HOW BIBLES ARE WRITTEN
Religious people support their beliefs with claims that the Bible is historically accurate. They do this because they need to have something real and tangible to believe in. Their thinking goes something like this:

If the people of the Bible were real, and, If the events of the Bible really happened, then My trust in the words of the Bible is justified, and My religion based on those words is justified.

It is this kind of thinking that predisposes religious people to interpret the Bible literally and not symbolically. It is this kind of thinking that causes religious people to believe that the natural world was created in seven natural days. It is this kind of thinking that causes religious people to believe that the story of Noah and the great flood actually happened. It is this kind of thinking that causes people to believe that Jesus was a real person who was  raised from the dead. It is this kind of thinking that causes people to believe in a physical place called heaven where they will go after they die. It is this kind of thinking that inspires people to create and participate in religious rituals and traditions.

In general, this kind of thinking exemplifies walking by sight –not by faith. This kind of thinking, with its irrepressible focus on things that can be seen, is the antithesis of walking by faith. This kind of thinking, with its constant focus on historical Biblical facts and literal Biblical words, effectively obstructs hearing God’s spoken voice which is a matter of pure faith.

With this kind of thinking firmly in place, religious people think of the Bible as history that informs them about things that they should and should not do. Reports of Biblical events are the foundation of religious doctrines. God didn’t speak to the prophets and apostles to teach them history. Here is why Bibles exist and why we should read them:

2-timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

If we really want to know God, if we really want to be trained in righteousness, we  can learn from experiences of Bible characters, and we can learn from Biblical events but we must also listen to his voice to hear what he is telling us today.

COMMENTARY ON LISTENING TO GOD’S VOICE: Curiously, the command to listen to God’s voice is one command in the Bible that religious people do not take literally. They do their best to obey the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ commands, but listening to God’s voice is a command that they do not obey. They wrongly believe that if they listen to the voices of religious leaders who interpret the Bible, they have fulfilled the command to listen to God’s voice.

Failure to listen to God’s spoken voice is the reason people are religious. That is why God is calling people out of religion.

STUDY TIP: See LISTEN FOR GOD’S VOICE WHILE READING.

If what we read does not result in rebukes, correction and training in righteousness that equips us for good work, we have not learned what God wants to teach us through the Bible. We may have learned some facts, and some history, and may have memorized some scripture, but we have not listened to God’s spoken voice. And if we have not heard God’s voice we do not have faith because faith comes by hearing God’s voice.

The Bible can be useful in this process, but the Bible is not absolutely necessary to have faith. Consider the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. They did not have Bibles, but they did hear God’s spoken voice.

STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding on how to use the Bible as a tool for hearing God’s voice.

We first come to know God in our hearts. That does not mean that we do not have an intellectual awareness of God, but that happens only after we understand in our heart. Modern Bibles with frills appeal to human intellect and senses — not to the heart. All the frills are distractions from listening to God’s voice.

We know God when his laws are written on our hearts — not when we follow religious laws based on the literal words of Bibles written by man. Knowing God is accomplished when any individual reads any Bible version while listening to God’s spoken voice. What they will hear is the unadulterated truth in the life-giving word of God — not dead historical facts.

Given all of these options, choosing a Bible in these modern times is not a simple task. For most people, making a choice comes down to this: Who/what do you trust to guide your decision about which Bible to read? Here are some of the possibilities:

Publisher How Bible looks Recommendations of others Price Availability Your personal tastes/instincts

The greater, more important questions that most people will not ask are these: Why are there so many versions of the Bible to choose from? Do I really need a Bible with decorative, non-essential frills to know God?

In the world of religion, trust in man for instruction about God is how people learn religion. But, is that what God really wants? Might he want people to put their trust in him instead of man? This is a critical question.

So we see that not even Bible scholars agree on Bible standards. But, where does that leave a non-clergy, English speaking person who wants to know which Bible is the best translation of God’s spoken word?

Even though all Bibles have the same origins, they look different (e.g. bindings, size, large/small print, colors, pictures, etc.) and have different content. When we look at all these choices, it is clear that all Bibles are not the same. In fact, it is clear that Bible have more differences than similarities. It is clear also that humans, not God, have had the most control over the shape and content of modern Bibles.

Despite these differences in packaging and content, it is true that all Bibles originated from unique ancient texts which God authored when he spoke to Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Since then, however, generations of religious scholars and book publishers have greatly controlled the shape and content of today’s Bibles. This history is not understood by people who believe in the inerrancy of the bible and trust that every word in it was spoken by God and is absolutely true. Perhaps they will think differently when they understand the full history of how bibles came to be.

The origins of the bible are Hebrew and Greek texts written by people who heard God’s voice in their hearts. The original Greek text are their interpretations of what they heard in their hearts when God spoke to them. They translated what they heard into Hebrew and Greek texts which are the source material for all bibles.

Since God’s words are more like dreams and visions, The job of Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles was to translate dreams and visions into human language. Anyone who has tried to remember a dream and translate into human language knows how difficult this is to do. We should not be surprised, therefore, that the bible is so difficult to understand and has inconsistencies and contradictions.

Here is a brief summary of how what we read in the bible came to be:

God spoke to bible authors (i.e. prophets and apostles) in his own, unique spiritual language. Bible authors did their best to capture the spiritual words they heard in their hearts and convert the images of those spiritual words to Hebrew and Greek. Bible theologians and publishers studied the Hebrew and Greek texts and made personal decisions about how to translate those words into human languages. When bible publishers were unsure about how to translate Hebrew and Greek texts into human languages, they adopted interpretations that agreed with their personal religious beliefs. Religious people read bibles and try to make sense out of the literal words that they read.

When we look at this history of how bibles are written and think about how difficult it is to convert dreams to words, we can appreciate the effort prophets and apostles made to record an honest interpretation of dreams and visions spoken to their hearts by God. And then, when we think about the many ways Hebrew and Greek words can be translated into our native languages, we can easily understand why there are so many different versions of the bible and why there is so much room for misinterpretation of bible texts.

STUDY TIP: See this link for a more detailed discussion about how bibles are published.

The challenge to understand any part of the bible is further compounded by the fact that religious people are strongly inclined to interpret what they read literally — not symbolically. And when we consider that different religious teachers also add their personal interpretations of the literal texts, we should not be surprised that there is so much confusion and disagreement about the bible that leads to different religions and denominations within religions.

When we consider the many variables that go into the process of publishing a bible, we can see why literal interpretations can lead to gross misinterpretations of God’s intended meanings of the dreams and visions that he revealed to prophets and aposltes of bible texts.

We must always remember that God is well aware of the many ways his original words (i.e. dreams and visions) are misinterpreted and that these misinterpretations result in wrong understandings of him and his ways. The truth is that no one gets it right. In fact, God says all bible scribes are liars. Too many religious people with religious motives have had opportunities to shape the bible in ways that agree with their religious inclinations. That is why God says that his people should listen to his voice themselves. Listening to God’s voice in our hearts is the only way to avoid the misinterpretations that result from all the human variables that go into the process of developing the bible.

God spoke in his unique spiritual language Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Prophets and apostles did their best to record and report what they heard God say in their native languages (i.e. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). Since then, the Bible has been written, rewritten, and rewritten again by hundreds, maybe thousands, of humans.

Every time a new Bible was written, a group of editors/scholars (it is usually a group effort) collaborated to write it. What they wrote was guided by their unique religious, financial and political agendas and biases. The Catholics were first, and then reform protestants followed after the printing press was invented.

Today, the editors/scholars/publishers cover the full spectrum of Christianity. Each group was highly motivated to write a better Bible for religious reasons and perhaps for financial rewards. It is impossible to say exactly what motivated any one of them, but we can be sure that somewhere in their mind was the noble goal of writing the more-or-less perfect Bible that would help Bible readers know the God of their chosen religion.

Considering this history, it is safe to say that not all Bibles are the same. They are different because authors/editors/publishers created them to differentiate their new version from all other existing versions. It can be said without fear of contradiction, therefore, that many humans have put their personal stamps on the Bible they have written. God’s spoken word is buried in the text, but, when we look at the history and the wide array of Bibles for sale today, we are forced to conclude that the greater portion of each Bible is the work of man.

Because of human influence on the Bible, it is impossible to say that there is one, original, absolutely accurate Bible. God’s spoken word is inerrant, but he speaks in dreams and visions –not human words. It cannot be said, therefore, that any Bible that man has written is inerrant. People who make such a claim are woefully deceived about the history of the Bibles they read. They believe the lie that their religious leaders have told them about Bibles being inerrant. They wrongly believe that when they read a Bible, they are reading the equivalent of God’s word spoken to the prophets and apostles. Not understanding that the only way to know God is when he writes his laws on their hearts, they wrongly believe that by reading the Bible they will learn to know God. They even believe that the words that report events that might better be called history are God’s words. Fortified by this belief, they insist on interpreting the Bible literally, leaving little room for symbolism.

STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding on how to know God.

No doubt they have missed or ignored what God said about scribes (i.e. people who write Bibles and other translations of God’s spoken words) making God’s word a lie. That is a shocking thing for God to say, but it is worth considering.

Here are a few truths that must be remembered about the Bible and God’s voice:

TRUTHS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE	TRUTHS ABOUT GOD’S WORDS
The written Bible is a collection of human words. God does not speak in human words.	God’s voice is like a whisper of gentle wind, but also like wind, thunder and lightning. God’s voice cannot be heard by people with dull, hard hearts. It causes a trembling in the heart that is like an earthquake. But. it can also be like the sound of many waters and like the sound of harpists playing on their harps. God’s voice resonates as truth in our hearts (i.e. spirits) like thunder and enlightens our spirits like lightning flashes of truth that we cannot anticipate and can’t quite believe we have seen/heard because it happens so fast. It is very hard to translate God’s words into human words.
God does not speak in human languages such as those found in Bibles. God speaks in a unique spiritual language.	Only people who are born again are able to understand God’s spiritual language. For people who are not born again (i.e. Old/First Covenant religionists), God’s voice is perceived like another language (i.e. tongue) that has not been heard before.  One of the rewards of being born again is the gift of hearing God speak in his spiritual language and understanding what he says.
God did not write the Bible.	In  both Old Testament and New Testament times, God spoke in many ways to anointed prophets, angels, messiahs, high priests, witnesses, and warriors whom he sent to speak to religious people who refused to listen to God’s voice. Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles heard God’s voice and did their best to translate God’s spiritual language  into human language (i.e. Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek). A long succession of religious leaders/scholars translated the texts written by Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles into thousands of Bibles in their own native languages with words that reflected their individual religious perspectives.

Considering these truths, it must be said that the Bible began as God’s  spoken word but that, beginning with Old/Testament prophets and New Testament apostles, it has also been heavily interpreted and translated by man.

Actually, it is not stretching the truth to say that, during the past two thousand years, God’s original spoken word has evolved through the written translations of thousands of Bible scholars. We must also conclude that God’s spoken word and God’s written words are not the same because man has edited (i.e. added to and subtracted from) what God said every time man wrote/rewrote a Bible. This is one of the main reasons God warned us not to trust man.

The stark truth about the Bible is this: No human person, no matter how well-trained he or she may be, is able to perfectly translate God’s spoken words into human language. Therefore, no human person can report God’s spoken word with complete accuracy. Anyone who has ever tried to record and report a dream or vision to human words.

STUDY TIP: See What God’s Voice is Like for understanding of the difficulty of translating God’s spoken word into human language.

The history of the Bible can be summarized like this: It is a collection of a series of man’s translations of translations of translations of visions and dreams of spiritual words spoken by God to prophets and apostles thousands of years ago.

Similarly, interpreting a dream or vision, as the prophets and apostles did, is also impossible to do with absolute accuracy. That is why the written Bible is not perfect and cannot be trusted. The only word that can be trusted is the spiritual word that comes directly from God’s mouth. This is the word that you hear when you hear God’s spoken voice.

Anyone who claims that his/her translation or interpretation of the original Hebrew or Greek Bible texts is the true, perfect, word of the Lord is an arrogant fool. Only God’s spoken word is true and perfect. That is why he insists that people listen to his spoken voice.

Accordingly, anyone who accepts the written words of a human translator of the original Hebrew and Greek texts as absolute truth, is a fool who does not understand that God wants to do the speaking himself, directly, or through his spirit speaking through anointed true prophets, angels, messiahs, high priests, witnesses, and warriors.