What Are The Closest Texts To The Bible?, What is the closest thing to the Bible? Options

Hello, all. I am here once again to ask a question regarding the Bible. I have never completely read the Bible due to the fact that it was always a problem for me to read something as modern as the King James Bible. What I mean by this is, over time, the words in the Bible have obviously been altered. I can not completely read the Bible for I feel what I am reading does not possess the actual true words it once did.

I am looking for certain passages in Revelations and I simply can not trust the modern Bibles. I want to know what are the closest texts to the real Bible.

Do some research on it yourself. See what experts are saying about the bible, what translations are accurate or inaccurate. What books of the bible were added when and were actually written by someone who knew Jesus--if he existed. Check out the dead sea scrolls, the councils of Nicea, etc. Doing your own research is good practice and will allow you to know for yourself instead of taking some anonymous person's word for it.

Go and troll some college websites on the higher end of the University heirarchy. I'm talking about Oxford, Cornell, Yale, Harvard... the professors there should have their published works for display. They should have dissertations, synopses, and analyses of various interpretations of the bible. Also, check museum pages.

the simplest method is to pick up a concordance (every word back to the original text) and a parallel bible (many different versions referenced together)

the original texts are many and in many different languages (aramaic, hebrew, greek) - impossible to learn them all unless you are studying to be a religion scholar

many different texts were also left out of the bible after the big meeting in nicea(spelling? - google 'council of nicea') where jesus was voted to be divine, dissenters to the vote murdered, and all texts that didn't support it were thrown out - also there was a lot of texts that referenced 'sophia' (sort of a gaia or earthly feminine essence) that also got texts thrown out

the concordance and parallel bible won't have the left out stuff, but most of the ideas will be there

there are also tons of 'commentaries' available, all with differing opinions, even among different reprintings of the same commentary - example: the 1922 printing of a bible commentary listed baalam ("mountain man") as a 'friend of god', since he could talk to god in a dream, talk to animals and angels, and was used by god to teach discernment of astral dopplegangers pretending to be god when he was deceived, but in the 'modern' version of the same commentary baalam is now listed as an 'enemy of god', even though he finally learned and did god's bidding - so much for the commentaries

also look for (free downloads on the internet):
gospel of thomas
gospel of phillip
gospel of judas (yes, that judas)
pistis sophia (sortof a gospel of mary)

that should get you started on the texts, but to do revelation/apoclaypse st john, there is much to consider - a ) he was hyped up on a herb; b) he was in a sea cave that to this day has a euphoria or something(methane?), and c) lots of people have apocalyptic messages given to them (especially ufo people and catholic children :wink:), most are different and some are impossible, so one has to take them all into consideration - another thing to think about is the symbology involved in the whole revelation, which is kabbalistic + astrological (1 sol -> 4 elements ->12 houses ->24 influences, i.e., one eye looking forward and one eye looking back, with all that applied to the tree - very interesting if you can wrap your head around it)

back to work...

This post has been edited by esoterica: Sep 15 2009, 08:20 AM

This is very interesting, Esoterica. You've definitely given me plenty to think of and study upon concerning this. I didn't even know what a concordance was, heh. This I imagine will be quite useful for what I'm researching. Thank you. I definitely will search museum pages and the like, that may prove helpful as well. I have researched the matter myself but not to a satisfied extent, and I always confirm the opinions/statements of 'anonymous' people before delving deeper which proves to be quite useful for validity and further research; a very good technique.