by Ken Bradford

Created on: October 26, 2008

For Christians, believing that the Holy Bible is the inspired word of God and not a grouping of fables and myths is no problem, but to those who have no Christian beliefs and have actually never read the book, believing in the teachings of the Bible could be very difficult.

I have heard all my life that there are two things we should never discuss in any diverse group of people, one is politics and the other is religion. Most people believe in just what they choose to believe and those things, which seem to make their lives more comfortable.

I will not even attempt to defend the Bible here, for it needs no defense. It is not like our Constitution, which must be defended each and every day. I will mention some of the history of the Bible and how thousands of years ago, some people knew about the problems that we all face today and actually presented solutions to these problems.

We will begin with a statement from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., which is known as America's national educational facility:

"The factual bases of the stories are hidden from our view archaeologically. The stories remain a part of folk traditions and were included in the Bible to illustrate and explain theological ideas such as: Where did humans come from? If humans were created by God (who is perfect and good), how did evil among them come to be? If we are all related as children of God, why do we speak different languages? It must be remembered that the Bible is primarily a book of religion, a guide to faith. It was not a book of history, poetry, economics, or science."

In 2006, the Smithsonian opened a new exhibit "In the Beginning-Bibles Before The Year 1000" and in this exhibit are over 70 of the earliest biblical artifacts in existence, including pages and fragments written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian and Coptic, many on display for the first time in the United States.

In 1604, King James I of England, after convening the Hampton Court Conference, instructed some 47 translators to write a new English version of the "Great Bible" to conform to the beliefs of the Church of England. The Old Testament was translated from the Hebrew texts and the New Testament was translated from the Greek texts. In 1611, the first "Authorized Version" was published, and the first publication of what we know as the "King James Version" was published in the late 1800s.

Now that we have learned some of the Bible's history, we must look at some of the "truths"

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