The Bible is probably the most read book in the world by the millions of Christians. Of course Jews have their own form of the Old Testament and Muslims, who consider themselves “People of the Book,” use the Bible to supplement what is written in the Qur’an. There have also been books written by Hindus and Buddhists showing a relationship between Jesus’ teachings and their religious beliefs. This is understandable if Jesus, as we stated above, really studied in Hindu and Buddhist Ashrams in India.

Unfortunately the Bible is also the most misunder-stood, misquoted and misused book with the result that it has been used to support warfare, murder, torture, slavery, bigot-ry, misogyny, exclusivism and many other evils apparently despite what Jesus was said to preach about love for all. The Qur’an has suffered the same fate with so called “Muslim” terrorists ignoring the words telling of Allah being a kind and fair judge. They also ignore that it states that He created people to be different from each other so that they could learn from each other – not murder each other (my empha-sis). Finally they ignore its prohibition of the killing of non-combatants, especially women and children

Religious Literature in General
All religious beliefs started out as oral traditions, usually based on a tribal viewpoint. However, around the sixth century BCE a literacy movement and also a movement from tribal beliefs to the beliefs of certain individuals oc-curred. The earliest religious writings were the Upanishads which built the foundation of the Hindu religion, written be-tween 1200 to 500 BCE. The Hindus followed this up with the Bhagavad Gita c. 200 BCE, a narrative description of what was expected of them (called by some the “Hindu Bi-ble”). In the eighth century BCE, the Jews started collecting their own oral legends and consolidating them into the Penta-teuch, the first five books of the Bible. In the late fifth cen-tury to the early fourth century BCE both Buddha and Con-fucius came on the scene with their religious ideas. However the first written record available of Buddha’s teachings is the Gondharan Buddhist texts, 27 birch bark scrolls written from the first century BCE to the third century CE. There is no certainty about Confucius’ writings, called the five classics, although it is claimed he was responsible for them. Of course the earliest existing Christian scriptures were the epistles of Paul, written 20 to 30 years after Jesus’ death. The scriptures continued being written into the second century CE although the canon (format) of the Bible was not decided upon until the fourth century CE. Finally, Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born c. 570 CE and died in 632 CE. During an annual retreat to a mountain cave, an angel sent by Al Lah (the God) appeared to him in a vision and started teaching him things he was to recite, primarily to the members of his tribe. The visionary teachings were made in segments over a period of 23 years. Since Muhammad was illiterate, he recited these segments as he received them, one at a time, to the Muslims who tried to memorize them. A few Muslims who were literate would eventually record what they were told he said but the sayings were not officially compiled into the Qur’an (recital) until 20 years after his death. We have to realize that no religious writings were produced, magically, by divine revelation or otherwise, by whoever or whatever a particular religion considered the Divine Reality. Instead, in all cases they were authored by fallible men who relied on oral memories, often mythical, or previous documents for their information. Usually the writings were created to justify the author’s (or his group’s) beliefs or to explain their religious practices or both. These writings are all the beliefs of the authors based on their civilization’s concepts of over two thousand years ago.

We also have to realize that the words these people used are just symbols of the concepts they were describing, using words and meanings of their day, and cannot be taken literally. The Buddhists have a saying that the finger that points at the moon is not the moon. The words describing religious beliefs are not the actual beliefs and can and will be interpreted differently by the different people who read them.

The Christian Bible
Since I was raised in the Christian faith, I will concentrate primarily on the Bible although most of what I say is equally applicable to other faiths and their writings. I think that the Bible is a great literary masterpiece and the King James Ver-sion, especially, is a jewel of the English language. It is very readable as opposed to the Qur’an which was meant primari-ly for liturgical recitation and chanted prayers. Despite the Bible’s literary value, I do not believe that the Bible, as we have received it, is either historically, biographically or theo-logically correct.

There are two extreme views about the Bible and es-pecially the New Testament. Many Christian churches (in-cluding the Roman Catholic, although they do provide for some interpretation by the Magisterium) state clearly that the Bible is the infallible, literal word of God and that the au-thors of the books of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit. At the other extreme is the group of scholars, men-tioned before, known as “mythicists” that claim Jesus never existed, the Gospels were developed from Egyptian myths about their gods and that most of the Old Testament is false. …