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.
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).
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.
The bible is 4th century BCE scifi.
It has won a popularity contest though 600 years later.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
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.
Now I guess that's a joke, but the "Bible" can refer to either the Jewish Bible (the Torah) (what Christians tend to call the "Old Testament"), or to the Christian Bible (which is both the Jewish Bible and the "New Testament").
Of course, "the" bible is a bit of a silly thing to say of course, because there are a heck of a lot more then just one of them. There are multiple versions of the Christian "New Testament" (incidentally a some Jews get upset with the old/new distinction, I don't know why...), ranging from versions in the "original" Greek, through to translations into Latin, and then various translations into English, all of which introduce changes into "the word of God". (One reason Muslims say that Arabic is the only language of Koran is prevent this problem of translations.) It isn't just translations that introduce changes either, a number of gospels were thrown out of the original Christian bible, and have only in the last hundred years or so started to be rediscovered. And then there are multiple versions of the Torah as well (translations, etc.).
So in reality, when you talk of "the bible" or even the "New Testament", you aren't talking about one thing. (And it sorta makes a mockery of the whole word of god thing. Why should I follow your bible version, when mine very distinctly doesn't include the commandment one about working six days, but actually says three days and then taking the other 4 days off? And even if it is included in your bible, why should I follow it if you don't? Does "give away all your possessions" sound familiar? Or it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then a rich man to enter heaven?)
Back onto the original topic of this old scrap paper being put online. Yup, it's a good thing when this old stuff is digitalised, because coping bits is a fuck load easier then coping hard copy. Opening this up to scholars around the world (most of whom would never have had a chance to see it otherwise), means that differences and contradictions between this and the modern versions can be picked up and pointed out.
(And now for a random troll, fuck religion and the horse it rode in on!)
I wank in the shower.
"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
You're aware that 400 AD is in the 5th century, right? This Bible was really written between 330 and 350 [1].
You just got troll'd!
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
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.
Unlike most SciFi Chanel shows, though, this one was not canceled. It has been running for 2000+ seasons!
You're aware that 400 AD is in the 5th century, right?
Don't you mean 401 AD is the 5th century, since this non-technology-savvy counting starts with 1? I believe we did this to death back in the years 1999, 2000 and 2001 and then some. :)
You would be amazed how many people would be put to death if society decided to follow the bible as it is interpreted today. I can promise you, the homosexuals would be a miniscule portion of the people who would get their throats cut and stoned to death. Does "For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death," sound familiar? hehe. That's just one little line that plays a role against today's society, especially in the USA. The bible is fun to read and quote. You bring up quotes that say I'm going to hell, then I bring up quotes that say you are going to hell. Fun! God, what an atheist I am.
Although the chance that anyone on Slashdot will bother to read the text is low.
Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted, god gets quite irate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The oldest and the newest bibles on the same internets!
"sudo rm -rf your-face"
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.
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
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 always wondered that if all human knowledge/evidence was lost, books, video clips etc. (With one exception) and a handful of humans survived, with no prior knowledge of anything before themselves except a grasp of English, and these people were to find the only surviving books, a complete works of J. R. R. Tolkien, what the hell religion would be like then.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
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?)
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.
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.
Having the devil cast into a fiery pit with his minions, then everyone else going to a massive city made of gold and gems to live with God and Jesus isn't a happy ending for Christians?
Have you read it?
which is totally what she said
"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
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
The Buddhist suttas of the Theravada tradition would like to have a word with you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pali_Canon
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.
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)
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
I never speak about my faith on slashdot generally, since doing so tends to get exactly same reactionism without considderation as talking to a Southern Baptist about evolution does. Most Christians in the rest of the world think American Christians are idiots who give us all a bad name. Not least because they seriously underestimate the very God they will use as an excuse to do anything they want and control everybody else.
Enlightened Christians have long since decided that Genesis is METAPHORICAL not LITERAL. Many parts of the Bible are literal truth and we often have archeological evidence to back them up (See the Towns built by Solomon for example - archeologists on those digs actually use the book of Kings to know WHERE to dig for WHAT part), many parts are not. The prodigial son is not literal truth - it's a teaching story. So why is it so hard to think that Genesis was a teaching story for a humanity 3000 years to early to understand the science of evolution ? It's point is that God created the universe and life, not HOW ! Evolution and the big bang theories make no claim otherwise (at least, when it's done by proper scientists without an agenda).
What's worse is that they really don't seem to get what 'allmighty' MEANS. God is not bound by time ! He says it in the gospels and they still pretend otherwise. There is no reason why both the creation tales in Genesis AND evolution can't all three be literal truth ! God could create the earth in six days AND in the universe in a hundred billion years without contradiction - time happens to other people. Any God who couldn't do that wouldn't even be very potent, let alone OMNIpotent !
It's like the old question of whether God could create something to heavy for him to lift. The answer to one of faith is a simple "yes". And afterwards, he could lift it. This is only logically inconsistent if you are bound by the laws of logic - God can change them to suit himself.
Many people have forgotten that Christianity is all about love. Try this one out. A common reading of some texts get people to claim 'do good unto all, and especially good unto others of the same faith'. I read it the exact opposite: do ESPECIALLY good to people of other religions. Don't try to convert people with long speeches, or draconic laws ! The bible tells us that most important act of mission we must do is the example of love. American fundamentalists are creating a global impression of Christians as people without understanding or empathy or love - and that is undoing the single most important task given to them by God AND Jesus. Charity is the ultimate form of mission - and charity without agenda, those who - impressed by it - ASKS - you then teach why you do it, that you are trying to show the same love you have received. If Christians were any good at actually acting according to their faith - we would not be in the PR disaster we are in.
Some protestant theological schools (notably my own church's) even have a required subject for preachers called "criticism of scripture" which studies historical alteration of the Bible, modification of meanings, likely entries that got added by accident and the like and evaluates it line by line to try and improve the quality. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a correction (think 30-40 years) which then goes for ultimate approval (with all the evidence) to the synod - but they do happen, and being rash with them would be irresponsible- and it helps that every preacher voting at the synod will have studied the subject, and probably participated in some of the research when they were students.
So the vision of Christians as closed-minded bigots is limited to a few groups scattered around the world, with the American bible-belt most likely the single largest concentration - it is not how most Christians live and act. Most Christians do NOT think the SPLA deserves any of our support. We do not think we should get to write the laws either, quite the contrary - our mandate according to Jesus is to follow the law, whatever the
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The fact that somebody actually got modded +5 for questioning the occurrence of World War I has certainly given ME faith in miracles.
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.
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.
Yep, it's insults all the way down.
America, Home of the Brave.
contradict yourself much there?
"validating the resurrection is not difficult"
actually it's impossible, since no verifiable resurrection has occurred that modern science has been able to observe and your primary example of christ happened 2000 years ago and doesn't even occur in this earliest known bible.
"but there will always be a missing piece without the existance of God. "
and there is the difference between us. when i see a missing piece to a puzzle i use science to find the truth, you primitive savages fill it with god.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
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."
I thought Landover baptist was a parody site?
You mad
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.
Will it blend?
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
*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 . . . .
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
...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?"
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.' "
The word you want for the "semi-official" texts is "apocrypha".
I write sci-fi for metalheads
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'"
Chorus angelorum te suscipiat et cum GNAA quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.
*smack*
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
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.
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?"
I stopped reading when you said
"Many parts of the Bible are literal truth and we often have archeological evidence to back them up (See the Towns built by Solomon for example - archeologists on those digs actually use the book of Kings to know WHERE to dig for WHAT part), many parts are not."
If I write a sci-fi book using the city of London as a location, but populate it with godzilla and flying cars, what relevance does London actually existing have to the rest of the story's veracity ?
Unless the whole document is true, then none of it can be relied upon to be an accurate representation of what went on at the time.
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?
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.
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.
If I had mod points, you'd be getting them.
Still, don't lump all "American Christians" into the same bucket, either. Some of us do have a bit of sense.
Regarding the homosexuality issue, as I told a friend of mine once, "A few lines later the bible condems men with long hair. You don't see any 'God Hates Mullets' signs, do you?"
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...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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)
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/
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
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. =====
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
Wikipedia is as good as anywhere:
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."