Bible reading is very complicated!

The earliest new testament fragment we possess is no older than the first half of the second century.  The pauline liturgical apparatus was already in business by that time.

(October 3, 2019 at 11:49 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: The earliest new testament fragment we possess is no older than the first half of the second century.  The pauline liturgical apparatus was already in business by that time.

Many ancient non-Biblical texts (e.g., Homer) come to us via the oldest surviving manuscript copies being hundreds of years after authorship, and no one suggests they are substantial forgeries.

I'm not saying there's zero corruption or fiddling of the NT, just that the consensus of scholars is that it's unlikely, and even if you don't buy that, the CONTENT is so ridiculous that it scarcely matters. I'm simply advocating for not wasting intellectual capital discrediting the provenance of the manuscripts; it's not the slam dunk most seem to think it is and it's not necessary.

Who said anything about a forgery? We dont even use that word when we refer to magic book. We call them interpolations, and there are plenty.

The point, is that it's not surprising to find that the pauline establishment document of christianity matches the early christian documents we find, that were produced by the pauline liturgical apparatus. Controlling the flow of that information and establishing a unified theology were exactly what the proto christian authorities were doing at the time. Document production would explode shortly thereafter, as the christians captured the roman state, and wouldn't you know it..those docs match up too.

It's not a forgery when you faithfully repeat the version of the story your predecessors founded your subcult on, lol.

(October 3, 2019 at 1:28 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Who said anything about a forgery?  We dont even use that word when we refer to magic book.  We call them interpolations, and there are plenty.  

The point, is that it's not surprising to find that the pauline establishment document of christianity matches the early christian documents we find, that were produced by the pauline liturgical apparatus.  Controlling the flow of that information and establishing a unified theology were exactly what the proto christian authorities were doing at the time.  Document production would explode shortly thereafter, as the christians captured the roman state, and wouldn't you know it..those docs match up too.

It's not a forgery when you faithfully repeat the version of the story your predecessors founded your subcult on, lol.

There is another term that intellectually honest people use.

Provenance. 1900 years of written consistency, out of a possible 1925 years of written history.

(October 3, 2019 at 1:28 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Who said anything about a forgery?  We dont even use that word when we refer to magic book.  We call them interpolations, and there are plenty.  

The point, is that it's not surprising to find that the pauline establishment document of christianity matches the early christian documents we find, that were produced by the pauline liturgical apparatus.  Controlling the flow of that information and establishing a unified theology were exactly what the proto christian authorities were doing at the time.  Document production would explode shortly thereafter, as the christians captured the roman state, and wouldn't you know it..those docs match up too.

It's not a forgery when you faithfully repeat the version of the story your predecessors founded your subcult on, lol.

That is a more nuanced view that may well be correct, but some atheists I've encountered seem to think that manuscripts are corrupted in various ways or even think that translations are sourced in other translations. We should be capable of better than such cringeworthy ignorant assertions.

I do not know that the early Christian era was dominated by Paul and his adherents, given that the gospels authored much later than his screeds are so at odds with them. I have tended to view Paul as a gnostic-leaning aberration whose writings were popular but in conflict with the evolving orthodoxy. He was effectively neutered by being reframed ... by the simple device of ordering the eventual canon of scripture with the gospels first. Thus all his prattling about "celestial Jesus" could be reinterpreted as "positional truth" because readers already had absorbed the narrative of the Miracle-Working Flesh-and-Blood God-Man.

But perhaps you question the generally accepted dating of the authorship of Paul's corpus and of the gospels, maybe even relative to each other. While I have no skin in this game anymore, having left the faith a generation ago, I would simply point out that dating of authorship has nothing really to do with the dating of manuscripts. Authorship dating is a function of lower criticism acting on all available manuscript evidence, regardless of its dating. That's how we date, e.g., Homer's authorship to hundreds of years before the dating of the oldest known manuscripts of his writings.

Of course, many (not all) of the people who care about these topics when it comes to the scriptures, work for or are funded by religious organizations and so, who knows, maybe the scholarly consensus begs too many questions / assumes too much. I have tended to stick with it however because the content of the NT is such self-contradicting fabulist nonsense that there's no real need to expend energy debunking the generally accepted provenance of the manuscripts or the authorship.

It is, of course, an interesting point of discussion. But one must keep in mind, at the end of the day we are discussing documents full of bullshit anyway.

(October 4, 2019 at 3:34 pm)Drich Wrote:

(October 3, 2019 at 1:28 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote: Who said anything about a forgery?  We dont even use that word when we refer to magic book.  We call them interpolations, and there are plenty.  

The point, is that it's not surprising to find that the pauline establishment document of christianity matches the early christian documents we find, that were produced by the pauline liturgical apparatus.  Controlling the flow of that information and establishing a unified theology were exactly what the proto christian authorities were doing at the time.  Document production would explode shortly thereafter, as the christians captured the roman state, and wouldn't you know it..those docs match up too.

It's not a forgery when you faithfully repeat the version of the story your predecessors founded your subcult on, lol.

There is another term that intellectually honest people use.

Provenance. 1900 years of written consistency, out of a possible 1925 years of written history.

Consistency? In all those 25,000 manuscripts, there are thousands of different textual variations. One recent study estimated as many as HALF A MILLION different textual variations. Granted, the vast majority of them are fairly minor, but there’s at least one instance where we can actually see scribes messing with the text to further their own agenda. And that instance in particular is important because it’s the only explicit reference to the Trinity in the Bible. And noticing the textual differences in the Bible isn’t a new phenomenon. Origen actually wrote about the many textual variants floating about when he wrote his commentaries on the Gospels. And that was in the Third Century. Not quite 1925 years of unbroken consistency.

(October 10, 2019 at 12:03 am)Rev. Rye Wrote:

(October 4, 2019 at 3:34 pm)Drich Wrote: There is another term that intellectually honest people use.

Provenance. 1900 years of written consistency, out of a possible 1925 years of written history.

Consistency? In all those 25,000 manuscripts, there are thousands of different textual variations. One recent study estimated as many as HALF A MILLION different textual variations. Granted, the vast majority of them are fairly minor, but there’s at least one instance where we can actually see scribes messing with the text to further their own agenda. And that instance in particular is important because it’s the only explicit reference to the Trinity in the Bible. And noticing the textual differences in the Bible isn’t a new phenomenon. Origen actually wrote about the many textual variants floating about when he wrote his commentaries on the Gospels. And that was in the Third Century. Not quite 1925 years of unbroken consistency.

what dishonesty or sheer ignorance.

Aramaic was the spoken language one without an official written text. 

 Which means when translating aramic to the greek where there are no set spelling or words for or not words to even directly translate to. I take for granted in knowing how things simply get lost in translation being able to somewhat speak a second language. espically one with no common root. 

So in a sense Aramaic is a spoken slange that was contextually translated. if you look at the contextual translations the numbers of variances go way way down however if you want to stack the numbers against the bible you look at textual variances. there could be millions simply because there was no set spelling or not set translation from the slang that was aramaic to the set standard of the koine greek.

And the instances where the variations go beyond different approaches to transliterating Aramaic? Because the addition of an entire verse is not something that strikes me as just a different interpretation of some Aramaic.

And your remark on Aramaic not having a written form, I’m not sure how to interpret it, whether it means Aramaic didn’t actually have a written alphabet at the time, which is flat-out wrong, whether the original Aramaic speakers who told the stories didn’t actually write it down until Greek supplanted Aramaic, which is accurate, or if you meant that it was hard to properly transliterate a system that doesn’t have its own vowels into one that does, well, it’s an oversimplified version of the truth.

(September 4, 2019 at 2:27 pm)Macoleco Wrote: The Bible, or any other holy book, is a translation of scriptures written thousands of years ago, and even in different tongues.

How can theists confirm these translations are 100%, or even somewhat, accurate?

One would think that if God wants to deliver such an important message, it would be translation and time proof. But I am sure that the Bible is different even in modern bibles of different languages, and even of the same language.

Do you think the problem with a creationist acceptance of evolution, is because no one has managed to articulate it properly? Like if it was explained more clearly they would accept it?

Secondly do you think a child learns better what a cat is, by finding the proper words for a description, by describing a cat, or by pointing to one, or an image of one?