What if the stories of the bible were just that, stories?

Many cultures have stories around the origins of the world and many of them have, to an extent, some sort of truth woven within them. We have become more intent on the validity of the 'stories' rather than the content. Certainly in hollywood sense they are stories turned into, what the producers hope, will be box office hits. In that sense they are taking the stories and retelling them.

The old testament in particular is about a certain people and their relationship with God from the perspective of those people. Why isn't it stories just taken too far? That is very subjective in the sense of what one believes is too far?

If you mean in the sense that hollywood are kicking a hole in it to make a fast buck, then yeah. If you mean on a personal level then that depends what one takes from the stories themselves. There were many writtings at the time of Christ that weren't included in the bible, such as the Gnostic texts.

What you need to keep in context is that the bible was compiled from available sources and were chosen for a specific reason, namely that the were approved by the prevailing churches. Even then they couldn't agree as some versions of the bible have additional writtings included.

The Gnostics were considerd Heretics by the then established church, now we have Christian Gnostics who are accepted. As I said, it's about what one takes from the stories that is important.

The Bible is more than a story book it's a historical part of literature. Like it or not it has some unique insight to the life back 2000 thousand years ago, and whats more amazing is that it teaches our society how to marry, what the relationship towards people should be like towards each other, our methods of interacting with people and the first court case was at the time of king David, could be all traced back. There is many small things people don't think of when talking about the bible, for example. It brought langues together back in those days it was written in one langue, yet today you can find the bible is translated into almost every langue out there.

Whats wrong with believing in stories, so much of our society thrives on fictional stories, vampires, mermaids, Aliens, unicorns and dragons are not real at all but people believe it like it's gospel.And yet people just don't want to believe in the bible because it tells them whats wrong with their lives, and how to fix it. The blood of Jesus Christ can wash your sins away

Hmmm ... someone may have said this already, but something interesting about the Bible is that it has been preserved over centuries and centuries without change. Unlike may other stories and folklore we tell in our society. Look at a very recent example, Grimm's fairy tales. They've become so watered-down that the stories now are only little outlines of what they were hen they were originally written.

But the Bible isn't like that. The stories have lessons, just like these fairy tales. They have seemingly impossible elements.. But they've remained the same, unlike the much younger Grimm's fairy tales.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that it wasn't ... popular to believe what Jesus said. It wasn't exactly "cool" to believe that Jesus was the son of God, hence why he was crucified. The ones that crucified Him would have wanted nothing more than to completely rid the world of these stories about Him. People don't do that with ordinary stories - they don't stand up for it and put their life on the line just to defend it. And Jesus was real, whether he was the son of God or not. So, all in all, regardless of whether you believe them or not, these stories are much, much different than ordinary stories. That's why they've stayed around, unchanged, for so long, and that's why people are so faithful to them.

A figure of speech is a departure from the normal patterns of language for the purpose of emphasizing something. The simplest figure of speech is the SIMILE. A simile emphasizes a similarity of two things by merely saying it: "You are like a dog", or "You are as a dog". The figure rests entirely on one word.

A METAPHOR emphasizes a similarity of two things by saying they are the same; "You are a dog".

Next comes a big word: HYPOCATASTASIS. This is a Greek word for name-calling. Hypocatastasis just calls the fellow "Dog!" See Luke 13:32 "that fox", and Genesis 3:1 "the serpent".

A PARABLE is an extended figure of speech; a story based on a simile, metaphor, or hypocatastasis. If the story is possible, it is a MYTH. If the story is impossible, it is a FABLE. If a fable includes an explanation of the meaning, it is an ALLEGORY. Don't confuse any of these with LEGEND, which is a supposedly true but unverified historical account (Adam and Eve, for example).

These terms are not used with any precise meaning in modern discourse. For instance, most people think 'allegory' means "a story full of religious symbolism beyond human comprehension". But when discussing figures of speech they are very precisely defined. Here is a book that lists about 900 figures found in the bible. It is almost the only work in the subject for the last two thousand years: http://openlibrary.org/search?q=e.+w.+bullinger+fi...

If the bible is just stories, then oh well. There's nothing wrong in believing that those people really existed, those cities were real back then, those events and situation really happened, etc. My belief doesn't harm anyone. But my disbelief could harm me. In the end. In reality, all religions today could just be full of crap. We have seen religions in the past, like ancient Egyptians and their gods, pagans and their gods, the ancient Greek and Romans and their gods weren't about real gods. These no longer exist. But if, perhaps, one of them was the truth and no one believes in it anymore? Religion and faith is a personal choice, a personal life journey. If it is making you a better person, with more good morals than bad ones, and you are not killing and harming others, why not believe? It's the religious leaders that use fear and death threats to get followers to do their evildoings, like how we see Muslims terrorists today. THat's wrong. Very wrong. And yes, Christianity, mainly Catholicism has it's history of mass killings, like with the Crusades. The three main world religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam have been at each other's throats for thousands of years. Hopefully it will end, some time soon. But for the good religious people in them, they are good with their faith.

Way too much historical proof to list. Will try to keep short.

Here's just a list of people in the Bible that are proven outside of the Bible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_fig...

Just take the accounts of the flood and compare them to the accounts of Jesus.

Atheists are always asking for contemporary references for Jesus from outside the Bible to corroborate the 5 in the Bible. Like Philo-he's one person Atheists say should have written about Jesus.

But then when they get all these corroborating accounts from other cultures about the flood, Atheists claim the corroborating accounts disprove the flood.

That's like finding the long lost Gospel of Philo in Egypt, and then claiming it proved that Jesus didn't exist, because Philo had invented him instead of Paul.

“As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source. Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables. The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world. That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened.” - Excerpt From: GK Chesterton. “Heretics.” (1905)

How does one take a good story too far? Mind you there are also bad stories in the Bible and they should be removed but no one can take a good story too far.

The Bible is about good. God is love and that's the emphasis of the Bible. That's what the entire book should be about and all the racism and terrorism should be removed like it says in Jeremiah 8:8. Get rid of the dishonesty. .

You can do that I suppose. But the reality is that the old testament is historical. Below is a link to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs citing it's history that is in the bible. They are true.

It is important that they be true. It is even more important than they contain truth. A true events and stories justifies why the bible can be relied upon as a book of truth.

In fact it is such a symbol for truth that court systems had people that testified to swear on the Bible. It is used today that the presidents of the United States swear on the Bible as they take their oath for office.

You don't do that on a book of fables or fairy tales.

They used to say that King David was "just a story" ... Until a stele was found that spoke of him ( in that 1990's ).

Also there is Ciaphas, the Jewish High Preist that declared Jesus blasphemous, his ossuary was also unearthed in the 1990's.

If the Bible is "just a story" it has a very large number of confirmed historical facts. The only problem skeptics have with it are those pesky miracles, otherwise it has been shown to be accurate in every way ckeckable.

As children, growing up in a religious family, we are taught Bible 'stories' to help us understand more about the Bible. It is easier, for a child, to understand a story than to just read the Bible as it is written.