Greg Boyd on New Testiment Reliablity

[LoneMateria]

In response:
1. Taking into account the length of time that the Bible has been around, and all that has happened in that time, all of these minor changes (and translations!) should be expected. With the hundreds of languages that the Bible has been translated into, I see no reason to think there could only be (and have only been) a few versions of the Bible.
2. If Christians have changed the Bible as drastically as you imply, then please point me to multiple instances of parts of the Bible that have been radically changed that are instrumental to any aspect of Christianity. I would very much like to know about them.

I'm going to start off with a short response because in order for me to cite exactly what you want I've got to sift through Misquoting Jesus which isn't very well ordered and full of a lot of different information.  I'm going to cross check different references over the internet (proally wikipedia and as well as a few counter apologetic cites).  I'm going to have to put a lot of effort into the posts which i'm willing to do but I want to ask you a few questions first.

We've debated a lot over this topic.  We both know it.  When I answer your questions and ask my own I feel you only answer a fraction of my questions and provide examples / works to back up your view only when asked while I try my hardest to answer every question you pose and address every point you make.  By me answering these questions what chance do I have of changing your view on this subject?  When we've gone through this it seems as if you run to the first apologist you can find and say, "This is my answer Link".  I'm not willing to have this type of conversation with you anymore because it doesn't show me you are thinking about this.  If you won't think about what i'm saying and address my points head on then our conversation is pointless except for maybe 1 or 2 spectators who actually want to follow along.

Are you willing to have an honest conversation with me over this?  Are you willing to back up your views with evidence instead of quoting apologists and thinking they have done their homework?  Are you willing to answer my questions and address the points I make?  If so I will be more then happy to have this discussion with you.  The reason I bring this up is because most of my long posts I make for you remain largely unaddressed.   For example the last long post you don't address whats wrong you just re-asserted your previous premise and then challenged me.  A few posts before that I made another long post and you addressed it

Stuff

If you really want to have this conversation and play by the rules then let me know.  I don't think i'm being unreasonable in asking you back up your views with evidence and for you not to just ignore what I say and shift the focus of our conversation.  Let me know.

[Reginus]

Sorry, I decided to cut straight to the chase instead of addressing your response paragraph by paragraph when I saw this:

the whole point of this book CHRISTIANS FUCKING CHANGE THEIR BIBLE

Well.... I think we can agree on this. That is why I want examples of where the change is significant to belief, and if there are examples, how many of these have ended up in the NIV. Does that make sense?

Anyway, of course I would be wiling to have a conversation and answer your questions, just make them clear.

[LoneMateria]

Sorry, I decided to cut straight to the chase instead of addressing your response paragraph by paragraph when I saw this:

the whole point of this book CHRISTIANS FUCKING CHANGE THEIR BIBLE

Well.... I think we can agree on this. That is why I want examples of where the change is significant to belief, and if there are examples, how many of these have ended up in the NIV. Does that make sense?

Anyway, of course I would be wiling to have a conversation and answer your questions, just make them clear.

I'm glad we can address this this point since this will cut down significantly on my response.  A quick question, when you reached that sentence did you just stop reading my post?  I'd like to know if our difference was of opinion or if you saw fallacies in my response.  Though I understand that you would have to read Misquoting Jesus to examine my responses more thoroughly (which you can get new for less then $10 from amazon, and with 413 reviews the book is still 4 stars out of 5 so its both a cheap book and a good book ^_^)

To make sure I can address your post, hopefully, to your satisfaction we will have to identify a few points of consideration and I need to figure out exactly what you want.  There are several areas I can take this from.  

Firstly though I need to ask why the New International Version of the bible(that is what i'm assuming NIV means)?  If you want to examine the differences from bible to bible http://www.biblegateway.com/ would be a good place to start and i'm not prepared to begin to address the differences of the current bibles.  Although I know words like abortion is added to current bibles (my old Jehovah Witness friend pissed me off by pulling that out of her ass she thought I was a jackass and I pointed out that it was only her version that used the word abortion and she couldn't figure out why it was a bad thing).  Also what edition bible do you have since there are slight changes from edition to edition to "correct" mistakes.  Each edition of the bible has been translated and interpretated from a different set of sources.  (Check the copyright and authors in the front of your book)

Now i'm going to ask how will these changes affect your perspective?  I mean its not like i'm going to be able to demonstrate that the meaning of the bible is the exact opposite of what we currently mean it to believe.  A lot of the intentional additions and changes are meant to improve Jesus' image as well as prove his divinity (and occasionally inspire hatred for the Jews).  I'm only going to be able to demonstrate how stories have been altered to reinforce the popular belief of that time.  Is this what you are looking for?

Or are you looking for proof of the unrelyabality through early skeptics of Christianity (which I find fascinating looking at the earliest ridicule of Christianity before they were able to burn those who spoke against them)?  We have early letters from the educated and from Pagans who criticize the Church and their responses.  

Or how about the infighting that helped lead to the biblical cannon?  There were groups eventually called "heretics" (and we have letters against them) that believed different things about the bible but were wiped out.  The Jewish Christians only believed in Matthew, the Valentinians only accepted John, some didn't believe that Jesus was the Christ and accepted only Mark, Marcion (the heretic) and his followers only accepted a certain form of Luke, and still there were others who only accepted a combination of these or of the Apocrypha.

Or how about information on the Canonization process where the council of Nicaea voted on what would be part of the biblical canon?  Thats always a fascinating subject since there have been gospels and accounts omitted for example in the bible we have the book of Revelations which is essentially the Apocalypse of John however early Christians also enjoyed the Apocalypse of Peter and The Shepherd of Hermas.

This really boils down to which direction do you want to go first.  Sorry I didn't mean for this post to be so long.

**EDIT**
Crap I forgot to add one more direction we can go.  I can explain the process of copying texts and address how this was done before the time of Constantine and also little errors that even professional scribes make.  Remember each bible is a copy from an earlier work and when an error is made (spelling or otherwise) it tends to get copied over and over again.

[Reginus]

A quick question, when you reached that sentence did you just stop reading my post?  I'd like to know if our difference was of opinion or if you saw fallacies in my response.

No, I read the whole thing. I think our differences are mostly a matter of perception, but there were a few things in your post that I disagree with. First you said that the argument from majority doesn't really mean anything. As far as the "flat-earth" argument goes, I remember a teacher of mine saying that long before Columbus/Magellan proved that the world was round, the "thinkers" of the day already had a pretty good idea that the Earth was spherical. Now, these people that Mr. Boyd is citing aren't just random people off the streets, they are scholars who have done years upon years of research in the area of biblical history (and have looked and the same exact evidence) and yet still come to far more conservative conclusions than Ehrman.

Firstly though I need to ask why the New International Version of the bible(that is what i'm assuming NIV means)?

Why not? lol

Now i'm going to ask how will these changes affect your perspective?

Mostly practically. For example, if you can prove that certain passages were added to incite Jewish hatred, I suppose I'll mentally omit these when I'm reading the bible. Like Greg said, I think that most of these changes should only be concerning to people who have put a lot of stake into a certain view of inerrancy.

I'm actually more interested in whether or not you have evidence that goes against (or goes against the evidence for) the general reliability of the Gospels. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be what the book is about. Just because minor changes have been made in the past, that doesn't really prove much about the reliability of the Gospels and their general content. That there was a man who preformed miracles, claimed to be God, was crucified, and then rose from the dead.  

I'm also interested in about how many manuscripts we still have to cross-reference, and when these were written (like what are the earliest ones we have?) For those that were written in the 30-60 AD range, I find it very unlikely that much legendary accretion and change could have happened. Also, how hard is it to know when they were written?

Thanks for your time.

[LoneMateria]

To your first point that people thought the earth was spherical before Columbus.  Of course they did, I don't know why Columbus was attributed to finding out if the world was round.  I know it was around before him because some astronomers pointed out that the Earth's shadow on the moon looked like a sphere.  I was referring to that time.  Also I have a small bit of trivia here evolution was first noticed by the ancient greeks.  They pointed out that it looks as if we had common decent from animals.  Unfortunately this took place right before the dark ages and scientific progress got shut down.  Damn dark ages.

Just a note about Mr. Boyd's citing.  I've seen it done when it comes to evolution that creationists and apologists take the minority opinion and make it seem like the majority opinion.  Apologists today would have you believe evolution is merely a theory that is heavily opposed to its very core.  They don't want you to know 99.999% of scientists believe in evolution and common decent that most of the arguments are just refining that theory making sure its valid.  Also sometimes when they cite "experts" they aren't versed on the subject for example taking a physicist and having him give his opinion on biology.  I need to do more research when it comes to biblical scholars to prove this true but this is whats going through my mind when apologists cite "experts".  I noticed when looking at Boyd's degree it didn't say he was biblical scholar so he isn't a reliable authority figure on the subject.  An appeal to authority in his case would be a fallacy when asking about the reliability and history of the bible.

About the NIV I can try but I make no promises.  

Why would you omit the passages you don't like when you read the bible?  I realize they are altered passages but in some cases we don't know what they originally said.  On top of that 2 of the endings for the gospels were added on, will you just not read those?

In the book Misquoting Jesus the whole book is about how the bible was made (copies of copies of copies) and the changes we know that have taken place in them and why you should question the reliability of the bible.  Btw originally the early manuscripts we have never had Jesus claim he was God and those claims appeared later in different gospels and were added in.  Anyway more about that when I do the post.  (Also in the early letters we have of Christian writing it never said Jesus rose from the dead, it just said he would come back to bring judgement on the world).

I no longer remember the estimate of the number of manuscripts we have.  I know some are in bad shape and some manuscripts only have several words on them.  However I think the number was somewhere around 25,000 but it could be higher.  The first gospel was written between 65 and 90.  Well not quite 90 but thats our best guess.  Christians often say it was 65 AD like its known for a fact... but its not.  We don't have those manuscripts.  The earliest gospels we have are from around 150 AD.  However thats gospels we have much earlier Christian writing.  We have a letter from Paul from about AD 50 (20 years after Jesus died and 20 years before the first gospel was written).  If memory serves it made its way into 1 Thess (not the whole thing).  Only some of Paul's letters made it in the bible, we've lost some to time and his older ones were probably written by his followers since the wording is different.

Anyway where do you want me to start?  Where ever I start its going to be a long post (pfft like thats anything new).  Anyway this will hopefully be fun. ^_^

[Reginus]

Sorry, I've been really busy lately and haven't been able to respond.

Just a note about Mr. Boyd's citing.  I've seen it done when it comes to evolution that creationists and apologists take the minority opinion and make it seem like the majority opinion.  Apologists today would have you believe evolution is merely a theory that is heavily opposed to its very core.  They don't want you to know 99.999% of scientists believe in evolution and common decent that most of the arguments are just refining that theory making sure its valid.  Also sometimes when they cite "experts" they aren't versed on the subject for example taking a physicist and having him give his opinion on biology.  I need to do more research when it comes to biblical scholars to prove this true but this is whats going through my mind when apologists cite "experts".  I noticed when looking at Boyd's degree it didn't say he was biblical scholar so he isn't a reliable authority figure on the subject.  An appeal to authority in his case would be a fallacy when asking about the reliability and history of the bible.

I again can't say that I agree. The Bible and its history is a topic absolutely central to theology and apologetics, and (with a PhD,) Greg has done a fair share of biblical research. I'm fairly sure he's co-authored two books on the subject of historical evidence for Jesus (though I haven't read them).

Anyway where do you want me to start? Where ever I start its going to be a long post (pfft like thats anything new). Anyway this will hopefully be fun. ^_^

Ok, here's something I'm wondering: based on Misquoting Jesus, what can we conclude about Jesus by examining early resources? Does the evidence point to him being entirely made up? What evidence is there against the claim that he was divine? Do the early manuscripts say he claimed to be God? Basically, according to the book, what is the best picture of Jesus we can have?

[LoneMateria]

Sorry, I've been really busy lately and haven't been able to respond.

lol)

Another anti-adoptionistic change took place in Jesus's early life in the gospel of Luke.  Luke 2:33 "his father and his mother were marveling at what was said to him" (his father referring to Joseph, looking at the NIV its words are very similar to this).  This was changed by the orthodox to read, "Joseph and his mother were marveling ..." (different then NIV).  Another change to "prove" Jesus's divinity.  This change turns into a trend in Luke because a few verses later when Jesus was 12 and in the Temple, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were at a festival in Jerusalem and they accidentally left Jesus.  It said, "his parents didn't know about it" and was changed to "Joseph and his mother didn't know about it."  Then this happens again a little later when they return to look for Jesus and three days later find him in the Temple.  She says "Your father and I have been looking for you!" which was changed to "We have been looking for you!"

Another anti-adoptionistic change occurred where you would expect it to occur.  At the baptism by John, and it was here where many adoptionists believed that God adopted Jesus to be his son.  In both Mark's and Luke's account at this time the heavens open up and the spirit descends upon Jesus as a dove and you hear a voice from heaven.  The manuscripts of Luke's gospel are divided on what was said.  Most of our manuscripts say what we have in our bible, "You are my beloved son in whom i'm well pleased." (Mark 1:11, Luke 3:23).  However in one Greek manuscript and several Latin ones we have the voice say something completely different, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you."  Today I have begotten you suggests that Jesus became his son on the day of his baptism which looks like an adoptionistic view.

The next few paragraphs he goes into more detail about this change so I will hit any high point he makes.  He bring it up that the first issue to resolve is which of these texts is the original and which one is the alteration.  The vast majority of early greek texts reads, "You are my beloved son in whom i'm well pleased".  The problem is this verse was quoted a lot by early church fathers before most of our manuscripts were produced.  It was quoted in the 2nd and 3rd centuries from Rome, to Alexandria, North Africa, to Palestine, Gaul, to Spain.  In almost every instance the other form was used, "today I have begotten you".

Now this text is unlike what is found in Mark.  Scribes typically try to harmonize text.  Therefore it is this form that differers from Mark that makes it more likely to be original to Luke.  "today I have begotten you" is the original and was changed by scribes fearing adoptionistic overtones.  

Now Ehrman takes on the counter argument from some scholars.  They say, "You are my beloved son in whom i'm well pleased" is the original because before that point in the story it is already established that Jesus is God because of what was said in Luke 1:35.  Before Jesus's birth the angel Gabriel says to Mary, "the Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the Power of the Most High will overshadow you, therefore the one who is born of you shall be called Holy, the Son of God."  Because this was said earlier Jesus couldn't become God's son at baptism so, "You are my beloved ..." is probably the original.

This may look persuasive at first glance however this overlooks how Luke generally uses designations of Jesus throughout his works (not just his gospel but his part of Acts as well).  Lets consider, for example, what Luke says about Jesus as the "Messiah" (which is the Hebrew word for the Greek word Christ).  According to Luke 2:11 Jesus was born the Christ, but in one of his speeches in Acts Jesus was said to become the Christ at his baptism (Acts 10:37-38).  In another passage Jesus became the Christ at his resurrection (Acts 2:38).  How can all these be true?  It appears for Luke it was important to emphasize key moments of Jesus's existence and to stress these as vital to Jesus's  identity ( e.g.. as the Christ)

The same applies to Luke's understanding as Jesus as Lord.  He was said to be born the lord in Luke 2:11, he is called the lord while living in Luke 10:1, but Acts 2:38 indicate that he became the lord at his resurrection.  For Luke Jesus's identity as Lord, Christ, and Son of God is important but only at the important times of his life, birth, baptism and resurrection.

It appears then that originally it was said at Jesus's baptism by the voice, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you" is the original.  However it probably didn't mean what adoptionists interpreted it to mean.  After all Luke had already narrated the virgin birth, however later Christians were taken aback by its potential implications and to prevent anyone from taking it that way some proto-orthodox scribes changed it to completely conform with Mark.  However its still an anti-adoptionistic change in the text.

Now that was the fun and interesting case, were gonna look at other cases like 1Tim 3:16 to finish up.  The next change occurs in the Gospel of John, the gospel more then any other to stress Jesus's divinity.  The first 18 verses of John is sometimes called the prologue.  There are 2 variations of the 18th verse and the original is still heavily debated (at least when this book was written in 2005).  "No one has seen God at any time, but the [unique Son / unique God] who is in the bosom of Father, that one has made him known."  The variation is the "unique" what, Son or God.

Fist it must be acknowledged that our oldest and best manuscripts of the Alexandrian textual family uses "unique God".  However this is rarely found with manuscripts not associated with Alexandria.  Could this be a textual variant by the scribe in Alexandria and popularized there? (Textual variants such as these were sometimes added to the bible based on local belief.) If this is true then it would explain why the vast majority of manuscripts from everywhere else had the reading "unique Son".  

There are other reasons for thinking this latter reading is the correct one.  (Its not always the earliest manuscripts which are the correct ones because, for example, if you have 2 manuscripts with a phrase in question and one manuscript was from 800 C.E. and one was from 1100 C.E. your first reaction would be to use the one from 800.  However the one from 800 was copied from a manuscript from 600 C.E. and the one from 1100 was copied from a manuscript from 400 C.E. which one would be more accurate?  Just a note back to the book ^_^)  In the gospel of John the phrase "unique Son" (sometimes mistranslated as "only begotten son") is used on several other occasion (John 3:16 and 18) and nowhere else does it speak of Christ as the "unique God".  

What would it mean to call Christ that?  Unique in Greek means "one of a kind" and there can be only one who is one of a kind.  The term unique God must refer to God the father himself, otherwise he is not unique.  Now if the term refers to the father how can it be used for the son?  Given the fact that the more common (and understandable) phrase in the Gospel of John is the "unique son" it appears as if that was the original text if John 1:18.  This is still a highly exalted view of Christ as he is the one who explains God to everyone else.  Even so it appears that some scribes in the Alexandria area weren't happy with this exalted view and made him even more exalted by changing the text.  Christ is no longer Gods adopted son but he is God himself.  This too seems to be anti-adoptionistic text made by proto-orthodox scribes of the 2nd century.  
[/quote]

Whew that too a while (a few hours on and off).  Please let me know if you have questions and I will do my best to answer them.  But there are changes that were made to make Christ seem divine.  Heretics who held these views were wiped out eventually and most of their books burned.  Thats the way things were eventually dealt with when Christians finally got power.

[Reginus]

Whew that too a while (a few hours on and off).  Please let me know if you have questions and I will do my best to answer them.  But there are changes that were made to make Christ seem divine.  Heretics who held these views were wiped out eventually and most of their books burned.  Thats the way things were eventually dealt with when Christians finally got power.

Well, I read your summary and found it very interesting. I might buy the book sometime if I see it at Barns&Noble. Ultimately I would need to do a lot of Bible mining before I'm prepared to seriously dispute the sub-section, but I do have a couple of thoughts:

-Imagine for a second that everything the NIV says Jesus said and did was really true. Now, I'm sure that many Jews of the time would have wanted to, however difficult it may have been to do so, combine aspects of Judaism with Jesus in their manuscripts. I'm sure many wanted to somehow make Jesus fit in with their beliefs. With this said, I'm not surprised many people of the time held a bias adoptionistic view that did not necessarily stem from what Jesus said.

-Secondly, I think it is possible for there to be in-betweens between Jesus being equal to "the father", and Jesus simply being a "prophetic" human being. For example, I find it possible that before his baptism, Jesus (human) and Christ ("the son") were not one. So what are the implications of this? Well, there aren't really many in my opinion.

-Thirdly, (though I would need to do some serious Bible mining to provide enough examples of this,) there is a huge amount of biblical evidence for Jesus's divinity (whether or not he was divine before he was baptized). The disciples clearly think of him as God, and Jesus never corrects them. He refers to God as "Abba", which literally means "father". Instead of saying "our father", he says "my father" (John 20:17)

-Lastly, you haven't really disputed Greg Boyd's statement that 95%-98% of the Gospel's passages are essentially the same as they were 2,000 years ago. Does Ehrman say anything against this? Sure some passages might have been added to to make Jesus look slightly more divine, but if you subtract 1 from 100, you still end up with a positive number.


In essence, though I have no doubt that many changes have been made to the Gospels, we can still take them as a generally reliable picture of Jesus.

[AlP]

-Lastly, you haven't really disputed Greg Boyd's statement that 95%-98% of the Gospel's passages are essentially the same as they were 2,000 years ago. Does Ehrman say anything against this? Sure some passages might have been added to to make Jesus look slightly more divine, but if you subtract 1 from 100, you still end up with a positive number.

I think is Ehrman's point of view too. He did a talk on his book Misquoting Jesus here.

In essence, though I have no doubt that many changes have been made to the Gospels, we can still take them as a generally reliable picture of Jesus.

There is still the credibility and bias of the authors to take into account.

[LoneMateria]

Well, I read your summary and found it very interesting. I might buy the book sometime if I see it at Barns&Noble. Ultimately I would need to do a lot of Bible mining before I'm prepared to seriously dispute the sub-section, but I do have a couple of thoughts:

The book is real interesting.  A lot of it is like a detective story like in that sub section.  I honestly have never seen it at B&N, I had to get this copy online from Amazon (which i'm sure would be difficult to explain to your parents).  Bible mining might not be the best way to go about this.  You can't really look for answers to changes solely in the book that was changed.  My suggestion is where ever you end up looking don't just look for people who agree with you.  If I did that I'd probably be a Christian today ^_^

-Imagine for a second that everything the NIV says Jesus said and did was really true. Now, I'm sure that many Jews of the time would have wanted to, however difficult it may have been to do so, combine aspects of Judaism with Jesus in their manuscripts. I'm sure many wanted to somehow make Jesus fit in with their beliefs. With this said, I'm not surprised many people of the time held a bias adoptionistic view that did not necessarily stem from what Jesus said.

Did I mention the group of Jewish Christians when I made that article?  Ehrman talks about them somewhat and if memory serves (it may not) they believed Jesus was the Messiah however he was a Rabbi (which is true) and his teachings were that of strict Judaism (Or as I like to call it 600 laws of suck).  Anyway yeah early Christians were often viewed as atheists because they didn't follow Jewish law.  They claimed to worship the Jewish God but didn't follow any of his laws.

Also what does having a bias adoptionistic view have to do with imagining everything the NIV says is true?  (Why the NIV?  Why not the Living Bible, or the Amplified Bible, or the 21st century king james version [just noting I don't intend to read any of these ])  

Now to be clear with the adoptionists they believed in the teachings of Jesus (Although they may not have used the same gospels or used a special version of one).  They were Christians (from what we can tell what the orthodox Christians left of them) they just didn't happen to think Jesus was God.  And the Orthodox killed them.  

-Secondly, I think it is possible for there to be in-betweens between Jesus being equal to "the father", and Jesus simply being a "prophetic" human being. For example, I find it possible that before his baptism, Jesus (human) and Christ ("the son") were not one. So what are the implications of this? Well, there aren't really many in my opinion.

Story wise yes, that can make sense.  Followers of Islam believe that Jesus was a Prophet but not that he was the messiah.

-Thirdly, (though I would need to do some serious Bible mining to provide enough examples of this,) there is a huge amount of biblical evidence for Jesus's divinity (whether or not he was divine before he was baptized). The disciples clearly think of him as God, and Jesus never corrects them. He refers to God as "Abba", which literally means "father". Instead of saying "our father", he says "my father" (John 20:17)

You can't count the bible as evidence.  Thats like saying my book on the flying spaghetti monster says the flying spaghetti monster became his own Son and its true because it says so in my flying spaghetti monster book.  There are a lot of biblical references (I consider that so far away from evidence that i'd go so far to say they are mutually exclusive) for the divinity of Jesus.  That was noted in the summary (I hope it was right there in the passages).  John kept stressing the divinity of Jesus.  John was also a name appended on the gospel to make them seem more reliable, same with Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Whether the characters of the bible believed Jesus was God or not is irrelevant.  Biblical citations are not evidence to whether the claims are true or not.  I think the next thing i'm going to attempt to summarize is how the early Christians produced the bible.  Hopefully I won't quote so much that I will get into copyright trouble.  

-Lastly, you haven't really disputed Greg Boyd's statement that 95%-98% of the Gospel's passages are essentially the same as they were 2,000 years ago. Does Ehrman say anything against this? Sure some passages might have been added to to make Jesus look slightly more divine, but if you subtract 1 from 100, you still end up with a positive number.

The reason I haven't discussed it is because i'm honestly not sure of it.  I know there are more textual variations in all the bibles we have then there are words in the New Testament.  To put it plainly in all the bibles we have up until King James there are more differences then words in the New Testament.  Now with Boyd's statement I find major problems with it.  1.) I feel that number was pulled out of his ass because with a conservative number of differences in the New Testament at 200,000 I don't quite think 95-98% fits the bill.  I'd be more apt to play ball if he said 50% and even then i'm not sure.  2.) We don't have the original Gospel's from 2000 years ago or anything close so what is he comparing this to exactly?  That whole statement feels like he pulled it out of his ass.

As far as I know Ehrman doesn't mention how much of the bible is changed he only throws out there the estimated differences in the bible from experts starting with a MINIMUM of 200,000 differences to 500,000+ differences.  I need to check out that link AlP gave, maybe it will shed some light on it.  

If I understand your last 2 statements correctly then you are saying, "So what if its been changed".  Please correct me if i'm wrong.  Now those examples I gave were just a few.  Let me ask you a question, how much of the bible has to be changed before you question the validity of the text?  10%, 25%, 99%?  What parts need to be changed in order for you to reject it?  Maybe if it said Jesus rode the djinn to the pink dragon where he cured the dragons sore throat (lol)?  If that was in the bible would you believe it?  How is walking on water, curing the sick, casting out demons, and coming back from the dead any different then curing the dragon with his sore throat?  The book is crazy and I have no idea why you think its accurate.

In essence, though I have no doubt that many changes have been made to the Gospels, we can still take them as a generally reliable picture of Jesus.

Why?

[Reginus]

I had to get this copy online from Amazon (which i'm sure would be difficult to explain to your parents).

Uh, yeah lol

they believed Jesus was the Messiah however he was a Rabbi (which is true) and his teachings were that of strict Judaism (Or as I like to call it 600 laws of suck).

Preaching to thieves and prostitutes? Forcefully confronting pharisees? Doesn't sound like strict Judaism to me.

Also what does having a bias adoptionistic view have to do with imagining everything the NIV says is true?

All I'm saying is that many people of the time would have viewed Jesus through a bias Jewish lens, just because Judaism was the common belief of the time, which is in huge conflict with the picture of Jesus that the modern bible portrays.

You can't count the bible as evidence...

Misquoting Jesus seems to claim that the Bible has been changed so much that it is no longer reliable. You gave several example passages that quite possibly may have been changed (each of which I have no doubt is being debated), but in order to prove that the original point, you would need to attack the tens (hundreds?) of other passages that point to Jesus being divine, and show how they were changed. Simply showing that a few passages have been modified is not enough.

I think the next thing i'm going to attempt to summarize is how the early Christians produced the bible. Hopefully I won't quote so much that I will get into copyright trouble.

Sounds great, and I seriously doubt that the publisher has minions spying on us around here.

*Got to go to bed for now, so I'll discuss your last few paragraphs tomorrow.

[AlP]

Out of interest Reginus, why is the accuracy or inaccuracy of the current copies of the bible versus the original work important to you? I would expect any ancient text that was copied by hand to have changes. What's the big deal?

[LoneMateria]

I dunno. If I find 25 passages that seem to indicate that Jesus was divine, then Ehrman would need to explain how these had been changed.

You seemed to miss my point.  I didn't say every passage has been changed (from the originals we don't know we don't have them).  Ehrman points to passages of Jesus being considered divine to help prove which text was original in my summary before.  I'm not saying that every view has been added/changed.  I'm saying that 1 because it was written down doesn't make it accurate because 2 different changes have been added to literally enhance Jesus's image as the messiah (like adding passages to make him fulfill OT prophecies) and to snuff out rival denominations of Christianity by changing the word of the bible and calling those without the change heretics.  

...and I wouldn't be on this forum lol

Preaching to thieves and prostitutes? Forcefully confronting pharisees? Doesn't sound like strict Judaism to me.

Do you know what strict Judaism is?

All I'm saying is that many people of the time would have viewed Jesus through a bias Jewish lens, just because Judaism was the common belief of the time, which is in huge conflict with the picture of Jesus that the modern bible portrays.

Umm... you are factually wrong here.  Judaism has never been the common belief of any time period.  During the time of Christ and after Christ it was Paganism that was the dominant religion.  Judaism was about as big as Scientology is now.  Christianity was a sect of Judaism.  Surprisingly it only took 200 years for Christians to hate Jews but thats another topic.  And Jews are to this day looking for a Messiah just like they were 2000 years ago, the bible tries to portray Jesus as the Messiah so I don't see a conflict there.  Jews look for messiah and book claims that he came.  (A side note most early converts to Christianity were Pagans, Jews with their prophecies didn't think Jesus fulfilled what their Messiah was supposed to do)

Misquoting Jesus seems to claim that the Bible has been changed so much that it is no longer reliable. You gave several example passages that quite possibly may have been changed (each of which I have no doubt is being debated), but in order to prove that the original point, you would need to attack the tens (hundreds?) of other passages that point to Jesus being divine, and show how they were changed. Simply showing that a few passages have been modified is not enough.

I must not have articulated my point clearly.  You are half right here.  Misquoting Jesus claims that the bible is not reliable.  I'm NOT saying that NOBODY held the belief that Jesus was divine and that it WASN'T in the early bibles.  I'm saying that there have been changes to prove he is divine and some of them dishonestly.  Not only were there the slight alterations that I cited earlier, there have been passages added to make Jesus fulfill OT prophecies (which is why they say Jesus is from Nazareth a city that didn't exist until a few hundred years after Christ's death [for a quick example]).  Common beliefs and potential problems have caused intentional changes in the bible whether a scribe saw an error and was correcting it or Church leaders needed to kill heretics and had to add a passage or 2 to do it.

I'm curious how many passages would have to be modified for you to no longer take the bible seriously?  For the sake of argument say I could prove that 25 out of 40 passages that says Jesus was divine were added/changed to say that.  Would that be enough to show the inaccuracy of the bible?  How about 35/40 or 10/40 or 5/40?  Where do you draw the line?  Or are you going to quote mine and accept exactly what you want to?  I'm asking you this because this is where I feel we are heading.  You seem to want me to go line by line through the bible and show where its wrong before you accept it is wrong.  Is that logical?  Say you were reading a history book and in chapter 1 it says the Holocaust didn't happen.  How much of that book would you believe is accurate?  Chapter 1 didn't happen in the bible lol

*Got to go to bed for now, so I'll discuss your last few paragraphs tomorrow.

Me 2, tomorrow I plan on summarizing the first part of Chapter 1 for you, but I may not IDK yet.

[Renegnicat]

Good stuff.

[Reginus]

The reason I haven't discussed it is because i'm honestly not sure of it.  I know there are more textual variations in all the bibles we have then there are words in the New Testament.  To put it plainly in all the bibles we have up until King James there are more differences then words in the New Testament.  Now with Boyd's statement I find major problems with it.  1.) I feel that number was pulled out of his ass because with a conservative number of differences in the New Testament at 200,000 I don't quite think 95-98% fits the bill.  I'd be more apt to play ball if he said 50% and even then i'm not sure.  2.) We don't have the original Gospel's from 2000 years ago or anything close so what is he comparing this to exactly?  That whole statement feels like he pulled it out of his ass.

As far as I know Ehrman doesn't mention how much of the bible is changed he only throws out there the estimated differences in the bible from experts starting with a MINIMUM of 200,000 differences to 500,000+ differences.  I need to check out that link AlP gave, maybe it will shed some light on it.

By textual variations, do other languages count as variations? If so, then if the NT is in 100 languages and is made up of 10,000 passages, then there are already 1,000,000 combined variations in passages. Or do you mean NT manuscripts with at least one difference in one or more passages?

If I understand your last 2 statements correctly then you are saying, "So what if its been changed". Please correct me if i'm wrong. Now those examples I gave were just a few. Let me ask you a question, how much of the bible has to be changed before you question the validity of the text? 10%, 25%, 99%? What parts need to be changed in order for you to reject it? Maybe if it said Jesus rode the djinn to the pink dragon where he cured the dragons sore throat (lol)? If that was in the bible would you believe it? How is walking on water, curing the sick, casting out demons, and coming back from the dead any different then curing the dragon with his sore throat? The book is crazy and I have no idea why you think its accurate.

If we can come up with an estimate like 30%, then surely we must know what the text has been changed from. It only makes sense to "believe" the most accurate version of the Bible. If we knew that someone had put in the dragon part, then it wouldn't make any sense to discard the rest of the NT just because of the change.

Out of interest Reginus, why is the accuracy or inaccuracy of the current copies of the bible versus the original work important to you? I would expect any ancient text that was copied by hand to have changes. What's the big deal?

Exactly my point

I'm saying that 1 because it was written down doesn't make it accurate because 2 different changes have been added to literally enhance Jesus's image as the messiah (like adding passages to make him fulfill OT prophecies) and to snuff out rival denominations of Christianity by changing the word of the bible and calling those without the change heretics.

1 the articles in my first post explain why it is unlikely that the Gospels were simply made up 2 again, changes don't invalidate the rest of the Bible.

Do you know what strict Judaism is?

Apparently I am misunderstanding something, so please explain.

Umm... you are factually wrong here. Judaism has never been the common belief of any time period.

Not even in Judea?

Say you were reading a history book and in chapter 1 it says the Holocaust didn't happen. How much of that book would you believe is accurate? Chapter 1 didn't happen in the bible , but thats not the point. How about if in Chapter 1 it said that X many of millions of Jews were killed during WWII from a deadly disease? And that the Jews were in camps to protect them from the war when someone caught the disease and it spread? Is that more believable? What would you think of the History book then? If you claim the historical confessions of genocide are false then where does the line get drawn between what is believable and what isnt? With a change/error that big how much of the rest of the book would you take seriously? My guess is very little.

If we knew that this part of the book was changed, but 95% of it is true, and we don't have any alternative history books, I would be inclined to believe most of it (not to mention the 9 points of textual critique.) I might take what chapter one was changed from and mentally switch it around with the current chapter one.

In summary, the Bible can only be considered changed/unreliable to the extent that it has been changed.