Slashdot Mirror
World's Oldest Bible Going Online
99luftballon writes "The British Museum is putting online the remaining fragments of the world's oldest Bible. The Codex Sinaiticus dates to the fourth century BCE and was discovered in the 19th century. Very few people have seen it due to its fragile state — that and the fact that parts of it are in collections scattered across the globe. It'll give scholars and those interested their first chance to take a look. However, I've got a feeling that some people won't be happy to see it online, since it makes no mention of the resurrection, which is a central part of Christian belief."On Thursday the Book of Psalms and the Gospel According to Mark will go live at the Codex Sinaiticus site. The plan is to have all the material up, with translations and commentaries, a year from now.
First comment on the oldest bible. Now that's something !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
They took an OK script and tacked on a happy ending...
It would be a neat trick to have a gospel of Matthew from the fourth century BCE. It should be CE (or AD).
2000 - 1600 (from the site) is NOT 2400 years!
It should be 400 CE (or AD, if you've not caught up with the current usage).
Now that *is* old. I never knew the New Testament was written that long before Christ.
Handwritten in Greek more than 1,600 years ago
isn't that 4 AD, not 4 BCE!?
methinks someone made a mistake in the summary...
study it's an interesting thing to put on line. The one thing that sends chills down my spine is the reactions from all religious whackos out there.
Protestant fundamentalists will start debating if it's complete, valid, canonical and whatnot. The Muslims will surely try to use it to debase Christianity further. The Catholic Church will probably not allow its followers to read it. The Mormons will.... then again, never mind the Mormons. :-D
On the bright side, at least the Jews will just shrug and say it's not Torah.
Heretic, you will burn for spreading the truth.
SRSLY
"I've got a feeling that some people won't be happy to see it online, since it makes no mention of the resurrection, which is a central part of Christian belief"
Was it not written 400 BC? But then again, if the words in the bible are the words of god & he is allknowing, he should have known, should he not? Finally proof he is not allknowing! IT MUST BE A HOAX!
Should be fun. I wonder if they're going to say "Thou shall not kill" or "Thou shall not murder". I can't wait to count the mistranslations! Or, who knows, maybe historians will lead the project. Maybe definitely.
If the gospels had been written 400 years beforehand that would have impressed me.
According to the article, the text was "Handwritten in Greek more than 1,600 years ago". 1600+ years ago would be around 400 AD (or CE, for you revisionist folks, though the numbering is the same). This is NOT before the Common Era. The summary is off by eight centuries (otherwise it would make perfect sense that this text did not contain anything about the Resurrection, considering it was 400 years before Christ! :-p)
but there were never any books I wasn't allowed to read while going to a Catholic school. The earth wasn't flat, gays weren't out to get me, and doing a book report on Darwin didn't get me excommunicated. If anything religion was the framework for how one behaved in school and did not control what I learned there.
If anything going to a public school was more of a shocker, stepping back the equivalent of two grades and being bombarded with more ignorance than one can shake a stick at.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There, fixed that for you.
Everybod knows the Flying Spaghetti Monster hid them from us. He's such a prankster!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
You know what I like the best about this version of the Bible? The part about gay marriage. Look it up!
You just got troll'd!
Well you know, I wouldn't have made that redundant comment if it weren't for this stupid D2 shit telling me there are no comments when there are.
Well, I'll assume that the trolls won't actually READ the Bible, but they might read this Cliff's Notes version: Don't Know Much About The Bible
"It's too risky for anybody to translate that [The Bible] into other languages. Mistakes can creep in... and that can lead to heresy. True Christians should only read English."
"If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James --- your original Hebrew is wrong. If your original Hebrew agrees with my original King James, your original Hebrew is right."
http://wanusmaximus.livejournal.com/1131751.html
This text is NOT the same text as what was compiled during the Council of Nicaea in 325. Nor is it the same as the Vatican bible. It is a third text written/compiled between 330-350. T
Who wants to start a betting pool on how many rounds of copyright "harmonization" it'll take before this sucker gets yanked out of the public domain and back under cover of copyright and darkness(as Big Content and God intended)? Particularly hairy for theological documents: At least in all Berne Convention signatories, copyright is life of author + 50 years(or greater). Presumably Jesus' 50 years started ticking at his Crucifixion, was it reset at Resurrection? If so, did it start again at Ascention, or does that not qualify as death, leaving His Works perpetually copyrighted?.
Muslims are in even more trouble. Allah doesn't exist in time, per se, nor does he fall neatly into either the category of individual author or corporate author. Being eternal, though, it is unlikely that his works are out of copyright.
Jews should mostly be ok, I think one or two of the prophets may have ascended rather than dying; but their quotations are generally short and pithy enough to fall under fair use.
Scientologists are screwed; but at least "All your base are belong to Hubbard" constitutes unambiguous legal advice.
Joking aside, though, this is great. Exactly the sort of thing that digital distribution is great for. There are loads of delicate and moldering historical documents of considerable interest that are, today, virtually impossible for anybody but scholars with nontrivial access to get their hands on. With digitization, the whole world can get access for peanuts.
Where to start, where to start...
First of all, there's some dispute as to whether Sinaiticus is indeed the oldest -- a cursory Google will show that Codex Vaticanus is believed by some to be older.
Second, it's patently untrue that Sinaiticus "makes no mention of the resurrection". The version of the gospel of Mark in it omits the last passage where Jesus appears to his disciples, but other post-resurrection appearances occur in the other gospels -- and even the Sinaiticus Mark version ends with an angel's pronouncement that he has risen. You can read an English translation for yourself here.
First, as others have pointed out, the Codex is from the 4th century CE (i.e. "AD") rather than BCE (or "BC").
Second, saying "it makes no mention of the resurrection" is inaccurate. It doesn't contain the final 8 verses from Mark's Gospel, which have been considered to be a late addition for years and are usually square-bracketed in modern Bible editions.
However, if you actually *read* Mark's Gospel, it has plenty of references to the resurrection of Jesus earlier in the text. Plus the Codex Sinaiticus also includes the other three Gospels, all of which include post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.
But apart from misdating the document by 800 years, misstating the impact of putting it online and misrepresenting the likely attitude of Christians to its publication, the summary is fine...
This is a misleading statement by the poster and the article itself. The post-resurrection text in Mark (which is the only text the article seems to mention is in contention) has always been recognized by the modern Christian church as not appearing in the earliest manuscripts. Don't take my word for it; pick up the latest NIV Bible and look at Mark 16:9-20. It most likely mentions this very fact.
The article only mentions the text in Mark missing. From the article:
Unfortunately, you still need to deal with the resurrection stories in the other three gospels (Matthew, Luke and John) as well as the Old Testament references such as Psalms 16:10.
Although the chance that anyone on Slashdot will bother to read the text is low.
There are people who do believe that the King James version is the "inspired" Word of God. I don't fully understand why would they consider a translation the "inspired" one.
From a religious point of view, if there is anything inspired, it would be the first version in its original language. So the closer you get to the original ones, theoretically would be the better.
This news is great, we could actually see one of the oldest copies around. Part of me truly wonders how many more manuscripts (religious or not) would have been available today if people back then don't have the habit of burning every piece of paper they dislike.
Just look at the prototype. Unreadable. It's like it's in some other language or something!
Have no fear there are many more factual errors in the actual Codex itself than in the summary!!! The Codex while historically important is a silly mythology from superstitious ancestors and has very little to do with Objective Reality where we find our selves existing under the Laws of Mother Nature!!!
However Mark 16:6, which is included, still declares the resurection:
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him."
Additionally, the article only refers to the book of Mark as making no reference to the resurection. No mention is made of the other three gospels.
See Mark 16 in the Wikipedia
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
Some of us cope by not believing in inerrancy in the first place.
And, for some of us, the idea that the copying and translation has introduced both unintentional errors and intentional variation is not particularly news.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
But apart from misdating the document by 800 years, misstating the impact of putting it online and misrepresenting the likely attitude of Christians to its publication, the summary is fine...
What do you expect from Slashdot? Honesty? That's a laugh.
The Bible is not a book. It is a collection of books. The New Testament is a collection of what were considered the best sources available: mostly books and letters.
You might understand better if you knew what faith was and why people have it.
..or is it Hebrew or e Aramaic?
inspired in this case does not mean it is "over other books", or "very special" - it means, that the rough parts of translation were made in such a right sense, that it kind of reflects the original meaning.
inspired also means, it is not translated word by word. which would be very dangerous for people, reading a book that old, withouth knowing about the habits in this era, can lead to extreme one sided reading of the bible, and a lot of misunderstandings.
Yeah, the closer we can get to the original, the closer we can get to the Original.
But the King James version is itself considered to have been the work of inspired men, so there would be some point in putting more stock by the King James version than by random early texts whose authors may or may not be known to have been inspired.
(And then, there are some of us who believe that, even if you had the originals and were fluent in the original language, you'd still have to read under inspiration from God to get a full and perfect understanding of the text.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
thats because it's a made up fairy tale and it didn't happen. it's amazing to me that everyone this day and age doesn't get this.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Some people I talk with insist that it is more correct to call it the Revelation (singular) than to call it the Revelations (plural). I think there is meaning there, but I'm not sure the distinction is all that important to most people.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Well,
1. It was perverted from the start.
E.g., right after Christ's death, we already know that there was a sect called the Ebionites, which actually contained relatives of Jesus and people who knew him personally. (They actually insisted that the leadership of the church should go to a relative of Jesus, not to Peter.) They also made no claim of resurrection, nor that Mary was a virgin (much less the later idiocy that she stayed a virgin even after giving birth), etc. Generally they thought of him as a _human_. Prophet and divinely inspired, yes, but not the divine incarnation that the later church turned him into.
What we inherited as Christianity is actually mostly due to Paul, who went fanboy and convinced the others that they must (A) proselitise at all cost, and (B) that it's ok to change stuff, e.g., about half the Old Testament, if it makes it easier to swallow by potential new followers. I wouldn't be too surprised if it involved some embellishing about Jesus too, especially given the following fact:
The Ebionites actually considered Paul an apostate. Not a misunderstanding, or mis-representation, or whatever, but outright apostate. That's how much it deviated.
2. That wouldn't even be the end of massaging it into a different shape.
The new religion wasn't even too clear about who Jesus was, or wth did it all mean. A lot of the early "heresies", like Arianism or Pellagianism are, strictly speaking, compatible with what was actually written. They just filled the blanks in differently.
It took several generations of Byzantine philosophers to define exactly wth _do_ they believe in, down to the smallest details. (The schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism came much later, so yes, you did inherit the byzantine construct even if you're Catholic or Protestant.) A lot of things that resulted don't even reflect the original context or meaning, but the effort of fitting Christianity into the Greek way of seeing the world, which at times was like fitting a square peg in a triangular hole. E.g., they had to make Mary and the birth even more perfect and wondrous, because they thought that something perfect (e.g., Jesus) can't possibly come out of something imperfect (e.g., a normal human mother.)
And even then it created even more schisms and heresies, because some things made no sense to cultures who thought differently. At least one schism was because stuff that made sense in Greek, made no sense when translated into Syriac, because the words didn't have the same nuances.
They also defined very strictly what is included in the Bible, what you can write or say about it, and in which terms.
3. Which brings me to the point, they had no problem dealing with the Ebionites or with the Syriac churches which were a lot closer to where it all happened. They just proclaimed them heretics.
I'm guessing it will be the same today. People will just proclaim this manuscript as some gnostic heresy, and continue as if nothing happened.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I for one welcome our divine overlord, Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified and has risen - whether the last twelve verses of Mark 16 were or were not written by Mark...
Approves !!
Any game that Rod and Todd like is good enough for him, He sayeth !!
Truth is that they just like it because the King James Bible has more of the sort of blood-and-thunder language that appeals to these sorts. The old-fashioned English it uses sounds kinda scary to the modern ear and that's how they like it.
The oldest and the newest bibles on the same internets!
"sudo rm -rf your-face"
Why do I imagine you saying that very quickly while rocking back and forth?
Mark's Gospel was considered by some theologians to been written in a style of "play". Mark writes like you could play it on a stage. People come in, talk, go out.
Mark's ending, with the cross, was in many ways like the ending of a drama. It opened doors not just for talk about the play, but also for thinking about the matter.
I cant recite what I have read further, but the theologian was going into detail, why the ending did suggest something else to happen, which would have been obvious for people of that time, so mark didn't need the resurrection to be mentioned. it was obvious for them that there was more to it, like it is obvious for us now, that "I am your father" is a reference to Star Wars, but later, when time passed, the resurrection was added to the book.
Most christians know, that Mark did not mention the resurrection chronologically in the original. But, there were 3 other gospels, and plenty of people writing about the resurrection, and even Mark pointed the resurrection out in a lot of passages. So, no, there is no debate at all on our side.
Still, thanx for the news. Accurate timing (BCE?) and some insights which books are in this old bible would have been better, though.
Evidently, with multiple exclamation marks!!! It's Super Objecitve!!!
Can anyone spot the logical flaw in your argument that "I didn't know about any banned books therefore there were no banned books"?
I'm sure if you'd tried working your way through the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum) then I'm sure you'd have been in a lot of trouble.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Ah, this discussion reminds me of those we have when the subject is Linux, Windows or OSX. Or in the old days when we debated vi and emacs...
I have no doubt that this topic will spiral into a squabble between both camps in the God divide but before that happens, the rest of us could give thanks (you choose to whom) that we are now in a position to be able to examine a growing wealth of original source material in a way that has never before been available to anyone. The opportunity that this portends for the future are quite possibly, of greater immensity than we can imagine.
Not only that but in the very near future, when the pointless grandstanding that will soon render this topic unreadable happens, or when the discussion inevitably turns to the eternal question of how many polar bears can be balance on the point of an argument, we shall have a new moderation:
Go See.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
And then you realize that -oops- the bible is also the most accurately kept book of all times. Whether you have faith in God or not, you'd have to admit that there are lines found on parchment dating back a millenium before christ (the dead sea scrolls), that appear verbatim in the currently accepted bible. This doesn't prove nothing ever changed (since it's about 12 lines of the text), but the mere fact that they agree and that we can actually still read them is extremely special.
The bible has a secure claim of being the oldest preserved book (or, if you don't have faith, that part of it contains a copy of the oldest preserved book). Not the oldest book, but the oldest that you can reasonably hope to read.
The mere fact that we still have this codex, and the care invested in keeping it safe for future generations, should illustrate just how much faith you can put in the text of the bible being unchanged. It is also a very incomplete codex.
Do you believe WWI happened ? Well we are MORE certain about the bible being unchanged than we are about that little event actually having had place. We don't have a single reliable wittness, and only inconsistent, conflicting accounts that mostly agree on a small subset of what they describe. That small "mostly agreed upon" subset is accepted as historical truth.
All of history is uncertain. That the text of the bible hasn't been changed in nearing 2 millenia is one of the most trusted assumptions in any serious historical course. It is also VERY uncommon for any source to be that reliable.
By contrast, neither the vedas nor the quran can claim even 100 years of constant text (the current quran was "edited" together in 1923 in Cairo, and originally contained the warning that it was pieced together from unreliable sources, of even the accepted sources (they rejected about 20x more text than they accepted for being "probably made up on the spot") which about 30% STILL isn't deciphered, the vedas don't have real unity, we know they date back much farther than the bible, but only from external sources, there aren't any actual vedas backdating more than 600 years, this bible by contrast is nearing it's 2000th birthday). Of course in the case of the quran they hide the older texts for fear of getting blown up (like the one in constantinopel).
Archeologists near mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is currently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read "To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitous and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental."
This sig all sigs devours
I'm terribly sorry to have the negative comment on this article, because I'm sure a lot of you are going to mod me down for this. But I think that the point of view that this article has no place as /. news article is a valid issue to be discussed, so please don't discard my opinion without considering it, because I mean it in the spirit of open discussion.
/.
Why is this considered newsworthy? I understand the science and technology of recovering and archiving ancient texts for future research, and it is a noble end and vital if we learned any lesson from the library at Alexandria. But this article isn't about the science of it, or the tech of it. It is about a specific book being archived and shared for public viewing, which I do not consider news.
If this book was just as old, but NOT the bible, would it have been submitted? I wasn't forced to read it, and I'm not offended by it. But I'm more so concerned with something that to me core seems like a contradiction to the tenet of "News for Nerds, News that Matters".
Basically, no topics should be holy. By which I mean that no subject should get preferential treatment in any way. And I feel that the only way this article could have gotten onto the main page is through the bias many people inherently give toward giving validity and credence to the relevance of Christianity (and all religion in general).
Religious topics have a place for discussion, but considering the damage Christianity (and other religions) has caused to science historically, I do not think that place is on
If anything, I believe the appropriate discussion regarding religion would be regarding the direct contradictions between the empirical evidence used in scientific study and the present positions held in current theology.
Is it not more important for the progression of scientific reasoning to address the sincere danger posed by religion on influencing the general perception of the public regarding a host of complex issues such as evolution, genetic research, and medical technology? Because the majority of Americans still believe in a "giant invisible man in the sky" interpretation of religion, if I am to trust the polls I have seen over a period of years and if you'll excuse the callous categorization of that type. I have also seen a number of polls which have shown a correlation between levels of education and religiosity being inversely proportional, which I hope I can trust without being more arrogant than I have already been. Perhaps the correlation can affect behavior in the direction opposite from the intuitive "education implies skepticism which implies questioning of faith". Perhaps by directly confronting people about the absurdity of their beliefs relative to scientific explanations would affect education in that it would spurn people to be skeptics about many other things in the world around them.
Just my two cents, no offense intended.
Intelligent majority? Please. Most of you are a bunch of stupid fucks with too much time on your hands. LOL.
So, if it was dated to 4 BCE (thats BC for you christians who havn't adopted the new format for dates) ... how does it have the gospel of mark (which was written after christ?)
Uhhh... you realize the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, right, and not Latin?
I don't know who is represented by the vague term "truly religious" but it seems weird to me that a modern Christian would have trouble dealing with the fact that virtually all manuscripts have some differences. Even if you believe that these people have never read the bible in anything but English. The NKJV, RSV, NIV all have footnotes/marginal notes like "X is not contained in the oldest most reliable manuscripts".
The other weird thing is the assertion (presumably by non-Christians) that the text can't possibly (or can't reasonably) closely approximate the original. Textual criticism is used for just about any ancient book to approximate it's original text. To single out the bible seems ignorant.
I will admit that there are people who do other forms of biblical criticism which are braindead but interestingly enough these hit on both sides of the "It's the truth" line.
In fact considering the wealth of text that there is to work with. It seems also rather weird to claim that the bible is even 'bad' in it's textual support.
I mean sure, disagree with it's content all you want (including things like relying on Alexandrian text types for things like the NIV) but your comments on the text seem pretty uneducated.
hmmmm "NT" ... I wonder what that stands for ...
Nice Troll?
You say it like people don't use and extreme one sided reading of the bible when they want to justify something and don't already suffer from a lot of misunderstandings.
"However, I've got a feeling that some people won't be happy to see it online, since it makes no mention of the resurrection, which is a central part of Christian belief"
This is complete nonsense, Christians should be very happy to see the most important manuscript online. The "no mention of the resurrection" is a myth.
My little Linux and tech blog
"Why... this is preposterous! This simply cannot be! This book has no references to magic! Who in the hell did we see resurrect?"
Many, many years ago: a puppet master rofl's.
Get in the way of a good Christian-bashing. After all Bush is Christian (not that anyone ever checked :-p), that proves they're all evil, right ?
By contrast pointing out that the founder of islam was a thieving (took things from people violently) paedophile (f*cked children below 9 years old) rapist (f*cked said child without her permission, using force, also others) is a fact (according to muslim sources), yet apparently here facts are not important, and have to be denied.
Of course said thieving paedophile rapist also killed women for criticizing him, and left their children to die (google "asma bint marwan").
Perhaps Jesus should have murdered some more women and children, and stolen more. Surely it seems that would have raised his standing on slashdot (and elsewhere) enormously.
It's easy to verify this. I ask you to point out a SINGLE relevant deviation between that text and today's popular Bible translations, when this book comes online.
(If it didn't happen with a much older script, the Dead Sea Scrolls, I don't expect surprises here either. See http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/dead-sea-scrolls-2.htm, last paragraph.)
Please use the Reply button when you found a significant difference between the old text and the new translations. Thanks.
For people who are supposed to be open-minded, there are a lot of closed minded comments being made. I am not pro-religion - but I am a believer in God and of salvation through Christ. God gave us the bible as a means of seeking Him. You can try to explain away the creation of the world - but there will always be a missing piece without the existance of God. I am not saying just accept this on faith - just let God and the Bible be explored with an open mind.
BTW there are over 5,000 extant copies of the new testament and validating the resurrection is not difficult
http://www.gnfi.org/external/TimLaHayeProphecy/reliability_of_new_testament.htm
"It's too risky for anybody to translate that [The Bible] into other languages. Mistakes can creep in... and that can lead to heresy. True Christians should only read English."
"If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James --- your original Hebrew is wrong. If your original Hebrew agrees with my original King James, your original Hebrew is right."
http://wanusmaximus.livejournal.com/1131751.html
At least a few of those quotes I recognise as having come from the Landover Baptist Church forum:
http://landoverbaptist.net/
You are absolutely right about asking how translation is close to inspiration. As you know the most of the early books of Bible came via oral tradition, early century jews scribes / scholars took pain to pass on the original meaning for many centuries using a meticulous system of coding the words like this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishnah this coding helped translators to arrive at closest meaning of the original word. More from wikipedia on old testament http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Possibly a bit off-topic, but, FWIW, there's this prophet guy, Nephi, in the Book of Mormon, that records a vision of the primary events of the New Testament in what would be the early 5th century BC.
FWIW, I believe it.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
And the truth is: the bible is a collectionof stories. You just don't read the bible as if it were a history manual, or some kind of unfallible transcription of PureTruth(tm)...
Let's look at the old and the new testament separately, shall we?
The old testament is a *typical* collection of short stories -- just like the ones you probably use to buy in your local book store.
But why is it so ... "holy", then?
It's the origin and original purpose of the stories that make them... well, worth a reading :-) (Is this what "holy" means? Who knows... who cares.) You have to know that 3-3.5k of years ago, people in the middle east were mostly nomades. They wandered from place to place. Few of them were educated, almost none of them could write. But the more intelligent of them gathered their share of wisdom, along the years... about how to lead a life, about how to behave in a way that society (whatever their society was like) could function.
So, what does an old wise man do before he dies? Try to teach the younger ones. Not being able to write (and knowing that the youngsters won't be able to read), the only way to teach them wisdom of life is telling them.
Ok, so why not write down "wisdom" instead of the stories? Well, the old testament *is* full of "wisdom". Read the book of Salomon, for example... But it's also full of stories (the story of Job, for example), because of the way people back then and back there used to think... they didn't like to tell one "do this and to that to make things work", they'd rather tell one "things didn't work for me the other day, so then I did this and that, and they they worked!" and then leave it for you to do the same.
In a nutshell: people 3.5k years ago in the middle east shared life experience and life wisdom by telling stories and passing legends around the camp fire -- stories about arguments, about wars, about ... "enlightening" experiences, aboud what they believed to be an experience of God etc. Of course, stories got exagerated, they became legend-like, but hey... that can happen to a story if it's being carried on from father to son for several hundred years :-) The key point here is that they shared life experience (and experience of what they thought to be "God") through stories.
(As a sidenote: read the genesis once again with the information I just gave you in mind: you'll clearly notice the fact that there are at least two texts having been mixed up that actually make up the genesis as we read it ... you clearly notice two different wrinting styles, belonging to two different authors. And there are even some passages that seem to repeat and/or contradict, further supporting the fact that a third author/redactor carefully put together some kind of a "Genesis" story from bits & pieces of information that he could find on the topic... a "Genesis" story that could possibly explain the origin of the world back then.)
Well, at some point, some guy decided to write down a besf-of collection those stories. *That* became the old testament. More or less... :-)
New testament.
The oldest evanghelium of the new testament was written sometime 70 AD, and the youngest one around 300 AD. So most of the "evanghelists" were certainly not around to witness Christ. Whoever wrote the evangheliums, they gathered whatever information they could, and then put it togegher to somehow make sense.
This would be like somebody *now* trying to write down what happened during the Civil War in USA, couple of hundreds of years ago, using nothing but information that somehow... well, just made it through to here :-)
How would it look like? Well, there would probably be a lot of documents with official Government stamps, some letters between this general and that other general, some orders, some plans... all kinds of stuff which's genuinity could somehow be proved. We'd take all tha
How can anybody tell from such poor scans? There's a brownish colour cast, the text is all wobbly and the contrast is way too low. I couldn't read a bloody word of it.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
The Buddhist suttas of the Theravada tradition would like to have a word with you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pali_Canon
LOL... trolled the shit out of you guys. *pats self on back* Take your religious/non-religious beliefs elsewhere.
Finding the few stupidest comments made by a group of hundreds of millions of people proves what exactly?
I'd like to know...
Not very much, apparently, or you would know already. :)
Christian apologists love this question because the answer is clear and relatively uncontroversial, at least as far as the New Testament is concerned. Just google for "new testament textual criticism" or "new testament manuscripts".
And points out another point some Christians disagree on.
Some of us believe God allows us to make mistakes. In certain special circumstances, He corrects us more carefully than in others, but, in the end, He doesn't apply force. (Impossible to force a person to be saved.) So, even in the copying and translation of the scriptures, there would be some errors.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
the bible is also the most accurately kept book of all times. Whether you have faith in God or not, you'd have to admit that there are lines found on parchment dating back a millenium before christ (the dead sea scrolls), that appear verbatim in the currently accepted bible.
Well the codex is in Greek and the Dead Sea Scrolls are in mostly in Hebrew, so is the Greek Bible or the Hebrew Bible the "currently accepted" one? Of course, the Vulgate, KJV, NIV, NASB and other bibles may have the same text in translation, but that is not the same as 'verbatim' is it?
Interestingly, you dismiss the Quran as edited together 100 years ago (ignoring that there are far older examples of the text in existence), yet claim the bible is 2000 years old, omitting to mention that the KJV only dates back to 1611, the modern Vulgate to 1590, the NIV to 1978, etc. Depending on which version is on their desk, many Christians' bibles could be less that 15 years old (NASB).
I doubt there is anyone today using a faithful reproduction of the 2000 year old text as their bible.
The bible has a secure claim of being the oldest preserved book
Ok fair enough, but imagine of instead of some fairytales, we had a history book. Imagine how great that would be.
Well we are MORE certain about the bible being unchanged than we are about that little event actually having had place.
Really? I mean, those MILLIONS of people involved have made records. (I can read my grandfathers diary, for instance) There are newspapers from the time. There are literally millions of DIFFERENT sources all describing the event in different ways. There are photos. How can you possibly make this statement?
Actually it is both in Latin and in Greek, and arameic, and hebrew, and ... The versions that were accepted as bible were initally spread with greek and latin versions of the same text on facing pages, or only the latin text.
You are correct that greek is the original language of the bible (well actually a syrian arameic dialect for most of the bible, but most of the new testament was indeed originally written down in greek), but the versions that were actually used were latin, not greek.
Latin is certainly the language of the bible, despite the book being originally written in greek. And the bible and the church were the main motivation, and the main people for the renaissense to push latin as a language.
For comparison, muslims use an arabic quran. However the quran was written in kufic script of a southern arameic dialect, which has long been a dead language that noone has understood for more than a millenium, and even an arabic linguist would not be able to read the few orignal verses that remain, nor can you learn either arameic or kufic anywhere in the islamic world (google "christopher luxenberg" for the description of someone who actually tries to understand it). Arameic and arabic are of the same family, but then again so are English and Parsi (example farsi site)
So how did the creation story (both of them) come to be in it, because if God actually told someone then that would also be in the Bible too. No?
According to that site, the oldest version still in existence was written down in 1877. Hardly compares to the bible's > 2000 years.
Wow, are you right! Why, if the Codex' Gospel of Mark was written in the 4th Century BCE as the headline says, then they had three centuries to revise it before the events even happened!
As it is, I (a Christian) do not intend to get very upset about this... much of the Bible does not speak of the resurrection, though much of it does.
Even Christ had to point out some of the finer points to the Sadduccees (God is a God of the living, not the dead; but says "I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" to Moses. Therefore, they must be living.)
Aside from that, conspiracy theorists always go over the deep end, making much out of nothing. Anti-Christian conspiracy theorists are no different.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
This news is great, we could actually see one of the oldest copies around. Part of me truly wonders how many more manuscripts (religious or not) would have been available today if people back then don't have the habit of burning every piece of paper they dislike.
Religious book burnings are only part of it. Try to imagine what went up in smoke when the great library of Alexandria burned (mostly as a result of warfare). Modern archeologists and historians find it hard to even contemplate that loss. Fortunately, once in a while we do get very, very, lucky:
The Oxyrhynchus papyri, not religious texts and much of the material was mundane public and private stuff like invoices, edicts and tax records but valuable to archeologists.
The Villa of the Papyri, IMHO by far one of the most spectacular discoveries yet. Much of it seems to consist of Epicurean texts but who knows what else is in there. The lost works of some of the great ancient historians and scientists? One can hope...
There are probably quite a few more such finds that deserve mention. Book burning and generally all efforts to suppress and destroy written material, be it religious or secular, are among of the worst manifestations of ignorance. We are fortunate that once in a while the efforts of these zealots and vandals are undone.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The fact that moderators on here moderated your post "Interesting" and not the "Funny" it was clearly intended may be the most frightening thing I've seen in recent memory on Slashdot.
Unless its subtle additional humor, in which case jolly good show moderators!
And then you can go to check just some english versions and see the differences for yourself (I suggest starting with the song of songs). After this, the most accurately kept book of all times doesn't seem that accurate.
The fact that somebody actually got modded +5 for questioning the occurrence of World War I has certainly given ME faith in miracles.
Well, you know how the virgin birth came to be?
The two gospels mentioning this, was based on a prediction from an even older, hebrew book from the old testament, and they just translated a word meaning "young woman" to "virgin" by mistake. All it said was that the son of god would be born by a young woman.
Now, how do the Catholic church cope with the fact that the virgin mother is a typo?
This is blinging
Because it was copied word for word. It was not "rewritten."
Ad Astra Per Asper
Really? I mean, those MILLIONS of people involved have made records. (I can read my grandfathers diary, for instance) There are newspapers from the time. There are literally millions of DIFFERENT sources all describing the event in different ways. There are photos. How can you possibly make this statement?
I think you will agree that there are first and foremost at best a few tnes of thousand sources for WWI, not millions by far.
Furthermore there are dozens of sources mentioning Jesus Christ (it's first-hand accounts that are in really short supply), and given that there were much, much less capable writers 2000 years ago than 80 years ago, one would at least consider them equal.
And there are also a few thousand historical sources, both Christian and otherwise (Tacitus, Suetonus, Pliny the younger, Lucian, Philo, Josephus, ...) mentioning Jesus Christ, and referencing the gospels, most of those can of course easily be dismissed as fabrications (I only named reliable sources), but then again so can a lot of WWI sources. The bible is one of those sources that can be shown to have been written by people that have been proven to have been in Israel at more-or-less the right time (and consists of a lot of books), and is by far the most reliably preserved of those sources.
"Do you believe WWI happened ? Well we are MORE certain about the bible being unchanged than we are about that little event actually having had place."
So the archived film footage of World War I was fake? The many people that died? The fact that it occurred within living memory and that there are people still alive that were around when WWI was occurring?
Sure, I trust the 2000 years of conflicting opinions of a fairytale way more than something that destroyed so many lives only 90 years ago....
... not to get a Christian Moderator to mark you flamebait... just what are the chances of that at Slashdot. Uh... Whazzat? 99.99999%
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
It certainly does mention the resurrection! See the Book of Isaiah.
NT= No Thanks?
This is the sig that says NI (again)
And then you realize that -oops- the bible is also the most accurately kept book of all times.
Wrong.
you'd have to admit that there are lines found on parchment dating back a millenium before christ (the dead sea scrolls)
Wrong.
that appear verbatim in the currently accepted bible
Wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls
If I had to nominate something as a candidate for "most accurately-kept ancient text" I'd probably go for something like G. Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, which are so well-known that they are a standard text in first-year Latin classes, but that's probably a reflection of my own areas of familiarity.
Do Americans still have first-year Latin classes? I guess it's probably been superseded by "cheerleading" or something like that.
I'd like to know how the truly religious cope the fact that the book they read today has been rewritten over and over and perverted so many times that it can hardly reflect what was 'supposed' to be there.
Hah. Wait until they find out about this one and the number of early Christians who were killed to suppress it, along with other 'lost' gospels.
But again what does this prove? That it's holy?
Like has been said before: the Christian God would be happy (based on the sort of other prayers the Christian God answers) to give someone their arm, or leg, back after it was amputated. But this has NEVER EVER happened. http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/
So the Christian God (or what you believe it to be) is willing to help your local football team win, but not give an arm back to a devote Christian.
Seems like chance to me.
it means, that the rough parts of translation were made in such a right sense, that it kind of reflects the original meaning.
"Inspired" in religious terms generally means something along the lines of "channeling": God Himself came down and wrote the translation through the author's hands.
if it weren't true. But unfortunately there are people out there who think exactly like that.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
They weren't the "best sources available." They chose the books that supported a particular set of theological views. They destroyed the rest that they could find, and persecuted the sects that held different views. Historical accuracy was the objective.
I meant "historical accuracy was not the objective." It's always nice to contradict yourself in the last sentence.
ughm.. last i checked there was a written copy of the qur'an dating over ~1300 years ago.. that remains relatively unchanged. the only changes made were accent marks to help new comers to arabic pronounce and pick out words whereas native speakers would be easily able to decipher words based on context.
there are very old copies of the qur'an.. one of the originals is in uzbekistan.. you can ask karimov why he's not allowing it to be digitized/scanned like this bible version. i'm sure it will be a matter of time before it will be scanned and placed online.
it seems more like your replies are attempting to convince yourself, rather than others, of the supremacy of christian literature.. let me clue you in on something.
its all bullshit.
> Now, how do the Catholic church cope with the fact that the virgin mother is a typo?
Virgin Birth merely means the first child born to a (young) woman.
Are you confusing the Virgin Birth with the Immaculate Conception?
I'm not a catholic, but AFAIK the catholic church is not confused about this.
I think "millions" is a lot closer to the actual number then "thousends". Depending on what you call a "source" there are probably already "thousends" of photographs alone. Considering that there where about 20 million military and civilian deaths, even if only 5% of those people wrote a letter to a loved one, that's already over 1 million letters.
Second, people referencing some old text does not make that old text any more true. The fact that there where only a few people that could write does not make their writing any more reliable. In fact, it makes it less reliable. The fewer people you have to "convert" the more likely it is you will succeed and the more likely it is that you will try.
The bible may be one of the oldest books around, but that does not say anything about the reliability of it's contents. Especially considering we're dealing with religion.
So Jesus WAS born of a virgin, was he? Or was that a young woman? Or don't mistranslations count as errors? Do you think that may be kind of important?
I would like to point out that this text could not have come from 400 BCE and contain the Gospel of Mark. Did the author intend to say 400 CE? I am curious about the errors made in this stub, as well as the reaction to it. This has helped me realize some of the shortcomings of the Slashdot perspective of the world.
"neither the vedas nor the quran can claim even 100 years of constant text"
by contrast? there have been countless versions of the Bible, each with varying interpretations. Some could argue the Qur'an, while being subject to controversy over interpretation, had a more reliable text as it remained in the original language it was written in.
Im sure the Quran has been edited, however to argue which has been edited more or less is useless and the point of which is irrelevant.
People from every faith should remain respectful of those from other faiths and accept what others believe, not as their own, by as a belief.
the sad truth is, that everybody can read everything as they want to. in the sadest cases reading is mostly not included anymore.
when i say "wrong reading" i mean spiritual things, personal things, not people who try to justify their actions with texts. because on that level, you dont have to read it wrong anyway, you dont read it at all. you believe that your actions are right, and would see anywhere anything confirming it. you use the bible, as you could use any book, however, the bible is a better tool because it is old and people do know it.
citing from hindu texts to scare them, or justify yourself, just does not work that well.
but certain quotes in the bible may shock a believer (on a personal level), or he interpretes them in a wrong fashion, is puzzled by them - it is good if there are people who can actually go into detail on those.
a word-translation bears the additional danger of being read in a wrong sense, because your words mean a different thing in your personal and modern language. (there is not just english inspired versions)
but that goes far too much into detail, and i dont have time to debate about such things. mostly, i just wanted to clear up, that inspired does not mean, the book translation is somewhat superior, as if angels would have whispered in their ears while translating (i dont say they didnt, i simply dont care), and so it is more holy, or something. it is just more "inspirational" for a modern reader.
So its big controversy is that something is not mentioned in the "remaining fragments"? There would then presumably much that is said in the non-remaining fragments, no?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
The Bible definitely underwent a major edit at the hands of Constantine and the original version labeled as "apocrypha" and suppressed.
That's definitely less than 200 years ago ans I'm sure there's more knowledgeable people than me who can come up with better examples.
Most of the old testament books clearly have multiple authors (different writing styles, different words for "god" from one chapter to the next, etc).
At most you can claim the bible is about 1500 years old and even then there's big differences between the various translations.
So... there's a 1500 year-old Bible and then there's things like The Iliad and The Odyssey from the eighth or ninth century BC.
Which is older?
No sig today...
Do Americans still have first-year Latin classes?
They got rid of it just before they did away with Pompous 101.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's amazing to me that so many intelligent people who have such interest in physics, astrology, science, quantum theroy and the like...do not see the universe as as testiment to God... The more I learn the more I see. God is in the details.
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
Sorry about that, but this guy clearly didn't mean to be funny... and that's just frightening in itself. :(
Presumably you prefer "dhimmi" with it's ideology of submission under pain of death.
As a non-Muslim please correct any error here: Mohammed is the ultimate model of Islam, no? So to be the best Muslim you need to emulate him as closely as possible. Murder the infidel, or take taxes off them if you get bored doing that. Forcibly "marry" yourself to young girls that kind of thing?
"arameic"
LOL. You don't have a fucking clue what you're on about. While we're on the subject why do you capitalize some languages, not capitalize others and do some part of the time?
All the oldest writings the find are only parts of the bible, most often in different languages ranging from greek, latin, vulgar latin, hebrew and aramaic and the like.
For anyone studying the bible from a non-religious perspective, it is obvious that the bible is a patchwork of stories written by different individuals at different times in different languages.
Some of these stories made the final cut, some did not and were forgotten, while others live on as semi-official religious works (I'm not sure of the correct term in english, but in university I studied a great work that tells about Jesus going to hell to pick up all the persons there who couldn't have known about the true belief because he did not yet spread it).
If you have been raised with a certain translation as reference and the notion that this is the word of god, I can imagine that accepting that god delivered his words piecemeal through different individuals and that some other individuals decided what was his word and what was not can be quite confronting.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
As it happens, I have a friend who was a believer, so much so that he learned Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic so that he could read older versions. He ended up concluding that the translators had done so much revising that if god existed, he would have prevented the distortion.
He's a happy atheist today.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The guy to read on this is the late Bruce Metzger.
"It's too risky for anybody to translate that [The Bible] into other languages. Mistakes can creep in... and that can lead to heresy. True Christians should only read English."
Reminds me of the Red Dwarf episode, where Rimmer explains that a typo in a copy of the bible meant that a whole community was hopping on Sunday instead of hoping on Sunday.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I thought Landover baptist was a parody site?
You mad
Actually, Biblical scholars make similar arguments that you have - different authors writing different stories that rarely contradict (and don't contradict where it particularly matters). The passage you talk about is referenced in II Peter, but you may be talking of a bit of a longer work.
The ancient Greek texts are also a lot less politically sensitive so they're less likely to have been meddled with.
No sig today...
It is humourous that they used BCE incorrectly. Especially since it is in reference to a story about Christianity. Ha! I bet the writer would not have made this mistake if he had used the AD/BC notation. The CE / BCE always comes across to me as elite - why change a standard? What's wrong with AD and BC?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
First of all, I'm an agnostic leaning towards atheism. I don't think Jesus was anything special, but I do think that _a_ man called Jesus might have existed. If nothing else because it was such a common name, that it's akin to saying that a Russian called Ivan must have existed. At any rate, you know, keep your canned speeches about "wishful thinking" for when they actually apply. Or was it too hard to come up with some original thought?
Second, this is such a monumental stupidity that it still cracks me up.
Get this: we don't have all documents and records from back then. In fact, we have only a small fraction. We don't even know half the commanders of the legions, or half the consuls of, say, the Gaul Empire (which was actually a bunch of provinces which rebelled and split up their own piece of the Roman Empire), or half the governors (e.g., who the heck _was_ governor of Britannia after Agricola?) You know, important people. But it was lost anyway.
A lot of records were destroyed in the warfare. A lot simply rotted away in some ruins. A lot were destroyed by the christian monks who erased old scrolls and wrote new stuff over them. Some even took it as an act of purification to destroy the heathen writings and write some copy of the Bible on that parchment instead.
So, pray tell, what kind of madness or idiocy makes you think that we'd absolutely have the records about every single unimportant John Doe? Because that's what's required to claim that lack of records proves non-existence.
No, seriously. We don't know anything about most of the _citizens_ of the Empire. What makes you think you can take lack of records about a John Doe as confirmation that it didn't exist?
For the Romans, Jesus was a John Doe. Just another non-citizen nutter who spoke against the Emperor and was nailed for it. Business as usual. According to Roman law, they didn't even have to grant a proper trial to a non-citizen, he could be executed on any whim of the governor or a military commander. Pilat wasn't even required to note anywhere that he had him executed. But again, even if you want to believe he did, we lost more important stuff in those 2000 years.
So basically, to cut it short, what you're doing there is just a pretentious kind of the Argument From Ignorance fallacy. Not knowing something doesn't automatically make it false.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm told by a reliable source that it's still spoken in Brazil, Argentina and several countries in the region.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Will it blend?
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Nietzsche would laugh SO hard. :)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Are you telling me, with a straight face, that this site isn't a troll-site? I've only been perusing it a few minutes and can't stop cracking up. I love the "Straight 4 Jesus! (Back Door Christians)" sub-forum.
It's not about fate, it's about character.
there be no shelter here, the frontline is everywhere!
Dude, if the King James was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for me!
I'm curious... Is your perception that book-burnings were common an accurate reflection of reality? Might be, might not be... But does your perception come from positive knowledge of common practices, or is it simply a popular assumption?
No, no, no. Cheerleading is much too active, the kids might not turn out obese if we let them do that. Latin 1 was replaced by television appreciation.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
*Bonk*
Christians -- at least, English-speaking Christians -- seem to be alone among the world's major religions in relying exclusively upon translations of their sacred texts. Muslims believe that one can truly understand the Koran only in the original Arabic; Jews are instructed in Hebrew in their youth; Hindus learn Sanskrit in order to read the Bhagavad Gita and other writings. But among Christians, only scholars and specialists have even the slightest knowledge of the Greek in which the New Testament is written.
Curious . . . .
See the next comment on the same parent...
They do, actually. One of the first texts they have to learn is Lorem Ipsum. Which i'm told is a much more accurately-kept ancient text than even Ceasar's!
Sadly, the bible is more accurate than slashdot. You'd think copy/pasting news blurbs wouldn't leave much room for error, yet most slashdot stories are old news, dupes, have incorrect/misleading titles, summaries with factual errIgnoors, or quotes taken out of context.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
if the books they found (and based their religion on) was "the collected works of George Lucas"
Well, actually, modern Bibles use the oldest Greek and Hebrew manuscripts to corroborate and correct the text of the older Bibles, such as the King James and Douay-Rheims (or Latin Vulgate). The best of today's translations are the most accurate ever. That being said, some translations will interpret passages, and slant the translation to fit in with a particular theological point of view (under the excuse of 'this is what the verse really means'). This happens mainly in the apocalypses, and it is a relatively minor problem, affecting only a small number of verses. And of course a more accurate translation of any slanted verse can always be found in other translations.
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Who do you mean? Nazis?
A mere toddler compared to the Egyptian Book of The Dead's near 5000 years.
1. The Codex Sinaiticus has been corrected by so many hands that it affords a most interesting and intricate problem to the palaeographer who wishes to disentangle the various stages by which it has reached its present condition...
2. Tischendorf identified four different scribes who were involved writing the original text. However, as many as ten scribes tampered with the codex throughout the centuries. Tischendorf said he "counted 14,800 alterations and corrections in Sinaiticus." Alterations, more alterations, and more alterations were made, and in fact, most of them are believed to be made in the 6th and 7th centuries.
3. There are glaring examples where one scribe had copied verses up to the end of the first, but when he looked up to his example again to continue copying, his eye fell upon the second occurrence of the phrase, from which he continued, omitting all of those words between the two occurrences of the phrase.
4. If you are not acquainted with the Greek, you can study the alterations and changes that have come into the New Testament by Sinaiticus and Vaticanus through Westcott and Hort by getting "The Doctored New Testament"
Google is your friend, not Wikipedia, nor Slashdot. Seek and ye shall find - Anonymous Coward 5:1
thats because it's a made up fairy tale and it didn't happen. it's amazing to me that everyone this day and age doesn't get this
.
The resurrection is in all four of these early gospel texts - meaning you didn't read beyond the summary or examine it critically. You were ready to believe what you wanted to believe.
Awful, isn't it. The sheer persistence of religious belief is what turned me into a nihilist. If I claimed to have some other invisible sky friend who told me what to do, I'd be committed, yet religious people roam the streets and are entrusted positions of power in our societies. :(
That's not to say they aren't perfectly nice people. In the end I just don't trust anyone who's let their reason go.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Please bear with this non-Christian for asking a stupid question . . .
the OP says:
My question: Why would this be upsetting? Christians call the BCE period "BC" meaning "Before Christ". The text is from the fourth century BCE -- about three to four hundred years before Jesus' birth, and therefore at least that long before the resurrection. Unless the resurrection was supposed to have been foretold, then there isn't anything to get upset about, is there? Even if the resurrection was supposed to be foretold, maybe it hadn't been foretold yet at that point.
www.wavefront-av.com
...to be a Christian. Old texts go a long way to proving the authenticity of the Bible - not the other way around. Often times, after a discovery such as this one, the media gets all excited. Never mind the fact that most of these discoveries 'reveal' things already known to religious and secular scholars. Have a look in a Bible, check the footnotes. They mark passages that don't appear in all notable manuscripts. Christians don't hide this, nor do they need to.
I have a BS in Physics from a state school (Emphasis on theory not some science-math-wimpy-education-track). I have listened to the higher criticism of the Bible as well as equally capable defenders of the faith. Those in defense of the Bible have a better case.
Now, if you take someone who has poor logical and rhetoric skills and put them up against a professor, it is easy to make the educated side seem to have the correct position. But, that works both ways.
Have a listen to what some well educated and well spoken men of God say in the defense of the Bible. Of course, there are charlatans, who masquerade as if they know what they are talking about and make Christianity look stupid. But, every field has those - cold fusion, anybody?
I would suggest Ravi Zacharias rzim.org if you are looking for a modern man with excellent logical skills and comprehensive knowledge on the subject. He has Q&A sessions (often at colleges after a debate) and takes questions such as yours seriously and gives educated answers that actually address your criticism. Take a look here for the past 100 broadcasts of his 'Let My People Think' program, you might find answers to some questions you have had. If he isn't to your liking, look for another - there are many.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Do Americans still have first-year Latin classes? I guess it's probably been superseded by "cheerleading" or something like that.
Probably. But they sound about as useful as each other though. So no great loss.
I thought the first person to translate the Bible into English was burned at the stake as a heretic.
This makes more sense to me, as I thought the bible was supposed to be the Old Testament and the New Testament. I was curious how they could have find a bible older than the new testament.
There's an error in the quote from this story. The Codex Sinaiticus doesn't have any post-resurrection stories, but it does mention the resurrection. It ends at Mark 16:8, but just two verses prior in 16:6-7 we have:
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "
CE and BCE are stupid. Not only because they look alike, but because they're new. January is named after the god Janus. All words have historical references. Some we know, others we don't. The point is that we have common and accepted terms that we use. What's the point in making up new ones? We still have to learn the old. This is just creating more work and confusion, especially when the new terms look alike.
The word you want for the "semi-official" texts is "apocrypha".
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Your conjecture is that a god powerful enough to give men his desires in a written form and wishes them preformed by all men, but then is not foresighted or powerful enough to make sure at least the jist of what he is saying makes it through to translations into subsequent languages when he himself gave men diverse tongues early in the history recorded in that book?
If I had to nominate something as a candidate for "most accurately-kept ancient text" I'd probably go for something like G. Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars
Nah. The NT documents have far better MMS support than any other comparable writing. For example, we have 10 MMS of Caesar's Gallic wars. The earliest of these dates from 900AD. This is nearly 1000 years after it was originally written.
There are thousands of NT MMS. The earliest fragment of the gospel of John we have dates from the first half of the the second century - only 25-50 years after the book was written.
"rewritten over and over"
I believe your view is somewhat mistaken. It's only been "rewritten" once, and that's to translate it from the original language into the language you read - English, French, etc. Google " textual criticism"
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"...one can easily "translate" the text if one already knows what they want it translated too. ..."
Is that what you think of linguists? Surely they can compare modern translations to their ancient origins better than that.
Regarding the amputees -- I don't claim to know the answer, but God is sovereign and according to Jesus, he is leaving much of what he has for us to the next era. And while believing this takes faith, based on Jesus' character and actions, that is faith well founded.
When you have an organization that stretches back over a thousand years, maintains strict records and a sizeable library, and has a hierarchy for disseminating official interpretations, the idea of being close to an inspired (and thus "correct") interpretation becomes easier to believe.
Now I don't quite buy it myself, despite being Catholic, as I think the kind of people that get put into place in such positions of authority are no better at deciphering literary work than you and I, but I dare say they have a claim at it, more so than most religions.
Actually, the 'inspired word of god' only makes sense in regard to the 'literal word of god.' If I'm not mistaken, islam believes the Qu'aran is the literal word of God. A mistake then would be severe. As a Christian, the bible is inspired. The message is important, not the words.
This happens mainly in the apocalypses, and it is a relatively minor problem, affecting only a small number of verses.
My favorite is actually Job 12, 10. The more "literal" translations imply that every living thing has a soul, while the more theologically slanted translations go through great lengths to avoid that.
According to that site, the oldest version still in existence was written down in 1877. Hardly compares to the bible's > 2000 years.
Qur'an is entirely unchanged.
Have you ever had an instruction manual for some piece of electronic gear (or a video game) that was so badly translated that it was hard to figure out how the damned thing worked? An instruction manual that was incomplete and seemingly at odds with itself? But you got the piece of gear working anyway, and although the manual helped it was frustrating?
The Bible is life's instruction manual. It is badly translated and at odds with itself, but it is useful. It even explains why you, an athiest, can't use it. John 8:47- " He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God."
The book of Proverbs is an exemple of much wisdom. "A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels".
"Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you."
I can attest to the fact that it is entirely correct when it says that if you consort with prostitutes, you'll spend a lot of cash. Some of my slashdot journals are about hookers (warning - most of them are NSFW). One whore stole the keys to my car, then came back in the middle of the night and stole the car. It gets mor einteresting but recounting the sad yet hilarious tale would take me offtopic, and it's already chronicled in my journals, so I won't.
Oddly, what a lot of Christians preach isn't in the bible at all! For example, it doesn't badmouth whores, but it does badmouth pimps and adulterers.
Sorry if this wasn't much help.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Sinaiticus has complete resurrection accounts in Matthew, Luke, and John and the entirety of Paul's resurrection theology (e.g. Romans). It doesn't have the post-resurrection appearences in Mark (the Gospel ends right when the disciples find the empty tomb), although it does have the pre-resurrection foretellings. It's also one of the four key texts behind the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, which is the basis behind nearly every modern Bible translation and what ministry candidates study in most North American seminaries. The problem with many of you atheists is that you assume Christians don't do any of their own textual criticism or historical research, therefore you don't do it, either.
Okay. Probably because I read this before I had my coffee, but does this sound, to anyone else, like the output of a MegaHAL that's been trained on a game theory text?
Can you provide your proof that the Codex Sinaiticus doesn't include the resurrection? The Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest COMPLETE Bibles that we have. Noticie it mentions complete. You can look it up for yourself and check the sources. Not to mention we have over 5,300 ancient Greek manuscript copies of the New Testament Greek (these are copies of the actual words penned by the Apostles) We have an additional 10,000 Latin vulgate, and over 9,300 early manuscript versions in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Gothic totaling over 24,000 surviving manuscripts of the New Testament all of them have the resurrection. Also from those thousands of copies 85% show no varience at all. Out of the remaining 15% - 90% have NO impact on the meaning of scripture. The remaining 10% can easily be figured out within the context of the text. Bruce Metzger the worlds leading Greek Scholar ( who Also was a professor at Princeton University for over 40 years) States that the New Testament is 99.5% accurate. So if you are going to claim that something was taking out of this text you are going to have to provide some evidence. Because there are thousands of texts that seem to disagree with you. You VS. thousands. ? ? ?
A warning to the feint of heart and/or those who are depressed and/or have a low tolerance for stupidity: the following links/quotes are not for you. Stop reading here.
Those are excerpts from the Fundies Say The Darndest Things! Top 100 Quotes.
FSTDT! will usually make you angry, sad, or depressed. Occasionally there's a laugh in there, but it's generally so damned depressing that these people barely even know their own religion that you're going to be popping Xanax like Pez Candy.
I once made the mistake of reading through a year and a half of their archives in one sitting.. I have never wanted to drink myself into oblivion more than that one day.
The ones up there are pretty funny - silly, almost - but there's a lot that just make you depressed or angry, such as:
If u have sex before marriage then in Gods eyes u are married to that person if a man rapes a woman in Gods eyes they are married it sucks for the girl but what can we do lol
To say the Bible was written by men and may contain inaccuracies completely contradicts the word of the Bible.
Atheists See No Problem With Human To Animal Sex
Best ones? Hypocrasy.
I am 100% pro-life, unless we're talking about capital punishment, in which case I am 100% pro-death.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
My understanding is that the books that were chosen were written by people who were either direct eye-witnesses to the events in the Gospel or close (e.g., Paul's letters). For example, the book of Acts does not detail the death of the apostle Paul, so it is believed to have been written before his death. Now Paul is reckoned to have died between 64-67AD, which suggests Acts was written prior to this.
Acts is the "sequel" to the Gospel of Luke which takes influences from the Gospel of Mark which is generally believed to be the first gospel to be written. This therefore dates the writing of Mark and Luke to 65AD, or within 3 decades of Jesus' ministry where a significant number of eye witnesses would still be around.
For those of us who deal in "Internet Time", 30 years is a long time. Apparently, for historians, it's a short period of time.
By comparison, most of the other rejected gospels (Judas, Peter, Philip) were written long after the original characters were dead, at least 100AD.
None of this is, of course, conclusive, but I personally find it quite interesting.
> By contrast, neither the vedas nor the quran can claim even 100 years of constant text
Nice try at FUD there...
For anyone who's interested in codification of Qur'an from a purely historical/archaeological perspective (ie. religion aside) can read the following article:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/History/Islam/Dome_Of_The_Rock/Estwitness.html
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
since it makes no mention of the resurrection, which is a central part of Christian belief."Imagine that! Oh wait, that's the whole problem to begin with...
A-Bomb
It hasn't been "rewritten" over and over. Scholars pretty much know what the original said, give or take the odd word here or there. That's because there are abundant manuscripts and ancient versions. There isn't much controversial here, no matter what your religious beliefs. Even the most divergent of manuscripts are still the same bible, and a typical man in the pew probably wouldn't notice which manuscript it was translated from.
Actually any intellectually honest religious person would see this as a great move. Translation efforts in English are constantly attempting to use the most accurate (oldest) version of the text available. In this case, having an older version available would only be good for Christianity.
On top of that, in a lot of cases (not all, there are still errors) as we find older copies of manuscripts, we find that very little if anything has changed. Most of the time when things do change, it is a change in vowel. With a old Hebrew document like these scrolls, that won't be much of an issue because vowels weren't even being added to the language in any significant way yet.
They also use the bible and their personal interpretation of it to justify their own wanton greed and the destruction of the innocent. George Bush, for example, claims to be a Christian. Hasn't he heard "thou shalt not kill?" Yet when he was Governor of the state that executes more men than any other state, he executed more men than any other Governor of that state. How could anyone who believed the Bible act like that?
Christ warned of "wolves in sheeps' clothing" but we have wolves in shepherd's clothing, like Pat Robertson. That man has converted more Christians to atheism than all the athiests at slashdot combined! How could a Christian call for the assassination of a foreign leader? Christians are supposed to love their enemies, and do good to those who harm them. Never trust a preacher who wears a five thousand dollar suit!
If you go into almost any church, you will see a whole lot of people, most of whom are there to be seen by men and many of whom no more believe in God than the average athiest at slashdot.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Do you have sources for all this? I had always been under the impression that Koine Greek was used specifically because everyone spoke it, essentially the same way that close enough to everyone speaks English today.
I suppose it's people like you who should teach us what the original means, since you know what it's "supposed" to mean
New Technology!
Somehow, kdawson just seeks out the worst submissions with the most errors and posts them. He has an excellent track record at this.
They destroyed the rest that they could find
I've heard that before, but never seen it actually backed up. Who are "they"? Do you mean the Nicene council? What books did they destroy? How do you know they destroyed them? IANAH or anything, just wondering where the proof is for this. I always just assumed that it happened, but then realized I had never seen any real evidence of it.
Apart from brief quotations in inscriptions and a two-page fragment from the eighth or ninth century found in Nepal, the oldest manuscripts known are from late in the fifteenth century,[41] ... you just don't read, do you?
the 1877 date you speak of is a "version commonly available in the west".
Antes de Cristo
Despues de Cristo
No sig today...
"From a religious point of view, if there is anything inspired, it would be the first version in its original language. So the closer you get to the original ones, theoretically would be the better. "
No no, that's not a religious view - that's a scientific point of view - something which is the enemy of all religion.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
King James is not a translation it is a "Version" Just as 2 people tell there version of a story. The dead see scrolls predated the material that was used to produce the King James. Some of the modern "Translation" are closer to the orginal as they go to an earlier copy.
... then no wonder it doesn't mention the Resurrection, which occurred in CE (or AD, however you like it).
The Codex does indeed mention the resurrection.
Actually again, "the book of the dead" is the title of an archeological account by Karl Richard Lepsius, created in 1842. So the "book of the dead" is a platry 165 years old.
The papyrus that was found is not a book, but at best a pamphflet, a religious text containing the procedure that the God of Heaven would follow in the afterlife, to decide between heaven and hell. It is not an account of the Egyptian religion, and there are hundreds of different versions of said papyrus.
The religion that they are about was killed by the muslim invasion of Egypt (then Byzantium) immmediately following the death of their paedophile prophet, and it's only surviving full books destroyed by those muslims when they burned the library of alexandria, believing it to be competition for the quran. After the massive extermination campaign the muslims waged in Egypt, amongst other things selling every black egyptian as a slave (before the muslims, you started seeing 100% black people near the nile before you crossed the egyptian border, right now you have to go another 800 kilometers (and you'd be in darfur/south sudan, so they're still racistly eradicating blacks)), nothing was left intact.
As someone who has only read like 4 pages out of a bible... may I ask a favor?
Can you recommend a bible that isn't full of fluffing/pampering and gives what was actually in the book, rather than what makes you warm-n-fuzzy inside? I only have looked at one, and I assume this was meant to be read to children.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Killing is not incompatible with Christianity.
Yeah, at least if you're an excessively naive and suicidal Christian.
Do you believe WWI happened ? Well we are MORE certain about the bible being unchanged than we are about that little event actually having had place. We don't have a single reliable wittness
Are you calling my friend Ralph a liar? Ralph is a dear friend of mine, introduced me to a lot of hookers and drank a lot of beer with me. He is a WWII veteran who served in the Navy on a destroyer.
He's the oldest person I know, and he has no reason whatever to lie about WWII.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Yes, and first year Spanish, French, German, Greek and many others... you have to get through the first year to get to the second.
Its just not required, depending on the school.
You don't really need to.
If you are looking for truth from the scriptures, ask God. (James 1: 5, among other places.)
When your neighbors come around to talk, well, talking can be an interesting pastime. (Ya think?) And sometimes it can help open the mind a bit. (Although it can also do the opposite when we are not careful. I'm rambling.)
Oh, but the answer I would suggest for the other question, probably all 9000 have some degree of real understanding. (In addition to some degree of fooling themselves.) As I understand things, God teaches people what He thinks they need to know, not what I, you, or somebody else thinks I need to know.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Do Americans still have first-year Latin classes?
They got rid of it just before they did away with Pompous 101.
odi profanum vulgus, et aceo
I suppose you know what the original meant since you know that it has been perverted and rewritten so many times? I assume you have studied both the new and the old quite scientifically to note all the mistakes in text and meaning?
No problem, just join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as Mormons. Part of the official dogma is that the Bible has been horribly translated over the years. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, is the "most perfect" of any book on Earth. It's also possible that a Prophet may provide the Church with a correct translation of the Bible some day. Joseph Smith, the founder, actually started on that.
Also, someone mentioned all the confusion after Christ's death. This is also part of the Mormon version of Christian history. Before Christ can return, there must be a "falling away", and Mormon's refer to it as the "apostasy". They believe the Paul was right, but after all the apostles died, or were martyred, that the true Church ceased to exist. So, the great "falling away" is what happened as the Catholic and Orthodox Churches slowly came into existence.
See, now it all makes perfect sense!
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
Its highly doubtful that I am a Christian anymore. I studied the text of scripture self taught w/ assistance of Greek Seminary Classes. I have look at these differences. Codex Aleph (1st letter of Hebrew Alphabet) is the oldest "complete" bible in Greek.
These variants as they are called not even the Codex Bezea (D1) the most variant has any difference in the story or teachings of the New Testament. If you want to have doubts fine. I actually have many NOT because of the text of the document but for the contents of it. Still have unresolved issues with it. Hanging out between Deism and Conservative/Moderate Presbyterianism.
But be fair. In truth King James Onlyists are small percentage of Christians. Most Christians accept the NIV, ESV and others as just as valid. Get an annotated NKJV if you want to see the types of textual differences. They give the major editions of the Greek, Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew text families on the footnotes. $5 - $10. Really easy to see the types of differences rather minor.
Hard to believe that people could bear reading books that only explosed two pages at the same time. Thank heavens printing technology evolved such that books could finally be read in 4 dimensions.
Really makes you think, doesn't it..
You can start here for the bible :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Bible
As usual the page is not 100% correct, but this is wikipedia. Anything anyone takes offence with gets molested beyond recognition (in religious matters, mostly by muslims, e.g. try to find a "textual history" in the article about the quran, because that's seen as criticism of their stupid religion).
The new testament was spread in both Greek and Latin first, later only Latin. It was originally in Greek, with small sections of Hebrew and Arameic ("Syrian").
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/
Just watched it last night. Creepy, creepy stuff.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Earlier in my life, as an intellectual skeptic, I found Josh McDowell's short apology "More Than a Carpenter" to be a very convincing read, especially in the chapter where he addresses this very subject (historical authenticity and accuracy).
That was a very bad summary, here's why:
1) The summary said that the book was dated from the fourth century BCE. This New Testament was found in the fourth century *AD* (or ACE if you prefer, but since we're talking about Jesus, might as well be AD).
2) While this is the oldest surviving New Testament, that does NOT make it the oldest surviving version of Mark or any of the other Gospels. Historians have dated and reliable fragments (e.g. a couple pages here, a couple pages there, etc, a.k.a: all that's left after 2000 years of poor care.) from as early as the second century AD, including those with Mark's resurrection story.
3) And about the codex's Mark not having the resurrection, that's not really a big problem. The other three gospels in this codex DO have the resurrection story in them, so that stands to reason that Mark would have had the resurrection story if it weren't for a large number of pages being missing from the codex. From the article: "The Gospel of Mark ends abruptly..." which tells us that if it ends abruptly then it probably wasn't the end the writer meant. Also from the article: "Handwritten in Greek more than 1,600 years ago -- it isn't exactly clear where -- the surviving 400 or so pages..." which tells us that there's a substantial amount missing. So put two and two together: if the other gospels in the same handwritten codex have the resurrection, and Mark ends abruptly, and the codex is missing a alot of pages, then it's very reasonable to assume that the person who wrote this down did not mean for Mark to end that way.
Yeah, I'll agree. The KJT wording is a bit better at showing the deeper meaning than the simple prohibition against lying, especially in early 20th century English.
But if the boss is fishing for a compliment, "Yeah, they do." could be equivalent to saying, "I don't care how you feel about life today, honey." where a "The slacks nice and you do to." might be a way to avoid passing judgment on the size of the posterior. I'm not going to advise playing verbal chess, but it can sometimes be good to consider what the other person is going to hear.
And then there will be times when a "Yes they do. Take them back and tell your sister I don't like her taste in clothes." is appropriate.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Because it has not been perverted,as you claim. How do we Christians know?
We consider the quantity of manuscripts and manuscript fragments, and also the time span between the original documents and our earliest copies. The more copies, the better able we are to work back to the original. The closer the time span between the copies and the original, the less likely it is that serious textual error would creep in. The Bible has stronger bibliographic support than any classical literature â" including Homer, Tacitus, Pliny, and Aristotle.
We have more than 14,000 manuscripts and fragments of the Old Testament of three main types: (a) approximately 10,000 from the Cairo Geniza (storeroom) find of 1897, dating back as far as about AD. 800; (b) about 190 from the Dead Sea Scrolls find of 1947-1955, the oldest dating back to 250-200 B.C.; and (c) at least 4,314 assorted other copies. The short time between the original Old Testament manuscripts (completed around 400 B.C.) and the first extensive copies (about 250 B.C.) - coupled with the more than 14,000 copies that have been discovered - ensures the trustworthiness of the Old Testament text. The earliest quoted verses (Num. 6:24-26) date from 800-700 B.C. When comparing the older texts with the later texts, these writings have proved to be virtually identical.
The same is true of the New Testament text. The abundance of textual witnesses is amazing. We possess over 5,300 manuscripts or portions of the (Greek) New Testament â" almost 800 copied before A.D. 1000. The time between the original composition and our earliest copies is an unbelievably short 60 years or so. This is tremendous when you consider that only seven of Platos manuscripts are in existence today and there's a 1,300-year gap which separates the earliest copy from the original writing. Equally amazing is another fact; and that is, that the New Testament has been virtually unaltered. This has been demonstrated by scholars who have compared the earliest written manuscripts with manuscripts written centuries later. The overwhelming bibliographic reliability of the Bible is clearly evident.
We can also look at external evidence outside the texts themselves to ascertain the historical reliability of the historical events, geographical locations, and cultural consistency of the biblical texts. Unlike writings from other world religions which make no historical references or which fabricate histories, the Bible refers to historical events and assumes its historical accuracy. The historical assertions it makes have been proven time and again.
Many of the events, people, places, and customs in the New Testament are confirmed by secular historians who were almost contemporaries with New Testament writers. Secular historians like the Jewish Josephus (before A.D. 100), the Roman Tacitus (around A.D. 120), the Roman Suetonius (A.D. 110), and the Roman governor Pliny Secundus (A.D. 100-110) make direct reference to Jesus or affirm one or more historical New Testament references. Early church leaders such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Julius Africanus, and Clement of Rome - all writing before A.D. 250 - shed light on New Testament historical accuracy. Even skeptical historians agree that the New Testament is a remarkable historical document. Hence, it is clear that there is strong external evidence to support the Bibleâ(TM)s manuscript reliability.
We can also consider archaeological evidence. Over and over again, comprehensive field work (archaeology) and careful biblical interpretation affirms the reliability of the Bible. It is telling when a secular scholar must revise his biblical criticism in light of solid archaeological evidence.
For years critics dismissed the Book of Daniel, partly because there was no evidence that a king named Belshazzar ruled in Babylon during that time period. However, later archaeological research confirmed that the reigning monarch, Nabonidus, appointed Belshazzar as his co-regent whi1e he was away from Babylon.
One of the most well
Why was the parent modded flamebait? Just read this site and focus on all the -1 posts. You'd conclude we're all tards.
by excellent men of Rhetoric and not so excellent men. Just give Scientology another thousand some years and it could be on par with any "legit" religion of today. Look how it has progressed in only a few decades. For some enlightening reading, check out the following.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainlfe.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3186/3186-h/3186-h.htm
And no, I am not an atheist. I use my reason and believe in no human god because there is no "True" evidence, and faith is not it. But, I also do not claim that there is no God because I neither have "True" evidence of that. I do not belong to any religion because the past and present has shown that it can be easily manipulated by certain corrupt humans for their own political agendas. Most likely the future will show the same.
"Without curiosity and knowledge, the mind is a vast void. Without the mind, curiosity and knowledge are nonexistent."
That's a comparatively "modern" development. Historically, the Latin scriptures were never much used outside of North Africa and Western Europe (not surprisingly, both places where Latin was used more than Greek). To this day, the original Greek text of the New Testament remains the standard in all of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Even in Rome itself, the liturgy itself was in Greek for the first century or two (see Wikipedia). The insistence on the Latin text is purely a Roman Catholic development (I say this as a Catholic myself), developing first when the knowledge of Greek had ceased to be common-place even among the educated populations (i.e., prior to the Renaissance) and then taking on new significance in the reaction to the Protestant Reformation (post-Trent).
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...
nt;
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
If your original Hebrew disagrees with my original King James I won't know it, because I don't read Hebrew. If I did in fact read Hebrew (or rather Aramaic) then what use would I have for the King James version? I use that version because it is the oldest text that I can read.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'd like to know how the truly religious cope the fact that the book they read today has been rewritten over and over and perverted so many times that it can hardly reflect what was 'supposed' to be there.
They don't have to.
Many like to believe that the Bible has been rewritten many times to suit the politics of the day. They, like you, assert that the Bible that people read today bears little resemblence to the original manuscripts. But ancient manuscripts such as the Codex Siniaticus show that this is not the case.
I would suggest reading the Wikipedia article on the Codex Sinaiticus. If I understand this article correctly, the differences can be divided into three general categories:
* Brief passages which other manuscripts omit
* Brief passages which the Codex Sinaiticus ommits but other manuscripts include
* Differences in spelling
Most of the thousands of differences between ancient manuscripts that scholars count are in the last category.
The discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, which did not differ substantially from previously known, much younger manuscripts, supported rather than undermined the belief that the Bible has been transmitted substantially as written./p.
That's fine, but you can understand how a lot of people might not think too highly of King James. When you read about his life and consider the implications of relying on a "translation" that was written at the direction of a man who believed that, as a king, he had divine capabilities, it's not exactly a huge mental leap to reach a place of significant distrust in the "translation's" accuracy.
This summary is ridiculous. The Codex Sinaiticus contains plenty of references to the resurrection. The article mentioned that pieces of the resurrection story at the end of the book of Mark were missing. Mark is only one book in the Codex Sinaiticus - Matt., Luke and John are included fully with references to the resurrection. At least get your facts straight before bashing the Bible.
Summary says "world's oldest Bible"
Actually its the oldest extant New Testament
Summary says "makes no mention of the resurrection"
Actually the New Testament is rife with references to the resurrection. This particular book contains a shortened version of Mark that ends when the disciples discover the empty tomb. Any biblical scholar is familiar with this shorter version of Mark.
In other words the summary is not merely bad but suggests an agenda.
It isn't 4th century BCE, it is 4th century CE (AD). That is a typo in the summary.
The summary is also in error that there is no mention of the resurrection. It is only the Book of Mark which doesn't mention the resurrection, it ends right after the women enter the tomb and find it empty. There are various reasons for this, and you are free to research them.
While this may be the "world's oldest Bible", it does not contain the oldest manuscripts. There are manuscripts dating to 1st century CE.
I have no doubt that there are people who have objections to publishing this, but I don't understand the objections.
Large swaths of the resurrection details were fortold in Isaiah (and in many other OT books).
"If God had intended us to walk he would not have invented roller skates." -- Willy Wonka
odi profanum vulgus, et aceo
I don't care if you hate them, Garrison.
(I only took 1 year of Latin, but Google makes me smart!)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Faith, hop, and charity... and the greatest of these is hop.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Behold the unborn fetus and weep salt tears crocodilian;
All life is sacred, save of course an enemy civilian.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I guess given that, the Bible would be more likely an authentic work than pretty much any other known publication from a historical point of view of the evidence. You may not believe what it says, but it is historically verifiable.
no comment
The NIV is an easy read for most Americans. I'm not sure which pages you read, but the Bible is full of non-fluff which sometimes seems too "real" to be appropriate for children. Take the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. There isn't a whole lot of fluff in it, and it's a story that I would be uncomfortable explaining to a child *in full detail*.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah)
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat et cum GNAA quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.
*smack*
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I'd like to know how the truly religious cope the fact that the book they read today has been rewritten over and over and perverted so many times that it can hardly reflect what was 'supposed' to be there.
Well, if you knew anything about how the translations occured, you would know that throughout the centuries the Bible has been cross examined, and is found to be VERY accurate to the original translations as found from the earliest fragments. Almost all of the variances in the translations pertain to spelling. There are manuscripts from VERY early on and many more are being found.
however, I have a very "unpopular" view for /. as everyone here knows EVERYTHING and whoever believes in God is wrong?
And yes I'm an AC as I don't really find any reason to post comments, but I have been visiting /. for at least 4 years now.
Inspired doesn't mean either of the things you say it means. The word translated "insipred" is "" which literally means "God breathed". It refers to the fact that the concepts the authors were writting came from God via the Holy Spirit.
It has nothing to do with translations or even manuscripts in the original language. It simply means the the autographs (the original work of the author) are free from factual error because the facts where given to the author by God.
"If God had intended us to walk he would not have invented roller skates." -- Willy Wonka
I was aware of the original languages, but not of an early Latin translation being spread at the time the mostly-Greek original was first going around. The Wikipedia article you linked to makes no mention of this, either.
Pretty much all Orthodox Jewish Rabbi's and a very large percentage of Orthodox Jews in general are fluent in ancient Aramaic ( language of the Talmud ). Also, there are a number of places where Aramaic is still a day to day spoken language. Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic probably have as much overlap as English and French ( about 40% I think ). It's somewhat amusing that the only people in the middle east who could probably read an original 6th century Koran are Sephardic Orthodox Jewish Rabbis ( a number of very important texts on Jewish religious law are written in classical Arabic ). Not too surprising considering that Muhammad himself was illiterate.
it is believed that the first 5 books of the bible (the pentateuch: genesis, exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy ) were sent down to Moses around the same time he got the stone tablets. They were past the stone-age back then and most of it was probably written on papyrus.
They chose the books that supported a particular set of theological views.
What is informing your assertion here? How do you know that it was not the other way around?
The classic Christian doctrine is "inspiration" - "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost". The documents were written, and the words chosen by men, with the individual personalities showing in full force - but the inspiration and endorsement was from God. The "divine dictation" idea that someone sat with a pen and wrote exactly what God dictated is cultic - although *some* divine dictation is contained within prophetic books. Even Mormons only believe in divine dictation as a miraculous means of restoring a lost manuscript. ("All copies are lost? No problem, I'll let you copy a vision of one.")
"rewritten over and over": The 5000+ extant manuscripts of the NT have only minor variations. The OT books were copies virtually error free thanks to clever checksum schemes used by the scribes. Since the variations in NT books are transcription errors (not "rewriting"), they form a tree, like genetic mutations. And you can trace down to the root and get a pretty good idea of the original.
Its all Greek to me.
Even if a small part of the Bible is an accurate copy of something from the second century it still isn't the oldest book. Not by at least a thousand years.
No sig today...
Uh, two problems.
1.) You seem to have missed the irony of my comment. I said that if the King James Bible was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for me. I was gently teasing King James Only advocates--the people who believe that the KJV itself was inspired.
2.) Unless King James was involved with the actual translation process--directing how he wanted the translation to end up, pressuring people, etc.--then it is a huge mental leap to significantly distrust the translation's accuracy. I think you'll have a great deal of difficulty finding good scholarship that says it was a poor translation effort. (We have better stuff now, due to more manuscripts and more awareness of some details of Greek & Hebrew, but that doesn't detract from the accomplishment of the KJV.)
Since Yeshua mentions His own resurrection numerous times thru the Gospels and it's discussed thru the Letters, and is forecast in Isaiah, the omission of the actual resurrection stories themselves can only have been a purposeful culling. The resurrection has been under attack since day one because that is the crucial moment of victory. Day one as in the Pharisees instructing the guards to spread the story that they had been overcome and the body was stolen. Resistance to the resurrection continued and continues to this day. As in any war, propaganda is a tool that is often used against the enemy and discrediting the resurrection via propaganda or censorship would be then and is now paramount by those who loath Yeshua and what He stands for. Nevertheless, the Act is done and cannot be hidden under a rock.
Latin is certainly the language of the bible, despite the book being originally written in greek.
That would depend on where you lived, and what date you are talking about. The eastern part of the Roman empire was Greek speaking, and the western half was Latin speaking. When Constantine I had 50 copies (a significant effort) of the bible made c.330AD, they would have been in Greek - this was not a translation project. Also remember that written copies of the bible were extrememly scarce and would have only been read by a small number of scholars and early church fathers. Most 4th, and even 5th, century "Christians" were quite unclear about what exactly the new religion believed in, and saw no incompatability in also clinging to belief in the sun god Sol Invictus (as recorded and bemoaned by Pope Leo I c.450AD).
The earliest latin translations, and proliferation therof, of the bible start around the end of the 4th century with the translation of St. Jerome (based on the Hebrew original, not the Greek Septaguint) which became known as the Vulgate.
Yes, but everyone ought to read Ovid anyhow -- quite brilliant stuff, actually.
Totally. Fucking. Awesome.
my pet machine
When I came to slashdot for the first time, I thought, "Wow, I'm really glad I found a place where people can provide intellectual arguments and have the facts to back them up." My respect for the authors and many of the posters have gone downhill since then, especially when it comes to religious discussion. The utter innaccuracy and bias in the presentation of TFA has really demonstrated the quality of slashdot to me.
Thanks kdawson for this great article... *unchecks kdawson from authors list*
I think you should try to find out how long a millenium is exactly.
Even in the short version, a angel explains why the tomb is empty.
I'd like to know how the truly religious cope the fact that the book they read today has been rewritten over and over and perverted so many times that it can hardly reflect what was 'supposed' to be there.
By reading different versions? That's why this sort of thing is kind of important. All Christians and Catholics know that the Bible is really really old. Being 'Truly Religous' doesn't mean you've stopped searching for Truth, in fact it means you realize you don't have all the answers yet.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
...the date the article gives is AD.
and it also says the Gospel of Mark "abruptly ends" before the resurrection.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
The Old Testament is the instruction manual (and most Jews don't even follow all the silly bits of that any more.) The New Testament is just illustrative stories, or at least it was until it got edited into a set of commands. A lot of it has been mistranslated or misrepresented to say things it never did say (e.g. "god hates fags" or "masturbation is wrong".)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It hasn't been "rewritten" over and over. Scholars pretty much know what the original said, give or take the odd word here or there.
Explain please why the KJV and NIV so clearly produce a dramatically different meaning even than the several-generations-removed Greek texts that are known to exist, and are still used in spite of this fact.
It doesn't matter what the Scholars know if it doesn't make it into the book that the typical man in the pew reads at home, or has misinterpreted for him in church.
Even the most divergent of manuscripts are still the same bible, and a typical man in the pew probably wouldn't notice which manuscript it was translated from.
That's because he's been lied to about the sanctity of the text that has been delivered to him, brainwashed about its validity, and is incapable of reading the translations on which they are badly based in any case.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hello? If it is from the 4th century BC (BCE for you new types) it wouldn't mention the resurrection because it is from before Jesus was born. Which would make it a copy of the Torah not the Christian Bible. You idiots.
Because "inspired" is a subjective judgement of the book, and pretty much just means "appealing." A book you can read is vastly more appealing than one you can't. If you can't read Greek, then a Greek bible is about as inspiring as the Greek Necronomicon.
Translation issues aside, it also might be the best selected collection from a populist point of view. The "most inspired" version is going to be the one that tells you what you want to hear. God's laws and values are always Man's laws and values -- He is us. You'll never see someone point at some part of their holy book and say, "God says this, but I disagree with Him." There are no mainstream (sorry, Cthulhu cultists) religions where God has different opinions about morality than people do, because the whole point of religion is to fulfill people's fantasy of justice. If the KJ version of the bible preaches values that match peoples' opinions better than other versions of the bible, then it's the best version. I'm a little surprised that something that old is the most popular one; I'd think a 21st century bible could do even better.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Not written down, printed. It was written down in the 1rst century BC.
For every one of these stories, there is one about the devout atheist who studies diligently to disprove the Bible only to become a Christian.
For examples of atheist-turned-Christian see CS Lewis to quote "...Lewis claimed he became an atheist at the age of 15..."
Or you could listen to a radio drama of another true life converstion at unshackled right here in their archives (wma and ram sorry). Heck you can search their archives for others. And when you find them, look the people up in the phone book an call them and ask them yourself instead of taking a radio drama's word for it.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Well, it's true that it hit mainstream because of Constantine, and obviously got mangled by Constantine and his successory.
But it didn't appear suddenly, out of nowhere, at that point. We have plenty of records of Christians before that, if nothing else, of the "persecutions" against them. Nero (37 AD to 68 AD) blamed the great fire of 64 AD on the Christians for example, and, to be fair, the only ones who blamed Nero for the fire were the Christians. That's a good 250 years before Constantine's conversion.
(And I say persecutions rather loosely, because the Romans didn't actually have anything against Christianity as such. They only had a law that you're not allowed to deny the official Gods. You weren't even supposed to worship the official Gods, just don't be an arsehole to those who do. You know, play nice and don't go telling other people that their gods are lies and demons. It annoys people. Especially not to the Gods of the ruling class, because then they can do nasty things when annoyed. Nowadays we consider this to be just good manners, but early Christians took it as some duty and act of faith to troll those of a different religion. And let's just say that the Romans did feed the trolls... to the lions;)
So, you know, those _before_ Constantine had to believe in _something_, if they risked life and limb for it.
I'll further risk a guess that a great factor in it was the anti-Roman symbolism of it all. The crucifix, for example, was a symbol of Roman oppression. It was a cruel execution that was reserved by law for non-citizens only.
So basically I'd say that the whole rest is, basically, irrelevant in that context. Even whether the guy was called Jesus or not or were several Jesuses. What mattered was, basically, "OMG, they even nailed God's son." There were literally millions who were very dissatisfied with Roman rule, and the promise of a God who's against the Roman imperial power too 'cause of what they did to his kid, would find a lot of willing ears.
I'm also guessing that Constantine basically had very little choice there. Christianity was spreading steadily, both in the colonies and at home, and it was rabidly anti-Imperial. The only way to "declaw" it was to adopt it as the Imperial religion. Which he did.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Today I read a very good article on Mojave Spaceport. It was full of interesting glimpses of interesting work. But at the bottom, there was a comment by a guy who couldn't understand the point of the place. After all, flying saucers had been invented back in 1961 and suppressed by NASA to keep people from traveling to the Moon in a day.
Now I read an interesting piece of news about the very interesting Codex Sinaiticus, something of great interest to scholars, theologians, and ordinary people (of faith or not). I think to myself about how much interesting work will result, how much fruitful creativity, how many deep insights into what's either a very interesting group of folklore texts, or the actual Word of God. Either way, people are very interested in understanding what's going on.
Then I come to Slashdot's comments, and encounter almost nothing but the religious and historical equivalent of 'the flying saucer was suppressed by NASA'. Disappointing.
The real story, like the real spaceships at Mojave, is a lot more complicated but a lot more interesting. (Which is why real religious people slobber over themselves to study the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Codex Sinaiticus, and the real NASA is not in the business of suppressing theoretical flying saucers.)
So if you don't know what you're talking about, why not do a little research? (And no, I don't mean reading Chariots of the Gods or Holy Blood, Holy Grail.) Biblical studies and patristics studies (early Christian literature) are fairly easy to pursue, these days, and the latest thoughts of the scholarly community are accessible on the Web.
Don't be frightened, Interesting mod is used to give karma to funny comments. This has been going on since the humorless assholes that run this site decided that funny mods should not give karma.
I have always loved the self-legitimizing process of collecting a few decades of writings, and then picking the ones which legitimize your organization. And then, as you pointed out, destroying anything which might threaten you, and persecuting any who believe in those works. I always thought that Leviticus was darn silly. I would love to see a collection of ALL the writings which were excluded from the bible. That must be a fun read.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
There are fragments from the 100s AD.
Thanks to Kurt Aland, Greek New Testaments already show scholars EXACTLY what each version of the scriptures says (all 5600 versions), including Codex Siniaticus, and they can reconstruct ANY manuscript from the notes at the bottom.
No mention of the resurrection? Surprises? Not hardly. Where do people come up with this stuff?
I guarantee you there will be ZERO surprises to anyone.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
They do it by saying that the people doing the translating and rewriting were 'inspired'.
As with all religion, but there is a teeny bit of impossible-to-refute pseudologic there.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Yeah Latin is still available to anyone who wants to take it, though most opt for Spanish to fulfill their foreign language requirements. I would guess even French gets more students than Latin though.
I don't need proof - I have faith that people who believe in religion are stupid.
"Inspired" usually means that people believe it to be the infallible word of God written through a human author. Or, at least the original Greek was.
So, if reading a translation the Bible leads to a lot of misunderstandings about God (very few, actually), it would seem that not reading it would lead to far more...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
One of the main reasons I have decided that the bible is a load of rubbish is not just that Genesis only takes 7 'days', but the way things are done are in the wrong order, so it doesn't really even make much sense as a metaphor..
Check out the literary framework interpretation of Genesis 1. It has been advocated in some form at least since St. Augustine (born AD 354) in his Literal Meaning of Genesis, and it stems from the very same interpretive considerations of the text itself that you bring up, not from a desire to make the text dance nicely with modern cosmology or biology. This view is figurative, but the figure of speech that it uses is not a metaphor.
In brief, the view "holds that the seven-day creation account found therein is not a literal or scientific description of the origins of the universe; rather, it is an ancient text which outlines a religious doctrine of creation. The seven day 'framework' is therefore not meant to be chronological but is a literary or symbolic structure designed to reinforce the purposefulness of God in creation and the Sabbath commandment" (Wikipedia).
With respect to the problem of the ordering of events, the framework view postulates that days 4-6 are a recapitulation of days 1-3, where each pair literarily describes a "kingdoms" and a "kings" to rule over them (sun over the day, birds over the air, fish over the sea, etc.). Any other view, as you note, introduces the difficulty of understanding where the light came from before the sun, etc.
A reader of the text can thus either bend over backwards in an dubious effort to force the text make sense as a scientific text (cf. your garden variety creationists); or one can assume that the author was an idiot and didn't know that light came from the sun and that this brief text is simply incoherent (as you have); or one can look a bit deeper and try to see what the author was really getting at (hint: it was not a scientific description of the origin of the cosmos).
...this
At least, I hope that wasn't serious..
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
What you described is the old argument about the differences between Religion and Faith. You claim the reason you don't believe the Bible is because it is used by men to control men. While I would agree with your conclusion that men control men using the Bible as a tool, my reading of the Bible has led me to the exact opposite conclusion, that it wasn't about men controlling men, it was about men controlling themselves through FAITH.
Yes the Bible has all sorts of rules and "commandments", but those commandments weren't issued by men to control men, they were issued by GOD.
However this never stopped men from using whatever tool they have to bash people over the head.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
They destroyed the rest that they could find, and persecuted the sects that held different views.
Actually at the time of deciding which books and letters went into the bible and which did not, Catholics(the ones deciding at this time) were hardly the ones persecuting anybody at that time. Saying you were a Catholic got you cooking in a heated chair or fed to lions. It was not made in the view of what they didn't like but what was worth dying for. It wasn't until later during the Catholic's church rise to power did you have the Spanish Inquisitions (nobody expected it) and whatnot.
Watch the "Gospel of Judas" by the National Geographic Channel to see how the Bible came to be and why other books, such as the Gospel of Judas", didn't make the team.
It's all Greek to me.
Killing is not incompatible with Christianity.
Please elaborate. I was raised Christian, and while I don't believe in it, those 10 commandmenty thingies are pretty much the fundamental building blocks of the religion.
That doesn't mean that the followers are consistent, but that's a problem with the people, not the religion.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
is worse than Slashdot on the law.
Just saying.
Wow, the arrogance. Parent should get a clue as well by reading the article he linked to. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum isn't even enforced anymore, it's relegated to the status of a historic document.
I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie
Dear sir, I thank you for this gem.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
You have a very innocent understanding of how it all came about.
The bible is a collection of writings by a vast many number of people. What King James people did was assemble all these writings (well the ones they could acquire, right?) and through analysis determined which were "divine" (or "inspired" as you said) and which were not.
Think about it... this was done some hundreds of years AD right? There were PLENTY of people writing stuff. Their goal was separating the junk from the authentic. It would be like 200 years from now, sorting through a mix of tabloid articles and "authentic" newspaper articles and making the determination of which are "correct" and which are not.
As you can guess, it would be impossible to be 100% accurate, and as such I seriously doubt King James' team could have kept a perfect score as well. It's funny how followers of the bible are the first to point out the fallibility of man, yet some human king and his monks somehow were infallible when it came to this task? Impossible.
Did you intend this as satire? In case you didn't:
Killing is not incompatible with Christianity.
Ok, so please explain to me why the commandment states simply "thou shalt not kill" without andding qualifiers?
Yeah, at least if you're an excessively naive and suicidal Christian.
My limited reading of the bible showed that apostles and others told Jesus that his stance was naive and suicidal, but he stuck to it nevertheless. So where does current christianity get the authority to overrule him?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
The documentation of Jesus's activities post-resurrection are omitted in Mark - NOT the resurrection itself!!!
Mark 16:8-20 are omitted. But... read Mark 16:5-7 and you tell me that the resurrection was omitted. Tthe resurrection has been under attack by the world since the first day when the Roman guards were instructed to lie, having misinformation like that statement pandered by Slashdot should come as no surprise.
And even then, earlier writers predating the Codex Sinaiticus referred to the expunged text authoritatively, such as Irenaeus - so the texts in question were removed rather than added later. The Alexandrian texts suffered from too-vigorous a cleaning, the same can be said of the Sinaiticus - and yet the cleaning or omissions have done nothing to discredit the resurrection.
There are enough other references to the resurrection too that has not been expunged from the scriptures - even the Sinaiticus - that you simply cannot say that the "Codex Sinaiticus makes no mention of the resurrection." Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant.
Latin classes are still offered in the U.S. Now, if you'd just fuck off and die, the world would be a little better place.
1. You don't seem to understand the Romans very well.
For a start, they actually deliberately erased the records about some people, who they thought he _shouldn't_ be remembered. Traitors, for example, could get a "Damnatio Memoriae", meaning that the Romans literally tried to erase the person from all recorded history. Census data, chronicles, monuments, etc, they'd erase any mention they could find.
They weren't the only ones, btw. In Egypt, Hatshepsut was almost erased from history as a Pharaoh by her son (though he did leave everything alone that didn't mention her as a Pharaoh), and Akhenaten. The Greek states also occasionally practiced that kind of thing.
Basically you seem to assume that, like today, if someone got famous for the wrong reasons (at least from the point of the view of existing law and government), you'd want to know and record every single detail about him. E.g., the way everyone knows all the details about the Unabomber. In the ancient world essentially they'd try to prevent other people like Herostratus from being tempted to achieve fame by nefarious means. Precisely _because_ those bombings were made to achieve a certain exposure for him and his manifesto, someone like the Unabomber would have vanished from the records altogether in the ancient world.
2. Well, you have to understand that he achieved that notoriety a (relatively) long time after his death. It would be many decades before Rome even figured out the difference between Christians and Jews. The Jews were quite rebellious and had a major religious problem with the Romans too, so yet another group of them preaching fire and damnation against the romans, was, well, business as usual.
Basically by the time that Jesus got really famous, there was no way to go back in time and tell the governor, "psst, make sure you record everything about this guy."
3. I don't know what you mean by, "The Romans put an inordinate amount of effort into killing the guy". It doesn't seem like any signifficant kind of effort to me. Just about everything about it, that I remember, was bog-standard (in fact, regulation standard) for a Crucifixion. Even posting guards there, or breaking those two other guys' legs when they weren't dead yet, and everything, was a standard crucifixion. They already knew in advance exactly what to do when they can't leave someone on the cross for several days. The Romans were organized like that :P
Or what did you mean?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
just imagine how people will be confused in 1600 years when they find the 'original' flying spaghetti monster documents. we'd better start making printouts in as many languages as possible, perhaps carved in stone.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Good fucking grief. He's ok with God letting millions of people being murdered: that doesn't disprove either God's benevolence or existence. But failure to edit a book: oh noes, this can't be happening!
God said : "Literary critics, where were you when I wrote the original? How dare you complain about me not signing off on every translation?"
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I think what you are referring to is a 'god of the gaps'. Google it. It is doomed to failure.
-Xoltri
Man, if you can win a game of verbal chess with a woman my hat's off to you.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I find your point of view of "hypocrisy" to be hypocritical.
The viewpoint you're mocking believes that innocent life should be spared, while the worst of murderers should be put to death.
Your viewpoint is that we should save the lives of the murderers, but continue to put to death the innocent unborn.
The British Library's Turning the Pages is not just religious text, but includes wide range of old books including; The Diamond Sutra, probably the worlds oldest printed 'BOOK', Sketches by Leonardo, FIRST ATLAS OF EUROPE and others.
> I don't fully understand why would they
> consider a translation the "inspired" one.
Easy - people have become accumosted to hating people for some silly sin that could be corrected. Fundamentalism isn't about QUESTIONING the Bible, it's about believing it to be 'da thing!' Anything else is heresy.
Yup, America is fucked. We have too many flat headed true believers. Wanna see what we're going to be in a 100 years? Take a look at the Middle East and the joy and love they've found.
True Believers will attempt to correct me - they have the love of the true god on their side, of course. And they'll correct me in 100 years time even when the US has gone to the shits. You see, it's the remaining sinners, like me, that is cursing the land.
And then: off comes my head - for the obvious reasons.
Fundamentalist Christians are all about excuses, despite claiming otherwise.
Of course, the Love Filled Christians will attempt to correct this post - those nasty Muslims, their Koran is filled with hate, which is why they are savages. Love Filled Christian, I ask you this: "Why the Salem Witch Trials? Why the Inquisition?"
And what is your excuse this time?
The "Belief in GOD" is the way that you can distiguish between those who think, and those who don't. Those who "believe in god" go about their days in a capacity to do nothing more than dwell in circular logic, or the lack of any logical reasoning in general.
The problem is that you can't actually believe in a "god", because that would require that the definition actually make sense, it doesn't. There is no "god" not because "it" doesn't exist, but because the "it" part has no conceivable logic that can be described accurately. You can't believe in something you can't describe. If you try to describe it, the description must make sense logically. This is why it is impossible to be "agnostic".
You said: "... He has a plan..."
You used the word "he" as one aspect in the description of your "god". Where did you get that from? Any grand arm chair philosophy about what gods should be would lead you directly to the idea that they are by definition genderless. You state that your "god" would have a "plan", but by definition, no "god" would plan. Planning is something humans need to do. No real idea of a god would use the word "plan".
People constantly bandy about the word "god" this and "god" that without once dwelling deeply in their lives what "it" is. A "god" to Christians is just some kind of a "mega" or "meta" king. Their grand "king" still has all the standard emotions and frailties of standard humans.
The "god" as creator of the universe doesn't even make sense. How do we know the universe was "created". If the universe was created, then how do we know that it wasn't created by something less than a god. How do we know that it takes some grand thinking to realize the creation of a universe? Maybe creating a universe is as simple as making coffee? Would you be satisfied to know that the universe was created by an alien? How about a human? Maybe the universe just is. Maybe the universe changes over time, and maybe one of the states that it must be in is a state in which it has no material in it, and maybe that state happens every now and then.
Maybe a god doesn't exist now, but it will in the future. Maybe we need to create god. Maybe a god did exist in the beginning but to create the universe it had to destroy itself, and maybe one day it will exist again.
What would a god "need" a human for? Why would a god "need" to be worshipped? Needs, requirements, wants, lusts, these are all human emotions. Praying is utterly meaningless to gods because a god would alreay know what you were about to pray. All gods know the future right? Wrong. A god would not know the future, or past, or any other "kind of time". Time, space, and storage of information is meaningless to gods.
Gods just don't make any sense. The religious rhetoric bandied about to describe gods, angels, demons, and devils is nothing more than non-concretized haphazard thinking. This is the way children think. This may be a period of history in which the human species needs to evolve out of. Many people are still primitive and have thoughts close to animals. It could take a while to get us all evolved out of this mess.
The only logical definition of the word "god" is the universe itself. We know the universe exists. We know the universe created us. We know the universe has a plan. We know the universe is every where at every time.
There are SOOOO many ideas! Think, or be damned to generate no new information in your circular reasoning. Only a devil would prmote "belief", a self induced sensory deprivation.
Theological noncognitivist.
From your wiki link:
[T]he Congregation for Doctrine of Faith ceased publication of the Index in 1966 following the end of the Second Vatican Council, largely for practical considerations
So unless this guy went to school before '66...there was no banned books list. Further on evolution anyway, the late Pope John Paul II was a supporter of the theory and believed it compatible with Catholic doctrine.
Catholicism is the IBM of religions...bad when it's dominant, but when in an a minority, it has no problems adapting pragmatic stances and using common sense to survive. And they'll both survive me;)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Both of the quotes appear on the Fundies Say The Darndest Things top 100 collection.
Some of my favorites:
No, everyone is born Christian. Only later in life do people choose to stray from Jesus and worship satan instead. Atheists have the greatest "cover" of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims.
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I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don't think he's ready to date yet. What's worse is that he's sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!
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[Am I in discussion with a human who has a functioning brain?]
What does a functioning brain have to do with the Bible?
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If the Bible is wrong when it tells us it is infallible, then it contradicts itself. If it contradicts itself, then it is unreliable. If it is unreliable, then our faith is totally shattered and Christianity is a lie. You need to seriously reconsider your logic.
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One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
No, the texts to which Lepsius refers are nearly 5000 years old. Note that neither the Dead Sea Scrolls not the Codex Sinaiticus refer to themselves as "the Bible", yet you claim they are older versions of the same.
That you do not see the inconsistency in your own argument is plain. Earlier versions of the Quran exist from before the 100 years ago you claim it has been around, and later versions of the bible date from after the 2000 year history you claim for it. You seek to discount other texts' histories by referring to recent events, yet ignore it when these same events occur in the history of the bible. This is called 'special pleading'.
Whether the Book of the Dead is a statement of Egyptian religion or not is immaterial since this was not a part of your original claim. The original pyramid texts exist, today, almost entirely unchanged after nearly 5000 years. The bible has nothing on that kind of consistency.
I was actually thinking more of the widely held view of how the moon was created from the earth, and how it would have to be done before the water and all life.
I don't particularly believe the writers of religious texts are idiots, Paul must have been quite clever to come up with some of the stuff he did and affect so many people over the world, but I think that if God were the God that Christians think he is, then he would have just said we came from animals, because he would know that we would have found out eventually and it would cause many people to doubt and basically go to hell for using their brains. There are far too many things that need to be explained away. If you have to make lots and lots of complex addendums to a theory to keep it valid, it probably isn't actually a valid theory. Maybe you have to place limits on a theory to keep it simple (ie Newtonian physics only works on the level we see, it doesn't apply down on a subatomic level), and that's what you're doing by saying it's just a metaphor, but there are just too many issues for me to believe in it any more.
One of the most poignant things someone said to me in the last few months is that even if the Christian God does exist, they wouldn't want to worship him. And it's true. That a god would create a bunch of people knowing that some are going to hell, and still call himself 'good'/ is pretty sickening. The good thing to do would just be to blank those people out of existence. Roman Catholicism gets round that by creating the idea of purgatory, but the reformed church doesn't believe in that, and I consider the reformed church to be more 'pure' to what Christianity was originally meant to be. If something has been added later by humans then it's obviously not from God, though you could say that about the new testament over the original Torah too. Basically, you can explain away anything if you want to. But I no longer want to worship a god who would be such a jerk, and if I have to go to some kind of hell for that then so be it. I maybe won't get used to it like a hot bath (as Reverend Lovejoy or his wife mention in The Simpsons), but if I can't do anything about it but take then pain then meh, I can't do anything about it :p
which is totally what she said
You say it like people don't use and extreme one sided reading of the bible when they want to justify something and don't already suffer from a lot of misunderstandings.
You say it like people don't do that with EVERYTHING! ;) Just listen to ANY news broadcast and determine for yourself if the information isn't being slanted one way or another. Distortion of truth for personal gain, whether in the Scriptures, media, law or anything else, has been a problem as long as man could think for himself.
(I use "truth" to mean, simply, what is empirically there, not the Truth of the scriptures.)
But there are manuscripts of the individual gospels and many of the epistles that date much earlier, including some that can reliably be dated within the first century AD.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
But the entire argument was over the age of the bible. Yes no matter the age of the bible, that doesn't make it any more true.
However that the bible is the oldest book and that it has been kept unchanged for at least 1850 years, and some parts unchanged for over 2500 years, is as historically accurate as the fact that we had a little war in 1914.
Evaluating truth in the bible is a complex matter, since the bible itself claims to have been written by inspired individuals, and is not, with a few exceptions, the literal word of God. A few biblical authors actually claim authorship in the text, and for most texts at least approximate authorship information is known. Therefore unlike the quran, which is claimed to be the word of God (despite being written "to average" a few thousand differing oral accounts), and contains stupid mathematical mistakes, is not disproven by a statement that, taken literally proves incorrectness.
The problem is simple. Both the quran and the bible speak of a flat earth. The bible, however claims that one author saw "a large flat piece of earth", which is exactly what anyone on the surface of the ball shaped earth will see. In the quran however God claims that the earth is flat. Due to the necessity of literalism in that absolutist text (specified in quran 3:7) that disproves its contents. In the bible every book immediately makes clear that it's a historical perspective. How one human saw God's intervention in a specific event. The clearest example is the new testament : it is not the word of God, but 4 human perspectives on the behavior of God, while he was setting an example for humans to follow. The text does not, at all, lend itself to absolutist interpretations, which is probably the reason western civilization isn't absolutist, unlike just about every "alternative" (communism, islam, shinto, buddhism, Iran's whacko state structure ... all are absolutist, a Christian Kingdom isn't).
You can see that such a claim "the literal word of god" makes a book trivial to disprove, since it presents a lot of easy targets. The bible, however does not present easy targets for getting disproven. For example, in a correct interpretation there is, as long as you accept the special status and special responsability of the human race due to certain gifts from God, no fight between Genesis and Darwin.
However it is equally trivial to see that Darwin's "the origin of species" does not apply to current human civilization, certainly not in the way it does to animals. All animal and plant species are the way they are due to eternal resource wars fought to extermination between races. Hitler tried that with the human race, and I think we can conclude that, however correct Darwin might have been for animals, we do not want to fight until only a single race is left (in darwin, with the exception of male/female differences, every differing gene is (obviously) a cause for lethal competition), clearly despite a few muslim racist and religious extermination wars in Darfur and Indonesia, we haven't seen anyone try to implement Darwin "let the strongest survive" mentality since the middle of the 20th century on humans. And thank God that we indeed haven't. I do hope that Darwin will prove a lot more wrong on the human front in the 21st century, and that no idiots will start acting like Darwin suggests they do (even though it seems many are trying, again, sadly, they use a religion associated with a race, instead of race directly. Then again, Hitler never used an actual ethnicity, just one in his head, then again, Darwin says this does not matter)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedas#Rigveda
That kind of conversion to atheism does apparently happen to a fair number of fundamentalists. In the view, the reason is that they never really believed in God as much as they believed in the Bible.
The logic behind reading a literal six-day creation is that, while "day" in Hebrew can mean a period of time when used alone, all other references to "day" that include "evening and morning" are references to literal days. Thus, the literalists argue, there is no reason to believe the usage of "day" with the term "evening and morning" in Genesis should be viewed any differently.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I dunno--this might be helpful:
http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/sodom_and_gomorrah/gn19_01.html
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Codex Sinaiticus has been used as a source to help compile Greek bibles and from there to translate the New Testament since at least 1975 or so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus). This isn't any new information, my seminary has a bound copy of Sinaiticus in the library. It is really cool that it is available online - that's the real story here. Up to this point one had to purchase an expensive photographic reproduction from the British Museum, usually only libraries. Now anyone can look at it (if you can read it), pretty cool.
On another note, remember that the "oldest bible" (not agreed upon by all researchers) is a misleading term. Sinaiticus is one of the best and most complete representatives of the Alexandrian Text Type (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandrian_text-type) which dates to as early as the mid second century and "All extant manuscripts of all text-types are at least 85% identical and most of the variations are not translatable into English, such as word order or spelling." (wikipedia).
"It's too risky for anybody to translate that [The Bible] into other languages. Mistakes can creep in... and that can lead to heresy. True Christians should only read English."
Amusingly, this used to be that true Christians should only read the Bible in latin and earlier greek versions were junk. I remember one anecdote about the vatican selling hundreds of the earliest surviving copies of the gospels (in greek) as scrap parchment to be made into fireworks.
I recommend starting with John and continuing through Acts and Romans. Just those 3 books (which will take about 2-3 hours to read), will give you a very good understanding of the core of Christian belief.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
At least since Uthman -- perhaps his most memorable role as Caliph was to gather up the variant copies of the Qur'an and burn them.
Maybe there are two seemingly conflicting stories because God is saying something to people who use their brains- "hey, you're not supposed to take the creation stories literally, that's why I got Moses to put two in".
If there is a God as per the Bible, which is more likely - Moses and God are stupid, or the people taking that bit literally are?
You think Moses didn't notice when he was writing that stuff down? Or think that other people would not notice? My bet is Moses wasn't that stupid.
Perhaps God doesn't like smart alecs? Or people who think they're smarter than they actually are?
A lot of the stuff in the Bible might look ok at first read (to the people who can barely read anyway ;) ), stupid at second read (first read to the people who think they can read ;) ), then sometimes not so stupid at X read.
By the way, according to Genesis there was a tree of life in the Garden of Eden, there was no prohibition from eating fruit from that tree (and thus living forever) but they chose not to. Instead they ate fruit from the prohibited tree instead - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Was that terrible of God? Don't forget though - God also had a plan to save us. Some bits of the plan don't make sense to me, and some bits make a lot of sense and so I'll keep reading.
Can you imagine being imperfect and living forever? In my imagination that could be the worst thing that could happen to someone. Forever is a very very long time. Longer than the lifespan of a universe. Longer than ten lifespans of a universe. Want to live forever? You better be made perfect by God first. You can't be made perfect by yourself or some other imperfect being.
People who want to laugh at the Bible, or take all of it literally rather than use their brains to figure out what the big picture might be like, should go read the Song of Songs literally:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=26&chapter=4&version=31&context=chapter
Actually again, "the book of the dead" is the title of an archeological account by Karl Richard Lepsius, created in 1842. So the "book of the dead" is a platry 165 years old.
And there was nothing called a "Dead Sea scroll" before 1947, so I guess they're only 60 years old then.
Please God, I pray to thee, don't let some idiot make this in to yet another iPod Bible App.
"Gravity: Doesn't exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. "
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Finally someone gets it right.
The King James was translated, with said translation itself being inspired, from an earlier work which was also considered inspired. This chain of inspired goes back through simple copies to translations to the original Greek or Hebrew, as necessary.
A religious person would have to conclude that this 4th century Bible was, in fact, a Satan-perverted nth copy, and that the originals, perhaps lost, reflected Jesus properly.
But this is hardly a new issue. 1500 years ago, theologians realized there were earlier works that looked as if the sacred works were derivatives evolving from them. They, quite literally, proposed the Devil set those up to make it look the True stuff merely evolved from it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I hear he also learned to speak Klingon, with pretty much the same outcome.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I am converted. Truly, if they managed to put the Codex Sinaiticus online.
Even if the book does not have an ethernet port, and relies on 1600 year old SLIP it's tremendous foresight that the original illuminators had to even include a comm port of any kind. Fair play to them.
My only concern is that if it's firewall has not been updated in many centuries, won't it get hacked.
And of course, the natural curiosity - does it run Linux ?
Nullius in verba
It's common knowledge that the bible is a collection of different works. That is why it is organized into books and chapters. The King James Version of the bible was actually an attempt to organize everything into one package. Before that, a bible was more like a library.
Wow, thats almost older than the earth!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
They (the "they" usually being poorly educated Protestant hillbillies) consider inspired because they're a bunch of anti-intellectual morons who distrust change or any educated clergy capable of reading Greek or Hebrew.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Q: From where did we get the Bible?
A: The Church. The community of faith saw to it that the Gospels were written down, and before that, the Jews saw to it that Scripture was recorded. These groups recognized these books as the word of God.
So it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Catholic Church's interpretation of the Bible is the "correct" one. When it comes to matters of interpretation, the Magisterium (that is, Catholic Tradition) can often be illuminating. It shouldn't surprise anyone if the two are in accord. You would expect a witness and his written testimony to agree; or a professor and his thesis to agree; why would the Bible be any different?
This is no secret - its a matter of historical fact. From time to time, some group will try to split away from the Church based on their own, unique, interpretation of the Bible. Often times, such interpretations are really heretical, because they deny things which, while they may be ambiguous in the Bible, were not at all ambiguous to early Christians. You know, things like the divinity of Jesus, and such.
So when a Catholic has a question of a matter of the faith, he is in the right to ask the Church. Because they know. In two thousand years, most of the questions of faith the common person experiences have already be asked and answered and written down. You just have to look.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Have you ever heard of the Strong's concordance?
If I say "Hi, how are you" in any language that you can understand, am I still saying "Hi, how are you?". The catholics used to use Latin before the dictionary which served two purposed. Latin was already a dead language which mean words and meaning couldn't be changed any more and served for locking meaning into the words. The second purpose was that no matter where in the world you were, if you attended their church, you could understand and know the sermon. This isn't really necessary with the invention/conception of a dictionary and is part of the reasons why they did away with it.
BTW, it wasn't that long ago you could goto church in Latin and it wasn't that long ago that you could read the bible in Latin. I guess the biggest differences is that English Christians don't expect their followers to be idiots like other religions do. Like I said, "Hi, how are you" means the same thing spoken in any language that the recipient can understand.
Killing is not incompatible with Christianity.
Please elaborate. I was raised Christian, and while I don't believe in it, those 10 commandmenty thingies are pretty much the fundamental building blocks of the religion.
Around about 200 AD a church in Rome claimed that they were the only ones who could properly interpret the bible and that their interpretation and in fact their commandments were the will of christ. They went so far as to eventually decide which gospels and versions fo gospels were "true" and should be included in what is now the bible.
People have been justifying murder as compatible with christianity ever since by claiming the church can legitimize killing and disobedience to the church is a sin.
Why is it the enemy of all religions?
Science was started by religions. Science doesn't speak to religion and I'm puzzled to why you think it is an enemy. Even in the evolution creation debate, there is so little in conflict that a belief in creation or god doesn't disqualify anyone from scientific work or doing science in over 99% of the science fields out there.
What's wrong with AD and BC?
Because whoever started that system did not start counting at zero. Either they didn't consider years to be ordinal numbers, or didn't consider zero to be a number, or whatever. Either way, they started count from one, and now whenever we do date calculations that cross the AD/BC line, we have to add or subtract one in order to make the math work.
Remember folks, when using numbers as labels, always start at zero.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"Historical accuracy"
I do not think this means what you think it means.
Faith, hop, and charity... and the greatest of these is hop.
Clearly you have a better memory than mine :)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Are you suggesting that they included only the books that did not support their views?
The history of early Christianity is well known. Everyone knows about Arianus and all other leaders/sects/whatever that were declared heretical and persecuted, through killing, confiscation of property, denial of position, etc. This is common knowledge and available in many books. I'm not going to provide a bibliography for something that is not seriously in dispute.
HAH...another so called word of god book...written by man, edited by man, interpreted by man...to suit the desires of the men in power...
Worthless as far as a belief items, nice that an old piece of FICTION can be read online though
Actually it is both in Latin and in Greek, and arameic, and hebrew, and ... The versions that were accepted as bible were initally spread with greek and latin versions of the same text on facing pages, or only the latin text.
As I recall, this is not true. Originally it was primarily in greek, with some documents including original translations into some other languages. The first bibles with greek and latin on facing pages were written much later, although still predating the vulgate.
Latin is certainly the language of the bible, despite the book being originally written in greek.
One could just as easily argue that English is the language of the bible, despite Latin having been the most popular for a long time.
I took a class on this in college, and it seemed to me that the KJV FTW! crowd has come to their beliefs in the same way as many other offshoot religious groups: A series of anecdotes turns into truth.
Most of the KVJ only'ers had the same argument, it went something like this: "When I/others read different translations, I/they get so confused, and have trouble finding the 'truth'. When we read the KJV, everything's so clear."
So of course it doesn't make sense to think of a later version of the bible as more accurate than an earlier version, which is why they rely on a series of anecdotes to support their beliefs. Anecdotes are much harder to argue with than facts.
Speaking of anecdotes, a town (Touchet, WA) near where I grew up used to have a giant billboard in the center of town that depicted a large lion with the letters "KJV" on its side, trampling a pile of other translations. It was brilliant. An effective witnessing tool I'm sure.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
The 10 Commandments are fundamental to Jewish beliefs. They are part of God's pact with Moses and the Jews. Christians basically have 2: "Love God" and "do unto others".
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Well, in which version? From your linked site, I see available several versions. Would you have any recommendation? I'm hoping there is a clearcut one that's more truth and less "edited to keep the serfs happy".
(versions listed on that site, in English)
* 21st Century King James Version
* American Standard Version
* Amplified Bible
* Contemporary English Version
* Darby Translation
* Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition
* English Standard Version
* Holman Christian Standard Bible
* King James Version
* New American Standard Bible
* New Century Version
* New International Reader's Version
* New International Version
* New International Version - UK
* New King James Version
* New Living Translation
* The Message
* Today's New International Version
* Worldwide English
* Wycliffe New Testament
* Young's Literal Translation
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I thought Landover baptist was a parody site?
I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people here think it's real. That's what they think a church looks like.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Holy crap, how did this misinformed, jingoistic tripe get modded +4 informative?
I've done some poking and it looks like Young's Literal is probably the best for me.
Thanks though!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"Best ones? Hypocrasy."
Christians see a huge difference in innocent life... a baby certainly is innocent... and someone that chose to do great evil.
You find that hypocritical. And yet I find it hypocritical that people would choose to abort a baby, and yet spare a murderer.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Thou shalt not kill REQUIRES some sort of qualifier. It does not say murder, meaning killing of a human being, it says kill, and that would mean ending the life of anything alive. Man can not survive without killing. Even if you are vegetarian, you kill plants to eat them. So the fact that the word for kill, not murder is used, means that we either need to interpret that in some context, or that God was deciding that all of his followers should die very quickly.
CE and BCE are stupid. Not only because they look alike, but because they're new. January is named after the god Janus. All words have historical references. Some we know, others we don't. The point is that we have common and accepted terms that we use. What's the point in making up new ones? We still have to learn the old. This is just creating more work and confusion, especially when the new terms look alike.
Right on. Moving to BCE/CE was just politically correct silliness to me. As the parent poster noted, do you have to believe in Greco-Roman gods to support the naming of our months? BC/AD is easier, and we should have stuck with it. The argument for changing the system was that it would offend non-Christians. Well, too bad. How many other things are we going to change in order to accommodate a politically correct naming convention? Planets? Cities? Landmarks? You don't even have to believe in the divinity of Christ to acknowledge the historical impact the man had, just like I don't have to be a Zeus/Jupiter worshipper to appreciate the names of the planets. We should have left well enough alone.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book has quite a bit to say on translation and why it is part of the Christian way. He also takes the King James Version to task. Worth a read.
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
Lee Strobel's "Case for *" books are very good.
"For the Romans, Jesus was a John Doe. Just another non-citizen nutter who spoke against the Emperor and was nailed for it. Business as usual."
Have you read the Gospels? Jesus did not speak out against the Roman Empire. He preached keeping your faith to God and worldly affairs separate ("render unto to Caesar"). This is why Pontius Pilate was so perplexed that Jesus had been arrested. He could find no fault with the man, and certainly didn't find that he'd rebelled against Rome in any way. Jesus was arrested because the old Hebrew priesthood considered him a blasphemer and wanted him dead. They just didn't want the blood on their own hands, so they turned him over to the Romans. Recall that Pilate pleaded with the crowd to let Jesus go.
This little meme really annoys me, because it's starting to catch on in some circles. Shane Claiborne writes in his books that Jesus came to topple Rome. He did no such thing, and he made his purposes clear. He was here for the coming kingdom, not this one. The Jews rejected him as a Messiah in part because he wouldn't oppose Rome. They thought the Messiah would be a kind of military commander to free them from the Roman yoke.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Everyone has a preference. I prefer New King James, even tho it's based on the Textus Receptus and isn't completely up-to-date with current and more complete textual witnesses (tho it does include notes referring to the differences if you get a study bible version of this translation). NASB is also another good choice that I like to read. I've been looking at the Holman bible too. If you get one, get a bona fide study bible. The extra cross-references and notes on other texts are very helpful.
As to the best recommendation for the absolute best "version"? I like the UBS Greek as well as Robinson's compilation of the Byzantine Greek texts. Greek isn't hard to learn and there's nothing that will expand your understanding more than getting closer to the original writers. Mounce has a lot of good texts to help you learn Greek too. Nowadays, light reading is the English translations I have - study is the Greek itself.
Sounds like God could have used CVS.
Why? Why wouldn't it be just as valid, from a "religious point of view", for a particular translation to be seen as inspired or, say, for the original writing of the various documents later assembled into the "Bible" and the assembly of the canon and many translations into many different languages at different times all to be seen as inspired? Is there something in the definition of "religious point of view" that mandates that inspiration happen once, and only with regard to the first reduction of an idea to writing?
Thou shalt not kill REQUIRES some sort of qualifier.
Ok, point conceded. But since one usually does not talk about killing in regards to plants, I would wager that we are talking about humans here (insert disclaimer re common usage in King James' time).
So there.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
George Bush, for example, claims to be a Christian. Hasn't he heard "thou shalt not kill?" Yet when he was Governor of the state that executes more men than any other state, he executed more men than any other Governor of that state. How could anyone who believed the Bible act like that?
Because he put his duty above his faith?
Naw, couldn't be, that does not fit the template!
Actually, CE was originally "Christian Era" but some people got oversensitive about that, so they changed it to "Common." But the Gospels about Jesus were *definitely* not written "Before Christ."
Of course, we're off by about 4-6 years, anyhow, thanks to a miscalculation by an ancient monk (Jesus was presumably born around 4-6 BC), but whatever.
Yes, there are some fringe scholars who try to write Jesus out of the picture and make Paul the founder of Christianity, but only for shock value. It's like trying to explain the universe, but leaving out the Big Bang (or Horrendous Space Kablooie, depending on your preference).
Actually, it's not the first time it's been made available online:
http://www.biblefacts.org/church/pdf/Codex%20Sinaiticus.pdf
People misunderstanding the bible... hmm... isn't that called Catholicism? (sorry for the flamebait. I had to.)
Sanity is like a condom: rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.
And that is what has fueled christianity's spread throughout widely-ranging and disparate areas of the globe among people with absolutely nothing else in common.
Christianity is among the easiest religions to matriculate to, and also seemingly the most missionary. I wouldn't argue either way about christianity's rights or wrongs, but you have to admit that it is a pretty fascinating case study in sociology. And deciding whether christianity's means and success is due to luck, design, or intelligent design is a mystery we may never solve.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
"You cannot serve two masters" -the bible. If you put duty before faith, you have no faith.
Besides, he had a DUTY to execute more men than any other Governor or of the state that executes more men than any other state? No, he's a cold blooded sociopath who will stop at nothing to advance his aims, not unlike most other powerful men.
He is to be pitied.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The sixth commandment forbids murder. The ethical theology that lies behind this prohibition is the fact that all men and women have been created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27; 9:6). While Hebrew possesses seven words for killing, the word used here--rasah --appears only forty-seven times in the OT. If any one of the seven words could signify "murder," where the factors of premeditation and intentionality are present, this is the verb. Recently, however, some have complained (see Childs, Exodus p. 420, for the bibliography and argument) that many of the instances of this verb relate to blood vengeance and the role of the avenger (go'el in Num 35; Deut 4:41-43; 19:1-13; Josh 20:3). Without exception, however, in the later periods (e.g., Ps 94:6; Prov 22:13; Isa 1:21; Hos 4:2; 6:9; Jer 7:9) it carries the idea of murder with intentional violence. Every one of these instances stresses the act or allegation of premeditation and deliberateness--and that is at the heart of this verb. Thus this prohibition does not apply to beasts (Gen 9:3), to defending one's home from night-time burglars (Exod 22:2), to accidental killings (Deut 19:5), to the execution of murderers by the state (Gen 9:6), or to involvement with one's nation in certain types of war as illustrated by Israel's history. It does apply, however, to self-murder (i.e., suicide), to all accessories to murder (2 Sam 12:9), and to those who have authority but fail to use it to punish known murderers (1 Kings 21:19).
(From the Expositor's Bible Commentary)
We don't question the authenticity of other ancient books...
I claim 666th post!
I'm very disappointed that the whole thing wasn't written as a collection of image macros. That ain't lolcat, it's just stupid.
Except that it wasn't a dead language as a result of the Church using it, and meaning did change (and often was opaque to start with) in Church Latin. Heck, there are still debates about exactly what certain terms mean in the Latin original of the current code of Canon Law.
The sermon (properly, the homily) in the Catholic Mass was the only part usually in the vernacular even when the service itself was in Latin. IIRC, the usual practice was (and remains, in those groups maintaining the Tridentine Mass) that the homily was in the vernacular when laity were present, but in Latin when only clergy and religious were present at the Mass.
Actually, back around 1978 someone wrote and published a book about how Star Wars (1977) proved the correctness of Christianity, and how SW was a parable of the Christ, or some such blather. I don't have a copy and can't find the title offhand, but the notion is hardly unique to Slashdot.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Just a correction, Quran was "inspired" in Arabic and written in Arabic. Muhammed was an Arab and lived among Arabs. Evidence of Arabic scripts is available as early as 8th century BC. Some of the finest Arabic poetry is as old as 4th century BC.
You are mixing fonts and typefaces with languages. Kufic is a typeface and a beautiful one at that. Modern Arabic script has its origins in Nabataean Aramaic and was finalized in it current script in the late 8th century AD.
So, today's Quran is the same as the Original Quran. Both written in Arabic but with different typefaces and scripts. One must differentiate between translation and transliteration. For example: "elah" and "god" are the same, but the first is a transliteration in Arabic with Latin alphabet while the second is a translation into English.
My 2 cents.
Actually that decision was taken following a survey of various churches by a guy called Eusebius of Caeserea in the 4th century, in order to ascertain what was regarded as canonical by each congregation. The current canon is a a result of the consensus reached by the survey. Eusebius even included some books he didn't particularly like because weight of opinion by the church was in favour of said books. Everything was put into three categories: books universally acknowledged (4 gospels, Acts of the Apostles, letters of Paul (number not given, would have included Hebrews), the 1st epistle of John and likewise that of Peter, Revelation); disputed books (James, Jude, 2nd Peter, so called 2nd & 3rd John); spurious books (e.g. Shepherd of Hemas).
You're possibly thinking of the Muratorian fragment, which details the views of the Roman church on the their collection of manuscripts in the 2nd century.
There really is a lolcat for everything. Maybe ceiling cat will become the next FSM. Or a religious war will break about between the two.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
I saw the 400 BCE also, and thought Bible meant Torah here. The article says 1,400 years ago, which is circa 400 AD.
I personally don't like the Common Era (CE) dates. If we're really going to make a standard, then let's have a year zero.
-1 The year before Mary was pregnant.
0 The year including most of the 40-week pregnancy.
+1 The year Jesus was born.
Finally, let's use Julian Days like every database vendor does internally!
Muslims believe that one can truly understand the Koran only in the original Arabic; Jews are instructed in Hebrew in their youth; Hindus learn Sanskrit in order to read the Bhagavad Gita and other writings. But among Christians, only scholars and specialists have even the slightest knowledge of the Greek in which the New Testament is written.
Curious . . . .
This is talked about extensively in 'God Is Not Great' by Christopher Hitchens. The plain fact is that those who cannot read the source material cannot form their own opinions about the source material. This keeps the power in the hands of the church.
The reason Islam is the mess that it is is because it depends on the uneducated and typically illiterate masses to do what they are told the Koran says. If someone tells me what the bible says I can go look it up myself and interpret it myself - and I sure as hell don't know Latin or Greek.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
The Gnostics are a good example. They were slaughtered by the Emperors after Constantine, and they had their own Gospels.
Though there are many documents that could be included among the gnostic gospels, the term most commonly refers to the following:
* Gospel of Mary (recovered in 1896)
* Gospel of Thomas (versions found in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt in 1898, and again in the Nag Hammadi Library)
* Gospel of Truth (Nag Hammadi Library)
* Gospel of Philip (Nag Hammadi Library)
* Gospel of Judas (recovered via the antiquities black market in 1983, and then reconstructed in 2006)
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
and it's only surviving full books destroyed by those muslims when they burned the library of alexandria, believing it to be competition for the quran.
Mod parent down please.
First of all, I want to say that I find this kind of misinformation and mockery really disappointing. I've been a slashdot reader for a while, and usually I'm impressed with how fairly and objectively this crowd deals with issues. Unfortunately, whenever a religion-related topic comes up, large quantities of respect and open-mindedness seem to vanish.
First regarding myself; I'm sure I'm considered radical by many, but I like to consider myself Biblical in my ideology and worldview. I strive to live by the principals I find in the Bible, while I'll be the first to admit that I often fail at this.
Regarding Scripture, I think the Bible has proven it's validity and accuracy both prophetically, as well as personally for me. I therefore believe that the original texts were inerrant and infallible; the authors were under direct and authoritative inspiration. Certainly because we do not have the originals, only copies of copies, there have been transcription errors, as well as the unfortunate intentional addition or omission by a over-zealous handler of the texts. Contrary to popular belief though, we can logically conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty, that these mishandling are minor. At least regarding the New Testament, after the writing copies were almost immediately spread across the known and civilized world. As an earlier poster mentioned, the earlier manuscripts that we have are then descended from those copies that were spread. The differences between the manuscripts that we have are almost all minor and most are easily identifiable as change. Therefore if any changes were made that we don't know of, they necessarily would have been made in the very small window of time between original authorship and duplication/spread, otherwise the manuscripts we have (some quite recently), could not be so similar.
So basically, to put it clearly, as does the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:
"WE AFFIRM that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
WE DENY that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant."
Finally, regarding the current state of the Christian faith, there have been many very valid accusations of bigotry and hypocrisy directed toward some of those who claim the banner of Christianity. When dealing with this sort of situation please remember that a outward claims and truth can often be very different. Read 1 John, starting with chapter 2:1-6. John very clearly explains what it really means to abide in Christ (to have true faith). Please do not disregard Christ and what I consider to be His infallible teachings on the basis of fallible humans and their mistakes, or even their knowledge-less zealotry.
Before judgment is passed on an ideology, consider it with an open mind. Compare a modern translation with this online one, pray about it and actually read and study it; I don' t think you will be disappointed.
http://www.twowaystolive.com/
The way I see it, God wrote two books (from a Christian perspective, anyway): the Bible, and the Universe.
One of those books was written by human hands and minds and is prone to human error, tampering, or outright forgery. The other contains things that simply cannot be forged or manipulated, such as: evidence of the continued expansion of the universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, the structure of the atom, etc.
One of the two is far older (closer to the original source?) than the other, as well.
Which book do you think would be the most reliable source of information? And BTW, it takes faith to believe in either one of these books.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Really? Then why do so many Christian scholars take that very view? And why were Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell two of the greatest ever scientists and yet also evangelical Christians?
Just so you know, there is some argument over whether Kufic script was the original medium for the Quran. It seems the gents in the link below have a pretty good argument against Kufic being the initial written version of the Quran.
Given the difficulty of reading Arabic scripts at the time and the duty of the qurra to preserve it's continuity, the Quran has many translation issues as well.
For a great deal of the work, it could be be compared to the Catholic version of the Bible as presented in Latin. The Quran in Arabic is considered to be the authoritative translation... but is it?
http://www.debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/qurmanu.htm
It's not at all curious. It comes about from a belief that the word of God should be accessible to anyone, not just a scholarly elite. At the same time, anyone is free to learn the original languages and read the best available texts. Most denominations would encourage anyone interested to do so and theological colleges and seminaries usually provide courses for people to learn the languages. There are plenty of books on it as well. In addition, there are plenty of commentaries that allow for varying levels of familiarity with the original languages.
There are very few denominations that would push the KJV as the best translation. In fact, go into a theological college or seminary, bring the topic up, and you'll be likely be pointed towards the New Revised Standard Version, English Standard Version or New American Standard Bible, all of which are late 20th/early 21st century translations. You may even be handed a Nestle-Aland 27th edition Greek New Testament and a copy of Duff's 'Elements of N.T. Greek' (or possibly Mounce).
My guess is that its both of your ability to understand exactly what 4th Century means. TFA mentions nothing about it being BCE. The second link in the submission says it was made 1600 years ago, which jives with what the AP article says. I'm guessing the submitter made the mistake, being as editors don't edit.
I, for one, would greatly like to see a bible written 400 BCE. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.
I guess it's pretty tricky to study historical records and discern which people were really Christians and which were just saying that they were. Heck, it's pretty tricky even when you *know* someone.
I'm confused. Is one of the 10 Commandments "Thou shalt not kill... unless they did something bad, or you don't like their religion, or they're invading your country"? Or perhaps "Thou shalt not kill, unless you have a good reason"?
Um, as I recall Jesus said to "turn the other cheek". It sounds like you're saying that following the teachings of Jesus is not a prerequisite for being a Christian. It seems you may be right, as the majority of people who call themselves Christian don't follow his teachings. However, many of these self-described Christians see this as a failing of themselves (i.e. they are unsuccessfully trying to follow the teachings of Christ), not as the proper way to be a Christian (i.e. feel that the proper way to be a Christian is to not follow the teachings of Christ).
To give a simple example that a unilingual like you might understand, take the following sentance, "her eyes stoked fires in my heart". It seems like a very simple sentence to translate, but underneath it are many analogies that might only exist in our language. For example, the idea that the heart is the location of love and warm fuzzy emotions might not exist in another language or culture. The correlation between fires and passion might not exist. It the translator isn't careful, the reader may think that her eyes are causing indigestion. Therefor, a careful translator would translate the phrase to something which literally says "her eyes bring love to mind", or maybe "her eyes make passionate take over my soul", all depending on what would be a roughly equivalent phrase in the language we're translating to. Now, imagine translating that back to english. The translator wouldn't know that the original said anything about a heart or fires, so he'd end up with "her eyes make me feel passion". Which is clearly a different statement than the original.
When translating from one language to another, decisions like these have to be made every single line. Only the most simplistic of writing can be translated literally. Now, imagine these changes mounting up, many in each paragraph. Even a single translation can significantly alter the tone or a work unless the translator is very talented. Even then, it alters the tone a little. Now imagine the dozens of times the bible has been translated and try and tell me whether Strong's concordance seems to apply anymore. And we haven't even touch on translation -errors-.
Meh, I prefer a.Y.P.S (Anno Yersina Pestis Spiritus)
There are people who do believe that the King James version is the "inspired" Word of God. I don't fully understand why would they consider a translation the "inspired" one.
From a religious point of view, if there is anything inspired, it would be the first version in its original language. So the closer you get to the original ones, theoretically would be the better.
Many people do not trust later editions, because they claim that those translators were pushing agendas. They say that the KJV was done by a group of scholars that can be trusted as much as if not more than any group that followed, and so that translation is the most trustworthy. Further, since many branches reject one or another translation for whatever reason, the KJV is the one easily accessible English translation that all branches of English-speaking Christianity accept.
Some Christians do not understand the above, and then translate the acceptance of only the KJV as dogma that the KJV is the "inspired" version. Dolts.
Actually, in Hebrew, the commandment in question is: "lo teer tsakh", were the verb ratsakh refers to murder or manslaughter, not simple killing.
By the time the Vulgate bible came around, this was translated to "non occides", which does indeed mean "do not kill", so the KJV cannot be blamed for the mistranslation, it happened earlier.
cool story bro
> I think it is funny to see the religions getting together to get rid of Atheists. It is like George Bush and Saddam Hussein getting together to get rid of pacifists.
I don't think atheists are pacifists. Stalin & Mao pretty directly contradict this, given the way religious folks were targeted in the purges. As a matter of fact, China is still out to suppress and destroy religion (see also: Tibet).
Well - um - thats because there is more than one bible. If you are referring to The Bible that is the Catholic bible which certainly does mention the resurrection.
Nice try at some Christian-hate, though.
If I say "Hi, how are you" in any language that you can understand, am I still saying "Hi, how are you?". ...
Like I said, "Hi, how are you" means the same thing spoken in any language that the recipient can understand.
Do you actually speak any other languages?
At best you can say approximately the same thing. But to convey exactly the same semantics -- what might take a short sentence in Japanese, becomes pages worth of English to convey all the semantics that went into that short sentence... and vice versa.
Depending on the language you can play around with plural forms, gender forms, tenses, verb forms, idioms, puns, double entendre, slang, formal vs informal forms, etc, etc to achieve all kinds of semantic layering that simply can't be concisely expressed in another language.
Because science is about fact - religion is about belief.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It's good that you brought Star Wars into this faith discussion. Personally I believe the truly inspired version in fact the Backstroke of the West version of the holy text.
Obviously some nutheads will claim that it has been translated into Chinese and then into English or some such, but that simply to further their agenda to prove that nothing like the event in Star Wars ever happened. They are apostates or trolls and there is no hope for them.
Just as an example that only this version is truly divinely inspired: in EpIII 03:08 nothing sums up more accurately Vader's emotional state than when he states "Do not want". Some may claim that the supposedly "original" version in EpIII 02:08 would have him cry out "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" instead, but anyone with half a brain could immediately tell how ridiculous that would have been.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
"Really? Then why do so many Christian scholars take that very view?"
You want me guess? Well, I assume there is hope for them yet, that they may give up the nonsense try rationality instead.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The King James version is a Government Publication ...
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
nt
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
It seems you didn't get the point of "Strong's concordance". It basically a reference of the bible that word for word traces each KJV english word/phrase to the original hebrew/greek words. In that it does NOT include cultural references, metaphors used in that time in that part of the world, figurative speech etc. which anyone who has peeked into the old hebrew or ancient greek counterparts can attest, make up a significant part or the text. Things like these DO get lost in translation and can only be understood by readers who actually have knowledge of the context culturally and otherwise.
reading your comment it would seem the ultimate would be killing EVERYONE-
sacraficing yourself so that no one could commit suicide or any other mortal sins--
plus all the stuff you mention...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Thanks a lot. One wonders, though, what else the translations (and the first bible itself) gets wrong, when it even fails horribly at one of its central parts. And that's not any central part, it's the part that is supposed to capture the essence in 10 simple sentences. I mean sheesh, how hard would it have been to make it clear and write "murder"?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Well ok. Which proves that the bible is not reliable enough to "believe" in it, since "it" is not defined.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Just meditate under a Bodhi tree and inspiration (Satori) will arrive. Hey, it worked for Buddha!
there is no god but truth, and reality is its prophet
This is truly a slash dot moment.
You all are actually arguing about a collective fantasy written so loooong ago, by soooo many different men, compiled from various other fantasy's that there are no records that can prove anything to back up any of your assertations.
I can't wait until "they" rewrite "the bible" (it doesn't deserve capitals) with george bush and dick cheney (and neither do they deserve capitals) as "great prophets".
It's only a matter of time, and I'm sure that in a thousand years many fools will believe that nonsense as "the truth" too (it's out there man...).
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
Roddenberry: "DAMN! Lost another believer! How does Hubbard do it?"
I have a BS in Physics from a state school (Emphasis on theory not some science-math-wimpy-education-track). I have listened to the higher criticism of the Bible as well as equally capable defenders of the faith. Those in defense of the Bible have a better case.
I have reached the opposite conclusion. I grew up in the church, but after some exposure to rhetoric and apologetics, I found that I could not justify my beliefs.
It's really cool to see people still looking for the original teachings to minimize distortions. Nevertheless, the teachings back then were designed for much more primitive people. The people today have a higher level of consciousness and thus are ready for higher levels of truth than that given 2,000 years ago.
Jesus' updated and corrected teachings are available today and he's here sharing with us the new levels of truth we're ready for. It's time for humanity to evolve. That was then, this is now.
"You can start by noting that Slashdot contributors are 90% atheists..."
Really?
Just how did you come up with that figure pilgrim?
I call bullshit on your weak ass claim.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
According to that site the oldest printed copy is from that time period. The original written version is still older.
The core message(s) hasn't changed: Love for others, and Love for God
i.e.
- Golden rule: Treat others how you want to be treated, Matthew 7:12. It has has been around for ages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity
- Karma - you reap what you sow, Mat 26:52, Gal 6:7
- You can become "God", John 14:12
- Truth is relative, 2 Cor 12:2-4
The fact that the Bible has been severely edited and is mostly fiction does not lessen (pardon the pun) the morals.
Cheers
He's ok with God letting millions of people being murdered:
How do you infer that from anything I said?
The issue of the translations goes to the question of its existence, not whether it's good or evil.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That reminds me:
Personally it's not God I dislike, it's his fan club I can't stand.
Are you suggesting that they included only the books that did not support their views?
The history of early Christianity is well known. Everyone knows about Arianus and all other leaders/sects/whatever that were declared heretical and persecuted, through killing, confiscation of property, denial of position, etc. This is common knowledge and available in many books. I'm not going to provide a bibliography for something that is not seriously in dispute.
No, I am not suggesting they including only the books which did not support their views. What I mean is that the canon was not formed by a top-down pronouncement. It formed at the as groups of letters and books began to circulate together and was later affirmed by synods. Moreover, you will find that in the case of disputed books, the litmus test was generally Apostolic authority, not theological correctness. So it seems that the theological views came from the canon and not the other way around, as you asserted. Note that your response was centered on persecution of heretics, not on the actual formation of the canon.
P.S. I think you mean Arius.
Evidently the poster couldn't be bothered to RTFA. The actual article doesn't say the codex has "no mention of the resurrection". It says that, "The Gospel of Mark ends abruptly after Jesus' disciples discover his empty tomb." What this refers to is Mark 16:9-20, which most modern translations note as a later addition or discard entirely. The gospel ends abruptly with the discovery of the empty tomb and skips later appearances of Jesus. The remaining three gospels pretty much have the usual resurrection stories in the usual places.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
The early few generations of humans lived for hundreds of years (Methusalah and several others lived to be over 1000 years old). Even if Adam had no written language, with human ages of that length the creation story could have been told fourth hand or so to Noah.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
"I can't speak for "most fundamentalists of any stripe," but I am a Mormon..."
And many folks will be happy to point out the incongruities in your special brand of propaganda posing as religion.
Like this example of my friend who's wife taught at BYU, in SLC.
He was on campus one day to meet her for lunch, and was accosted by an LDS'er and told to leave because he wasn't allowed on campus wearing a beard!
Beards are evil according to that guy.
So my friend attempted to reason with this individual, but he wasn't into listening, just preaching his version of the LDS beliefs on how beards are evil.
Finally, my friend just pointed to a statue of Joseph Smith sporting a big beard, and asked just why it was fine that he had a beard.
Shut that fool right up!
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
This really doesn't strike me as anything either new or needed. Anyone who might want to has been able to look at the entire manuscript (both Old Testament Septuagint and New Testament with Barnabas and Shepherd) in VERY high quality color images. I, myself, downloaded the entire thing to my home computer over two years ago.
http://alpha.reltech.org/BibleMSS.html
username: any
password: any
Uh, two problems.
1. OK, I missed the subtle "jab" at the KJV Only types, as I misinterpreted your statement. Given that you were responding to someone who was taking issue with the KJV Only types, it sounded as if your statement was a rebuttal.
2. I certainly don't think I'm the ONLY person to have ever suggested that KJV could have and did influence the translation. While I agree, it is quite difficult to unearth ANY scholarly work on the topic at all (other than re-interpretations of what has already been done) let alone documentation of the various changes/influence, I still don't think the idea is out of this world. I guess I can't understand why someone would find it implausible that King James I, who essentially thought that he, as King of England should also be head of the Church (and thus semi-divine), along with his "Chief Overseer" Archbishop Richard Bancroft who had an uncanny ability to rise through the ranks of the church and gain significant power/influence might have had vested interests in shaping how words/passages were interpreted. There are plenty of others who have researched this history and found it to be...well...suspect at the very best.
In short, ANY time there is a fundamentalist agenda (regardless of religious, social, governmental, etc) you can bet your ass that someone is shaping things to his/her favor in one way or another. I hate to be the wet blanket on the fire, but claiming that there is little room for argument as to the "authenticity" of the KJV (or really any version of what was an oral tradition for hundreds of years) is ridiculous. It's immaterial in the sense that it's up to the individual to decide what moves him/her spiritually, but to try to corroborate one's faith through "official" documents is probably missing the point.
"Personally it's not God I dislike, it's his fan club I can't stand."
I'm with you, many of them come off as complete nut cases.
Logic never enters into their thought process, it's completely Pavlovian behavior when it comes to xtians "defending" "their" religion.
If their "special" religion is the "best" then why do they feel the need to defend it?
It's the best right?
Tossers.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
citation needed.
inspired also means, it is not translated word by word. which would be very dangerous for people, reading a book that old, withouth knowing about the habits in this era, can lead to extreme one sided reading of the bible, and a lot of misunderstandings.
Very true...I always laugh when people talk about the virgin Mary....back then women with children before being married were called virgin mothers.
Then there is the whole was Jesus married. He had to be. He was a Rabi and back then to be a Rabi you had to be married. Then there is an entire gospel that is mostly destroyed/lost ...Mary Magdalene's. With the whole fact that she kept saying her Lord which could mean her husband...
the whole thing is way too open for us from a modern perspective to get confused.
The best thing to do is take the parts that make your life better to heart and live it. Benjamin Franklin did. He crafted his own bible. The most important thing is to try to do better. To try to improve oneself.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
People complain about fundamentalist, but isn't this just making it worse?
If the oldest bible was written around 400 BCE, then I doubt that their would be any mention of the resurrection, as that happpened 400 years later. I'm sure the OP meant 400 CE.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Regarding translations, you're criticising the KJV, which is around 400 years old. Scholarship is somewhat different now. Or should we evaluate science on the basis of Newton's theories and their failings with regard to relativistic speeds? Regarding 'the first Bible,' are you referring to the KJV or this manuscript? The KJV was not the first translation into English, let alone the first Bible. As for the codex, it is merely the earliest complete manuscript; there are fragments or even entire books that predate it. Besides which, it wouldn't say 'kill'; it wouldn't even have the Hebrew since the 10 commandments are in the Old Testament, not the New.
Hence pretty much every modern translation that uses better manuscripts and better scholarship rendering the word as 'murder' rather than 'kill'.
Anyway, murder isn't a perfect translation either because unlawful killing is by definition murder (or manslaughter), so to say murder is unlawful is virtually a tautology. At the end of the day, the sentence is a summary, as you pointed out. To find out what constitutes murder would require reading of the rest of the law anyway, so putting 'kill' instead isn't a disaster.
fnord
I don't believe: I accept or reject.
The Eastern Church of Christ has been using the Septuagint (the oldest text of the Old Testament available today, which is the Greek translation from Hebrew) and the New Testament (written in Greek) since about AD 100. Latin translations were used by the Western Church, the first latin translation was written much later (about AD 300). There's more to Christianity than the west, you know!
If you're going to bash, at least get your facts straight. Otherwise you just look foolish.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
It was dead and defined at the time of use. Whether it remained that way or not has little to do with the purposing for it. As for the questions of cannon law, sure, and for the exact reasons you stated. But those situations are what the use of Latin was attempting to limit.
I don't dispute this. But would you agree that someone could attend service anywhere and understand the bulk of the message without regard to the local languages? Sure, they wouldn't have the full experiences but at least on a fundamental level they got what most people went for. Now this has been relaxed a little. I'm not catholic but have attended sermon in other countries with friends I have visited and was actually surprised the first time I heard it all in German. Of course this sucked for me, my German skills end at "give me a beer" and "let me see your tits". I actually know a little more but nothing that was used in church.
LOL! That site is priceless.
How can anyone believe we evolved from monkeys heres a few questions for people who believe that
1.If we did evolve from monkeys then how come babies arent born monkeys
2.Even Darwin said his theories were wrong before he died so why do you still believe them
3.do you really not believe the bible it says we were created in seven days not millions of years
4.how come we cant speak monkey
That's it! I have been defeated by your impeccable logic! I'm converting!
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
According to wikipedia, the canon of the New Testament (compilation of books) was decided gradually and independently during a period of 200 years by the Churches and was written in the 1st century. The apocrypha (books outside the canon) were written after ~200, which means that they are almost certain the be historically inaccurate. Actually, historians (paragraph evaluation) agree with the Church canon. I would say that the facts prove you wrong.
Actually it is both in Latin and in Greek, and arameic, and hebrew, and ... The versions that were accepted as bible were initally spread with greek and latin versions of the same text on facing pages, or only the latin text.
I have no idea why you think this, because it's not true. I especially wonder why you think it when even the WP article that you cite in a nephew post contradicts this statement. All Latin versions of the New Testament are translations from Greek. The AC was absolutely correct.
It is of course arguable that some texts in the NT were translated from another language -- Aramaic (not Arameic) -- but no such original MSS survive. (Speaking personally I find the style in all of the first three gospels to be so un-Greek that I have always supposed that they were all translations from Aramaic, but from the WP article it seems that biblical scholars regard only Matthew as a candidate for a translation, so I'll bow to their greater knowledge ... assuming the WP article is accurate.)
No, it wasn't.
It was the living language of the Roman Empire when it was first used by the Church, and it evolved pretty much continuously from that point
The point was that there is a way to get the message across. It doesn't matter all the time if the words aren't exactly the same as long as you can take the same meanings away. This has happened with translations of the bible. There are tools like the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible which ensure that the proper meaning has been conveyed.
Often, words are transliterated instead of translated because there is no word in the language for it. Take jesus for example, Yeshua would have been the original Hebrew name but the Greeks didn't have anything with the same meanings or spelling (Now Greek has no "y" sound) behind it so it got translated as Iesous (pronounced "ee-ay-SUS"). This was later translated into Latin in which the English version was derived. But there were still problem in the Latin because the i is both an "i" and a "j" and can be a consonant in front of other vowels. It now became Iesus in Latin whihc translates into jesus and because in English pronounce the j, it is as we know it today. But no one has trouble understanding who Jesus is which proves my point.
Apparently, you're wrong, currently the Greek translation of the Hebrew original is considered to be more accurate than the Hebrew text (Masoretic) available today. By the way, how does your friend's reasoning handle that in Christ's time people would claim in front of Him that resurrection was a lie? Wasn't that a distortion of the Bible?
Nicene council: 325 AD
Constantine's conversion to Christianity: 312 AD
Basically ALL the particulars of Christianity were sorted out by Constantine I and his henchmen three centuries after Jebus got nailed up. They got the name wrong, only the inspired cartoon 'The Simpsons' has corrected it, but I digress).
Many were condemned as Heretics.
Constantine also had his own eldest son and wife executed in 326. Nobodies sure what for.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
People who take holy scripture literally are teh gay
Incidentally, despite the misleading title, this isn't the oldest surviving Bible; there are older copies of the Bible that are complete (i.e. Google it! :) )
I guess your right. For some reason I was thinking Rome had already fell when the church was created.
All translations are interpretations. Some have deliberate slant, some not.
The Mosaic law was never to be applied to non-jews. (Well it was applied, but Paul told them to knock it off). To argue otherwise is to misunderstand the transition in the book of Acts.
Yes, everyone old enough to know better IS sentenced to hell. I've accepted that on my own I'm not good enough for heaven, do you think you are? Or are you just hoping that by not believing in God he'll just go away?
God, what an atheist I am.
I got a chuckle out of that one
You say the Bible is fun to read: Read John through some time.
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
I was actually thinking more of the widely held view of how the moon was created from the earth, and how it would have to be done before the water and all life.
Still no problem with the framework view. As one of its primary exponents said of it, "The conclusion is that as far as the time frame is concerned, with respect to both the duration and sequence of events, the scientist is left free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about cosmic origins."
... I think that if God were the God that Christians think he is, then he would have just said we came from animals, because he would know that we would have found out eventually and it would cause many people to doubt and basically go to hell for using their brains.
Perhaps the point is that they didn't use their brains quite enough. Yes, religion requires faith, but so does every belief system, including yours. No one can prove their foundational principles are true; they simply must assume them. We must all have faith so that we may understand, as Augustine and Anselm said. The question is not faith or no faith, but rather which faith -- which faith is most consistent with my thoughts, my experience, and the way I live my life?
There are far too many things that need to be explained away. If you have to make lots and lots of complex addendums to a theory to keep it valid, it probably isn't actually a valid theory. Maybe you have to place limits on a theory to keep it simple (ie Newtonian physics only works on the level we see, it doesn't apply down on a subatomic level), and that's what you're doing by saying it's just a metaphor, but there are just too many issues for me to believe in it any more.
Perhaps you're making a broader argument about the Bible here, but at least with respect to the framework view of the Genesis 1-2:3 creation account, there is no such complex addendum keeping it valid. It is not Bible thumpers adjusting their interpretation to fit modern scientific theories (though that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself either). The order problem you mention was addressed by Augustine in the early 400s because of exegetical considerations from within the text itself, irrespective of what modern science would later say.
One of the most poignant things someone said to me in the last few months is that even if the Christian God does exist, they wouldn't want to worship him. And it's true. That a god would create a bunch of people knowing that some are going to hell, and still call himself 'good'/ is pretty sickening. The good thing to do would just be to blank those people out of existence.
You should read Tim Keller's book The Reason for God (or listen to his MP3 on on the topic of hell linked to from that website). He addresses this topic.
Basically, you can explain away anything if you want to.
Including the evidence for God?
That doesn't make them enemies.
At the most, it makes them separate principles that don't speak of each other. But that hardly makes them enemies.
The point was that there is a way to get the message across. It doesn't matter all the time if the words aren't exactly the same as long as you can take the same meanings away.
And my point is that there are TONS of things that don't translate. You -can't- take the same meanings away.
Tell me, how would one express the title of the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, in French? The english word game is deliberately being used both in its sense of 'something you play' 'checkers is a game' and in the sense of 'prey' as in a 'big game hunter'. That doesn't translate well.
You can talk about the hunting as a dangerous game, or you can talk about men as dangerous prey but you can't do both at once.
Or in French, according to the rules of grammar one can use tu or vous to address a singular person or multiple people respectively... while English only has 'you' for either case. However, in French the use of the word tu / vous also has a bearing on social distance and formality. One addresses friends and servants with tu, while vous is reserved for strangers and superiors. it would be quite rude and irregular for a waiter to refer to you as 'tu'. There really is no way to translate that to english while preserving the breach of etiquette and the insult it conveys.
But no one has trouble understanding who Jesus is which proves my point.
Proves nothing.
In one version of the bible I read a woman was 'great with child'; the image conjured was of a woman near the end of her pregnancy, with a large prominent belly. Some people I've spoken to have even gotten 'health and glow' pregnancy is known to convey into that phrase. Most people felt it expressed something 'uplifting' or 'positive'.
Another version simply translated it as 'pregnant'. This is a more ambiguous visual. And much more neutral in tone. Not outright 'negative', but not 'positive' either.
Why does it matter? imagine if jesus has spoken directly on abortion... should jesus have condemned the ending of a the life of an unborn child when a woman is 'pregnant' one might read that as no abortion allowed. Should jesus only have condemned the ending of the childs life when a woman is 'great with child' that might be read as consistent with it being unacceptable in the last trimester, but perhaps ok in the first trimester.
Two people who speak the same language can routinely read a passage of the bible and take a different meaning from it. So we can't express an idea accurately in ONE language, never mind try to express that idea accurately in multiple.
Two things:
Jesus wasn't a Rabbi.
Mary was a literal virgin. The Bible says she knew men not.
This isn't really as big of a problem as your stating. But that's also why the Strong's concordance is around.
I understand how you would see it this way but your forgetting the the bible isn't just a literary translation by itself. It is a tool more or less that came with teachings. You act as if it was translated, put on a shelve only to be rediscovered years later and translated again. This simply isn't the case. What is the case is that something was translated, and someone was around to tell you that the passionate or love meant fire as in the warm fuzzy feeling you get. Religions are, or at least they used to be meticulous at keeping the message the same. When it strays, you end up with a different denomination and while there are a few (3000 or so) different denominations, they all disagree on minor parts.
Something else that negates this effect with the bible is that people have had access to the original writings or duplications of them and have been able to verify to a high degree, their accuracy. So in this case, unilingual or not, "Hi, how are you" has the exact same meaning in the other language. With a few exception, the English bible is the same as the original texts except that contextual meanings sometimes need to be established. This is where a Strong's concordance comes in handy. And if you lack that, almost any church leader should be able to explain it.
So while it is true that translations can skew the meanings of the original statements, it is clear that it hasn't in this case. At least with more then 99% of the Christian Bible.
the bible was never "uncorrupted" in the first place. This is the kind of idealistic and idiotic thinking that religion encourages, that somehow, there was a "good old days" when people were pure and wholesome and then there was a "fall from grace" so that people today can be all said to be born with this "original sin" and thus in "need" of "salvation". Also there is scant evidence that jesus of nazereth even existed at all.
All religions are a lie. I was raised as a catholic, went to catholic school etc but as far as I can tell, the belief in god/jesus/whatever has about as much value to the believer as a fervent belief in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy or the Easter Bunny, i.e. no value at all. Rather it encourages blind conformity in case "god" is watching you and allows a small group to dictate what a large group of people believe and do. You don't have to watch people to make them *think* they are being watched....
The people that religious beliefs benefit are a small group, at the very top that knows that the whole thing is a gigantic lie to keep people in line and continuously distracted from practical issues such as how we are all being anally raped at the gas pump.
Well-rehearsed argument, and wrong in almost every detail.
Since you think Christianity is all wrong, why all the (95% bogus) research?
And I showed how things get TRANALITERATED instead of translated and a definition is placed on it to get the same meaning. Jesus is the same person regardless how you spell or pronounce the name.
This really doesn't matter because the bible comes with instructions. That is after all, what we are talking about isn't it? There is the Strong's concordance and of course church to explain all this away and keep things straight. So when you do the bible study thing, guess what, a teacher tells you about the etiquette and usage/meaning. In the end, people know what the original means.
But more importantly, almost all modern languages were derived from usage of the languages that the bible's books were documented in so there is really no conflicts like that. There might be in "The Greatest Game" but not in the Judea/Christian religions. This simply isn't a problem in the context we are discussing it. If it were, then people would know about it and it would have been addressed. Anything, if anything was, would already have been addressed by now.
Prove my point.
You already know that you have to take it in the context of the times it was written in. You also know that sometimes, when you don't understand something, you have to ask for help. There isn't a lot in the different denominations around the world that separate them because of a misreading of a passage. Most of the separation is because of Church Canon or emphasis on different things that say the same things.
There are tools out there that give you the exact context. Tools like the Strong's concordance, Churches and many others( Young's concordance). It isn't like your in a vacuum without any guidance anywhere. If you put a little effort into it,
You would have to be able to read Greek and Latin too.
But you would know it because reputable people would tell you about it. As it is, reputable people are telling your it is accurate. You see, There are people who read those other languages and they have checked too. But if you really want to make sure your getting the right meaning, pick up a Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible which will give you a cross reference to the original languages, show a tract between translations and give you the definitions of the words. It also does this for words used in each chapter so you can get the meaning in Mark and Revelations or whatever.
My favorite which isn't listed there is, if evolution is true, then why did it all the sudden stop.
Shouldn't the sig say:
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who was washing Waldo Woo.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You do realize that most of the posts there are trolls making fun of fundies right?
There was a competition a while back to see how many people could get something on it.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
Wikipedia is as good as anywhere:
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
Oh, you done grammar Nazi'd the immortal Dr. Seuss! Deduct 2 points of karma, count your rosaries, and meditate about what you did.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It wasn't a grammar thing. The OP was apparently playing a "w" game in the sig, and it seemed obvious that the "is" could be "was", adding "2 points" (?) to the OP's score.
As for the actual topic, I have read quite a bit about the history of the Bible, but I don't have time (or sufficient interest) to say anything substantive about the Book of J. My general conclusion is that information theory has taught us how to transmit messages clearly. Therefore from the Bible we must conclude that either God is not omniscient (since He wasn't aware of information theory and didn't use it for his 'special' message) or that the Bible was not written by any omniscient being. We human beings only learned about the mathematics of information encoding around 1950.
Maybe there is a God, but I hope he isn't an idiot. I haven't met him--but I've met plenty of human idiots, and there's plenty of evidence the Bible was written by regular fools like you and me.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I seriously don't know how this one found its way past the hose...
In any event what you make obvious from your summary is that you are an atheist with a chip on your shoulder. Did mommy take away your freedom, regularly stuff you in formal attire and force you to be abused by a legalistic preacher?
The Codex Sinaiticus is from around 350CE your date's off by a few years. Further, the book as I understand it has pages scattered all over the world with so many missing you can't help but get a swiss cheese version of the Bible.
Mark is also not the only mention of Jesus' resurrection. There's not a book of the new testament that doesn't either allude to or outright proclaim it. The old testament has all manner of prophecy speaking of it as well. I really don't understand the point you were trying to make.
Perhaps you should step off your prejudices for a bit and take a fresh look at the subject before you spray any more ignorant non-sense.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Not trying to be pedantic or anything, but if you just take the parts of the Bible that you think are "good" for you, similar to Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson for that matter, you run an awful big risk. What if the parts that you ignored were equally as true as the parts you kept in? In fact often the parts that people like to keep only logically follow if the parts that people like to keep out are true as well.
I'll just pick one example of something that most people like to keep in. Jesus's death and Resurrection. The first question I have to ask is Why did he have to die for people's sins? Couldn't God just sort of sweep them under the table and ignore them, the way a 'loving' parent might do for a kid who occasionally steals from her liquor cabinet? To extend the illustration, what if the kid steals liquor and he drives drunk and kills someone. Wouldn't you cry out for justice against both the kid and the parent? Both had a responsibility to not disobey, and yet they did. Justice demands that they both be punished.
Its the same with Sin. Things that we do or think that violate God's law are bad enough that they deserve punishment. It turns out for a perfect God, sin can only be punished by death, since only death is both serious enough to assuage the travesty of sin, and ensures that the person won't spoil God's perfection.
So now what is God left to do? Sin's bad and deserves justice, God is Just so he must punish Sin, but He loves those whom He's made, so He devised a way to both satisfy His Judgment and show His love. He sacrificed His Son for us to take that penalty, and then He raised His Son from the dead to show that His Son's death was acceptable as payment. He even goes beyond that and places Jesus's perfect righteous on us so that we can join Him in heaven. Our only requirement is to believe that this is true.
So that got a little longer than I meant it to, but I hope you get at least a glimpse of the danger of taking only part of the Bible. I will of course not be offended if you don't agree with what I've written, though I will be sad due to the risk you are willingly, though without complete knowledge, taking.
Sig 'em boy!
You can split the difference between Greek and the Teletubbies version by going with the Old King James. Using a Strong's Concordance you can match word for word to the original Greek new testament and the Aramaic/Hebrew old.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
people "have faith" because their parents "had faith" or because they are too weak to face reality. That is all.
> Yeah Latin is still available to anyone who wants to take it
:-)
Depends on the school.
At my high school, I had the choice of Spanish or French. No other foreign languages were offered, period. At the time, I selected Spanish for idiotic reasons having to do with the nasality of French. Had I to do over again, I'd select French over Spanish because of its greater influence on English over the last several centuries. But if Latin had been offered, I *certainly* would have chosen to take that instead of either Spanish or French. I definitely wanted to take Latin, and annoyed numerous people by saying so. Dead languages have always fascinated me. Alas, Latin was not an option.
But I made up for it in college by taking crosslisted seminary Greek (which fits nicely with the current topic, incidentally) for electives.
Perhaps some day I will take Sanskrit, and then when people boast about knowing Latin I can put them in their place
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
And if Protestants are to consider any translation of the Bible as divinely inspired, why not Luther's translation of the Bible into German?
Oh wait, the KJV enthusiasts are usually American or British fundamentalists and so don't speak German and probably don't even know what Luther wrote.
And besides, God always speaks English. A thousand biblical epics cannot be wrong.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Well, you'll have to ask yourself: how is it that all these years you've thought that that commandment was "thou shalt not kill," yet the ONLY one of God's laws that appears in ALL five of the first five books of the bible (the Pentateuch or the Torah) is that murderers shall be put to death by Man. How on Earth did God expect us, the people here on Earth, to put murderers to death but simultaneously obey "thou shalt not kill"? Answer? He didn't. It's a mistranslation (perhaps one of the biggest in history). And you didn't know it for the same reason I didn't know it for so long: nobody told me. So be VERY wary of what you think you know from a religuious standpoint, because it may very well be that you believe FAR too much of it simply because people before you whom you trusted and repected believed it too, and they passed it down to you.
Yes, I meant Arius--thanks. My point was that the selection of the canon is itself in line with a particular set of theological views. Just as is in any canon, it is presented as the objective "best" when in fact it is considered best because it supports the views of those that selected it.
How is Apostolic authority judged? By conformity to a set of beliefs. Anything that differs from the beliefs accepted by those selecting the canon is considered to be of poor authority, of dubious provenance, etc.
I'm not an expert, but I've read this in several places. Granted, these books are all of the skeptical variety, and they represent a parallel, very different version of history to the books that present the Bible's assembly as a more orderly process, free of interpretation, dogmatic screening, and persecution.
I'm not saying that this was evil, or trying to impugn the Bible. I'm only saying that which books went into the Bible was more a reflection of the theological views of those doing the selecting than it was a concern for historical accuracy as we would demand when, say, assembling an anthology on the battle of Stalingrad. Even THEN, the selections would still represent a certain set of views. We're human, and can't escape that.
It depends on which kind of Christian you are: the kind who believes Jesus came to establish a New Covenant that supersedes the Old, or the kind who believes that he came to FULFILL the old laws. There are both kinds of Christians, and both have evidence from the Bible to back them up.
I suspect Bush is the latter kind, and if that is the case, he is only following Old Testament law: murderers shall be put to death. So as far as he's concerned, not only is he following the law of the state, he's following the law of God.
Just because it's an anthology doesn't mean it's not a book.
Sounds like you know your stuff. You should really try to ween yourself of the "noone" usage, though. There is no such word (forgive me if that was merely a typo).
I didn't put a too fine point on the versions, translations, and so on. It is very obvious that this book fails on being "the word of god" when there are significant differences depending on which on you read.
I realize that scholarship is different now, but let's be honest, the religion as taught by the churches to their common followers has very little to do with the fine points of theological scholarship. Regarding the choice of the term "kill", I don't see how it matters what the Greek or whatever version really says. I judge the church on what they use officially today. And, for example, the official German bible of the catholic church uses "du sollst nicht tÃten", with tÃten == kill. So, that's the commandment for its German followers. If they mean something else, well, they should use a different term.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Crap. It's "du sollst nicht töten"
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
This is ridiculous. Up to today, the German-language catholic church teaches "du sollst nicht töten". töten == kill. If they mean something else, well SAY SO!
Further, if I were to find out all the contradictions in the bible, I'd die before being done. I just disregard it as being the word of god and am happy with that. This is why I am clueless about all the finer points. In my view, people investing their lives and their religious belief in a book that was written collectively by hundreds of people, over more than a thousand years, by an organization that is well-known for blatant lying if in its interest (look up the Donation of Constantine for an exammple), are insane.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Absolutely refraining from killing creates moral paradoxes. Sometimes there are situations where you have to kill people to prevent something bad from happening. If you simply sit by and let it happen, how are you being a good Christian? Pacifism only works in a fantasy world, unless you seriously don't give a shit about anyone or anything.
I recall Jesus telling his disciples to carry swords. And anyway, he was Jesus, not Joe Random. Just because he did something doesn't mean you should blindly do the same in every imaginable situation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War
"If you're going to bash, at least get your facts straight. Otherwise you just look foolish."
What "facts" are you referring to?
Did I get the mormon cult leaders name wrong?
So sorry, I can't keep up with all of them.
And yes, I'm the biggest fool on the planet simply because I believe there may be intelligent life on Slash Dot other than knee jerk reactionaries.
And I still see little evidence of any.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
About your first point: I know that, but I am not the one that wrote "thou shalt not kill".
About your second point: he also told them to not use them.
About your third point: they get the authority from Wikipedia? ;) Seriously, I know that people think about such stuff. The question as why human thinking suddenly overrules the word of god.
Sorry, I have to be curt because actually I gotta run to work. Anyway, we could argue about the contradictions in the bible all year without exhausting them. It all just proves my point that one cannot derive moral authority from the bible.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
those 10 commandmenty thingies are pretty much the fundamental building blocks of the religion
Actually, according to Jesus those are just expressions of the greatest command.
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
I don't know where you got your ideas about evolution, but I think you should redo your research in that area. First of all, quoting Darwin is useless, as the scientific theory of evolution has been refined since.
Second, the theory of evolution it not about "survival of the fittest" and it does not say that any difference is cause for lethal competition. It's about disadvantages to the weakest, and what the "weakest" is is totally depending on the context.
And why you bring Hitler into your reasoning is a mystery to me, as evolution has absolutely nothing to say about individuals.
You where doing very well with your reasoning, pity you showed your delusions in that last 1/3rd of it.
Of course we do. That's why no proper source will ever say "this _was_ written in 200 AD" but always something like "this was dated to..." indicating that that dating could be flawed.
Whenever there is a new dating method, or new correlating evidence, the dating is re-checked.
and is omnipotent, therefore knowing the future, we have no free will. That would mean that it doesn't matter wheter we believe or not; we have no choice.
Christianity is not like Islam. It's been constantly reinterpreted and changed. That's just how it is.
The conclusion is that as far as the time frame is concerned, with respect to both the duration and sequence of events, the scientist is left free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about cosmic origins
Which is another way of saying "it doesn't matter if the bible has things wrong, let's just forget this part of the bible and concentrate on the other stuff". Lots of the bible is 'good' morally speaking, and so useful in some ways, but I'd been brought up to believe the bible was 'infallible' and now that I see it isn't, and have thought about the incongruity of a few different things, it just seems very man-made to me now.
I don't particularly have a belief system right now, but yes everything requires faith and assumptions. That doesn't necessarily mean that your assumptions are correct either. A few of my assumptions may turn out to be wrong (though I'm trying not to assume too much at the moment - I do have some reasons to believe in spiritual things, but I have never seen any real evidence for Christianity specifically being true).
I have heard the reasoning behind things like punishment for sin before. I was part of the Free Church of Scotland which is a very fundamental branch of the church, Calvinistic etc. The ideas behind Calvinism make me think that prayer is a pointless exercise other than to brainwash people into continuing to believe things, or to get them to go out and actually do the things that they're praying for anyway. Church follows a lot of the patterns of brainwashing (scare people and offer them a solution, make them feel special/separated from the rest of the world by certain rites, blah blah blah).
Yes, you can explain away anything you want to like I said. I don't try to explain away evidence for God, I just believe that the Christian God either does not exist, or is not even worth worshipping if he does.
which is totally what she said
They also use the bible and their personal interpretation of it to justify their own wanton greed and the destruction of the innocent. George Bush, for example, claims to be a Christian. Hasn't he heard "thou shalt not kill?"
That depends on whether your interpretation (translation) of the commandment is "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou shalt not murder". Capital punishment is not murder.
I have no problem with that, but if what it means changes every few years, they should stop acting each time like it's the definitive word of god. Simple.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Any special reason?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Hitler's rise to power came with the socialists obsession with "eugenics". You might want to look that one up, and read a bit about it. Eugenics is a simple theory : let's let the state control genetic evolution. The methods that such policy requires are the problem.
Besides the socialists are once again on about how there are "too many people". It is generally agreed that population of the world needs to be brought down in the democratic party, and al gore's been repeating just that for a while now.
I do wonder what will happen once they (once again) realize that any acceptable method will have too little effect and/or go too slowly.
"Manuscript -- Too many concurrent connections (> 100.000). The manuscript page is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." Good job -- we just slashdotted God.
Jim Shilliday
I AM the OP... You've never heard of Dr. Seuss? I can't "correct" the quote in my sig or even really improve it - it comes straight out of the book "ABC".
As to religion... well, I happen to believe that you don't need to look beyond science to explain the natural world - I've seen no evidence of an event that requires a miracle as explanation.
Now the supernatural world, if it exists, would have to be explained by religion because science only concerns itself with the natural world. Now, it's not that I don't believe in a God or creator or what have you - it's just that I don't see any evidence that there has been any interaction between the supernatural and natural worlds. So, sure, there could be a god - but it's really irrelevant to my life here in the natural world.
Maybe in the future I will find a spiritual void that needs to be filled, but that isn't currently the case. I certainly won't disparage those who do find that religion suits them.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You're making us all look bad, /.
BCE means Before the Common Era, also known as BC.
The Codex dates to the 4th century CE, also known as AD.
I don't quite agree with you.
The King James Version (translation) was not inspired. If you read my description of what inspired means, you would see that it doesn't apply to translations, but only the autographs.
Textual criticism is the science of determining how close a copy (in the original language) is to the original "autograph".
"If God had intended us to walk he would not have invented roller skates." -- Willy Wonka
I was referring to questioning whether the book had been copied accurately. Nobody seems to doubt that.
How is Apostolic authority judged? By conformity to a set of beliefs.
Actually, Apostolic authority is judged by a connection to the people whom Jesus appointed as apostles.
Hundreds of posts to rationalize a religion based on faith. It fails from both ends. Those who don't believe in God (in the Christian sense) try to come up with rational arguments to prove He isn't real. On the other side of the coin, you can't prove God exists to someone who has no faith. You either believe it or you don't. Incidentally, though it has been said a eleventynine times above, looks like the contributor was so quick to try to give the Bible a black eye that he really stepped in it.
Then go back to archives from a few years ago. The archives stretch back to something like 2000-2001. That was just when the project collected posts and people didn't even think to try and troll it.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I only know you by your sig (which you had changed at that time)--and only vaguely. You do have a nice user ID number, however.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You do have a nice user ID number, however.
Unfortunately, because it is so easy to remember, I don't get any geek credit for remembering it. :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Assuming your retelling to be truthful then these people were probably not Christians, you understand that right?
i love the 'if people who call themselves christians do something that seems [fill in bad thing here] they are not [real] christians.' argument.
you're logic is a tad faulty. you're assuming christian == moral/ethical. it doesn't.
christian == someone who believes in jesus christ as the son of god incarnate. generally christians also believe in the resurrection, but not always.
some christians are ethical, some aren't. if a priest molests, he's an unethical christian. you don't get a free pass b/c you conflate belief in an avatar with being an ethical person.
The problem with many of you atheists
One doesn't need to be an atheist to have valid critisims of Christianity and the way that Christians behave.
No, I will not work for your startup
Okay; thanks for the clarification.
www.wavefront-av.com
The conclusion is that as far as the time frame is concerned, with respect to both the duration and sequence of events, the scientist is left free of biblical constraints in hypothesizing about cosmic origins
Which is another way of saying "it doesn't matter if the bible has things wrong, let's just forget this part of the bible and concentrate on the other stuff".
No, it's another way of saying that the Bible is not a science book and shouldn't be read as such, and it's "chronological snobbery" (as CS Lewis put it) and old fashioned arrogance and ego-centricity to insist that it or God must answer every question we have.
Personally I think John is an eye witness account - if it is not, it was written by a literary genius who developed a level of realism well ahead of his time: the inclusion of unnecessary details, the exclusion of detail likely to have been forgotten between the event and its recollection. Add to that the assertion that it was written by John himself, missing from the other gospels.
Just one tiny detail: Christ spoke Aramaic and the early bibles were all written in Greek.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
That's more an Islamic interpretation (and possibly that of some Puritanical protestant sects). Christian and especially Catholic tradition is that the Bible is the starting point and that ongoing revelation through the Holy Spirit is more important.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
At least one person -William Lane Craig- will be convinced by that line of arguing...
Not for the Old Testament it isn't! That's mostly in Hebrew, with a few, short sections in Aramaic. (There's a pair of letters and a commentary between them in Ezra, I think it is, and the book of Daniel switches from Hebrew to Aramaic in mid-sentence and stays there for a while before coming back.)
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lol. That's the problem with being entrenched in your beliefs. Even when something is shown to you that apparently contradicts what you believe, you manage to invent some excuse to twist things round to your own view point. Bravo. Myself, I think this logically shows that the Christian God is either a bastard or simply isn't there (you will disagree saying God's intelligence and sense of justice is far above our own, but if you had never had any beliefs and were presented all the religions and the pros and cons, you would discount Christianity because of this kind of thing):
The majority of people who ever existed never heard of Jesus or were given a chance to worship the Israelite God. I expect probably at least 95% of the people who ever lived. Even today not many people know about Jesus. If you believe that God gives them a chance anyway, then why witness to them? If you are going to make their punishment worse by witnessing to them (everyone will be judged based on the knowledge given to them), then you will just be making it worse for some people.
Secondly, why bother sending people to hell at all? Especially for an eternity. I can understand punishment for say a million years if sin really is that big a deal to a 'perfect' God - who somehow is not responsible for sin in any way, but let it come into existence anyway. *sigh* There are just so many illogicalities in all of this that it's insane I ever believed it, but that's what happens when you are brought up in a Christian home and want to fit in.
Yes I have slight reason to believe in spiritual things, but I have no experiences in life to specifically make me think that the Christian God is real, and I believe from just the way the church is so divided, and from the way I've seen many Christians act, that the church is a very human endeavour.
which is totally what she said
I'm fascinated by your comment. Could you give an example of what you mean?
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Well, this depends on your definition of "authenticity". If you mean that the Bible was written a long time ago, then yes, old versions do show us that the Bible was not written 100yrs ago. However, old versions can tell us nothing about the truth of the statements in the text, other than that they weren't written recently. Just because they were part of the "original" text does not make them true. As such I would say that old texts prove very little.
I think if you asked an "average" Christian, i.e. one who isn't a Biblical scholar, they would be somewhat surprised to learn about the council of Nicea etc. and the amount of editing that has been performed over the years by men.
Such is your opinion. I have also listened to many debates, and it is clear to me that the critics of the Bible have the better case. Which is really irrelevant to the topic at hand as it's just my opinion.
Absolutely true. Though I feel I should point out that it seems that in my experience, when the highly educated go up against the poorly educated to discuss religion, the averages have the highly educated side opposing religion. Please note I said the averages, as I know a few highly educated Christians myself.
I have heard many priests speak eloquently and reasonably on the topic of religion, however the arguments and positions they take when discussing faith with an educated atheist are far removed from the positions they take when preaching to the "unwashed masses" as it were.
The difference, of course, is that cold fusion can be independently verified. If someone claims to have cracked it, then we can all have a go at replicating their experiment and check for ourselves if they are correct or not. The same is not true of church leaders. How can you tell if a preacher is lying or mistaken about the meaning or veracity of a Bible passage?
Look, I'm not interested in debating you on this or any other random point of doctrine you might bring up. See Keller's book and/or MP3 on hell, which represents as well thought-out (not to mention NYTimes best-selling) position as you're likely to find. If you don't find that persuasive, I doubt I can add anything that would change your mind.
Your comment that drew my attention was (emphasis mine): "One of the main reasons I have decided that the bible is a load of rubbish is not just that Genesis only takes 7 'days', but the way things are done are in the wrong order, so it doesn't really even make much sense as a metaphor."
My point in responding to you here is that, while I think there are some difficulties that may amount to good reasons for tossing out the Bible (formation of the canon, internal inconsistencies, etc.), this is not one of them. You make the same error as the young earth fundamentalist in failing to account for the genre of Genesis 1 and instead reading it through a modern scientific lens.
If this is what you base your doubts on, you need to be more skeptical of your attempt at skepticism.
That was one of the main things initially, but since then I have reconsidered a lot of other things, and the whole thing just makes a lot more sense from the point of view that the bible is man-made rather than God-breathed. I know all the bullshit reasoning about why God let sin into the world, why people have to go to hell for it etc, but it does not seem like Justice to me. You will believe that God's concept of justice is above our own, but now I believe that in fact it was just the Israelites idea of justice and their own self importance. How likely is it that God would choose one race and let all the others for thouuuusands of years just go to Hell? And even today the majority of people are going to Hell. It's pretty easy to ignore how unjust the whole idea is if you take it locally, where most people around you have at least some exposure to Jesus, but taken on a global scale over thousands of years, it is ludicrous. It's the sort of thing you just gloss over if you're trying to explain the bible away, but when you start doubting the validity of the whole thing, you don't have to gloss over it anymore and can just accept that it's a load of bollocks.
So to reiterate - I now base my doubts on all of it, the stuff that I'd previously explained away with a complex web of interweaving crap. If you selectively ignore things and just say "oh, we'll never understand that because it's way above us" rather than accepting that the Israelite god was just as much a man-made thing as Baal and all the other gods from that era, then you are just convincing yourself of a lie. I understand how easy it is to do that once you are entrenched in your beliefs, believe me, but I now see that I was just being an idiot. I don't care if Genesis was a poem, it is possible to make a poem beautiful and yet factual at the same time. If you always operate on the assumption that the bible is truth then you will find ways of making it such in your head. If you operate on the assumption that it is man-made, then you no longer have to make pathetic excuses for why Genesis is wrong, why there are so many supposedly Christian denominations that believe totally different things (if God was there then he would be guiding them more to be of one body and believe the same things), and any inconsistency is not to do with divine wisdom and mystery, it is simply due to everything being made up.
I admire people who at least try to reason and think about their beliefs and defend them, it shows strength of character, but I also am disappointed that people can be made to believe rubbish so easily. If you think about Buddhists or Muslims or whatever you'll think "how could they believe that rubbish, it's obviously not The Way", but yet they think the same of you, and now I think the same of all Christians. It's all a matter of perspective, and I am at least attempting to be more reasonable rather than just go with what I have been conditioned (by others and by myself) to believe.
which is totally what she said
That [the order of creation in Gen 1] was one of the main things initially, but since then I have reconsidered a lot of other things, and the whole thing just makes a lot more sense from the point of view that the bible is man-made rather than God-breathed.
Fair enough, but my point is your "main reason" (here an "initial main reason") is of one cloth with 24-hour literalism and hence is an equally wrong-headed approach to the text. Better watch the company you keep.
I am at least attempting to be more reasonable rather than just go with what I have been conditioned (by others and by myself) to believe.
Bad news, Bucko. You're still putting your faith in someone. All worldviews ultimately boil down to faith commitments, even hyper-skeptical, absurdist worldviews.
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