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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).
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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 *
(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.)
So there are almost no christians who have a perfect understanding of the text? I mean if the language requirement cuts out a huge percentage of readers, and then they would have to not only feel the inpiration to read for perfect understanding, but also have access to the text at the time of inspiration. How many christians could that possibly be?
I live in a small rural town in the midwest FULL of christians (more than two dozen churches) who think they have a true understanding of the word. So out of 9,000 people, how many could really know what they say they know? Why are the rest of them fooling themselves?
What are the odds that the ones who knock at my door have a clue?
And how can I tell the difference?
C.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
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.
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 believe that nobody has a perfect understanding... not myself, not the pastor of my church, nobody. That's not the point, as far as I can tell.
Most prophecy in the Bible is written so that it isn't obvious exactly when or how it will be fulfilled, until it has been fulfilled. For instance, the birth of the Messiah (or Christ) did not have a date, and nobody knew that he would be born in a feeding trough. The point is so that God can show the world that He has a plan, and that He has the power to fulfill it after it has been stated (in other words, he knows the future).
The unfulfilled prophecies, including those in the book of Revelation, are similar for us today. We don't know exactly when it will happen, or how. So, nobody has a perfect knowledge of it.
He's God... if He wants you to know a certain amount of the Bible, He can and will give you the insight to make it happen.
(For those who don't believe in God, please... please, spare me the comments on how I am stupid for my beliefs and how anyone living in a modern world who believes in God is insane... those comments are getting quite old, and prove nothing.)
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
*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?"
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.
I myself believe in GOD, I just don't believe in the bible. As I've always said. The bible is a book written by man to control man. I have no faith in churches either, they are just a conduit to try to push the "Christian belief" onto it's masses. I'm not saying that the Christian/Catholic mindset is wrong but the measures that the "Church" have used for centuries to gain it's powers go against it's very "word". How many wars have been fought due to religion in general. How many countless individuals have been killed due to "religion" I don't think GOD would be happy that people are using him as a reason to kill someone else just because they don't agree with them. One of the supposed 10 commandments are "thou shall not kill", not "thou shall not kill unless one disagrees with your religious belief"
I could go on and on but I'll stop here. This post is in no way meant to anger anyone but if it happens then well........
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Neat! The same is true of horoscopes and fortune cookies!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.