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Re: They were names before the Bible came along. nt
Definitely true. I tend to think of the Bible as a semi-historical document full of stories people made up or changed to teach lessons to their followers and was rewritten many times through history to suit what Christian spiritual leaders felt the current generation's beliefs and needs should be.The names in the Bible are just the names that were popular among people at the time or maybe just popular with Christian's at the time. There are also names that they chose to portray in a negative light by giving them to people of "poor" character or they belonged to people of "poor" character. They may have also made up some of the names in the Bible I would assume they did but maybe not.I've heard until recently most Christian's used to not consider the Bible to be literal but rather a teaching tool full of metaphor. The number of people who view the Bible to be the literal word of God has been growing in number. I would find it difficult to view it as a completely historical document since we can trace the history of the Bible and it has been changed many times and parts of it have been removed. The question always becomes what exactly was changed. I know that some of the names have definitely changed through time and translation.
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This message was edited 9/23/2016, 2:16 PM

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I didn't know there were people who viewed the Bible to be literal. But even then, the people in the Bible would have been named whatever they were named before the Bible existed. Their parents gave them the names they did for some reason. None of the major Biblical names could have existed without the Hebrew language existing first, which couldn't have existed without its predecessors, etc.
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Yep and there are a lot of people especially in the US who take the Bible to be literal. The number supposedly keeps growing. Through history there have been generations where literal believers of the Bible were the majority and generations where the majority felt the Bible was more about metaphor. We are currently in a time where the majority of Christian's in the US believe the Bible to be literal.Most Catholics I know view the Bible to be metaphorical and most of the Christian's I'm close to are Catholics. Though I know more people who believe in God but are not Christian's, Jew's, or Muslims. Some of them actively dislike organized religion but some of them just don't find it necessary. The PNW has a lot of people who are not apart of an organized religion.
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This message was edited 9/24/2016, 4:42 AM

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Um, not a very unbiased source there.
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