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What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

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    What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

    Many, many religions around the world are based on oral traditions. Christianity, Judaism & Muslim believers have written words.

    What if the Bible, Torah and Q'ran had never been written?

    How do you think these religions would be different today? Would they be different? Would society itself be different?
    The forum member formerly known as perzephone. Or Perze. I've shed a skin.

    #2
    Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

    Welp a big chunk of horror would be cut out of the world history, now wouldn't it?
    Satan is my spirit animal

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      #3
      Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

      I'm not really sure that that is a question which can be answered. Even if the Bible as we know it hadn't been written and compiled, surely at some point the teachings of various Abrahamic sects would have been codified, and the resulting texts would have had their own impact on the world. You could better speculate over specific reasons as to why the Bible might not have been written (at least in it's current form) - what if, say, the Council of Nicaea had never happened? What if Constantine had never converted to Christianity and made it the state religion of the empire? What if certain passages had been translated differently? etc.

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        #4
        Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

        If the Torah had never been written down, which started wth the Jawist text between (depending on who who you ask) 950 and 700 BC, and was added to slowly over the next few centuries, then Jewish tradition would have been changed vastly in ways we cant even imagine. No rules or cultural heritage, no proof of the longevity of their culture to get them their exception to Roman tributes, their religion would have been much more amorphous. Its really impossible to say.

        If none of that had been written down, Islam and Christianity couldn't have added their own texts.... But really I don't even think they'd exist in a form we could recognize.

        Lets say though, that Judaism survived entirely by Oral tradition. What you'd end up with is a religion that is entirely reliant on its priestly caste to continue to propagate. The great reforms of Jesus, and the other spiritual revolutionaries such as John, which put the word of God in the hands of ordinary people and freed them from the tyranny of compliance to the powers that be, could not have happened if those reformers hadn't been able to study the texts and use them to create a more welcoming and less authoritarian religion. Sure, people used those texts (as the Deuteronomists did before them) to create the opposite of that later on, but the availability of the secret and full knowledge of the religion was very valuable to reformers. Sure, it also meant those with ill intentions could use the texts, but it took away the power from the few, and gave to the many, and that was pretty awesome.

        Anyways, if those books hadn't been written down we'd all be in a less monotheistic world. Unless somehow the massive change of all that meant that Zoroastrian Persia conquered everybody, which when you're changing history from 950 BC, could have happened as much as anything else.
        Last edited by Malflick; 18 Nov 2013, 03:59. Reason: clarified which text was 1st
        hey look, I have a book! And look I have a second one too!

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          #5
          Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

          Do you mean if they hadn't been written down after revelation or if they didn't exist in the first place?
          [4:82]

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            #6
            Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

            There were so many people that worked toward writing the bible that if the entire thing weren't written, it could be the same as saying the entire culture of Israelites died out before it could get created.

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              #7
              Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

              Originally posted by Dumuzi View Post
              Do you mean if they hadn't been written down after revelation or if they didn't exist in the first place?
              Only if they hadn't been written down. If all of the Big Three books remained as oral histories. No Torah, no Q'ran, no King James et al.

              That's one of the big ones right there - no written Bible means no hinky business with revisions or shifty editing to support the latest political power. Instead it would be priests arguing over who said what, why and when.
              The forum member formerly known as perzephone. Or Perze. I've shed a skin.

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                #8
                Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

                I think it would be great...if either it had remained oral history, or if it hadn't been made into one "my way or the highway" tome...like the vedas or the upanishads or something.
                Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                  #9

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                    #10
                    Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

                    The thing people don't know about the Qur'an is that it's an oral transmission to begin with. The people that memorize the Qur'an today learn it by ear from people who learned it by ear from others and so on, all the way back to Muhammad, peace be upon him, himself.

                    So in the end, it wouldn't really make a difference. Even if all the copies of the Qur'an vanished for some reason, in most Muslim cities, people could just sit together and write it again collectively.

                    [4:82]

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                      #11
                      Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

                      Originally posted by Dumuzi View Post
                      So in the end, it wouldn't really make a difference. Even if all the copies of the Qur'an vanished for some reason, in most Muslim cities, people could just sit together and write it again collectively.

                      that is impressive! seriously. i don't think many religions can say that for themselves.

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                        #12
                        Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

                        Originally posted by Dumuzi View Post
                        The thing people don't know about the Qur'an is that it's an oral transmission to begin with. The people that memorize the Qur'an today learn it by ear from people who learned it by ear from others and so on, all the way back to Muhammad, peace be upon him, himself.

                        So in the end, it wouldn't really make a difference. Even if all the copies of the Qur'an vanished for some reason, in most Muslim cities, people could just sit together and write it again collectively.

                        So.... If the Bible hadn't been written I'd by Muslim. Got it
                        hey look, I have a book! And look I have a second one too!

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                          #13
                          Re: What If The Bible Had Never Been Written

                          Lol I'm not exactly sure. I think there still would be some war but it wouldn't be over if someone was a Jew or not lol. Probably be over, hey that was my side of the fricken forest and your crossed it.

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