The Bible is a book.

Still waiting for yours...

That's hear-say.

Yes, I wasn't there to hear Him say it, that's why I quoted the book of Mark....... I guess all history is hear-say, huh? hrugs:

And the book of Mark was also hearsay.

And the book of Mark was also hearsay. In fact, all 4 of the canonical gospels are hearsay because their writers were not present for the events described.

What evidence do you have for that? Were you there when Mark was written? Or are you depending on hearsay?

Frustrated by criticism of your religious mythology? No worries! Take your frustrations out in game, when a bigoted Christian video game based on the dominionist agenda hits the stores. Players will take to the streets as a soldier after the "rapture" to establish a christian theocracy in the U.S. The mission is to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and homosexuals.
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959

*shiver*

~Ulrika~

I'm going on Biblical Scholarship, which isn't much different than methods police use to determine who broke into a house and stole something. There are also fingerprints in scholarship, there are cultural and dialectic clues as well which tell experts much. And it's pretty universally accepted right now that the 4 gospels were written long after the fact -- Mark may have been the earliest, written between 60 to 80 AD when he tried to remember the accounts related to him verbally by Peter (so now we're down to 3rd-hand).

According to Eusebius of Caesarea (3d century AD), "Mark, who had indeed been Peter's interpreter, accurately wrote as much as he remembered, yet not in order, about that which was either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but later, as I said, Peter, who would make the teachings anecdotally but not exactly an arrangement of the Lord's reports, so that Mark did not fail by writing certain things as he recalled."

I don't think I've read any concept recently that has struck me as so true as this one.

Public religion is punishment. Absolutely. There is no other purpose. Each person has a stone in their hand and they are posed to throw it.

I've read many of Greg Bear's novels which one was this in? I'll have to read it again or maybe I missed a darn good book!

.

You are saying the author heard it from the mouth of the witness. That's pretty much what news reporters do. Much of history is an author's attempt to accurately quote the witnesses of an event.

God might even have helped preserve the memory of the witnesses, if one believes such things.

Actually, you're making a "straw-man" argument that's irrelevant. Beside the point. "Smoke".

Mark in particular and the New Testament in general are among the most heavily- adumbrated and emended religious texts in history. The original Gospel of Mark was an edited version of various conflicting oral accounts given nearly a century after Christ's life. Portions of it can be found in the Aquila bible which dates from 130 AD. A more complete version can be found in the Vetus Itala from 383 AD, but by then the personality of Christ that emerges in this gospel and others has been "dumbed down" for the masses. There are other, incomplete versions of Mark in the Gothic Arian Bible, the various Armenian versions, and Syriac version - all of which are based on the religious scholar Origen's Hexapla text, and all of which differ significantly on what Christ said and what he was like.

The earliest "official" Bible of the Catholic Church was the Vulgate, largely gathered together and interpreted by Jerome between 390 and 405 AD. Although it suffered much corruption from various editors, it became widely used by Catholics in the ninth century, and was declared as "authentic" by the Council of Trent the sixteenth century. The King James version in the early 1600s was a direct Protestant reaction to the Vulgate, in which scholars tried to imbue the Bible - and especially the Gospels - with distinctly Protestant values - most notably, a denial of infallibility, the error of celibacy, and the need for a strong missionary ethic....

The point being, you have no clue as to whether Christ actually said what Mark says he said in 16:15. Earlier versions of the gospels, including the gnostic writings found in the 20th century, indicate that he was primarily interested in bringing word to his own people. Blame the missionary ethic on Paul, if you like - or admit that it's a matter of personal faith. And if the latter is the case - and it most assuredly is - then the "raincoat statement" is borne out.

Except that professional historians have evidentiary standards that are more exacting than a journalist's. And certainly, Biblical Scholarship is in a completely different realm, more akin to a scientific approach to history than a librarian's. You're begging the point, of course, but I'm not surprised.


Sorry, I don't believe in the Easter Bunny, either.

Although it may just be a 'book', it is however a book that many people believe in. It all boils down to faith, no matter what religion you choose to follow.

Remember, 'variety is the spice of life'...keep and open mind and don't judge just because you don't understand!

Blessings,

SeXXXy Bliss (Pagan and Proud)

"Some people have the idea that the New Testament has been translated "so many times" that it has become corrupted through stages of translating. Well, if the translations were being made from other translations, they would have a case. But translations are not made from translations, but from original Greek text found in ancient manuscripts.
We know the New Testament we have today is true to its original form because:
1. We have such a huge number of manuscript copies--over 5,000.
2. The words among those copies are in agreement with each other--99.5% agreement.
3. The copies were found very close to their original date of authorship--see link at end of this section.

When one compares the text from one manuscript copy to another, the compatibility is amazing. Sometimes the spelling may vary or words may be transposed, but that is of little consequence. Concerning word order, Bruce M. Metzger, professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, explains: "It makes a whale of a difference in English if you say, 'Dog bites man' or 'Man bites dog'--sequence matters in English. But in Greek it doesn't. One word functions as the subject of the sentence regardless of where it stands in the sequence."7

What about discrepancies? The variations among the manuscripts are "so rare that scholars Norman Geisler and William Nix conclude, 'The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great book--a form that is 99.5 percent pure.'"8

Dr. Ravi Zacharias, a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, also comments: "In real terms, the New Testament is easily the best attested ancient writing in terms of the sheer number of documents, the time span between the events and the documents, and the variety of documents available to sustain or contradict it. There is nothing in ancient manuscript evidence to match such textual availability and integrity."9

The New Testament is humanity's most reliable ancient document. Its textual integrity is more certain than that of Plato's writings or Homer's Iliad."
footnotes:
{7} Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ (Zondervan Publishing House, 199, p. 83.
{8} Ibid., p. 85.
{9} Zacharias, Ravi. Can Man Live Without God? (Word Publishing, 1994), p. 162.
http://www.everystudent.com/features/bible.html#5

I find it fascinating, Kevn, that you can't answer a very simple question but yet will go into essay-long tirades.

So, to reiterate:

Do you believe that your religious standards should be what we all live by regardless of our personal beliefs?

You seem to think that's what atheists demand.

No, I don't. I have said before that I despise the idea of forced beliefs. In fact, it's impossible to force a belief. A wise man once said 'a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'.

I think the majority shouldn't be cow-tied by the minority though.

1) The problem isn't the number of translations. The problem is that those translations have had either flaws or differing interpretations. A very good example: the Greek word "parqevno" (parthenos) can mean either young girl of marrying age or a virgin -- in their attempts to link to the prophecies of Isaiah (which actually referred to a girl who was already pregnant, not a virgin), translators misapplied the term and thus gave birth (pun intended) to the Virgin Mary myth.
2) Jesus didn't speak Greek. How much was lost going from Aramaic to Greek?



It's nowhere near that simple.

Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts



I Googled Norman Geisler: "Christian apologist and president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina." That Norman Geisler? The Evangelical guy? How about I find some juicy Madelyn Murray O'Hair quotes to counter that?


According to the collection of scholars calling themselves the Jesus Seminar, it's likely that only about 16% of the events and 18% of the sayings recounted in the NT actually happened. Yeh, that's really accurate.

I love a good fable as much as the next person, though.

At the turn of the millennium, Greek was a widespread language, as was Latin.
We know Jesus was an educated person, it is therefore expected that he would
speak these languages, in addition to Aramaic and Hebrew.

I did not claim that I made a good case for Christian oppression. It is collectively that atheists, agnostics, and other dissaffected groups are making the case. Go back and read the thread. Go and read other threads. And try not to skim over the boring oppression stuff. You'll only end up making uninformed posts later on.

Define that last bit, if you would be so kind. Does that mean that the minority, because a majority follow some sort of god, should be legally bound by /your religious standards/?

I've seen your opinion on certain things, Kevn. I'd like to know if my body and rights would be bound by your book should you ever get a djinn in a magic lamp...

Jesus was educated? But all my Christian friends have been trying to convince me he was a poor, illiterate carpenter's son. Make up your mind.

He may have been well-versed in the religious texts of his time, which would make sense -- but that's not anywhere close to learning Latin or Greek.

"The Jews were amazed and asked, "How did this man get such learning without having studied?" - John 7:15.

The following would indicate that he knew Hebrew and the Torah, but again -- that is NOT Greek:


So once again, Kevn, where do you get this unsupported idea that Jesus knew or spoke Greek?

Wow this reads like made up science and bias. These sources are religeous scholars, not historians.

Its general accepted historically there was significantly more that a .5 % level of disagreement in what would become Canon and what was translation errors.

For example there have been numerous books written on the subject of errors in the King James version as opposed to more thorough study of language in source texts.

As it is, the majority already sets the standard for what is acceptable.

Do I think your rights should be dictated by the standards of this country? Yes, I do.

Do I think you have certain rights that aren't subject to the whim of the majority? Yes, I do. Your right to speak freely, your right to own a gun, etc.

But I don't think you get a pass because some laws come from a religious context. If it's a law and it withstands the constitutional tests imposed by the founders, then it's something we all must abide by.

There are many things within the laws and regulations of this country with which I disagree, but I disobey them at my own risk.

Cindy, whether or not Jesus spoke Greek is moot. Further, according to scripture, Jesus was, as a child, well-versed enough in the Torah to teach at a temple with the rabbis. I'd say that's pretty clear evidence that Jesus was definitely not illiterate.


Except the people Jesus talked to weren't all educated, and so he would be speaking to them in the languages of the common people. And when the accounts of Jesus were recording, decades later, they were, in fact, done in languages other than Greek. It wasn't until the compilation of the Bible several centuries later that it was all written in one language - and it was done so that a person could learn one language and read the entire Bible.

The problem with tranlation isn't just with the language, either. Even in English, there are cultural nuances that go along with our speech, that is lost over the course of a mere century. Slang changes (hip / cool / phat / shizzle), the roots of colloquial sayings are forgotten ("the whole nine yards", "calling a spade a spade", etc). A really good interpretation of a passage requires research into the language, history, and story. Often time "bible-thumpers" just read a single verse like it's meant to be a command, without any context - linguistic, historical, or story - whatsoever. And that's the real problem - average joe picking and choosing an interpretation of his choice and then lodging his dogma down others' throats.

[/indent]
Here are some useful points I found in a search...

The oldest N.T. we have is written in Greek. And the Greek Septuagint
translation of the O.T. was well established by the time of Jesus.

In many places in John's gospel Jesus makes use of the distinction between
the two Greek words for knowing something, "gnosis," or knowledge through logic
and reason, and "whid," or intuitive perception. For example, John 14:15-23
quotes Jesus as saying, in part, (Greek words in parenthesis) "Yet a little
(micron) and the created order no longer will perceive (whid) me, but you will
perceive (whid) me. Because I am alive you shall be alive. On that day you will
comprehend (gnosis) that I am in my father ... ."

The word "agape," meaning a "god-like love" is derived from Plato; it is
actually a pre-illiad term. Nothing like it exists in Aramaic or Hebrew. Or
English, for that matter.

A reference to Socrates' hemlock cup in John 18:11. One has to admit that
Jesus seems to have known the Socrates story well, and assumed his listeners
also knew and understood it! Mention Socrates' cup to a random group of today's
"educated" Americans; how many will give you a blank stare? But these people,
all of them, knew the story well enough that Jesus did not need to explain his
literary allusion. Hard to believe he spoke about it in anything else than
Greek!