Activity from Wv§↻

great choice, Wv! I just read through them all ....

Yes, I love them as well! I am working on memorizing the whole book. It is such a help as it contains a lot of practical, everyday wisdom.

praise the Lord. Nice to hear.

I agree about the practical everyday wisdom, but I find Proverbs tricky for memorisation, because each verse is individual and there is no real ‘flow’ to the chapter. How are you finding it?

So far it has not been too hard. Some chapters are harder than others, but none of them have been impossible to learn.

It also doesn't help that since they were written by different people, they sometimes conflict with each other. That being said, I still love Proverbs.

Yes, but only a very short part in the last section of Proverbs was written by different people. Also, in one aspect they all have the same author as they were divinely and inerrantly inspired by God.

I would also add that the only seeming conflict in any part of Scripture is a reflection of our lack of understanding, not the result of there being the minutest defect in the pure Word of God. Personally, I wouldn't bother memorizing an imperfect Bible.

My own sentiments precisely, Wv

You are so mature for someone so young. May the LORD use you in a great way.

While my original point was simply saying that verse conflicts cause memory collisions, I would like to add some context to my comment. I certainly don't want to ruffle any feathers, but the fact remains is that we don't know exactly how many authors there are that contribute to Proverbs due to distance and the ravages of time. The book identifies itself as a collection of "proverbs of Solomon", but in the Ancient Near East it was common for a book to have a person's name attached as the author (due to name recognition) without the person actually contributing to it himself. In fact, linguistic studies of the book show that some of the individual proverbs directly correspond to similar proverbs (sometimes almost word for word) written at different periods of time. For this reason, scholars identify up to five authors depending upon who you ask. Perhaps that's why you get conflicting scriptures like Proverbs 26:4 (Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him) and Proverbs 26:5 (Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit). Of course, it is also easy to say that those verses indicate that answering or not answering a fool is situationally dependent. To be honest, it doesn't matter who the author(s) was, because if it found its way into the book, it is authoritative and useful to both the Jews and the Church. Likewise, even if it has verses that are found in other works of wisdom at the time, that just indicates that a similar set of wisdom existed in that area, and either the Jews adapted it to the God they served or the surrounding nations adapted it to their own cultures.

I agree that the Bible is divinely inspired. I also agree that it is "innerant," if you mean that it does not have any errors when rightly interpreted within the period it was written. In other words, "what did this mean to the people it was written to" and "what does that mean for me today?" If by "innerant" you mean "does not contain any errors," then I would have to disagree. My background of study is Biblical Greek and Hebrew, and when you look at the ancient manuscripts themselves you find that there are over 200,000 copy errors and misspellings in the Bible due to the conditions of which they were copied. Considering that there are over 25,000 known copies (or fragments of copies) in existence today that have survived the ravages of time, it is not surprising that there were errors in them. These errors, however, do not take away from the authority of the Bible. To be honest, the existence of errors in the manuscripts are a good thing, because only works of fiction have no errors in them. That is the work of the translators: to look at all the copies (there are no originals) to determine which one is most accurate and thus inspired by God. And that is the key, really: divine inspiration. If we have enough faith to believe that God raised a person who was both fully God and fully man from the dead to save our souls from eternal damnation, then believing that the Bible we have now is exactly the book we needed it to be to receive that salvation is relatively easy in comparison.

I apologize for my first comment. I see now that I should have given more context. Sometimes what I mean and what I say don't always match each other.

Thank you for those explanations. Speaking for myself, we accept your apology. It's simply a feature of our "modern" internet and sometimes faceless communication. We don't have, in it, the normal benefit of knowing someone in person, perceiving their body language, knowing their background, understanding the tone of voice used in saying whatever it is they say. It's only that which has made an apology necessary or helpful in this case, I think.

My own belief: The Bible is divinely inspired, inerrant, and God's Perfect and Living Word. The fact that it is inerrant is a function of His Sovereignty. He has simply made sure that the Word we have received is His actual inerrant message for us. As I child, I accept His Word and receive it within the framework of an understanding of His Soverignty. I do not make any claim to "understanding" every verse in the Bible. But as His child I accept them and receive them and pray that each of them will do their necessary work on me, via the agency of His Holy Spirit.

That Living Word has come to us by means of imperfect human writers, scribes, copy scribes, and through imperfect translators. Through imperfect book publishers. Nevertheless I consider, due to His Sovereignty, that Word in my hands to be inerrant and holy. We used to say, "The Holy Bible", and there was good reason for that, I think.

I revere God's Word, just as I would treasure a letter from my wife, if for some reason she had to be away from me for a long, long period of time. I would treasure that letter. It would be a very important "thing" which I could hold in my hand, which is truly from her. But when I then saw my wife again face to face, that letter would take on far less importance. So it is with God's Word, although it is far far more than a romantic letter. For this time we are in now, we treasure His Word -- I treasure each one of the words of God.

But it is HE Whom we actually worship -- not His Word. We treasure and revere His Word, because it leads us, teaches us, to revere, to treasure, and to love, and to worship HIM, the one to whom is due all worship everywhere and for all time.