Which is correct? Did Judas take his blood money, feel remorse, then hang himself (Matthew 27)?
Or did he use the money to buy a field (Acts 1 18-19) and then die when his intestines burst out?

Did Jesus say the cock would crow twice (Mark 14:30) or three times (the other 3 gospels) before Peter disowned him three times?
The gospels describe Peter denying Jesus in exquisite detail, yet contradict one another.

Or how about historical accuracy? Take the town of Nazareth, hailed in the gospels as the birthplace of Jesus the Christ.

St Paul seems to know nothing of the town, despite having supposedly spent many years with the gospel writers.
Nazareth is never mentioned anywhere in the old testament.
There is no mention of the town by any historians prior to a mention in the beginning of the 4th century.
There are no ruins, unlike the 1st century ruins of nearby Sepphoris (a 45 minute walk away from Nazareth, yet not even mentioned in the gospels).

Matthew speaks of a fulfilled prophecy in Matthew 2.23: “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”
And yet the prophecy he speaks of is from Judges 13.5: “For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”
Nazarite means ‘he who vows to grow long hair and serve god’. It does not mean the inhabitant of a city. Notice how Matthew misquotes Nazarite as Nazarene.

In fact, Nazarene was originally the name of an offshoot Christiant sect of the Essenes. The Nazerenes then split into two, and the losers of the Bar Kochbar War of 135 AD resettled in what is now the Nazareth Valley.

Luke 4:29 tells of the Nazerenes trying to kill Jesus: “and brought him to the precipice of the mountain that their city was built upon.”
The only problem is that the city of Nazareth is located in a valley, between gentle, rolling plains. There are no precipices, nor were there in 30 AD.

Treatment of women:

1 Timothy 2:11-12 “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”
Bear in mind that this is St Paul instructing his successor, teaching him how a church should be run. Exactly how is this taken out of context? It seems pretty complete to me.

In 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”
Here we have a reinforcement of this teaching. Once again, I doubt this is being taken out of context.

If you are a true Christian, you will follow the teachings of the apostles, including this one. After all, he was an apostle chosen by God himself, and he speaks with the authority given to him by God.

Slavery:

Ephesians 6:5: “Slaves, obey your masters here on earth.”
I.E. Slavery is not something to be abolished or fought against, but rather accepted and submitted to.
Slavery is a recurring theme throughout the bible, and is never ever condemned by God (except for the Egyptian episode, but that’s a bit of a special case). In fact, slave owners are considered blessed because of their god given wealth.

However, since then the dates have been pushed back by scholars to the time when some witnesses were still alive. The Teaching Company has a nice set of lectures on modern biblical scholarship.

But the Bible is not a magic book dictated by an angel: it is a bunch of stories written with the help of the inspiration of the deity not dictated by him.

And the stories are not history or science, but written for teaching: they tell of how God works in our lives.

Each story can be interpreted as history (oral tradition), allegory, spiritual message, and part of how God works in our lives.

As for which books belong in the bibles, Catholics say that the Deity inspires the church as the final authority on all of this, and that the Holy Spirit will make sure they get it right, politicalfights, stupid bishops, corrupt emperors and all.

If you think the church is nonsense, then you can choose any of the books you want, but tell you the truth, if the Church wasn’t guided by God, and Jesus was not God’s son, then why bother at all? I mean, it’s a nice story, but I wouldn’t build my life on it.

As for your remarks about slave masters: one line out of context about women doesn’t describe the complex anthropology and psychology of human gender differences, human sexuality and marriage. John Paul II’s complex theology of the body would be a good place to start. Or if you don’t want to get intellectual, try one of Andrew Greeley’s pot broilers to see how Catholicism is practiced by the average American Christian who attends the Catholic church.

As for women keeping quiet in church: well, history shows that only one person outranks the Pope: and that is a saint, be it Mother Angelica or Catherine of Sienna. But that’s another story…

All you have to go on is four accounts, written long after the supposed events, proven historically inaccurate and contradictory in places, and then a series of letters to the churches advocating everything from submitting to your slave masters to prohibiting women from speaking in church or uncovering their heads.

If the bible is the living word of God, then it MUST be truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If there is untruth in the bible (and there is), then either the bible is not the word of God, or God is a liar and cannot be trusted, or the god described in the bible does not exist. There can be no middle ground.

If you can so easily condemn these alternate stories as being debunked by scholars, shouldn’t you apply the same standards to the original story?