by Christine Holleyman

Created on: August 26, 2009   Last Updated: August 29, 2009

In my formative years I regularly attended a protestant Christian church. And during those years I loved to read. I read the Bible a lot. I read many other things too, including the Greek and Roman mythologies and accounts of other religions, ancient and not so ancient. And that started me wondering about all of them.

By the time I emerged from those early years, I was convinced the stories in the Bible were no more believable than the legends of the ancient Greeks and Romans. I told myself, "It's all mythologies." I did not disbelieve in a God since I couldn't see how the universe could have been made without some kind of intelligence behind it. But I could not see that intelligence in the Bible.

Many years later something I read stirred my curiosity again about the Bible. I decided I needed to re-investigate it. I read the King James Version from beginning to end twice (that's the only version I had). I then discovered the New English Bible and learned it was translated only from the original languages and not from other translations, so I eagerly read it also.

I obtained a very large commentary on the Bible that contained the latest opinions of Biblical scholars. They are experts on the Bible who have spent entire lives studying and examining in detail the many manuscripts, translations, original languages, and historical data that might pertain to it. I decided a study of the Bible would not be complete without their opinions, as they would obviously know more about the Bible than anyone else in the world. I studied that commentary for almost a year. Using it, I studied thoroughly the entire Bible. I studied it as a whole, each book separately, each chapter separately, and many of the verses separately.

After all my studying I once again decided the Bible is full of nothing but mythologies. That was quite obvious to me since the experts stated it's full of interpolations and changes. And so I thought, if it's full of interpolations and changes, how then can we depend upon anything it says? Also some experts maintain many of the books purported to have been written at certain times in history were actually written at much later dates. That would be prophesying certain incidents after they had occurred. And the experts claim some of the authors forged other names to their writings to give them more authority. That seemed somewhat deceitful to me.

Concerning the New Testament, some of the sayings attributed directly to Jesus, I could agree with, but the rest of

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