My 15 cents in the discussion.....
1. The Bible is important because it is a collection of writings that are the word of God.
2. It is inerrent in faith, morals and matters of salvation. This does not mean science or history (see the two different creation stories as an example).
3. The Bible is the inspired word of God. The Holy Spirit provided the ideas, thoughts and concepts to the authors, who then wrote it down in their own words using their own writing style.
4. At times man has corrputed the original message. An example is in Genesis. When God creates man and the animals he gives Adam a respectful responsibility over creation. In English this gets translated as "dominion." This is further transformed into "domination." Domination is not the same thing as a respectful relationship.
5. Many attempt to use Scripture as a sword to hurt rather than a message of love and relationship. A very simplistic answer that would take pages and pages to fully expound on.
6. This is much the same as #5. It's interesting to note that Martin Luther wanted to toss out some of the New Testament. He didn't like James or Revelation. He also wanted to toss out Esther from the Old Testament. The differences between Protestant and Catholic/Orthodox Bibles is an example of where divisions come from.
At the time the Christian Bible was being formed, a Greek translation of Jewish Scripture, the Septuagint, was in common use and Christians adopted it as the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. However, around 100 A.D., Jewish rabbis revised their Scripture and established an official canon of Judaism which excluded some portions of the Greek Septuagint.
Christians did not follow the revisions of Judaism and continued to use the text of the Septuagint. There are more direct quotes from the Septuagint in the New Testament than the Hebrew canon.
Catholic and Orthodox Churches continue to base their Old Testament on the Septuagint.
