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).
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.
The Muslims will surely try to use it to debase Christianity further.
Hmm? Muslims consider Jesus a prophet of God, and the Jews and Christians are the other "people of the book", and are held at a higher level than other infidels. I don't see the Muslims disparaging other religions (atleast, other monotheistic ones); if anything, after the Mohammed cartoon controversity, I'd imagine they'd want more "protection" against blasphemizing Jewish and Christian beliefs, so that their beliefs can be "protected" against blasphemy as well.
"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
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...
higher level than other infidels
Oh, so there's a caste system for infidels? Goody! Put me at the bottom, k?
I don't see the Muslims disparaging other religions
Really? I've heard Muslims call Jews rats, dogs, bastards, pigs....
As a side issue: wtf is up with Islam and dogs? Jesus friggin' Christ. Any religion that doesn't "allow" a boy to have a dog as a pet is... sick.
after the Mohammed cartoon controversity, I'd imagine they'd want more "protection"
You mean censorship?
"protected" against blasphemy
Fail.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
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.
True, that. All the usual religious suspects will throw a fit, because they know well that common insight into how their religion has evolved over time instead of being conceived in perfection ab initio, will destroy any claim to any higher power being the original source.
If you're one of the nutjobs claiming that the bible is "god's word" in the literal sense, and not a human creation, then evidence that "the bible" doesn't exist, but is a collection that changed over time, is the death-blow to a core pillar of your faith.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Unlike most SciFi Chanel shows, though, this one was not canceled. It has been running for 2000+ seasons!
You ever try putting a burkha on a dog?
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.
Warning: Religious POV ahead...
I could comment on the Catholic one, it is so true, well at least in our area (or at least with the devouts). People ( not just Catholics ) would tend to follow their religion blindly even if it contradicts with the Bible (or their religious texts)
I had encountered some that rants that they're doing this and that and that they're not doing this and that... I sometimes would ask them if what they're doing is in the Bible (or the other way around, i.e. they're not doing the things stated in the Bible) (or any other religious text)
I often get the answer that the leaders of their sect tells so. I would tell them that it is pointless to contradict or not follow your "manual" or "foundation". Well my point is moot to them most of the time.
Conclusion: Most of the religions use the Bible as a front. If it contradicts their purpose, they would ignore that part. If it is not there and they like to do it, they would still do it.
okay back to regular programming..
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.
Muslims don't have a problem with dogs, they have a problem with *pet* dogs.
You can own a dog to protect your property or yourself, but it shouldn't be allowed into the house.
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
This will probably never get seen and not get modded up, but while you are correct in one sense you are not in another; as a Muslim let me explain:
A fundamental belief in Islam is that through the ages, the uncorrupted Bible became rife with revisions and mistakes - the resurrection of Jesus being a prime example (the other big one being the trinity). For Muslims then, this version of the Bible bolsters the belief that Christianity during the time when Islam was beginning, was corrupted - not the word of God, but the word of man, if you will.
Without these changes there isn't a need for Islam because Islam (like Christianity) and Muslims perceive Islam as a correction to faiths before it.
I say all this as a Muslim and you are right - most Muslims do and all should respect the other people of the book (and other faiths as well - I was born in the West and other people's religions are none of my business). Moreover, there is an overlap in the views of people of faith especially extremists): Muslim-Americans voted in droves for George W. Bush in droves the first time around because they saw the Christian's right family/conservative values issues as overlapping with their own (as a small L liberal I found that particularly disgusting and as a result refuse to have anything to do with CAIR, who endorsed Bush).
Some Muslims may see a "hierarchy of infidels" but I think calling anyone an infidel, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, is pretty blasphemous myself.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
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?)
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
The Buddhist suttas of the Theravada tradition would like to have a word with you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pali_Canon
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)
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 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 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 *
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.
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."
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.
*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?"
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.
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)
fundamental belief in Islam is that through the ages, the uncorrupted Bible became rife with revisions and mistakes - the resurrection of Jesus being a prime example (the other big one being the trinity).
Being a muslim, I can see how you got this wrong, but the Trinity was never outlined in the bible. It is a tenant of faith that was conceived by the Church later on. I believe the councils of Nicea and Trent established it.
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
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.
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.'"
Tertullian espoused trinitarian theology back in the 2nd century (and in fact coined the term "trinity" in its theological sense), based on various proof texts where the Bible equates God, Jesus, and the holy spirit as being the same in power and substance, which essentially means they are the same person. Of course, this interpretation requires the use of logical inference (which shouldn't be a problem for anyone who's had to take a college class on law, philosophy, or higher-level mathematics).
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.
The Mormons will....
The Mormons "believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly" (Article of Faith 8). The idea of humans corrupting the inspired records of the Bible is basic to our understanding of the last 2000 years of religious history. The Book of Mormon speaks of "plain and precious things which have been taken away."
On the other hand, the fact of the resurrection and many other Christian doctrines is corroborated by other (religious) sources, and is fundamental to our faith. So the absence of these doctrines' mention in a particular source would not lead us to wonder about our doctrinal foundation.
Mormon scholars are actually quite interested in early Christianity. A significant amount of research at BYU (a Church-sponsored school), for example, has involved the Dead Sea Scrolls: CNN article; BYU research summary.
The discovery of extant and reliable manuscripts does not invalidate the belief that the Christian Scriptures are God's words. If you carefully study the statements of faith of various conservative Christian groups, they will, almost invariably, note that they believe that [paraphrasing] "the Bible, God's word, is inspired and without error in its original languages and was written by men who were moved by God to do so". Most of their biblical study focuses on exegesis and hermeneutics, the former being an attempt for critical understanding of the text based on its original context and intended audience, and the latter being an attempt to find practical application of those texts to modern living.
As to the "evolution over time" argument, a careful study of the earliest manuscripts or their transcripts (there are tens of thousands of extant copies of the various gospels and epistles, and a significant number of these can even be traced into the first century AD) will show that none of the central tenets of Christianity undewent any modification since the earliest manuscripts. Portions that have been found to have been appended by other writers at other times (most likely well-meaning scribes or monks) have never been found in sections of the text that deal with the core beliefs of Christianity (e.g., virgin birth, miracles, death, resurrection--others have already addressed the issue of the recent Mark text not invalidating other internal references to resurrection). One of the most well-known examples of such an embelishment is the end of the "Lord's Prayer" [I'm typing from memory here]:
Our Father, who art in heaven
Hallowed be Thy name
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our tresspasses
As we forgive those who tresspass against us
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil
For Thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever and ever. Amen!
The final section (those lines in bold italics ) does not appear in the earliest and most trustworthy manuscripts. Modern translations that hold to high standards to scholarship omit those verses, or at least print them following a note the explains that they do not appear in the best manuscripts. If you take away those lines, no critical teachings of the Christian gospel have been compromised. In fact, they are sentiments expressed of God elsewhere in the Chritian Scriptures, including in the book of Psalms and in the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John.
Yes, while church leaders came together in the fourth century to formalize the official canon that is accepted today, history shows us that there were lists of accepted writings as early as the second century AD. Most scholars agree that no such list was needed during the first century, because many of the original witnesses, or the people who had received their direct accounts, were still living. The modern "conservative" or "fundamentalist" Christian sees the canonization of Scripture as a divinely sanctioned act that preserved only those texts that were necessary for the advancement of the Gospel. I find myself in a slightly different camp. While I believe God used canonization to preserve those writings that were passed on to this day, I believe there were likely other writings that were lost, either temporarily (yet to be discovered) or permanently (destroyed). The teachings of the Christian Scriptures encourage believers to critically examine all teachings to see if they align with the truth of the previously recognized Scriptures (the Old Testament--the Hebrew Law and Prophets, plust the Poems). In the letters of Peter, he places Paul's writings on the same level as Scripture in that day (during the first century), so there was an early acceptance that Paul's teachings of Christ's death and resurrection aligned with the Old Testament's prophecies of a suffering messiah who would
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
"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
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