Biblical Tall Tales

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Makes sense. So GOD guided each of the councils to create different canon. He had the Ethiopians include Enoch as Biblical Scripture but guided the western church to exclude it, and She guided the Syrian Church to exclude all of the New Testament from the Bible.

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I never said this. The fact is that the church that convened the Nicaea Council was mainstream Christianity. They were there by direct Apostolic descent.The Ethiopian Orthodox church was an offshoot. Besides, there is scarcely anything in the extra Ethiopian Ortodox church's additional books that contradicts our standard Bible of today. So this cannot be used to debunk the Bible anyways.

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Do we have any first editions around?

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Second editions?

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How do we know how many copies down the line our oldest version is?

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I don't see how we've established that we must have original copies. Why do we need this for the Bible to be innerant, the word of God, authoritative?Are you equally zealous to attack the credibility of other ancient manuscripts? Like the writings of the Greeks and Romans? Are their histories fariry tales to you? Are the manuscripts we have of their writings horribly suspect too? Do you believe they are bascially unreliable? And yet, they have far less manuscripts for each writing and scarcely any originals or even secondary copies.This message has been edited by idontlikeforms, 01-01-2006 11:56 PM

Sorry, but the Ethiopian Church and the Syrian Church may well be older than the Western Church.There is no one Bible. Canons vary. All are the product of theology, politics and culture. Which is mainstream Christianity? Why is one branch mainstream and another not mainstream? Why is one Canon better or more correct than any other?The Bible stories are just that stories. Inspired? I think so. But only when dealing with the message. They are not historical texts. They are not science texts. They were never meant to be taken or used for either of those functions. As I pointed out back in Message 45 what we find are folktales, perhaps with some nugget of fact, but that have been modified, exagerated, changed to meet the needs of the storyteller, the culture and the era.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

So the one you like is the one you are even less familiar with?You haven't done the work you claim to have done, you don't know what the actual masoreh even are, and you have no concept of the text-tradition which constitutes the version you claim to favor.

The caption on the photo said 'Ron Wyatt'.Which means, that, of course, it has not been examined for peer review.

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Sorry, but the Ethiopian Church and the Syrian Church may well be older than the Western Church.

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I'm afraid you misunderstand. The Westerm church has bishops, who were ordained by other bishops, in a direct line of descent going all the way back to the Apostles, even from the Bible itself. They have a continuous organizational, scholarly, and theological tradition that literally goes back to Jesus Christ's own followers.

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There is no one Bible. Canons vary. All are the product of theology, politics and culture. Which is mainstream Christianity? Why is one branch mainstream and another not mainstream? Why is one Canon better or more correct than any other?

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Because they are from direct Apostolic descent and it's a coninuous Christian body of believers going all the way back to the first Apostles. That makes it different.

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The Bible stories are just that stories. Inspired? I think so. But only when dealing with the message. They are not historical texts. They are not science texts. They were never meant to be taken or used for either of those functions. As I pointed out back in Well, it's a fable, a fairytale (Message 45) what we find are folktales, perhaps with some nugget of fact, but that have been modified, exagerated, changed to meet the needs of the storyteller, the culture and the era.

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This is incorrect. In fact the bulk of the Bible is narrative. It was meant to be history. For example you can read I & II Kings and you will see books being cited that are clearly historical. Even Christians and Jews have used them for historical purposes all along. It is true that they are not scientific writings, in the context that we use the word today anyways. But they were definitely meant to be used as history, even by the original authors.

I'm sorry if you saw that as directly aimed at you, I was characterizing the christian position as a whole. Basically, a position that says: "This book, the bible, is special. Because it is inspired by god, and as such is infallible." Oh? How do you know the content is the same? Things could have been omited, embelished, added, etc. Not to mention that for most of christian history, each book of the bible was it's own thing. Meaning you got hundreds of editions, copys, and variations of 66 books running around the middle east (and who knows where else). How do you know what was changed and what wasn't?Ever played a game of telephone? A general idea isn't going to cut it when it comes to claims of the supernatural. No. Generations, editions, copys, whatever you want to call them. You don't think there was a standard torah lying around back then do you?This was pre printing press. Scribes were copying these things left and right and circulating different versions of the same texts all over the place. What OT? No such thing back then. No bible, remember? There are alot more sacred jewish books than are in the OT. Ask any Rabbi. Oh! Isn't that nice. Some guys got together, using a bunch of errant texts, with an agenda, and basically labeled everyone else they disagreed with a heratic. Isn't that a sweet way to establish an infalible text. I didn't know you could 'vote' on inerancy. Seems obvious to me. You don't have a "first edition" of any of the books in the bible. The books have been passed down thrugh thousands upon thousands of manuscripts, oral traditions, and whatever else. There is no reason to expect that any sort of "inerrant" quality is still resident in the darn thing. Ever play telephone?

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So the one you like is the one you are even less familiar with?

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I think the problem is you misunderatand how these things work. The NT functions the same way. Evangelical Scholars used a standard authorized text of the NT, in Koine Greek. They do not look at all the manuscripts and compare them. This has alredy been done for them. Without doing that. It is not meaningfull to talk in terms of "Mazoretic" or "Septuagint" in the first place. You can google this topic online yourself. If you do, you will find that there is a substantial amount of material on the issue and you can get a good feel for which side in the debate is correct and which isn't. It is not neccessary to be profficient in Greek and Hebrew and hold all the manuscripts in your own two hands.

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You haven't done the work you claim to have done, you don't know what the actual masoreh even are, and you have no concept of the text-tradition which constitutes the version you claim to favor.

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Well by all means. Please show how what I've done is worthless then.

Is anybody claiming that those are inerrant?

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Impeach Bush

And the Syrian and Ethiopian Churches were not founded directly by the apostles? Come on.We don't even know where most of the original apostls went, and we don't even have a clue who was included in the second wave.You may believe that much of the Bible was meant to be history, and if you mean a cultural mythology then I'd agree with you. But that's pretty much the extent of it. We know for example that the stories of the conquest of Canaan, or the Exodus, or the Flood are definitely exagerated mythology at best. While there might be some kernel of fact in there, reality is nothing like the Biblical stories.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Oh? How do you know the content is the same? Things could have been omited, embelished, added, etc. Not to mention that for most of christian history, each book of the bible was it's own thing. Meaning you got hundreds of editions, copys, and variations of 66 books running around the middle east (and who knows where else). How do you know what was changed and what wasn't?

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Ever played a game of telephone? A general idea isn't going to cut it when it comes to claims of the supernatural.

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I think you give ancient Jewish scholars too little credit. To them it is sacred. Not propaganda leaflets being cranked in high volumes. When they copied it, they payed attention to detail. They have an extensive tradition. They have enormous incentive to be meticulous. They had a literal caste in their society dedicated to the preservation of their theology and the teaching of it.Perhaps it is difficult for you, a modern day skeptic, to envision the mindset of the scholarly community throughout Israel's history being that precise. But I myself have no preconcieved prejudices against them. When I study the history of them and analyze things in their own words and their mindset, I don't start with the premise that they are liars and clumsy. You need this to be the case for your argument to hold water. What evidence do you have that they did shoddy work and had little compunction about altering the text?We can go back and forth like this for some time, but if the bottom line is that it is your opinion, than what is the point? Either you got something that shows pretty clearly that the Bible is unreliable or you don't and then would have to logically concede that the Christians' view is at least plausible, even if you don't personally agree with it.

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This was pre printing press. Scribes were copying these things left and right and circulating different versions of the same texts all over the place.

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This is highly unlikely. From what we know of Jewish history, they tended to keep copies in Synagogues and by logical inference the Temple itself. This would lead to a much smaller line of copies and copies that were made fairly far apart and with a sizeable body of scholars working on them. Like I said, keep in mind, to them it is the word of God. Whether Christianity or Judaism is true or not, they have enormous incentive to be meticulous. Why do you think they don't? Personally I think it is just arrogant to assume ancient man was organizationally inept. I certainly don't give much weight to an argument that neccessitates such a baseless assumption.

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What OT? No such thing back then. No bible, remember? There are alot more sacred jewish books than are in the OT. Ask any Rabbi.

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They don't carry the same weight as the OT though. Also keep in mind that Jospehus actually comments on this matter too and he claims that the OT was viewed as sacred by the Jews. So there is a known tradition of the OT being viewed as cannon by the Jews for some time.

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Oh! Isn't that nice. Some guys got together, using a bunch of errant texts, with an agenda, and basically labeled everyone else they disagreed with a heratic. Isn't that a sweet way to establish an infalible text. I didn't know you could 'vote' on inerancy.

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They don't view the matter this way at all. This is merely your opinion. The fact is that the NT is logically consistent. There are reasons for why their own perosnal lists of cannons more or less were already in agreement with each others.But many of the spurious Christian writings are not logically consistent with the NT. They were simply making the refutation of heresies a more efficient matter.

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Seems obvious to me. You don't have a "first edition" of any of the books in the bible. The books have been passed down thrugh thousands upon thousands of manuscripts, oral traditions, and whatever else. There is no reason to expect that any sort of "inerrant" quality is still resident in the darn thing. Ever play telephone?

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This is an exaggeration. It seems logical to me that the high priest would have held an official copy and kept it for as long as reasonably possible and then used a large body of scholars to copy it when it was getting close to falling apart. That does not entail a chain of "thousands upon thousands of manuscripts." Neither does it make the ability to preserve the vaste majority of it accurately a farcical and completely improbable claim. I think you need to remove 21st century goggles when evaluating the plausability of evangelicals claims. I mean let's be honest, IF Christianity is false, it's still far more likely than not that the Bible is still basically accurate, from what was written the first time with each book.

Well, let me lay it out for you.You said that people believe that God guided the hands of the first people to lay down the word. Therefore, the original version is innerant.You also said that copies of the original could contain errors.So, do we have the original to test the copies against? Or are we just dealing with various copies, any one of which could contain an error?

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And the Syrian and Ethiopian Churches were not founded directly by the apostles? Come on.

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They are outside mainstream Christianity. The idea that they were not, is a recent liberal argument, likely aimed at attacking Christianity's crediblity. People in Antiquity would no doubt not agree.

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We don't even know where most of the original apostls went, and we don't even have a clue who was included in the second wave.

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I think the problem here is that you are not realizing the gravity nor the extent of the continous tradition I'm refering to. Even Eusebius, among others if I'm not mistaken, has chronicled the continous line of Apostolic descent for the major churches in Antiquity. So there are plenty of logical and historical reasons to suppose that the 1st century church at its core was basically the same theologically as the church council that convened at Nicaea. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

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You may believe that much of the Bible was meant to be history, and if you mean a cultural mythology then I'd agree with you. But that's pretty much the extent of it. We know for example that the stories of the conquest of Canaan, or the Exodus, or the Flood are definitely exagerated mythology at best. While there might be some kernel of fact in there, reality is nothing like the Biblical stories.

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It's an objective statement actually. Read the Biblical narratives then read other historical narratives. They are written in the same style. A better way to say it would be to say the narrative parts of the Bible were written as history with religious overtones. True or false, they are historical narrative. You can question the veracity of various parts of it, but that does not change its genre of literature. And yes the narratives are the largest component of the Bible.

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Well, let me lay it out for you.

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You said that people believe that God guided the hands of the first people to lay down the word. Therefore, the original version is innerant.

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You also said that copies of the original could contain errors.

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So, do we have the original to test the copies against? Or are we just dealing with various copies, any one of which could contain an error?

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Right. But what you don't realize is that your argument is missing a neccessary component. You must use logic or evidence to show how the original copies were poorly preserved. You can't simply assume this was the case. I am an Evangelical remember? I do not start with the same premises as you do.

HOLD UP! No one here is claiming that Christianity is "false". No one on this thread has made any claim that there was no Jesus. And, I'm pretty sure no one has mentioned any of the books of the New Testament.What people are saying is that using Genesis as an unimpeachable source for geological data is wrong.We're saying that there are some problems with translation, that the information in the books was oral history long before it was written history. That the writing didn't take place in a single place by a single man. That the copies were not made off a single document. That errors in the first 10 generations of copies are likely to be in every version that exists today.