One revealing question that is asked of Believers among themselves is "what is the best translation of the Bible?" A wonderful answer was written by the Tentmakers:
The Best Bible Translation. The essay is insightful, inspired, and filled with keen accuracies. And I cannot recommend it unless you enjoy sifting through ideas that no longer connect to the real world. The Tentmakers are putting a leg brace on the ghost limb attached to the limping Unicorn of Sanctity. The following is my own nod to the broader question of Scripture, and relying upon The Word.
God-followers over the centuries have understood that apparently God can write in stone, but humans cannot preserve the stone to save their lives. All the writings claimed for "Scripture" across this vale of tears compete with "versions".
And then there is the "translation" problem. No divine authority has ever "spoken in tongues". Apparently Rah spoke Egyptian, Jehovah spoke ancient Hebrew, Allah spoke classical Arabic, and Quetzalcoatl spoke Aztec. And few of us today speak any of these languages. Not one cohort of Believers claims that their divinity addressed their Scripture to all of us.
Let's look at one relatively recent example of the "translation" problem: The Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith, relied upon two Seer Stones to translate two Golden Tablets he dug up. The trumpeter angel, Gabriel aka Moroni, put down his trumpet and helped Smith translate the ancient text of an unknown language from those Tablets not seen since. Smith's wives wrote down his dictation, and we now have the Mormon Bible, as sacred text. And we also have the "translation" problems in a nutshell:
God speaks through a Prophet who engraves it on Tablets he buries in the ground of up-State New York where they lay for over a milenium. Dug up, the Tablets have to be translated and written anew. Smith is able to read the Tablets with the help of an angel and two Seer Stones, and he dictates to his wife and a friend. They then publish the Book of Mormon so that humans can interpret it with the help of their angels. And although this single Scripture, with its quintuple-hearsay, was dictated in fairly-recent times, it has provided the foundation for not less than fifty different congregations who construe it in as many different ways.
The Mormon example highlights the precautions suffered by all pretensions to Scripture. All Scriptures are cobbled together from a mystic time, and none reflect a comprehensive, global, supra-human "View". Once you start tracing the text back to its Source, there is no "there" there. We have an Egyptian Book of the Dead which really spells out to the Pharoahs how important their Priests are. We have Sumerian texts filled with fire, flood, plagues, smiting, and redemption through Redeemers born of Virgins. Many prophets claim "God spake" unto them, and remnant revenant tribes of Israel (or Judah, or Samaria). We are given the exact words to use in praying, ostensibly to "God", although we have no evidence that any god has been paying attention. All Scriptures -- the Gospels, the Quran, the Popovul
The world's oldest Temple stands in today's Turkey -- and is protected from scholarship by Islam's
Oldest Temple
The stone temples pre-date any Scripture, but arguably contain pre-literate forms of "scripture".
The history of the major religions is inextricably mixed with the history of Anatolia. Early Paganistic rituals slowly gave way to fairly well-developed deities coming out of Egypt, and these combined with tribal Sumerian and Semitic pantheons . Christianity seems to have led a "globalization" of religion and the monotheistic Unitarian "Goths" conquered Rome and Byzantium. Turkey itself fell to the Islamic faith of the invading Selcuks.
the
Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, but by 1817, he had moved with his family to the burned-over district of western New York, a site of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called "Latter Day Saints", or "Mormons". Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, but by 1817, he had moved with his family to the burned-over district of western New York, a site of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called "Latter Day Saints", or "Mormons".According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization.Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, but by 1817, he had moved with his family to the burned-over district of western New York, a site of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called "Latter Day Saints", or "Mormons".
Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, but by 1817, he had moved with his family to the burned-over district of western New York, a site of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel named Moroni directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called "Latter Day Saints", or "Mormons".
