Director Roger Nygard traveled the world asking theologians, scientists, skeptics, and everyday people 85 tough questions to try to understand The Nature of Existence! Now that he’s asked the experts, it’s YOUR TURN! To offer your own insights on today’s question, “What is the origin of the holy book(s)?”, Leave a Reply below!
There are no “holy books”, there are only books. Some are full of knowledge, some are full of superstitious nonsense, and some have a mix of the two. Alas, too many claim that the superstitious nonsense books are somehow “holy”. I think that’s just silly.
The books (whatever they are) are thoughts, historic accounts, wisdom, mystery, advice for living (either good or bad, depending on your point of view), even propoganda, etc; all that was deemed to be significant at some point in time and followed by people who believed in it. The origins may not be known and have been and are still being changed, today, either in language, wording, modernising, interpretation etc.
I believe the Old Testament is the written form of oral traditions and stories dating from the end of the Ice Age–hence the Great Flood story. As I understand it from my study of Jewish history, the rabbis got together in Babylon after being expelled from Jerusalem and basically wrote it all down. And of course, if you want people to “buy” your book nothing can sell it faster than claiming it’s divine–God’s word. But then, one has to consider who actually did the writing and the prejudices involved.
I have no problem accepting so called ‘holy book’ full of unscientific facts, unjust moral standard and contradictory directives as a revealation directly from God. Who says the God who created us is just, not vindictive and jelous of other gods? May be we are unfortunate ( I assume we have some free will) to have a guardian like this whose over all tone is “Love me or I’ll punish you!”
On second thought, after careful observation, all devine books of all religion have some common characteristics. All supported or at least careful not to take any side of the then wide accepted Geocentric model of the cosmos. All failed to clearly predict any new scientific discovery. Relgious authorities always find something scientific in the scriptures after scientists discover them, not the other way round! All of them more or less copied items from the earlier sources. Old testament’s several paragraph is a ditto copy of the Sumerian tale of Enuma Elish and story of Gilgamesh.
Certain verses of Quran was taken from the works of earlier pagan arab poets. The rituals are also borrowed from the cult of previous dominant religions. The 7 circumbulation ritual around the Kaba was an old pagan ritual practiced at the same venue–the only difference, it was done in total nudity. There’s a huge propaganda that Quran is the only scripture which survived unaltered. But during Kaliph Uthmaan’s time, there were 7 -26 versions of Quran was in circulation, that too through oral tradition which is not reliable considering human error. The kaliph burned all but kept a single copy as standard– apparently without any explanation–which we use today.
interestingly, most prophets were lonely sheaperds who used to spend time in isolation for years, sometimes in caves–a good spot for stambling upon ancient scrolls.
The most doubtful notion is that, God’s uncharastical helplessness regarding the alteration of revealed scriptures by the followers. Quran says Islam was the religion of the first man Adam. (Not sure if in the same name) The same monotheistic God has sent Zewish Torah, Chirstian Bible in between as they were all altered by men.
Finally, he claimed ‘I completed the great religion of Islam’ when he finished revealing the whole Quran through his ‘last’ messenger Muhammad. (If I would an imposter, I would say the same to ensure that my religion will not be trumped by another so called prophet in future. However, I am not saying this was the case), Now, why should an all-knowing God take thousands of years to form a religion? That too through trial and error? Was he not supposed to know in advance that the mortal men would alter his messages? In Quran, he apparently placed several mysterious random markers to detect possible deliberate alteration. Nobody knows their true mechanism. The point is, then how do we know that something has changed? Ok, God knows (That too from the markers!) but what can he do about it? He has already played his trump card and sent his last messenger, how he is going to let us know about the alteration?
It seems that there is only one God who doesn’t interfere in our business. All religions are an honest effort of enlightened men to show the human race the right path to live in peace and harmony. To achieve that, they applied politics, they didn’t hesitate to resort to small lie and invented fables, metaphors of punishment and reward etc. to earn loyalty of their followers. And that ultimately corrupt what started as a noble cause.
The lesson is, It is never ok to tell a small lie for a bigger truth. All Scriptures mentioned it, but their creators and followers didn’t practice it, unfortunately.
Like every book in existence, some human being had to write it. Many claim divine inspiration or divine authorship in some fashion for their particular “holy book”, but there’s no reason at all to put any credence in that and plenty of reasons to believe otherwise.
Pre-scientific, ignorant, (likely schizophrenic) desert sheep herders authored certain books that those who came after decided to term holy for their own means.
No different then someone picking up a comic book 1000 years from now and proclaiming it divinely inspired.
Survival of fittest.
(Deluded) human beings.
bunch of crack-head hippies centuries ago that overdid their lifelong wishful thinking amount.