to my previous point. Does the fact that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are difficult make James Joyce a bad writer? Many would say that those two books are very good books and Joyce a very good writer (to say the least). Again, the point the writer is making here is ridiculous and irrelevant. Then the writer says that many passages in the Bible would “get kicked back by any competent editor or writing professor…” I have no doubt that a typical writing professor is too much of a simpleton to understand the complexity of the Bible. Most college professors are Leftist morons, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a writing professor would give the Bible an “F”. Let’s dive into the specific quarrels this person has, shall we? “Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact-checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey.” If you were to compare what the New and Old Testaments say God commands His people to do, then, yes, there would be mixed messages. But that’s because the Old Testament people lived with the Old Covenant and New Testament people live with the New Covenant. It’s literally two separate messages that God gives His people, but not because He changed his mind halfway through the Bible. It’s because in the Old Testament, the way to be saved was to have faith (like in the New Testament) but also to make a sacrifice each time you sinned in repentance. You had to perform certain ceremonial acts. Not to mention that the Jewish leaders began adding things they supposedly “had” to do to appease God. Men literally made up laws and commandments that would “grant” them salvation. In the New Testament God offered His own Son as a sacrifice that all who believe in Him shall have eternal life. Regarding repetition, I’ve never known repetition to be a poor writing tool. Often times, I end up repeating myself because the point I’m making is so important I have to say it twice or more. Frankly, the books that I believe have the most repetition in them are the books of Psalm and Proverbs. And the reason they repeat phrases or proverbs is to indicate their significance in our lives. Repetition is used for emphasis throughout the Bible. For example, John 6:47 reads "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life." In this case the repetition of the word "truly" is meant to signify that what follows is particularly important. It was the style in Biblical times. Otherwise, the only other instance of repetition I can think of is the Four Gospels, but those are written in different people’s perspectives of the events that occurred in the apostle’s life with Christ. I don’t believe that to be a bad writing tool at all. “Bad fact-checking”? Are you serious? Notice how she never actually offers any sort of evidence to the claims she’s making. By saying that the Bible has “bad fact-checking” and failing to cite any evidence of it in the Bible is inherently bad fact-checking from this Leftist moron. If you want evidence of bad fact-checking, consider perhaps the entire Climate Change movement that requires more faith to believe in than the Bible itself. I know for a fact that there is a God (the evidence is LITERALLY EVERYTHING AROUND YOU COULDN’T HAVE COME FROM NOTHING WITHOUT GOD), just as I know that there is no Climate Change. And yet, I’m certain this Leftist writer believes Climate Change will kill us all one day. I won’t go into every single “point”, since this article is plenty lengthy as is, so I’ll focus on a few important ones. “Inconsistent voice”. The Bible was written by many people. Around 40 people, in fact. Gather 40 different writers from 7 different nations who spoke 3 different languages across 16 centuries to write different chapters in a book and tell me the voice will be consistent. “Weak character development”. That would only be a valid point if the Bible was fiction. But it’s not fiction. It’s HISTORY! Character development tends to be important in fiction books, not non-fiction histories. “Contradictions”. There’s a big difference between a contradiction and a paradox. A paradox is a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may provide to be well founded or true. And there are plenty of examples of it in the Bible. One such instance appears in the book of Daniel. During King Belshazzar’s feast, God wrote “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin.” Belshazzar did not know what this meant and called upon wise men to interpret it but none of them could. Belshazzar then called for Daniel to come and interpret what the words meant. He was successful, interpreting the word Mene to mean: “God has numbered the days of your [Belshazzar’s] kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres (singular of Parsin), your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” Belshazzar had promised Daniel that if he could interpret what the wall said that Daniel would be clothed in purple and have a chain of gold around his neck and made into the third ruler of the kingdom. And that’s where the “contradiction” comes in. If Belshazzar is naming Daniel as the third ruler, who was the second? Well, Belshazzar was. He was technically the second ruler. That may not make much sense but hear me out. Belshazzar wasn’t the first, he was the second. His direct father, King Nabodinus, who ruled from 556-539 B.C., was known as the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. He was the first. (Another "contradiction" would be that the Bible says Nebuchadnezzar is Belshazzar's father, but Belshazzar has a bloodline connected to Nebuchadnezzar and the Hebrew word for "father" can also be "ancestor".) Then how could Belshazzar be king at the time of Babylon’s fall to the Persians? Well, the Hebrew word for king is “melek” which can also mean “royal”. And Belshazzar was certainly a royal figure. Besides, at the time, Babylon was at war with Persia (given that Persia conquered Babylon soon after the events in that section of the book of Daniel). Kings would often go to war with their soldiers to directly command them. This means, of course, that a member of the royal family had to stay behind and rule the nation. That’s what made Belshazzar the second ruler and, therefore, made Daniel the third (not that it lasted). As you can see, that’s more of a paradox than a contradiction. But enough about that. This article is already very long, so I’ll simply end things with this. I’m very glad to see that attacking the Bible, even in this sense, will still result in negative attention for a far-Left publisher such as Salon. It gives me hope to see people so unabashedly defending the Truth. Titus 1:9 “He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.”
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