Let the Joyous news be spread: New Jersey votes yes on Gay civil union!

[swilborn 0]

My grandma used to say," Child, with all the hate in this world, if you can find love-praise God you found it." I believe I am not to set in judgement of others that's the god I worship job. Isn't it wonderful we live with the freedom of having opinions and being able to voice them.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

The 10 commandments are pretty clear to me. Maybe I'm just weird.

Can you point out to me where the 10 commandments are? I can not find them in my Bible.

[green 6]

If God is distressed by same sex unions then let Him deal with this issue. It is not up to us to judge nor to meddle in others' lives. I must stress that I find this issue particularly poignant since I am aware that all the latest research indicates that homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice. One doesn't choose the colour of one's skin or one's sex, and similarly one doesn't choose one's sexual orientation. I have a number of friends who are gay. They would have preferred to have been straight. Life is easier when you are straight.

[Carlene 12]

I only support what I read in the word of God.

And which version would that be? If you are Protestant, your version of the Bible dates from the mid-1880's. If you are Jewish, it's called the Torah and it is almost 3500 years old. If you are Catholic, the earliest written copy of your Bible is preserved in the British Museum Library in London. It was written around 300 AD.

You can argue religion all day long, but you can't argue with history.

The first recorded instance of God’s Word being written down, was when the Lord Himself wrote it down in the form of ten commandments on the stone tablets delivered to Moses at the top of Mount Sinai. Biblical scholars believe this occurred between 1,400 BC and 1,500 BC… almost 3,500 years ago. The language used was almost certainly an ancient form of Hebrew, the language of Old Covenant believers.

The earliest scripture is generally considered to be the “Pentateuch”, the first five books of the Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, & Deuteronomy… though there is some scholarly evidence to indicate that the Old Testament Book of Job may actually be the oldest book in the Bible. The Old Testament scriptures were written in ancient Hebrew, a language substantially different than the Hebrew of today. These writings were passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years on scrolls made of animal skin, usually sheep, but sometimes deer or cow. Animals considered “unclean” by the Jews, such as pigs, were of course, never used to make scrolls.

When the entire Pentateuch is present on a scroll, it is called a “Torah”. An entire Torah Scroll, if completely unraveled, is over 150 feet long! As most sheep are only about two to three feet long, it took an entire flock of sheep to make just one Torah scroll. The Jewish scribes who painstakingly produced each scroll were perfectionists. If they made even the slightest mistake in copying, such as allowing two letters of a word to touch, they destroyed that entire panel (the last three or four columns of text), and the panel before it, because it had touched the panel with a mistake! While most Christians today would consider this behavior fanatical and even idolatrous (worshiping the scripture, rather than the One who gave it to us), it nevertheless demonstrates the level of faithfulness to accuracy applied to the preservation of God’s Word throughout the first couple of thousand years of Biblical transmission.

Hebrew has one thing in common with English: they are both “picture languages”. Their words form a clear picture in your mind. As evidence of this; the first man to ever print the scriptures in English, William Tyndale, once commented that Hebrew was ten times easier to translate into English than any other language. Tyndale would certainly be qualified to make such a statement, as he was so fluent in eight languages, that it was said you would have thought any one of them to be his native tongue.

By approximately 500 BC, the 39 books that make up the Old Testament were completed, and continued to be preserved in Hebrew on scrolls. As we approach the last few centuries before Christ, the Jewish historical books known as the “Apocrypha” were completed, yet they were recorded in Greek rather than Hebrew. By the end of the First Century AD, the New Testament had been completed. It was preserved in Greek on Papyrus, a thin paper-like material made from crushed and flattened stalks of a reed-like plant. The word “Bible” comes from the same Greek root word as “papyrus”. The papyrus sheets were bound, or tied together in a configuration much more similar to modern books than to an elongated scroll.

These groupings of papyrus were called a “codex” (plural: “codices”). The oldest copies of the New Testament known to exist today are: The Codex Alexandrius and the Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum Library in London, and the Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican. They date back to approximately the 300’s AD. In 315 AD, Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identified the 27 Books which we recognize today as the canon of New Testament scripture.

In 382 AD, the early church father Jerome translated the New Testament from its original Greek into Latin. This translation became known as the “Latin Vulgate”, (“Vulgate” meaning “vulgar” or “common”). He put a note next to the Apocrypha Books, stating that he did not know whether or not they were inspired scripture, or just Jewish historical writings which accompanied the Old Testament.

The Apocrypha was kept as part of virtually every Bible scribed or printed from these early days until just 120 years ago, in the mid-1880’s, when it was removed from Protestant Bibles. Up until the 1880’s, however, every Christian… Protestant or otherwise… embraced the Apocrypha as part of the Bible, though debate continued as to whether or not the Apocrypha was inspired. There is no truth to the popular myth that there is something “Roman Catholic” about the Apocrypha, which stemmed from the fact that the Roman Catholics kept 12 of the 14 Apocrypha Books in their Bible, as the Protestants removed all of them. No real justification was ever given for the removal of these ancient Jewish writings from before the time of Christ, which had remained untouched and part of every Bible for nearly two thousand years.

[Josette 2]

Soooooo....how about those tigers???

I believe God loves each and every one of us and wouldn't stop a man from marrying a man and a woman from marrying a woman. They're not hurting anybody and it's nobodies business. You hear about religion all the time and how they reject homosexuality but then you keep hearing over and over about priests molesting little boys. Where is their religion?

[Carlene 12]

You hear about religion all the time and how they reject homosexuality but then you keep hearing over and over about priests molesting little boys. Where is their religion?

Priests who molest little boys are just men who have sinned. It has nothing to do with religion, other than the fact that they abused their position as a cleric.

[leatha_g 4]

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[green 6]

Carlene, would the Apocrypha be in the King James' Version of the Bible?

[lisah25 3]

It's interesting then, how many more are being 'born' in the past, say 50-60 years in comparison to how many were born before that?

I don't know if more are being born now, or more are living lives out of the closet now.

I love people, as people. Beyond that, I'd prefer not to know about their sexuality. After all, I have no need to go about telling my preferences and my escapades, I don't quite understand why I have to know about theirs.

If you are married, do you have wedding pics on your desk? Do you wear a wedding ring, talk about your kids if you have them? Hold hands with your SO in public? All of those tell people what your preferences are. I never really thought of that until I worked with a gay man years ago. Had some really interesting conversations.

As far as them deserving rights to their partners assets, I can see how that would be acceptable. I think joining them, legally, by union might be okay, if that's what they choose, but I don't think it should be called 'marriage' because of my spiritual beliefs and what I believe 'marriage' to have been born of. I simply don't like the idea of a few trying to change what was defined by God since the beginning of time.

I agree, I think working on getting civil unions with the same legal rights is a good step for now.

I will say that marriage as we see, one man and one woman, esp. marrying for love, is not how marriage has always been. Even in the Bible men had several wives.

[green 6]

Leatha g, I believe that there has always been homosexuals. It is just that most of them hid themselves; homosexuality wasn't socially accepted by most people and there were laws against the sexual practice of homosexuality.

[Carlene 12]

Carlene, would the Apocrypha be in the King James' Version of the Bible?

NO....the word "apocrypha" simply means questionable, or some would say not divinely inspired, in the context of religious works. The King James version of the Bible is an example of so-called apocrypha being deleted from the Bible.

The KJV was first published in 1611. The version most widely used today was adopted in the mid 1880's.

The Catholic Bible has 80 books, as did the Protestant Bible at one time. There is widely held misconception that Catholics do not read the Bible and do not revere it as the word of God. Not so. The Catholic Church is well aware that the Bible is not one book, delivered to us by God, all nicely bound in leather. It is a collection of writings, recollections, stories, observances and songs from many sources - handed down in many languages and pieced together over quite a long time. The Catholic Church holds the four gospels to be absolutely sacred. We believe that the remainder of the Bible is scripturally sound, but we also recognize that something may have been lost in the translation.

[green 6]

NO....the word "apocrypha" simply means questionable, or some would say not divinely inspired, in the context of religious works. The King James version of the Bible is an example of so-called apocrypha being deleted from the Bible.

The KJV was first published in 1611. The version most widely used today was adopted in the mid 1880's.

The Catholic Bible has 80 books, as did the Protestant Bible at one time. There is widely held misconception that Catholics do not read the Bible and do not revere it as the word of God. Not so. The Catholic Church is well aware that the Bible is not one book, delivered to us by God, all nicely bound in leather. It is a collection of writings, recollections, stories, observances and songs from many sources - handed down in many languages and pieced together over quite a long time. The Catholic Church holds the four gospels to be absolutely sacred. We believe that the remainder of the Bible is scripturally sound, but we also recognize that something may have been lost in the translation.

Thanks for your (always) most knowledgeable answers. This would indicate that should I wish to make a closer examination of the Bible, I would well be advised to get my paws on a Catholic edition, right?

As a sidebar, I also note that Catholic and Orthodox (Byzantine) Christianity are the two oldest/original forms of Christianity extant.

[Dianechef 3]

My beliefs are simply my beliefs & I do not need to push anyone else to believe what I believe. They will come to find out their own beliefs through their own experiences. If someone asks me, I will freely share with them.

Everyone has the right to live their lives the way they wish. God is the only judge. My job is to love & accept everyone for who they are.

I will always exercise my right to vote. However, my vote is kept private. Just because I may believe one way or another doesn't mean I would ever treat someone any different because of the way they live their lives.

[Carlene 12]

Thanks for your (always) most knowledgeable answers. This would indicate that should I wish to make a closer examination of the Bible, I would well be advised to get my paws on a Catholic edition, right?

As a sidebar, I also note that Catholic and Orthodox (Byzantine) Christianity are the two oldest/original forms of Christianity extant.

If you want to examine the OLDEST form of the Bible (including the New Testament), then yes. I don't want to start a debate with anyone over whose Bible is the "correct" version.

I have nothing against non-Catholics. All Christians are our offspring. And as in secular families, they may not want to claim us, but that doesn't change the face of history.

In the infancy of Christianity, there were no Baptists, Methodists, Church of Christ, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc. All those came much, much later. "Christian" - as in feed-them-to-the-lions - meant the Catholic church...the "one holy and apostolic church". (Notice the quotation marks...that means it's a quote, not a statement.)

The Orthodox church is the second oldest Christian denomination, although it has since split into numerous factions.

The word "orthodox" means traditional. The word "catholic" means universal. Many protestant denominations (Lutheran, Methodist....I'm not sure who else) still recite the Apostles Creed, which says, in part, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church", only they don't capitalize the "c" in Catholic.

I think religious history is fascinating. And, of course, I think Catholic history is particularly so. I am aware of all the dark moments in the Church's history. (The Spanish Inquisition was not our finest hour.) Regretably, mortals have stained the pages of Catholic history, but that doesn't make the church less holy. It makes those men less holy, but not the church.

[carol134 0]

Welp you guys have questions and the bible has answers, as to which bible you can figure that out and too which God I only hope you know that answer.

leatha thanks for pointing that out to tired old man. I'm done here.