RE: Rewriting the bible
November 6, 2014 at 10:08 pm
(This post was last modified: November 6, 2014 at 10:14 pm by Aractus.)
(November 5, 2014 at 6:01 am)robvalue Wrote: 1) The bible contains forgeriesI hate to be the one agreeing with Drippy, but he's right. Every one of your main points is fundamentally flawed to the point of being either completely wrong or intentionally deceptive on your part.
2) The bible has had many errors in translation
3) The bible has been censored, edited and compiled (by men)
...
In short, the book has been being edited for 2000 years.
1. Forgeries?
It's true that around half of Paul's epistles and the two Petrine epistles are thought to be pseudonymous by a majority of New Testament biblical scholars, however if you removed those books from the Bible it would not change the Christian doctrine or any fundamental Christian beliefs. So the influence of "forgeries" is very small.
2. Errors in Translation.
The texts are all available in their original languages, so this argument need not apply. There are other ancient documents for which only the translation exists, but this is not true for the 66 biblical books.
3. The biblical texts were systematically edited over the centuries and even millennia.
This argument is refuted by the ancient manuscripts themselves. If we assume that the OT was written around 700 BC, then there was only around 5-8 centuries between then and and the Dead Sea Scrolls. While it's quite possible some were edited in this time, we now know from the evidence of the DSS that they were not ever methodically modified after that time.
The textual agreement between the ancient DSS and the less-ancient Leningrad codex letter for letter is around 95%. When it comes to content it's about 99.5%. While there are a few words or even lines here and there missing in the later text, I'm aware of no later additions ever being identified in the Masoretic Text. So there is solid evidence that the OT was not intentionally modified between the 2nd century BC and the present.
On the case of the NT the evidence against modification is even stronger. There are over 5800 ancient Greek manuscripts, the average size is 400 pages - in total 2.6 million pages (i.e. 1.3 million individual leaves). That's just in Greek, there's a lot more than that in Latin and other languages, in total there's at least 20,000 ancient NT manuscripts and possibly as many as 26,000. Aside from the Comma Johanneum, there is no addition identified in the NT that occurred after the 2nd century AD. There are a few small additions that occurred before this time, but none that occurred afterward. Generally, biblical scholars are certain they have the exact meaning for the NT in 99.9% of the NT, with around 99.5% word-for-word accuracy. This is substantially higher than for the OT. Most of the word-for-word inaccuracy is word order which has no influence on the meaning ("Christ Jesus" vs. "Jesus Christ", etc., and of course the use of nomina sacra which also constitute a wording change even though the word itself is the same).
For Religion & Health see:[/b][/size] Williams & Sternthal. (2007). Spirituality, religion and health: Evidence and research directions. Med. J. Aust., 186(10), S47-S50. -LINK
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke