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Discussion » Questions » Religion and Spirituality » Do you think that you have to start off with the belief that God is a trinity, prior to reading the Bible, to properly understand the Bible?
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Do you think that you have to start off with the belief that God is a trinity, prior to reading the Bible, to properly understand the Bible?

(Not sure about the commas, Randy?)

Posted - February 7, 2018
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Responses


  • 2657
    "For a change" Ouchy. lol
    When discussing the Bible and Bible based beliefs, I do tend to recite scriptures. Wasn't raised in a religious home but do appreciate the Bible now.
    What do you want to talk about? I used to be into Kenpo. (American - Ed Parker) I like to fish and used to be a semi-organic gardener. Left our small farm with all the bedrooms up to buy a home in town with bedrooms down to care for my aging mom and stepdad. I love dogs and bears. Favorite place to visit is Alaska.
      February 7, 2018 8:33 PM MST
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  • 5391
    That’s refreshing, your candor is appreciated. Good to find that a real person exists underneath the outwardly religious one. Lol.
    I too, have experience in Kenpo, as well as Aikido; I taught both briefly in my spare time, back in the 80’s and 90’s.  Fishing is a passion of mine, one of the reasons I live along Florida’s Gulf Coast. I have a ridiculous boat. 

    I am a US Army Vet, and a retired entrepreneur, and I possess a Masters degree in Engineering and a Bachelors is Business Admin. I have also studied history, philosophy, theology (not formally, but at length) among other interests, like welding, carpentry, boating and the promotion of unbelief (which I am sure you know). I hate all things winter. 
      February 8, 2018 6:40 AM MST
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  • 2657
    So, I'm guessing we have two very different fishing styles as I mostly fish freshwater lakes. Catfish and sandbass mostly. What do you go after, Marlin or something?
      February 8, 2018 1:33 PM MST
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  • 5391
    Salt water “sport fish”: Tuna, tarpon, marlin, and the big prize - grouper. We’ve been known to hook a shark on occasion.  My freezer is rarely absent fish I’ve caught. 
    I have my boat outfitted for deep water fishing, as well as cruising. A trek to the Bahamas or Key West is a matter of hours by sea from my residence. 

    This post was edited by Don Barzini at February 8, 2018 5:14 PM MST
      February 8, 2018 3:48 PM MST
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  • 16240
    Catching sharks is easy - they'll take anything, hit the line like a torpedo but there's no fight in them. Watch the size, though - big ones are likely to be contaminated with heavy metals, particularly mercury, because of all the garbage they eat. If they're more than seven feet long, let them go.
      February 8, 2018 4:34 PM MST
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  • 5391
    Yeah, they’re like snagging a tire, but with  an attitude. Usually just cut the line. 
      February 8, 2018 6:26 PM MST
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  • 16240
    There's good eating on a smallish one. We'd go out after snapper and trevally and find that a school of hammerheads had chased them away - so we'd catch a boatload of sharks instead. School sharks average about 5 feet.
      February 8, 2018 7:15 PM MST
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  • 2657
    I caught 4 sand sharks once, 52 lb total. Not that tasty to me. We used to watch wicked tuna. They said thresher sharks are good.
      February 8, 2018 7:20 PM MST
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  • 16240
    Butterfish=shark. Flake=shark. McDonalds Filet o Fish=shark. If it's cheap, it's probably Jaws' little brother.
    A lot depends on how you prepare it. Sprinkle a little lemon pepper seasoning on it, top with slices of tomato, wrap it in foil and chuck it on the coals of the campfire for half an hour. Delish.
      February 8, 2018 7:29 PM MST
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  • 5391
    Not a fan of their bland taste. But, absent any other catch, they beat leftovers. Sauces can do wonders. 
      February 8, 2018 7:40 PM MST
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  • 2657
    I've never been sport fishing like that. I've been deep sea fishing a few times years ago when the snapper limit was 7 and they were talking about reducing the limit by one per year until something like 3 was to be reached and increasing the size limit by an inch per year to a certain point. Not hardly worth the drive for 3. Last time I went I the boat turned back. The time before that, a man that was catching big snapper and grouper told me that he has his own rod with 80lb line and uses mackerel for bait. The party boat used old 40lb line and squid. I bought a deep sea rod and 80lb line and a belt and a ton of mackerel for the next time. Had every thing ready and after two hours into the trip they announced it was to rough and would refund our money. I gave the bait away at Dolphin Docks in Port Aransas and never went again. My wife caught a large eel one time and the crew cut its head off at the rail. We were so mad that we didn't get to get a picture.
      February 8, 2018 5:21 PM MST
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  • 5391
    How disappointing. Getting a refund doesn’t return the lost time. 

    I have a place up in the Finger Lakes where we fish freshwater. Large and Smallmouth Bass,  lake trout, perch and walleye. Give me a glass lake, good earbuds and a smooth casting reel and I’m good for the day. 

      February 8, 2018 6:43 PM MST
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  • 5835
    It is not reliable to let people tell you what the bible says. Many people will make up stuff because they don't know what it says, and many will make up stuff because they wish it would not say what it says. You just have to read it for yourself. Read a chapter of Proverbs every day. Proverbs has 31 chapters so you can keep your place by just looking at a calendar. There is no religion or nothing in Proverbs and you don't have to believe anything. Just read to find wisdom. When you are comfortable with that, then read the bible from Romans to 2 Thessalonians over and over until you start to remember what it says. That is the part that applies to Christians.

    As for interpretations, they arise when people DON'T read the bible. For example, people say the world was created in six days. The bible says "In the beginning god created the heaven and the earth." No six days, it was in the beginning. There was no more creating until verse 21 when soul was created. The third instance of creating was spirits for A&E. Plants and animals were not created, God just commanded the Earth to bring them forth.

    You only need five books to study the bible:
    1. A King James bible. Other versions are ok, but the KJV has been stable for 400 years and the others have not.
    2. An English dictionary.
    3. An Interlinear Greek-English Translation Of The New Testament, any brand.
    4. An exhaustive concordance. There are several brands, but everybody seems to use Strong's. I like Young's because it is easier to use.
    5. A Hebrew lexicon, if you study the old testament.

    A bible atlas will also be helpful, but you can get along without it. Anything more and you are studying confusion.
      February 7, 2018 9:38 PM MST
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  • 2657
    A lot to discuss there, some I agree with, some not so much.
    When I first started studying the Bible, I used the 1769 KJV although I thought I was using the 1611 KJV. Some verses hard to understand due to changes in the language from archaic to modern. Modern translations so much easier.

    Matthew 19:14 (1611 KJV) But Iesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come vnto me: for of such is þe kingdome of heauen.

    Matthew 19:14 (1769 KJV) But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

    Matthew 19:14 (NASB)  But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”


    Then you have spurious verses (Most from the Received Text) John 8:1-11; Mark 16:9-20; 1 John 5:7, 8. (Error at 1 Tim 3:16)
    inconsistency in translation Sheol translated as Hell, Grave, Pit. Tetragrammaton translated as Jehovah 4 times, LORD most, GOD some. (1611 - IEHOVAH, Iehouah, Lord, God)
    15 Rules imposed by King James - King James's 3rd rule (3) The old ecclesiastical words to be kept, viz.: as the word ‘Church’ not to be translated ‘Congregation’ like Tyndale did. Bishop to be used rather than Elder.
      February 7, 2018 10:23 PM MST
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  • 16240
    The KJV is arguably the worst translation available - the scholars brought their prejudices to the job and didn't have access to the best texts (in the hands of the Ottomans, who weren't keen on Christians after fighting multiple Crusades). The NRSV is a better one - that includes clarifications derived from the Qumran scrolls, which weren't discovered until after WW2.
      February 8, 2018 3:17 AM MST
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  • 2657
    What do you think of the NASB? 

    Here are some websites where someone rated translations:

    https://bible.ovu.edu/terry/interpretation/translat.htm

    English Bible Translations

    (rated on a scale of 1 to 10 as to literalness)


    https://www.apbrown2.net/web/TranslationComparisonChart.htm

    Translation Comparison Charts

     



      February 8, 2018 6:25 AM MST
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  • 5835
    A translation is when you take each word of the original text and replace it with an exact equivalent in the target language. You can translate between Greek and Aramaic, but not English. Consider the Greek "pneuma hagion". That might mean God, so it has to be capitalilzed, or it might means God's gift to people who accept Jesus, so it is not capitalized. Every time that phrase appears, some man has to give his opinion of what it means. And when opinion is injected, it is no longer a translation; it is a version. There is no English translation of the bible. 

    Since all English versions of the bible are based on someone's opinion of what God meant, there is nothing to stop each church from writing a bible pushing their own opinions. Even the command of King James to write a bible as free as possible from personal interpretations did not stop the Catholics from publishing their own idea of what the bible should have said. Wherever the Catholics disagreed with the rest of the scholars, the KJV has the Catholic interpretations in the center column, and the RSV has the KJV interpretations in the center column.

    The only way around these disagreements is to study the scriptures yourself, using standard reference materials to check interpretations. But still, most misunderstandings do not arise from faulty translations; they arise from not reading it.
      February 9, 2018 5:07 AM MST
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  • 2657
    Pretty sure that Greek and Aramaic have some words that sometimes require a couple of words to to translate one word or vice versa just like Greek and English and other languages. 

    Doesn't pneuma mean something like spirit and hagion something like santuary or holy place? 

    Aren't there translations from close to literal, to idiomatic to dynamic to paraphrase?

    Do you really rate a translation just on popularity and being authorized by a King that imposed his religious bias?

    [Even the command of King James to write a bible as free as possible from personal interpretations...] Not that free from his rules though.
      February 9, 2018 6:09 PM MST
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  • 5835
    Here is an example study. Suppose you are reading and your attention is caught by Colossians 1:17 "And he is before all things, and by him all things consist." The Interlinear New Testament says "consist*ed" which means the word was translated by a different tense or case from the original. You look that word up in the concordance. The root meaning is "place together". It is used twelve times and ten of them are translated "approve" or "commend". Why is this usage translated differently? You check the other verses for context and conclude that this usage should have been translated the same as the others, "commended". Some people object because they use that verse to support the trinity. Well, it does not support it. And that is how you learn to rightly divide the word of truth, as it says in 2 Timothy 2:15.
      February 7, 2018 9:42 PM MST
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  • 7776
    I don't want to understand God and I don't want to understand the bible.
      February 7, 2018 10:25 PM MST
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  • 2657
    You do so, Yes ya does, um huh, yup,
    dats why u is in da religion section!
      February 7, 2018 10:28 PM MST
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  • 46117
    Who can say who properly understands it?

    That is debatable.  I may be able to quote you the entire New Testament and yet the idea of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost may escape my ability to grasp.  Or maybe I have a take on it that may be foreign to yours, is my take WRONG?

    Maybe I think we are all God.  Maybe I think that God the Son is the physical Self on the journey to realize the Holy Spirit and become one with the Father.

    That doesn't mean I cannot tell you all about the Bible. 
      February 8, 2018 7:43 PM MST
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  • 22891
    i dont think so
      February 10, 2018 3:57 PM MST
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  • 1326
    No, actually you're at a disadvantage if you start with the belief in the trinity doctrine. 
      February 15, 2018 10:44 PM MST
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  • 492
    There may be an disadvantage if you start without it but,  what if you're at an advantage if you end with belief in the the trinity doctrine?
      February 16, 2018 4:52 AM MST
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