Everything You Need to Know AboutThe Bible

It's stories aside, let's take a look at the Bible's formation and history. If one thinks the canonizing of the Bible was divinely guided they only need to look at the Bible's long history of changes and undivine limitations.
Map of all the bible stories

1Every story in the Bible takes place in just one tiny area of the globe.

Every person, place, animal, and event mentioned by the Bible are limited to one tiny area. The Bible contains no knowledge of the outside world. It’s as if the Bible’s knowledge of the world was limited by the knowledge of the people who wrote it.

2It contains interwoven stories because it is a handpicked collection of local stories.

Council of Nicea

Some wonder, what are the odds of 66 different books containing interwoven stories? The answer is high, extremely high.

If you take look at the various writings from Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology they also contain interwoven stories, because they are locally based stories. The books of the Bible are local stories that were hand-selected, often for political reasons, from a much larger collection. What books were to be considered canon was determined by councils such as the Council of Nicaea, ordered by Constantine in 325 CE, and the assembly of Westminster in 1647.

religious scrolls

3The Bible only contains a small selection of Christian scripture.

Within the first 400 years of Christianity, there were in existence more than 20 gospels, 15 apocalypses, and nearly 50 other religious texts about Paul’s Jesus Christ. In some of these texts Jesus didn’t “die”, he took revenge on his enemies, was not human at all, was not god at all, and was a wise teacher instead of a miracle worker.

Religious books

4The Bible you know has gone through countless changes.

Before becoming the collection of 66 books that Christians worship today, entire books were removed or added during the Bible’s history. Entire generations of Christians devoted their faith and lives to versions of the Bible that contained different collections of books and teachings. Just think about that for a moment. The Bible only became relatively consistent because of the 15th-century invention of the printing press, which mass-produced copies with its current collection of books.

5Entire books have been added and removed throughout the Bible's history.

Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were all rejected from older versions of the Christian Bible. The books Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement, 2 Clement, Paul’s Epistle to Laodiceans, and Apostolic Constitutions were all once included in the Bible but are now rejected from the version we read today.

Some books that man chose to remove from the Bible, deeming them as “unsacred”, are still referenced in the current Bible. There are at least 18 references in the Bible to scriptural texts that man chose to exclude from the current Bible. How can one honestly trust man’s decision of what texts are to be deemed “sacred” when those very texts invoke other texts which man discarded as unsacred?

  • Book of Jasher (Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18)
  • Book of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)
  • Book of Samuel the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29)
  • Book of Gad the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29)
  • Book of Nathan the Prophet (1 Chronicles 29:29, 2 Chronicles 9:29)
  • Prophecy of Ahijah (2 Chronicles 9:29, 13:22)
  • Visions of Iddo the Seer (2 Chronicles 9:29, 12:15, 13:22)
  • Book of Shemaiah (2 Chronicles 12:15)
  • Book of Jehu (2 Chronicles 35:25)
  • Sayings of the Seers (2 Chronicles 33:19)
  • Lament for Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:25)
  • Paul’s epistle to Corinthians before our “1 Corinthians” (Corinthians 5:9)
  • Paul’s epistle to Church at Laodicea (Colossians 4:16)

6Even individual scriptures have been changed over time.

Jesus and the adulterous

The Bible we know today is not based on original scriptures, but rather from copies of copies of copies. All these copies were copied by hand, and during the copy process changes were occasionally made. Thanks to the findings of ancient manuscripts we can see what was changed and when it was added.

The story of the Jesus and the Adulteress, John 7:53-8:12, was not added until the late 4th or 5th century. It isn’t in earlier surviving manuscripts like Codex Sinaiticus or Codex Vaticanus. Jesus’ Ascension to Heaven, Mark 16:9-20, also is not found in early scriptures such as the Alexandrian Unical Mss, Vaticanus, and Sinaiticus which all end at 16:8. Other verses not found in earlier copies of scripture include John 5:4 5:7 8:7 8:11, and Luke 24:12 22:20 22:44 24:51.

7Scripture is even deliberately altered in recent decades, with the release of new “versions.”

dragons in the bible

The Bible is filled with stories everyone knows are not true, nor parables. Scripture even mentions the existence of dragons 34 timesunicorns 9 times, and satyrs (half goats/men who commonly dance in the woods) twice. Humans once believed in these creatures but to make ridiculous stories sound believable in modern times the newer “versions” of the Bible changed what scripture said.

They replaced “dragons” with both “jackals” and “cobras”. They replace satyrs with just regular goats, wanting you to think goats were throwing a dance party in Isaiah 13:21. And “unicorns” are replaced with “wild-ox” even though only a single horn is mentioned when a single unicorn is mentioned (Psalm 92:10).

Some argue that “strength of an unicorn” does not make sense, but ox does. Today unicorns are pictured as sweet and fragile but historically they were described as strong beasts, hence why they were on shields and castle walls.

8It is filled with embarrassingly false claims about nature and history.

Bible blunders

If one were to suggest the Bible was divinely authored then they must wonder, why does its knowledge of nature perfectly reflects man’s limited knowledge of nature at the time it was written? Today we all know there is not an ocean in the sky nor literal pillars holding up the planet as the Bible’s authors believed. The Bible is also filled with concerning blunders related to false historical claims and failed prophecies about events that have since passed.

Learn more: The Bible’s knowledge of nature & The Bible’s historical blunders

9It is also filled with various contradictions.

Bible contradictions

The Bible disagrees with itself rather often. From the conflicting numbers it provides to claims about God’s word and Jesus’ life. These contradictions don’t distract too much from the stories at hand, and may even seem like minor details. But such contradictions and sloppy errors are common in the retelling of stories by man. They are however not something one would expect if the scribes were documenting actual events, or were guided by God.

View a list of the contradictions.

Recap

The Bible and its scriptures have been altered by man for thousands of years. Countless generations have lived following past versions of the Bible that contained different verses and different collections of books, as man kept changing it. The Bible’s formation and limited knowledge of the world around us shows all the signs of a book authored and assembled by fallible men.