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Go Back to The Bible and the Book of Mormon
How to understand the scriptures
When the Catholic church was aware that the study of the scriptures was a dangerous matter for them, because they were teaching different doctrines, took the resolution to forbid the reading of the Bible.
Under this title the weekly magazine "the truth" published in Jerusalem, gives us on November 1911, a news quoting a document stored in the national library of Paris, which contains suggestions that the cardinals gave to the Pope Julius third, when he was called as Pope in the year 1550:
Between all the suggestions that we can give to your holiness, we hold the most important for the last one. We must keep well opened eyes and intervene with all the power we have in the following business." The reading of the Gospel must not be allowed as less as possible, specially in the modern languages and in the country submitted to your authority. The few readed, generally to the mass,it should be enough and we must forbid to whosoever to read more.
Until the people will be glad of that few, your business will prosper, but in the moment that it will be readed more your business will suffer. This is the Book that more the all others provoked against us rebellions and storms that for few didn't destroy us. In fact if somebody checks accurately the teaching of the Bible and he compares it to what happens in ours churches, he will discover pretty soon the contradictions, and see that our teachings often are very different from the teachings of the Bible, and more often are in opposition to It. If the people will be able to understand this, will provoke us without rest, until everything will be discovered, and then we will become the object of the mockery and the universal hate. It is necessary, therefore, that the Bible be taken of from the hands of the people, but with great prudence, to persuade the people against violence.
This resolution, anyway, didn't resolve the problem, because several monks and priest that had a "legal" access to the scriptures, like Martin Luther, discovered their problem and the famous protest begun.
Now the scriptures are available to everybody, fortunately, but sometime we have another problem: many churches understand them according to their opinions. Obviously the battle's field instead to be narrower is becoming huger. Many times we ear to say:" You take this verse out of context" and many times is true. The real problem will arise when you quote a verse "in the context" but since it is not good for a particular doctrine of the listener this reply in this way:
The Bible should be registered as a lethal weapon! Hebrews 4:12 warns us "the word
of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword . . ."
That's why Paul warns us to "do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,
a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of
truth" (2 Timothy 2:14-19, italics mine).
This double-edged sword cannot only be spiritually deadly, but physically as well. For
instance, numerous atrocities including the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, as well as
child and wife abuse have been justified with biblical "proof texts." And the
majority of heresies, such as Jesus Christ not being God or "name it and claim
it," have developed from the incorrect handling of Scripture.
To correctly handle the Word of God we must . . .
take the common meaning of the word in the original language (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) at the time it was written.And after this advice several others.
So every reader, to be perfectly safe, should be able to know the particular meanings of the words in (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) to see if their meaning is well translated (in this case probably the translator is considered an imbecile, and also at this point "they believe in the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly" just like the lds people, but with an important difference, we accept our article of faith in those cases in which is so evident that there is a mistake in the text, instead they use this idea anytime they are in trouble to explain their idea. To support their idea many times they maintain that the meaning of the word could be different from when it was written. So the translators were not good because they probably didn't have this in their mind when they performed their labor, which I don't believe. It is true that every translation can differ from each other but the differences usually are not so big, otherwise we have a very good question:which Bible is the better translated? It makes me laugh this topic because it is more evident why the Lord brought forth the Book of Mormon: One text, one translator, one book and we have the manuscript. Turning back to the original topic I'd say that this way is another original idea to put the Bible back in the hands of the learned men of the world. How it could be possible for the simple basic man of the world to have all this knowledge? So did God write the Bible only for the learned men of the world? Taking the scriptures like sample this is simple abnormal and unknown to the method that God always used, even the scriptures make clear that God loves everybody but in the case of knowledge He prefer and uses the humble and simple man, not the learned men, for simple reasons, "without faith it is impossible to please Him" and He likes to reveal His secrets to the humble persons.
we can read this in 1 Corinthians 1:17,19-29
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel--not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
Since lately I discussed about the scriptures with learned men in the science of the world, when they were not able to explain a particular point, they started to say always: we should be careful because even tough it is in the context, we should know the customs, the idea of the time, the real meaning of the words, the dialects, the geography and the laws and I liked always to add that probably we need to know what size of shoes the writer had to have a better comprehension of all. I am not saying that these stuff, aside the shoes' size, are not useful, i am just saying that they are not"essential".
My conclusion is: if you want to study the scriptures in this manner you should (before to start) go to the university, closer to your house, you should take several branches and when you done you could start to read the Bible, keeping in mind to be careful and check every word to make sure that meaning, laws, customs and whatever is perfect. probably in a millions of years you will arrive finally to the new Testament and you will enjoy the testimony of Jesus, but keep in mind the New Testament was written in Greek but Jesus and the people in the new testament times were speaking Hebrew, so you are supposed to be ready for the great task to mingle well and shake well everything. Thanks God this is not the way the Holy Ghost works. Do you really think that God making the Bible made a real monster? Fortunately the Bible condemns this wrong concept in the words of Paul but what about Christ. Didn't teach Him that what was covered for the learned man of his time it would be revealed to the little children? didn't He speak about the "poor in spirit" in His sermon of the Mount? Didn't He condemn always the scribes and Pharisees in his sermons (they were the learned man of His time)? Didn't teach He the true doctrine of the knowledge? That is the prayer of the faith connected to the Holy Ghost to know the truth of everything? John 16:7-14
Anyway if the Bible gives us something different, about university, geography, customs, dialects and stuff like that, I'd like to take a closer look to the scriptures that are proclaiming that, is that fair?
