For this particular blog, I'd like to go into detail on the beliefs of different religions.There are 20 known religions in the world and from my experience I have had the opportunity to experience growing up with Christianity religious beliefs. Christianity is based on the bible's sacred text teachings, the thing that makes it so confusing to some people is studying and understanding the parables. Which can be developed and defined by modern day translation in many ways. I am only going to touch on the religious beliefs that fall under Christianity denominations because as I've said before there are 20 religions outside of what actually falls under Christianity. There are 18 denominational churches who study differently, now I want to go into what actually separates these beliefs and teachings. I'm not a bible scholar and trust me I have been doing some searching myself, mostly soul searching truthfully all in the spiritual realm. Learning from the Creator of all things, but something puzzles me about the division, if we are all serving the same God for the most part I needed to do a history study on the bible and find out exactly the track record of these ancient collection of writings. I wanted to know who was it that actually translated the bible, and to my surprise it was a English scholar by the name of John Wycliffe an Oxford professor known throughout Europe. He was pretty much a rebel to conforming to an organized church, which he believed to be opposite to the bible teachings. So what were they studying before the bible? We know now that it has come to be in English translations, Here's what's really going to bake your noodle "English" didn't exist and wasn't recognizable until 1000 A.D. The old testament was written in Hebrew, only the chapters and prophesies of Ezra, Daniel, and one verse from Jeremiah were written in Aramaic. The new testament as we know today however, was written in Greek. The world was still trapped in the "Latin" era which brings me to the point of noticing how could you possibly tell me if your translation is 100% accurate?
Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures, yet they were still translated from the Latin English language.
If you know a little about history then you should know that the priest ordered execution if you were using the sacred language they knew; and only the priests were educated to understand Latin, this gave the church ultimate power. As
Dr. Thomas L. Long stated in his article,
this is a history of composition and a history of interpretation.. How I understand as the power of the people's understanding never came to be, but only what people wanted us to know. I will add that I do believe in fact that bits and pieces of the truth lye in the bible. But there is something fishy going on with all the changes with the words in many ways which in fact I do not think the Almighty God himself intended them to be. I never limit myself to finding the truth, which brings me to the realization of knowing you can't always depend on the words of others when they want you to believe in their own truths. Here are some pinpoints I looked into myself helping me find some answers as to where the translation came from and how separation in beliefs came to be.
-Written Old English of 1000 AD is similar in vocabulary and grammar to other old Germanic languages such as Old High German and Old Norse, and completely unintelligible to modern speakers, while the modern language is already largely recognizable in written Middle English of 1400 AD.
-The first hand-written English language Bible manuscripts were produced in the 1380's AD
-The first recorded instance of God’s Word being written down, was when the Lord Himself wrote it down in the form of ten commandments on the stone tablets delivered to Moses at the top of Mount Sinai. Biblical scholars believe this occurred between 1,400 BC and 1,500 BC… almost 3,500 years ago. the language of Old Covenant believers.
-By approximately 500 BC, the 39 Books that make up the Old Testament were completed, and continued to be preserved in Hebrew on scrolls. As we approach the last few centuries before Christ, the Jewish historical books known as the “Apocrypha” were completed, yet they were recorded in Greek rather than Hebrew.
- By the end of the First Century AD, the New Testament had been completed. It was preserved in Greek on Papyrus, a thin paper-like material made from crushed and flattened stalks of a reed-like plant. The word “Bible” comes from the same Greek root word as “papyrus”. The papyrus sheets were bound, or tied together in a configuration much more similar to modern books than to an elongated scroll.
-in 563 AD, a man named Columba started a Bible College. For the next 700 years, this was the source of much of the non-Catholic, evangelical Bible teaching through those centuries of the Dark and Middle Ages. The students of this college were called “Culdees”, which means “certain stranger”. The Culdees were a secret society. < When I read this I thought to myself in some ways isn't this considered a "cult"?
-In the late 1300’s, the secret society of Culdees chose John Wycliffe to lead the world out of the Dark Ages. Wycliffe has been called the “Morning Star of the Reformation”.
-These groupings of papyrus were called a “codex” (plural: “codices”). The oldest copies of the New Testament known to exist today are: The Codex Alexandrius and the Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum Library in London, and the Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican. They date back to approximately the 300’s AD. In 315 AD, Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identified the 27 Books which we recognize today as the canon of New Testament scripture.
-In 382 AD, the early church father Jerome translated the New Testament from its original Greek into Latin.
-The Apocrypha was kept as part of virtually every Bible scribed or printed from these early days until just 120 years ago, in the mid-1880’s, when it was removed from Protestant Bibles. Up until the 1880’s, however, every Christian… Protestant or otherwise…
-By 500 AD the Bible had been translated into over 500 languages. Just one century later, by 600 AD, it has been restricted to only one language: the Latin Vulgate! The only organized and recognized church at that time in history was the Catholic Church of Rome, and they refused to allow the scripture to be available in any language other than Latin. Those in possession of non-Latin scriptures would be executed! This was because only the priests were educated to understand Latin, and this gave the church ultimate power… a power to rule without question… a power to deceive… a power to extort money from the masses. Nobody could question their “Biblical” teachings, because few people other than priests could read Latin.
-The church capitalized on this forced-ignorance through the 1,000 year period from 400 AD to 1,400 AD knows as the “Dark and Middle Ages”.
In conclusion, I just want to say that this was a very deep subject, and though my search continues on finding out what God is meant for me to know, I have to say that limiting yourself to what you are told or taught is the dumbest thing you could ever do. I do believe that God gave us enough wisdom to seek out the truth and if you are the type of person who is lazy, or just listening to what you are told while taking your own knowledge of "self" for granted as an adult you will be held accountable for what you do and don't know.
The world we live in is corrupt, and has been since the day Lucifer was sent here to lie and deceive all of us with intentions of separation from the almighty God. He doesn't really want us to know the plans our Almighty God has for us. This being doesn't care anything about changing words around or making certain things look as if it should be, remember it's a known fact that he wants things his way and not God's way.... God is togetherness, on ONE accord and following the path that leads you to righteousness! There is no separation in that, and no excuse to not believe he created us all for the purpose of worshiping him!
Not one of us is perfect, we can dissect, and interpret the bible in all the languages of the world. But if we aren't doing what The Most High requires of us what is the point of learning something you probably would never understand if you aren't getting an understanding from the direct source!
HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD PEOPLE, MORE THAN PEOPLE WHO HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH PEOPLE. YOU WILL SEE THAT HE MAKES THINGS MUCH MORE CLEARER AND THAT THE ANSWERS ARE USUALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE BECAUSE HE NEVER STEERS US WRONG. BUT WE ALL KNOW WHO DOES!!!!
Here's a link to go check out the timeline of the bible translation history....
http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/index.html
GREAT RESOURCE! PEACE AND BLESSINGS