Happy Atheist Forum

I consitered adding this material on to my "9 points" topic, but decided it deserved a new topic in it's own right.

The Quest for a "Merely Human" Jesus (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/new-testament/the-jesus-seminar/)

Internal Arguments for the Gospels (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/how-details-in-the-gospels-support-their-historicity/)

Archeological Support for the Gospels (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/is-there-archeological-support-for-the-reliability-of-the-gospels/)

Corroborating Historical Support For the New Testiment (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/corroborating-historical-evidence-of-the-new-testament/)

Reliablility of the Early Church's Oral Traditions (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/how-reliable-was-the-early-churchs-oral-traditions/)

Is the Book of Acts Reliable? (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/essays-bible/is-the-book-of-acts-reliable/)

Edit:Response to "Misquoting Jesus" (http://www.gregboyd.org/qa/bible/how-do-you-respond-to-ehrmans-book-misquoting-jesus/)

A summary:General Arguments For the Reliablity of the New Testiment (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/new-testament/are-the-gospels-reliable/)

I admit that as a Christian, I am pretty one sided as far as critical thinking goes for this topic, so I am interested in the flaws you guys see in these arguments.

Quote from: "Reginus"The Quest for a "Merely Human" Jesus (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/new-testament/the-jesus-seminar/)

This seems to ignore entirely the fact that the Bible today bears little resemblance to the original texts and additional books. Ecumenical politics permeates the Bible, so modern interpretation which only takes information from the NKJ or NIV would seem... irrelevant. Regardless of how the author feels about "liberal" "naturalism", the wider issue is that no one basing their understanding of Jesus on the modern Bible is getting even part of the story as it was supposedly, originally.

Naturalism is the answer to the question, "What principle can one settle on if they only accept verifiable evidence?" I don't blame modern theologians for trying to integrate such a principle into religion, in order to try and protect it from the likes of people like myself. Unfortunately, it's a bit like putting a barnacle on the outside of a piece of iron and calling it a fish. That fish won't float.

Quote from: "Reginus"Internal Arguments for the Gospels (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/how-details-in-the-gospels-support-their-historicity/)

Much like above, the modern interpretation ignores the history of the documents themselves. Since there's no evidence at all that the Gospels were written during the time when Jesus supposedly was alive, there's no reason at all to assume that any historical accuracy suggests anything more than simply fitting a fable in with known events. The same argument could be made for any historical fiction. Historicity no more demonstrates the truth of the gospels than it does the movie Titanic. There was a large boat named "Titanic", and on its maiden voyage its hull was punctured by an iceberg, which caused it to sink. There's nothing demonstrating that two young people, one rich and engaged and one poor and probably Irish, got busy in the back of a car or drew each other naked, however.

Quote from: "Reginus"Archeological Support for the Gospels (http://www.gregboyd.org/essays/apologetics/is-there-archeological-support-for-the-reliability-of-the-gospels/)

Evidence of the Nature of First Century Judaism gets us off with a bit of a strawman. Orthodox Jews are just as capable of reviewing their prophecies and creating a character to fit them as “Hellenized” Jews, in fact I'd say that have more of a reason to do so. Inventing a savior, if successful, could (and did) revitalize religion in the area making “Hellenization" less likely.

Bethsaida follows the same argument I made above, as does the A Galilean Fishing Boat.

 I don't know of anyone that doubts Pontius Pilate was a real historical figure. I certainly don't and I'm one of those people that argues that there's no historical, extra-Biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus. I'm also well aware people were crucified.

Regarding the Caiaphas Ossuary, I'm afraid it was debunked almost immediately by those tasked with testing it. Apparently, it was a hoax.

The Pool of Siloam? May have existed, doesn't prove that Jesus healed people there, or that there ever was a Jesus there.

Peter's House seems to suggest that there were Christians in the late first century, which doesn't really surprise me. The Gospel of Mark dates back to about 70AD, iirc. It should also be said that the dating of the building suggests that it's from the first or second century.

There has never been a burial site verified to have been the resting place of Jesus. Due respect to James Charlesworth, there's no evidence whatsoever to support such a wild and irresponsible conclusion.

I'm starting to see a pattern, so I'm going to have to conclude that there's really nothing new here. Some of the Bible does reference historically accurate information, but that does not suggest the entire Bible is correct.

QuoteThis naturalistic presupposition permeates liberal New Testament scholarship, and, while liberal scholars may differ somewhat in the degree to which they hold to it (depending on how broadly or narrowly they define the “natural” world), its importance in determining the conclusions more radical scholars arrive at can hardly be overstated. If a person begins his or her research with the assumption that supernatural events never occur, then obviously the only Jesus he or she can possibly “discover” through their research is a non-supernatural Jesus, a Jesus, in other words, that is radically different than the Jesus portrayed in the Bible. Thus, the conclusion that the Bible’s portrait of a supernatural savior is inaccurate is assumed at the start!

This guy just lost all credibility in my book for this statement, firstly it's a straw man fallacy and secondly I wouldn't be surprised if he's making the assumption that supernatural events can and did occur and starting from there. Instead of starting where you're supposed to: "We don't know whether Jesus performed supernatural acts, is there evidence to support either viewpoint?". It's just a really underhanded way of calling us close minded on his part.

Thanks for taking the time to post Will and Arctonyx. I read through the first couple of links. They were so inane I couldn't even think what to post. Thanks again for taking the time to make "sense" of it.

Quote from: "Greg Boyd"stuff

Does this guy have anything other than the Bible?

Quote from: "Arctonix"stuff

If we discover something beyond what we currently consider "natural,"  it would not be supernatural, because would exist.  The definition of "natural" would stretch to include it.  We would make new theories to model its behavior, attempt to utilize it, and probably revolutionize the way we live life.

Certainly, I have no belief in the supernatural.  It does not exist BY DEFINITION.

Quote from: "Heretical Rants"If we discover something beyond what we currently consider "natural,"  it would not be supernatural, because would exist.  The definition of "natural" would stretch to include it.  We would make new theories to model its behavior, attempt to utilize it, and probably revolutionize the way we live life.

Certainly, I have no belief in the supernatural.  It does not exist BY DEFINITION.

This is what confuses me when I hear arguments such as "God is outside of our reality, therefore you can't test it" or something (I've heard it a couple of times from a friend at least). And if God does exist then he must exist inside reality, things outside of reality don't exist. Though I guess most religious people use 'supernatural' in the sense that actions are performed which according to our current knowledge would be impossible.

I'm making a genuine attempt to understand what these articles mean and if I understood them I might be interested in debating them. The first stumbling block I have with the first article is I don't know what the author means by supernatural. It seems to mean different things to different people. Does he mean supernatural as in paranormal? Or is he referring to a non-natural realm, like Plato's ideal versus non-ideal realms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism)? Or something else?

Quote from: "Arctonyx""God is outside of our reality, therefore you can't test it"

The Muslims keep trying to tell me Allah exists outside of time, since time itself did not exist until he created it.

Quote from: "Arctonyx"This is what confuses me when I hear arguments such as "God is outside of our reality, therefore you can't test it" or something (I've heard it a couple of times from a friend at least). And if God does exist then he must exist inside reality, things outside of reality don't exist. Though I guess most religious people use 'supernatural' in the sense that actions are performed which according to our current knowledge would be impossible.

Of the debates I've participated in and have listened to I find when someone says, "God is outside of our reality." or something similar they are trying to cop out in a last ditch effort to preserve their god.  The thing is even if there was some way to exist outside of reality a god interacts (supposedly) in this reality.  Therefore there would be a way to measure and test what it does because it's inside reality.  If the god does not interact in our reality then theres no need to call it god, worship it, or really acknowledge it.  

If someone would use that definition of supernatural i'd show them the flaw with it.  If we shoot a gun is it supernatural that there are holes in what we are shooting at?  How about 2000 years ago?  It might be considered supernatural to them but not to us.  If they consider it supernatural does it make it supernatural?  No.  Is it okay for them to call it supernatural because they will never understand it? No.  If theists were to use supernatural to refer to their god it literally becomes a "god of the gaps" fallacy.  Because all they are doing is taking something we don't quite yet understand and saying it was god.  No proof, no evidence, just an empty assertion that becomes a classic "god of the gaps".

**Edit** I still need to read those articles I was just commenting.

Try not to get too hung up on the first post, as it's only an introduction. Anyway, I suppose you can just think of something that's "supernatural" as something that does not have a natural cause, something that's more than natural.  If you lived inside of a small two-dimensional world, it would be impossible for you to imagine a full form world of three dimensions.

Quote from: "Reginus"Try not to get too hung up on the first post, as it's only an introduction. Anyway, I suppose you can just think of something that's "supernatural" as something that does not have a natural cause, something that's more than natural.  If you lived inside of a small two-dimensional world, it would be impossible for you to imagine a full form world of three dimensions.

That's not quite the same thing. We live in a 4-dimensonal world, but that doesn't mean it's impossible for us to not only comprehend, but test and verify physics in the 5th dimension. Science doesn't have natural limits at all. The supernatural is something entirely outside of science, something that not only cannot be explained in any way by science yesterday or today, but ever. If god is ever discovered and can be tested using natural laws, god will never have been supernatural at all. Why is that a problem? God is supernatural by definition. Supernatural by definition means something can never ever be tested and demonstrated using science.

Quote from: "Reginus"Try not to get too hung up on the first post, as it's only an introduction. Anyway, I suppose you can just think of something that's "supernatural" as something that does not have a natural cause, something that's more than natural.  If you lived inside of a small two-dimensional world, it would be impossible for you to imagine a full form world of three dimensions.

So the definition, if I get it, is the natural is not a cause of the supernatural but the supernatural can presumably be a cause of the natural? The natural would be the universe, both in space and time? By this definition, does time also apply to the supernatural? Does the supernatural also have a kind of space like the natural?

If it has space and time then it seems like Plato's ideal realm that I linked earlier. If not then it seems more like the paranormal. I don't mean to use paranormal as a dysphemism for the supernatural. I am not attempting to portray the supernatural in a poor light with rhetoric. I simply do not know another comparable word.

Thanks.

Edit:
So I've been trying to make sense of this... The first article is about the futility of looking for a non-supernatural Jesus. Suppose Jesus was supernatural. Then by the definition you provided, it seems that he would not be affected causally by the natural world. But he lived in it and was presumably influenced by it right? You believe, among other things, that he was crucified right? Would this not be a contradiction? I'm going to speculate and guess that this is the reason for the Trinity? That would allow the natural and supernatural worlds to interact while keeping a clear non-causal relationship from natural to supernatural? Sorry to press you. People throw around the word supernatural all the time and I would like an accurate definition. This stuff interests me. Thanks again.

I have a couple of notes / questions.  Thinking about the supernatural can you demonstrate supernatural exists?  More importantly can you demonstrate supernatural is different then imaginary?  If you can't then what becomes a more reasonable position supernatural or imaginary?

A sort of fun note on dimensions.  Does anyone know about string theory?  According to it there is up to as many as 11 dimensions.  By the way for those who don't know string theory is a branch of theoretical physics that bridges Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity.  

Anyway i'm going to shout out to you programmers so those who don't like programming this paragraph you should just skip proally.  While I was learning XNA (Microsoft's game programming language) I came across some interesting features.  When drawing objects we have a few different methods built in to choose from.  We had Vector2D for drawing 2 dimensional objects which I never used cause 2 dimensional games weren't the point of the class.  Vector3D 3 dimensional objects which I did use.  But it also had Vector4D.  I never really learned how it worked, my parter guessed that it used a timer or some time reference but couldn't prove it.  Our book sucked and Microsoft's free help site didn't help.  I was trying to visualize it and my teacher gave it a guess.  He grabbed 2 pieces of paper and put them perpendicular to each other to form a 3d grid and showed the X, Y, and Z axis.  He tried to describe it as that 3d grid actually moving (by walking around the room) which would be interesting in a space game.  I don't know if he was referring to a fixed 0(x),0(y),0(z) or it moving.  I'm still a little confused if you have any better ideas let me know ^_^

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Anyway i'm going to shout out to you programmers so those who don't like programming this paragraph you should just skip proally.  While I was learning XNA (Microsoft's game programming language) I came across some interesting features.  When drawing objects we have a few different methods built in to choose from.  We had Vector2D for drawing 2 dimensional objects which I never used cause 2 dimensional games weren't the point of the class.  Vector3D 3 dimensional objects which I did use.  But it also had Vector4D.  I never really learned how it worked, my parter guessed that it used a timer or some time reference but couldn't prove it.  Our book sucked and Microsoft's free help site didn't help.  I was trying to visualize it and my teacher gave it a guess.  He grabbed 2 pieces of paper and put them perpendicular to each other to form a 3d grid and showed the X, Y, and Z axis.  He tried to describe it as that 3d grid actually moving (by walking around the room) which would be interesting in a space game.  I don't know if he was referring to a fixed 0(x),0(y),0(z) or it moving.  I'm still a little confused if you have any better ideas let me know ^_^

Oh please don't scare off Reginus. He's smart and he knows things about religion and I find religion fascinating. Anyway, I'm a (ex) video games programmer. 4 dimensional space is most often used for homogeneous coordinates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneous_coordinates) and quaternions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternions_and_spatial_rotation) in that domain. I won't explain here because it's OT!

Quote from: "AlP"Oh please don't scare off Reginus. He's smart and he knows things about religion and I find religion fascinating. Anyway, I'm a (ex) video games programmer. 4 dimensional space is most often used for homogeneous coordinates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogeneous_coordinates) and quaternions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternions_and_spatial_rotation) in that domain. I won't explain here because it's OT!

Scare him off  ?  I'm pretty sure non programmers are reading this thread and I was just giving them warning they are probably going to have a hard time understanding what i'm saying.  Side note I don't consider drag n drop real programming (sorry Reginus >.<) though I do sometimes use a GUI editor for convenience in C# just because it establishes the parameters more easily and sets up handlers quicker.  Also AlP I think I understand both of those ... in a very basic sense.  It seems like all they have to do with is rotation right? Weird 4th dimension.

Thats going to segue back on topic though (well not back on topic but back on current discussion).  What is considered a dimension? Dictionary.com gives the word dimension a broad range of meaning.  Can anyone think of a good way to define dimension with an example (preferably one thats not time ^_^ but can apply to time)?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Thats going to segue back on topic though (well not back on topic but back on current discussion).  What is considered a dimension? Dictionary.com gives the word dimension a broad range of meaning.  Can anyone think of a good way to define dimension with an example (preferably one thats not time ^_^ but can apply to time)?

Lol. If you ask this in another thread I'll answer. Maybe tomorrow though. I'm getting tired.

First, I have an alternative definition of "supernatural being": A free agent that is not restrained by the laws of physics.

Quote from: "Will"That's not quite the same thing. We live in a 4-dimensonal world, but that doesn't mean it's impossible for us to not only comprehend, but test and verify physics in the 5th dimension.

An analogy seeks to capture one aspect of the truth, not the entire truth. Since dimensions are naturalistic, a 5 dimensional world could be modeled mathematically for sure. However, I think that very few in the world (if any) could actually imagine what it would be like to exist in such a universe.

Quote from: "Will"If god is ever discovered and can be tested using natural laws, god will never have been supernatural at all. Why is that a problem? God is supernatural by definition. Supernatural by definition means something can never ever be tested and demonstrated using science.

Agreed. I doubt that God can be scientifically tested.

Quote from: "AIP"So the definition, if I get it, is the natural is not a cause of the supernatural but the supernatural can presumably be a cause of the natural? The natural would be the universe, both in space and time? By this definition, does time also apply to the supernatural? Does the supernatural also have a kind of space like the natural?

If it has space and time then it seems like Plato's ideal realm that I linked earlier. If not then it seems more like the paranormal. I don't mean to use paranormal as a dysphemism for the supernatural. I am not attempting to portray the supernatural in a poor light with rhetoric. I simply do not know another comparable word.

First, I would like to say that just as I find it hard to imagine what it would be like to live in a 5 dimensional universe, I find it just as hard to imagine what a supernatural realm might be like. However, the point of Mr. Boyd's first article is not to say exactly what the supernatural might be like, but simply that we ought to be open to the possibility that Jesus wasn't a normal human being.

Quote from: "AIP"Edit:
So I've been trying to make sense of this... The first article is about the futility of looking for a non-supernatural Jesus. Suppose Jesus was supernatural. Then by the definition you provided, it seems that he would not be affected causally by the natural world. But he lived in it and was presumably influenced by it right? You believe, among other things, that he was crucified right? Would this not be a contradiction? I'm going to speculate and guess that this is the reason for the Trinity? That would allow the natural and supernatural worlds to interact while keeping a clear non-causal relationship from natural to supernatural? Sorry to press you. People throw around the word supernatural all the time and I would like an accurate definition. This stuff interests me. Thanks again.

Christians generally believe that Christ (supernatural) was manifested through a person named Jesus. It would have certainly been possible for Christ to allow his body to be influenced by the natural world. In other words, Christ could exist without there being a person named Jesus, but Jesus could not have existed without Christ (or at least couldn't have preformed miracles, etc.).

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Thinking about the supernatural can you demonstrate supernatural exists?

If you mean something like "can we take a photograph of it?" or "can we scientifically test to see if there is such a thing?" then the answer is no. However, that doesn't mean that it's impossible for something supernatural to exist. If there is evidence suggesting that Jesus might have been (at least partly) supernatural, then we should be open to the possibility.

Btw, you don't have to worry about be leaving (at least for a while.) There's far too much to learn here.

Thanks Reginus. I will reread the first article with that definition in mind. Unfortunately the author's web site seems to be down right now. Hopefully it will be back up soon.

Quote from: "Reginus"First, I have an alternative definition of "supernatural being": A free agent that is not restrained by the laws of physics.

Can you demonstrate that is different then imaginary?  If a "free agent" is not restrained by the laws of physics and is able to interact we would have documented scientific evidences of this whether we could explain it or not (that is assuming the "free agent" can interact in this world).  There would be lots of these documented scientific mysteries if the "free agent" cares for us and changes the laws of physics on our behalf for a moment.  We'd have amputees with mysteriously regenerated limbs, bullets being stopped in mid air instead of killing someone and other things.  We don't see that.

Quote from: "Reginus"An analogy seeks to capture one aspect of the truth, not the entire truth. Since dimensions are naturalistic, a 5 dimensional world could be modeled mathematically for sure. However, I think that very few in the world (if any) could actually imagine what it would be like to exist in such a universe.

Through string theory there are up to 11 different dimensions.  We live in those dimensions.  Heres a thought say we only sense 4 dimensions (reasonable based on our senses) but we can mathematically show theres 11.  Even if we don't understand we live in 11 dimensions wouldn't the view of that many dimensions look just like our view right now?

Quote from: "Reginus"First, I would like to say that just as I find it hard to imagine what it would be like to live in a 5 dimensional universe, I find it just as hard to imagine what a supernatural realm might be like. However, the point of Mr. Boyd's first article is not to say exactly what the supernatural might be like, but simply that we ought to be open to the possibility that Jesus wasn't a normal human being.

The link is down for this article do you have another one?  I need a reference point to begin discussing this >.<

Quote from: "Reginus"Christians generally believe that Christ (supernatural) was manifested through a person named Jesus. It would have certainly been possible for Christ to allow his body to be influenced by the natural world. In other words, Christ could exist without there being a person named Jesus, but Jesus could not have existed without Christ (or at least couldn't have preformed miracles, etc.).

You said nothing here.  I'm going to note by your choice of words you imply you do not believe this so if you do please correct me.  Other then that this just seems like a bunch of assertions without really addressing AlP's concerns.

Quote from: "Reginus"If you mean something like "can we take a photograph of it?" or "can we scientifically test to see if there is such a thing?" then the answer is no. However, that doesn't mean that it's impossible for something supernatural to exist. If there is evidence suggesting that Jesus might have been (at least partly) supernatural, then we should be open to the possibility.

Btw, you don't have to worry about be leaving (at least for a while.) There's far too much to learn here.

Glad you are staying ^_^.  If something interacts with our physical world we can measure it.  We don't need a photograph.  We can't take a photograph of gravity or of the wind.  But we can measure the effects the have on the world.  Same thing would be true with some mysterious supernatural being that watches over us and helps us.  By the way you didn't answer my more important question, how can you tell the difference between supernatural (big foot, alien abductions, telekinesis, dowsing, gods, etc) and whats imaginary?   Now you just said we can't scientifically measure anything supernatural (evidence for this please) does that lend credit to any of these?  I'd say in order for something to exist we must have scientific evidence for its existence and that is the only way to tell what is real from what is imaginary.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Stuff

The article seems to be working fine for me. Try one more time, and if it still isn't working I'll copy and paste it here. A few thoughts:

---->1. Jesus is the center of evidence for supernaturalism (for me at least). Many Christians would say that there is other evidence for miracles, but arguing about this with an atheist would be pointless. Christian supernaturalism comes into play because there is evidence that Jesus preformed miracles, and because he says there there are demonic influences on the world.

2. If it's possible that the physical universe is really part of a larger picture, then we should be open to the possibility if evidence seems to support it. We shouldn't try to side-step it by saying naturalism is the only possibility.

3. Hardly any Christians believe that supernatural powers except for God have infinite power to change the physical world at any time they feel like it.

4. If there are supernatural influences on this world, then they have to "get the job done" somehow. I find it very hard to imagine a demonic/angelic influence simply stopping a bullet in mid-air without some sort of naturalistic mechanism. Perhaps they do this by somehow influencing natural particles who's nature is based on "randomness". Perhaps they are limited to spiritual influence. These guesses are likely wrong, but my original point stands.

...So basically, all this supernatural stuff might as well be happening in a parallel universe.  It has no effect on us, except perhaps our spirits, which also exist separately in that other realm...

Quote from: "Reginus"

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Stuff

Quote from: "Reginus"The article seems to be working fine for me. Try one more time, and if it still isn't working I'll copy and paste it here. A few thoughts:

Its up now, i'll post about it later.

Quote from: "Reginus"---->1. Jesus is the center of evidence for supernaturalism (for me at least). Many Christians would say that there is other evidence for miracles, but arguing about this with an atheist would be pointless.

Wow you act like atheists aren't open to evidence.  I'm going to correct what you are saying.  Arguing this with a non-Christian is pointless.  I'm pretty sure Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and so on would ask for some evidence as well regardless if they do the same for their religion.  Christianity is no different.

Quote from: "Reginus"Christian supernaturalism comes into play because there is evidence that Jesus preformed miracles, and because he says there there are demonic influences on the world.

What evidence?

Quote from: "Reginus"2. If it's possible that the physical universe is really part of a larger picture, then we should be open to the possibility if evidence seems to support it. We shouldn't try to side-step it by saying naturalism is the only possibility.

Its possible we live inside the rectum of a pink unicorn, its not probable but its possible.  What is this evidence you refer to?  If memory serves you said it was impossible to have evidence for supernatural events.

Quote from: "Reginus"3. Hardly any Christians believe that supernatural powers except for God have infinite power to change the physical world at any time they feel like it.

Is this an argument from majority?  Just because many people believed the earth was flat was it flat?

Quote from: "Reginus"4. If there are supernatural influences on this world, then they have to "get the job done" somehow.

You are making a lot of assumptions in this statement.  You are assuming (given there is such a thing as supernatural) that the influence is intelligent, that they are assigned a job, and that this job is somehow related to us.  Proof please.

Quote from: "Reginus"I find it very hard to imagine a demonic/angelic influence simply stopping a bullet in mid-air without some sort of naturalistic mechanism.

THEN THE INFLUENCE ISN'T SUPERNATURAL IT'S NATURAL!!!!!!  You said supernatural exists outside physics and that they actively affect things, but now you are saying, "oh well it can't be done without something natural but supernatural influences it".  You are freaking missing the point of the term SUPERNATURAL.  If the only way a bullet can be stopped is by something natural then either bullets are stronger then the supernatural (aka GOD), or there is no supernatural.  Which is it?

Quote from: "Reginus"Perhaps they do this by somehow influencing natural particles who's nature is based on "randomness". Perhaps they are limited to spiritual influence. These guesses are likely wrong, but my original point stands.

So now are you saying these supernatural things can influence randomness but can't stop a bullet without some natural force?  If supernatural things like GOD can't directly influence the world what is the point of cowering in fear and worshiping it?  Reginus I know you are busy with school but I've brought up a lot of questions about this and flaws in your arguments please address these so I know our conversation is going somewhere.  It feels like you are trying to talk in circles and make stuff up otherwise.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Wow you act like atheists aren't open to evidence.  I'm going to correct what you are saying.  Arguing this with a non-Christian is pointless.  I'm pretty sure Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and so on would ask for some evidence as well regardless if they do the same for their religion.  Christianity is no different.

The reason rallying for evidence in miracles is pointless is because it always comes down to the "God of the Gaps."

Quote from: "LoneMateria"What evidence?

Heh now we are getting somewhere. I will now direct you to the 8 or so articles in the opening post.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Its possible we live inside the rectum of a pink unicorn, its not probable but its possible.  What is this evidence you refer to?  If memory serves you said it was impossible to have evidence for supernatural events.

I think I said "scientific evidence", meaning always testable. Perhaps I have too narrow of a definition of scientific evidence?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Is this an argument from majority?  Just because many people believed the earth was flat was it flat?

No, it's just that the world would not be like it is if all supernatural influences had unlimited power.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"You are making a lot of assumptions in this statement.  You are assuming (given there is such a thing as supernatural) that the influence is intelligent, that they are assigned a job, and that this job is somehow related to us.  Proof please.

I make these assumptions based on what is depicted in the bible.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"THEN THE INFLUENCE ISN'T SUPERNATURAL IT'S NATURAL!!!!!!  You said supernatural exists outside physics and that they actively affect things, but now you are saying, "oh well it can't be done without something natural but supernatural influences it".  You are freaking missing the point of the term SUPERNATURAL.  If the only way a bullet can be stopped is by something natural then either bullets are stronger then the supernatural (aka GOD), or there is no supernatural.  Which is it?

If you blow out a candle, then it is essential because you made up your mind to do it. Of course, you could say that the candle went out because fast-flowing air put it out, but if you hadn't made the decision in your brain to blow, the candle would have remained burning. Now, all I'm saying is that I think it is possible for there to be middle ground between natural and supernatural.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"So now are you saying these supernatural things can influence randomness but can't stop a bullet without some natural force?

I really don't know, this is just a hypothesis.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"If supernatural things like GOD can't directly influence the world what is the point of cowering in fear and worshiping it?

I have been mostly talking about supernatural beings other than God (ex. demons as shown in the Bible.) I don't think that God him self often (with the exception of Jesus) choices to directly interfere. Why? Well in the OT, he DID. Guess what? It didn't work and the Israelites still miserably disobeyed him.

Anyway, here's the point that I feel like I need to get back to. Many liberal scholars start with the assumption that Jesus really did no supernatural acts. Instead of examining the evidence to see if this assumption is supported, they examine the evidence to see how he got away with looking so supernatural (and in the process are forced to discount the majority of the Gospel passages and other associated texts). Greg Boyd simply says that this is futile. That is the entire point of the first article.

Thank you for baring with me. It is hard to support a stance that supernatural powers actually exist, but I think that partly because of the Gospels, this is quite likely.

Quote from: "Reginus"Anyway, here's the point that I feel like I need to get back to. Many liberal scholars start with the assumption that Jesus really did no supernatural acts. Instead of examining the evidence to see if this assumption is supported, they examine the evidence to see how he got away with looking so supernatural (and in the process are forced to discount the majority of the Gospel passages and other associated texts). Greg Boyd simply says that this is futile. That is the entire point of the first article.

Thank you for baring with me. It is hard to support a stance that supernatural powers actually exist, but I think that partly because of the Gospels, this is quite likely.

I reread the first article and also read some of the other articles. First, if the author is criticizing historians who are asserting conclusions on the basis of poor evidence or bad arguments, and this is in fact the case (I don't know), then I think he would be making a fair point. If he is criticizing them simply for not making supernatural assumptions, I do not agree. I doubt there are many theologians who will disagree that a natural explanation is better than a supernatural explanation. By being skeptical, a scholar is more likely to find the simpler natural explanation.

As to whether I think it is most reasonable to interpret the bible historically on the basis of purely natural assumptions or on the basis of both natural and supernatural, I need a definition for the supernatural interventions claimed by the bible (of which I am not particularly familiar but also not entirely ignorant of). I'm going with this as a definition:

Quote from: "Kenneth W Kemp"Under what circumstances can supernatural agency be said to
meet the minimum criteria of acceptability as an explanation?
Although precise specification of the threshold is no more here to be
had than in the science laboratory, a general list of criteria can be
offered. Obviously God could do practically anything. So, nothing is
implausible on account of being beyond God’s power. An event can
plausibly be attributed to supernatural intervention, however, only
to the extent that it meets one or more of the following criteria:

(1) it seems consistent with divine wisdom and providence,
(2) it was the object of prayer, and
(3) it is the kind of intervention for which there is precedent
in Scripture and tradition.

Some inexplicable events will clearly fail the criteria.

Link here (http://www.stthomas.edu/CathStudies/logos/volumes/3-2/kemp.pdf). Is this reasonable?

So I think that if you want to find a supernatural interpretation of the bible, I agree with the author, it is better to make supernatural assumptions, otherwise you will likely not come to the supernatural conclusion. To me, the problem with this is that it is circular. Let's suppose the miraculous events in the bible are true by the criteria above. They would be true because they are consistent with divine wisdom and providence, are the object of prayer or are the kind of intervention for which there is a precedent in Scripture and tradition. The supernatural would be true only by its own definition. One must make specific supernatural assumptions, such as those above, in order to come to a supernatural conclusion. It is the logical fallacy of begging the question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question).

There is also the problem that Christianity is not the only religion that does this. It is not not simply a case of deciding whether or not one assumes the supernatural. There is the question of which supernatural. It is a matter of faith in one's own particular supernatural.

Quote from: "Reginus"The reason rallying for evidence in miracles is pointless is because it always comes down to the "God of the Gaps."

So it comes down to a fallacy?  Then if you still believe in it you are building information upon a fallacy.  Everything you build on a fallacy is equally fallacious.

Quote from: "Reginus"Heh now we are getting somewhere. I will now direct you to the 8 or so articles in the opening post.

Can you give me something specific?  Some point where you see it as evidence?  What i've read of those articles i'm not impressed and I see fallacies in them.  

Quote from: "Reginus"I think I said "scientific evidence", meaning always testable. Perhaps I have too narrow of a definition of scientific evidence?

Looking back you did.  But that doesn't change anything.  That just means before you assume we are part of a "larger picture" then you'd have to have testable evidence to prove it.  Saying we are part of a larger picture with no evidence is just as valid as saying we live inside the ass of a pink unicorn with no evidence.

Quote from: "Reginus"No, it's just that the world would not be like it is if all supernatural influences had unlimited power.

I know you said further down that you didn't include God.  However God is supernatural, so are you saying there is no God here?

Quote from: "Reginus"I make these assumptions based on what is depicted in the bible.

By saying that you are making even more assumptions.  You are assuming the bible is accurate.  You are assuming its correct in matters of the supernatural (evidence).  And you are assuming your particular interpretation of it is just as correct and accurate.  The more assumptions you make the more you have to demonstrate they are all right or the conclusion you draw is flawed.

Quote from: "Reginus"If you blow out a candle, then it is essential because you made up your mind to do it. Of course, you could say that the candle went out because fast-flowing air put it out, but if you hadn't made the decision in your brain to blow, the candle would have remained burning. Now, all I'm saying is that I think it is possible for there to be middle ground between natural and supernatural.

There is nothing supernatural about me.  There is nothing supernatural about me blowing out a candle.  In order for that to be true you need to demonstrate there is more then the natural world, and that there is a halfway point.

Quote from: "Reginus"I have been mostly talking about supernatural beings other than God (ex. demons as shown in the Bible.) I don't think that God him self often (with the exception of Jesus) choices to directly interfere. Why? Well in the OT, he DID. Guess what? It didn't work and the Israelites still miserably disobeyed him.

So much for being all knowing and all powerful :-/  You would think he would know this would happen so either he wanted this to happen, he didn't know it would happen, or there was nothing he could do about it.

Quote from: "Reginus"Anyway, here's the point that I feel like I need to get back to. Many liberal scholars start with the assumption that Jesus really did no supernatural acts. Instead of examining the evidence to see if this assumption is supported, they examine the evidence to see how he got away with looking so supernatural (and in the process are forced to discount the majority of the Gospel passages and other associated texts). Greg Boyd simply says that this is futile. That is the entire point of the first article.

That is the point of skepticism and science.  You start out doubting something until there is sufficient evidence to prove it true.  It is futile to say something exists when there isn't sufficient evidence for it.

[

NP.  I realize we are all busy so if I came off as pissy i'm sorry.  I think you would like Misquoting Jesus, I see you posted a link that discredits it, and i'm going to go over it eventually and i'll post what I think about that link.

Okay this is my thorough response to the Misquoting Jesus link.  If anyone wants to add or correct something i'm saying please feel free to do so.  ^_^  I'm going to start with the first paragraph under ANSWER.  I will number it as paragraph 1, and the number will represent each paragraph after that, if I have nothing to say or comment on a paragraph I will skip that number and go on. Just to clear up any possible confusion If I can't say anything about paragraph 3 my post will look like this.

Paragraph 2:
StuffStuffStuff
Paragraph 4:

Okay now to begin.

Paragraph 1:
Just a basic introduction to his history with the author attempting to lend credibility to himself saying he "knows" the person.  Of course he says he knew Bart when he was a fundamentalist.  Other then that he ends the paragraph by setting up an an ad hominem by calling Bart bias.  Which is true of everyone to an extent including this author.  Bart was a fundi Christian and was biased because of that, and when he finally became an atheist his views are biased based on that.  Just like everyone else.  The question becomes does his bias cause him to distort evidence in his favor or ignore evidence against his position?  I'd say after reading his book the answer is no, though he is an atheist he doesn't ignore counter points to his arguments, he addresses them head on.

Paragraph 2:
The author is attributing Bart's deconversion to the belief in inerrancy of the bible which in his book he says that is partly right.  There is a second part to this.  In order for us to know what the original authors were saying we need their words.  If we don't have their words we don't know what the original messages of the bible were.  Whether or not the bible has errors in it we can find out if the message survived from the originals which we don't have.

Paragraph 3:
Again the author is trying to blame this on inerrancy.  The main point of Misquoting Jesus isn't to show that our bible is wrong compared to older variations of the text (though it does).  Its point is to show that the meaning has changed from our oldest copies to our most recent ones, and that it hasn't changed a little it's changed a lot.  The author is trying to take this a different direction.  Now before I keep going I want to note that the author hasn't given us any of his credentials and his background which makes him qualified to say way Bart. Ehrman is wrong.  If he doesn't have the credentials then his opinion isn't worth anything, and it would be like a dietitian telling a biologist why evolution isn't real.  Our author ends this by saying its good enough for him to believe the bible is "inspired" and historically trustworthy.  Thats nice but lets see some evidence.

Paragraph 5:
Yes, i'm counting the one line sentence as a paragraph.  Our author says Bart's conclusions outrun the evidence, but this is an assertion that doesn't cite evidence.  From what I remember of the book his examples and his thoughts were clear and connected however I'd be happy to review this if I was presented evidence.  Bart doesn't treat the information as the Scholars are hiding something from you (like the author here implies).  He presents the evidence in a "most people who aren't scholars don't know this" sort of way.  The author finishes up this paragraph by asserting that Bart is in the minority (which may be true I don't know for sure) and that Ehrman is an extremist.  Notice how I use the word assert, this is because the author is failing to give any evidence to support his accusations and is instead trying to discredit Ehrman's work by name calling.

Paragraph 6:
Argument from authority.  The author is saying Bart's teacher from a long time ago doesn't agree with him regardless of the evidence.  First off, how many of us have disagreed with our teachers?  I know I have.  The author treats this as something big even though Metzger made a book with Ehrman in 2005, their relationship obviously wasn't hostile over this disagreement and it isn't as big of a deal as our author is trying to make.  The author finishes off this paragraph by once again asserting that Ehrman is in the minority.  Even if it is true he acts like this is a big deal, what does that have to do with Ehrman being wrong?  He is attempting to divert attention from the facts presented by using another ad hominem argument and an appeal to majority argument.  Ehrman says X, Ehrman is in the minority so X must be wrong.  Again I see no examples here just assertions.

Paragraph 7:
Again the author is attacking Ehrman for something that I don't see.  I will admit my hard jumped a little when I heard there were thousands upon thousands of variations (which the author admits is true in the next paragraph).  But the tone was still, "did you know there are thousands upon thousands of variations in the bible".  The author then tries to say we are uninformed that not every text is called into question which Ehrman makes a specific point of this right afterwards.  Obviously the author just skimmed that part of the book.

Paragraph 8:
 

QuoteBut it’s also the case that the vast majority of these thousands of variations are simply copies of copies of copies, etc… In other words, once a variation enters the textual tradition, it gets copied over and over and over again.

Ehrman specifically states this at multiple points throughout his book and here this author is treating it like Ehrman is hiding information from you (how dishonest).  Now i'm convinced the author just skimmed this if he read it at all.  Then he compounds this by asserting Ehrman treats each copy as a distinct variation which is only a half-truth (worst kind of lie).  Ehrman says in his books that you can trace different variations back to single books which the works were copied from originally and that this is the whole point of trying to restore the "originals" of the Gospels.  However mistakes, "corrections", and outright frauds are added to bibles later on and part of restoring the text is trying to figure out what has changed and if its a major change.  Ehrman admits that a lot of these variations and changes are minute ones that show scribes could spell about as good as the rest of us.  However some of these are major.  But his point into saying that there are thousands of variations to show how human the bible really is.  Its pretty damn effective.

Paragraph 9:
I'd like him to cite where these numbers come from because we all know 95% of statistics are made up on the spot.  Also Ehrman notes that there are more textual variations then words in the NT that the conservative estimates of variations is around 200,000 and the more liberal variations are around 500,000+.  I want to make a special note of his last sentence since he is obviously lying.  He says that if the text is not 100% certain its put into a questionable category, when is that true of anything?  In science nothing is 100% certain does that mean its truth is questionable?  Our theory of gravity isn't 100% certain does that make it false?  No the author is lying both about the numbers he made up and the outcome.

Paragraph 10:
The author claims we have a lot of early works which isn't true.  The thing is the early bibles were copied not by scribes but by literate Christians in the area.  Literate had a different meaning back then, you were considered literate if you could sign your name.  The thing is we have a lot of works after the NT was canonized and small few before that.  So we have a lot of works about 250 years or so after the bible was first written that was preserved by people who could pass as literate by being able to sign their name.  Now on to the point about the Iliad.  We don't have people actively looking to make laws and enforce laws based on the Iliad.  If you ask this author about the Iliad and ask him if he believed Achilles wounded the god Ares on the battlefield he will tell you no.  We don't trust the supernatural things in the Iliad actually happened, and we also don't trust that a lot of the natural things happened like Achilles could hold a spear that was too heavy for everyone else to hold.  On top of that we don't base our lives around the Iliad.  We do on the bible.  I agree with the author 100% when he says we should distrust the information presented by any ancient author.  The bible is included, if you want to read it read it like a work of literature written and embellished by people who didn't have our understanding of the world.

Paragraph 11:
Finally he bring up an example.  1 John 5:7 wasn't in the bible (I can't find this example in my misquoting Jesus book and I don't remember it well, it either wasn't a very emphasized point or I somehow missed/forgot about it and if its the former the author is guilty if making a mole hill out of horse crap).  The author seems to shrug this off saying it isn't what we based the trinity on (doesn't say what its based on) and then asserts early Christians 1200 years before the addition obviously believed it.  Again its another assertion based on no evidence.  The author doesn't care about whether he is reading the word of God (inspired or otherwise) or not.  This example simply shows text was added to the bible based on the scribes current/common belief which in turn was used to fight heretics.

Paragraph 12:
Now hes saying its not in his current bible so it doesn't count.  That the whole point of this book CHRISTIANS FUCKING CHANGE THEIR BIBLE, I can't think of a better way the author could have driven this point home.  

Paragraph 13:
Um ... now the author is trying to act like the previously mentioned changes don't occur.  Again asserting that people won't grant this.  He is just asserting Ehrman is wrong without evidence.  He ends this paragraph by saying that even if there are changes they don't matter.

Paragraph 14:
Its all about faith.  He is asserting that the changes aren't big and that it doesn't affect his faith.  All he is doing is asserting that the changes, the added endings, the words that were not properly translated, the spelling errors which lead to putting the wrong words in the text don't matter.  How much blind faith is required to be a Christian I wonder.  He is the blind and he is leading the blind.

Paragraph 15:
This paragraph is the final nail in the coffin.  He didn't read the book.  Ehrman cites where the bible was changed to incite people to fight heretics.  It was changed to silence opposition and to incite Jewish hatred and discrimination.  If only the author read the damn book before writing whats wrong with it he wouldn't sound like a jackass.

Conclusion:
Misquoting Jesus is a good book and is a must read if you want to learn about the history of the bible.  As long as you read this with an open mind your conclusions are your own.  Don't let assholes like this author mislead you and say you shouldn't read the book.  This author didn't read the book or his mistakes wouldn't be so blatant.  His article is horse crap.

I'll add a few facts. Greg Boyd has a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary (http://www.gregboyd.org/about/greg-boyd/bio-2/). 1 John 5:7-8 of the King James Bible (and others) does not appear in the earlier Greek Bibles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum).

Quote from: "AlP"I'll add a few facts. Greg Boyd has a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary (http://www.gregboyd.org/about/greg-boyd/bio-2/). 1 John 5:7-8 of the King James Bible (and others) does not appear in the earlier Greek Bibles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum).

I'm just going to note its on his site but it doesn't say its written by him (I looked up his credentials too).  I noticed it doesn't focus on textual translation of the bible.  Him arguing against this would be like Richard Dawkins arguing against quantum mechanics.  When I said I couldn't find the passage from John I meant I couldn't find it in Misquoting Jesus except a brief mention in the conclusion.  It just means I didn't find it in the chapters.

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.

Quote from: "Reginus"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.

From the things I've seen and read about Bart Ehrman, I don't think he would disagree with you. I watched one talk he did quite recently. His point was that the bible has changed over time due to mostly understandable accidental copying errors made by barely literate scribes. For the most part he says these changes are inconsequential and do not change the meaning in any substantial way. We're talking spelling errors and word order errors. He has some examples of seemingly deliberate modifications which change the meaning but none of these would seem to come even close to undermining the overall meaning of the Bible. Personally, I'm actually rather impressed how well it has made it down the years. Think about how quickly a meaning changes in a game of Chinese whispers.

I accused Greg Boyd of begging the question on another matter. The one you asked about. You sir have not defended him yet! =)

Quote from: "Reginus"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

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

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

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

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

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

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. ^_^

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

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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).

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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?

Quote from: "Reginus"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.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "Reginus"-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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJluEnIqTVk).

Quote from: "Reginus"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.

Quote from: "Reginus"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 ^_^

Quote-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.  

Quote-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.

Quote-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.  

Quote-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.

QuoteIn 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?

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

Uh, yeah lol

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

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?

Quote from: "Reginus"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.  

Quote from: "Reginus"...and I wouldn't be on this forum lol

Quote from: "Reginus"Preaching to thieves and prostitutes? Forcefully confronting pharisees? Doesn't sound like strict Judaism to me.

Do you know what strict Judaism is?

Quote from: "Reginus"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)

Quote from: "Reginus"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

Quote from: "Reginus"*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.

Good stuff.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "AIP"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

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Do you know what strict Judaism is?

Apparently I am misunderstanding something, so please explain.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Umm... you are factually wrong here. Judaism has never been the common belief of any time period.

Not even in Judea?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"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.

Quote from: "Reginus"

Quote from: "AIP"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

So why are you bringing it up on an atheist forum? An atheist isn't likely to overly care that the bible has changed over time. They are likely to think it was wrong when it was originally written. The rate at which changes occurred and the techniques people use to attempt to reconcile them are kind of interesting and I don't mind talking about it at all. But I can't help think there must be some kind underlying point here?

Quote from: "Reginus"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?

No.  By textual variations it just means it compares the words of the bibles (Latin, Greek (the language of our oldest manuscripts) and I think 1 more language starting right before the time of King James.  C'mon now why would they count each language as a variation?  Honestly with variations I don't know the extent to which its considered a variation.  Some of the manuscripts we have are just a passage or a few words so it may very well be a word is considered a variation, but I don't know I would expect more then that.  Also (if memory serves) Ehrman mentions that many of our variations showed that people could spell as well back then as they can now lol.  However lets look at the modern day equivalent ^_^.  In Jerusalem (the city of the Jews) what is the main religion?  Islam!  Just because its meant to be their city it doesn't mean their belief is the only one or even the majority.

Quote from: "Reginus"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.

Where are you pulling that number?  From an apologist no doubt.  Does an apologist have a steak in this?  Conflict of interest.  Do I have a stake in this ... not really.  Even if somehow 95% of the bible were original it wouldn't be enough evidence to prove miracles have happened in it.  Why don't we have other more reliable historical records?  Oh thats right Christians burned them ... hmm I wonder why.  Also why are you clinging to those 9 points that has been refuted in the other thread?  We have demonstrated why they don't work how can you use that to verify this?  That means you are verifying the authenticity based on a flawed system, your result is flawed.

Quote from: "Reginus"In summary, the Bible can only be considered changed/unreliable to the extent that it has been changed.

No.  Because you use the word unreliable that has absolutely nothing to do with text being changed.  Remember my Holocaust example?  When you put things that are factually wrong to start with into a book the originals are as unreliable as any permutation of the text.  If the text is changed yes the book is unreliable, its also unreliable if its filled with errors, especially those which contradict scientific understanding like a flat earth.  The bible talks about a flat earth in our oldest records does that mean the earth is flat (4 pillars and 4 corners of the earth [which is strangely why they chose 4 gospels for the NT]).  Impossibilities, magic and miracles show us how unreliable that this book actually is.


DAMNIT AlP I just typed all this out and you beat me to the punch, you suck ass :-D

Quote from: "AlP"So why are you bringing it up on an atheist forum?

Um, because LoneMateria brought it up...

Quote from: "AIP"No. By textual variations it just means it compares the words of the bibles (Latin, Greek (the language of our oldest manuscripts) and I think 1 more language starting right before the time of King James. C'mon now why would they count each language as a variation? Honestly with variations I don't know the extent to which its considered a variation. Some of the manuscripts we have are just a passage or a few words so it may very well be a word is considered a variation, but I don't know I would expect more then that. Also (if memory serves) Ehrman mentions that many of our variations showed that people could spell as well back then as they can now . But with no spaces between words and no punctuation thats not surprising. This merits more research on my part, however the variations of the bible isn't something an atheist came up with ;-p.

Ok, I'm still not sure if by variations Ehrman means (1.)combined variations of passages, or (2.)copies with some sort of difference.

1. Imagine there was a passage in the Bible that said, "after sunset, Peter walked home." Say it was translated from Greek to Hebrew (the third language that counts?), and translated back to Greek again. Now for this one little passage, we have all of these variations:
   -Peter walked home after sunset
   -Peter walked home after the sun had set
   -Peter walked home after the sun had gone down
   -Peter walked back home after the sun went down
   -After the sun had set, Peter walked home
   -At the end of the day, Peter walked home

...and many, many more (I'm sure I could come up with 50 if I had time) possible variations with the same exact point. Since there are maybe 15,000 passages in the NT, if you multiply that by 3 languages, you get 45,000 passages. Now to reach 200,000 to 500,000, all we have to do is get 4-10 variations like this per passage.

2. (for if he means variations of the entire NT) Again, lets say that there are 15,000 passages. Now say each of 15,000 copies of the NT has a change in a different passage. Now let's take each one of these 15,000 copies and put in a second change to a different passage. So now we have 15,000 copies of each of the first 15,000 copies, which turns out to be in the millions when we multiply them.

Anyway, you get the point. The number of variations "200,000-500,000" is pretty much meaningless in and of its self. The possibilities I presented are very conservative (almost no change at all in essence), and you seem to have a very liberal interpretation (the Bible has gone through so much drastic change that we can have very little idea what it was at first.) In reality, it is probably somewhere in the middle. In any case, I see no conflict between Boyd's 95%-98% estimate and Ehrman's 200,000-500,000 estimate.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Our oldest works contradict each other at times because they were used by two groups with different beliefs. We don't have the book from which they were both written, so we have to do some detective work.

Do the differences between these two groups of works really amount to much, or are the differences minor?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"The first gross absurdity is that Jesus was born of a virgin. It's biologically impossible for our species to a-sexually reproduce. How is this fixed, oh it was magic man he knocked up the mother and didn't tell her until she was in trouble. Great magic fixes everything. Well the absurdities are starting to build up in the beginning. Now maybe I can overlook that saying its a myth, then how can I distinguish myth from what happened? You can't, you have to accept what is said then pick and choose what you want to believe.

Why is this an absurdity? You would expect a creator to be able to create a tiny fetus if the creator can create the world. Aren't laws of nature simply compilations of observations (we have the law of gravity because we observe it continually)? In any case, how much does it really matter whether or not the virgin birth was a pagan addition? I think it is non essential to the question of Jesus' divinity?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Lets look at King Arthur for example here ^_^. It is generally thought that King Arthur was a historical person. Does that mean he really pulled the sword from the stone? Did he return Excalibur to the lady of the lake? Did he create the Knights of the Round table? The answer is probably not.

Good counter-example, and quite frankly I would need to do more research on King Arthur before I could compare them.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"How accurate is hearsay? When you get your first job you will see how bad it is. You might make a benign comment to someone like Cathy's hair looks bad. Your friend could tell it to someone else and by the time it gets to Cathy it will probably come out like, "Reginus (:P) thinks your ugly and fat, you don't dress well, and smell". That is how accurate hearsay is. Why can't this be the case with Jesus? His books weren't written until 30-60 years after his death.

I haven't read it, but Greg wrote an article on this exact topic which is in my first post.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Also keep in mind one of my favorite sayings, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. However with the accuracy of the bible (especially when it comes to miracles) what do we have? Nothing. In the newspaper articles we have from those days we have nothing about Jesus, nothing from the people who hated him, nothing. Why is that?

So how many have the articles have you read so far?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"With your earlier post you said that preaching to prostitutes and thieves wasn't strict Judaism. To me that sounded like something you made up so I called you out on it. Your response seems to confirm you were just making stuff up. Strict Judaism by that part of the Misquoting Jesus meant that he strictly followed the laws of the OT. At least that was according to the group of Christians (I think I was referring to the adoptionists but I don't know anymore). Anyway I'm not sure I have to recheck the 613 laws of the OT but I don't think there was a thou shalt not preach to the hooker. He was preaching his message to desperate people (a very distasteful tactic by anyones standards however its still employed by the church today thats why people preach in hospitals when people are at their most vulnerable). How is that divine?

Sorry, my original examples were rather poor. Anyway, he implied that he was the Son of God, which quite frankly doesn't fit with the completely monotheistic Jewish view. He completely disregards the law about not working on the Sabbath when confronted, and goes against many OT teachings (you have been told "an eye for an eye", but I tell you...).

Quote from: "LoneMateria"I don't have a book for Judea specifically so I don't know . However lets look at the modern day equivalent ^_^. In Jerusalem (the city of the Jews) what is the main religion? Islam! Just because its meant to be their city it doesn't mean their belief is the only one or even the majority.

Source please? Wikipedia says that Judaism is far more common in Jerusalem than Islam.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"No. Because you use the word unreliable that has absolutely nothing to do with text being changed. Remember my Holocaust example? When you put things that are factually wrong to start with into a book the originals are as unreliable as any permutation of the text. If the text is changed yes the book is unreliable, its also unreliable if its filled with errors, especially those which contradict scientific understanding like a flat earth. The bible talks about a flat earth in our oldest records does that mean the earth is flat (4 pillars and 4 corners of the earth [which is strangely why they chose 4 gospels for the NT]). Impossibilities, magic and miracles show us how unreliable that this book actually is.

By unreliable I meant an unreliable indicator of what the original Bible was. As for the flat Earth argument, is that from the Gospels? If not then we shouldn't even discuss it.

Read a few more of the articles if you time and tell me what you think.

Quote from: "Reginus"Ok, I'm still not sure if by variations Ehrman means (1.)combined variations of passages, or (2.)copies with some sort of difference.

Variation I think just means changes, slips in the pen, intentional alterations or the correcting of "mistakes".  But i'm not positive.  However I see a flaw with your two examples.

1.  It wasn't the goal of (most) scribes to make the bible flow better.  You gotta remember they were copying the bible down by hand, letter to letter, line to line, and thats a lot of work especially with no spaces between words and no syntax and abbreviations for common words that sometimes looked like other words.  They weren't thinking sentence structure they were thinking, "and Jesus said blah blah".  We know scribes made mistakes, the would omit word on accident and would sometimes copy the same line twice.  Sometimes someone would read the scribes the bible and many would sit down and by writing what was said and they would hear a different word and write it down.  Scribes would misspell words.  The thing is that each scribe would make changes in the work no matter how slight and when someone would copy from that work they would copy down the scribes mistakes and make their own and the process goes on and on.

2.  I think this is closer to the right definition however you are doing it on way too big of a scale.  Say we have single bible (The original)  IT was copied 5 times with a few mistakes and a change in each book (different mistakes).  Now each of those books got copied 5 times each with its own set of mistakes and changes, the original changes are copied.  Repeat the process about 50 times.  After 50 generations we can trace the newest book back and see how its changed from the original.  But in the case of our bibles we can't do that.  Our bibles today come from a certain branch of the tree with its own mistakes and alterations.  In order to see if the meaning has changed we need to compare even the smallest changes to other works from other branches of this tree.  When we don't have books from the first 20 generations how do we know that the bible we have has had the original words?  We have to compare them to other bibles each with their own sets of mistakes and have to decipher which is original and which isn't.  The mistakes through hand translation multiply exponentially the more generations it goes through.  If the first bible started out with 20 mistakes then the 2nd ones will have 50 and so on.  If you ever get bored one day and you have some friends over each of you copy a page out of a random book (perhaps on a subject you aren't too familiar with) then make a copy of that copy (dont look at the original) and so on and after you've done that 10 times or so compare yours to theirs and then compare it to the original.    

These variations are indeed important.  One mistake in 140 CE could still be present in our bibles nearly 1900 years later.  

Quote from: "Reginus"Do the differences between these two groups of works really amount to much, or are the differences minor?

I pointed out earlier about the adoptionists, there were sects of Jewish Christians, Orthodox Christians, and others.  Each of these people used the bible to make and keep their world views which inevitably lead to genocide.  So i'm gonna say the differences were pretty big.  We are spoiled in our society because we can walk into a book store and if there are 4 copies of say Angels and Demons on the shelf, when we pick them up we will know that the words will be the exact same no matter what copy.  That wasn't the case before the printing press.  Each of those copies might say something different and not just in a minor way.  You wouldn't know what you would get until you read it.

Quote from: "Reginus"Why is this an absurdity? You would expect a creator to be able to create a tiny fetus if the creator can create the world. Aren't laws of nature simply compilations of observations (we have the law of gravity because we observe it continually)? In any case, how much does it really matter whether or not the virgin birth was a pagan addition? I think it is non essential to the question of Jesus' divinity?

Its an absurdity because its physically impossible for human being to reproduce without a partner (Some species of fish and amphibians can do it but not us).  Do you see what you are doing trying to explain this?  You are making up absurdities to explain away absurdities, Magic did it!  And even to get to that statement you have to make assumptions to get there.  You have to assume there is a creator of the world and this creator not only has the ability to make giant rocks but complex fetuses,  you are assuming there is no other means of this,  and you are assuming that this is a good explanation.

The theory of gravity is the sum of what we have observed.  We have no reason to assume that there is any intelligence behind this force because gravity remains steadily calculable.  The heavier the object the stronger the force of gravity acts on it.

Just because you think the virgin birth is non essential others don't.  Either way the life of Jesus starts off with an absurdity which brings the following pages into question.

Quote from: "Reginus"I haven't read it, but Greg wrote an article on this exact topic which is in my first post.

i'm just going to point out you are trying to use as a defense something you haven't actually looked at.

Quote from: "Reginus"So how many have the articles have you read so far?

I hope you see the irony in asking me that after your last comment.  I actually read the one on Misquoting Jesus and I started reading one other, and stopped.  I decided after reading 2 paragraphs of crap that the summaries contributed by the other members were just as good ^_^

Quote from: "Reginus"Sorry, my original examples were rather poor. Anyway, he implied that he was the Son of God, which quite frankly doesn't fit with the completely monotheistic Jewish view. He completely disregards the law about not working on the Sabbath when confronted, and goes against many OT teachings (you have been told "an eye for an eye", but I tell you...).

I'm just saying what they believed.  I know Jesus broke the OT laws in a few places but I was just saying their belief and asking if you know what strict Judaism was.  Why does being the Son of God not fit with monotheism?  Isn't that what most claim Christianity is?

Quote from: "Reginus"Source please? Wikipedia says that Judaism is far more common in Jerusalem than Islam.

Sorry I got that impression from stuff I've seen.  I know that Jews don't run the city and that there is constantly one incident from being a holy war.  Jews aren't allowed into the Dome of the Rock because its holy to Muslims and they will kill people of they find Jews in there (no lie).  They have fragile control over that city.  However like I originally said I have no idea in Judea what the main belief was.  Even so we need to define "main belief".  Wikipedia says 2/3 of Jerusalem is Jewish which is 66%, thats not a strong majority.  For it to be a majority I would expect somewhere in upwards of 75 to 80% or higher.  But lets go back to the word I used time period.  Even if a particular belief was popular in one city it doesn't mean it was popular of that time period.  I'm sure at least one city in the U.S. is mainly Mormon but that doesn't mean Mormonism is the common belief of the US.  

Quote from: "Reginus"By unreliable I meant an unreliable indicator of what the original Bible was. As for the flat Earth argument, is that from the Gospels? If not then we shouldn't even discuss it.

I mentioned above the copying problems.  I found it in misquoting Jesus and i'll post that ... maybe Monday it just depends.  I'm real busy tomorrow and I might be busy most of the day Sunday, but by monday I should be able to get it up here.

Matthew implies a flat earth 4:8 where the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world.  

[quote="Reginus"
Read a few more of the articles if you time and tell me what you think.[/quote]

Which ones?  From Misquoting Jesus by copying them?  Or from your list in the beginning?

In response to:

Response 1: Still, the view that the NT has been radically changed doesn't really make sense to me. I understand that the process of copying could have made it possible, but thats far different from saying because the mechanism of copying made it possible for it to be completely altered, it really was completely altered. A few changes to make Jesus seem more divine (before baptism) does not count as a radical change in my opinion, and I don't think it makes the NT as we know it unreliable. There's a lot of debate going on over what just a few verses (percentage wise) should read as. It seems to me like biblical criticism is so precise that if there were these big, accumulating changes, scholars wouldn't be debating over tiny, nearly irrelevant details.  

Res 2: Just curious, whats the biggest change to the NT, or conflict between copies, that we know of?

Res 3: It is only an absurdity if you start out with the assumption that no God exists. It doesn't make sense to say "the fact that the virgin birth could not have happened without supernatural interference proves that it didn't happen."

Res 4: Good point lol) is a pretty good explanation.  

Res 8 (second line): Oh come on now. Does this metaphor really down-grade the Gospels' reliability?

First off Sorry I haven't copied that text for you i've been busy and when i've been home I just havent felt like doing it.  So i'm gonna aim for doing this monday again lol By the way, I'm sure Wikipedia has a very good article on George Washington (although I haven't read it.)
[/quote]

I honestly don't know what you are referring to.

Quote from: "Reginus"Res 6: Just saying that their belief doesn't prove much since Judaism was the (a?) common religion of the time. I think they could have very well been mixing common culture with Jesus (so that their beliefs were not uniformly based on what Jesus said or did), in the same way that many Americans Christians mix Christianity with nationalism even though these two things are radically contradictory.

First off i'm not exactly sure what point you are trying to make here.  The 2nd part of your statement are you saying because some Christians believe in Nationalism that Christ was a nationalist?  I'm going to need some quotes to figure out what exactly you are referring to.  

Quote from: "Reginus"As far as the question of "is Christianity monotheistic?" goes, I think the ice-water-steam analogy (from Jesus-actor in Religulous ) is a pretty good explanation.  

I never actually saw Religulous so you will have to fill me in.

Quote from: "Reginus"Res 8 (second line): Oh come on now. Does this metaphor really down-grade the Gospels' reliability?

Oh so when its something you don't agree with it's metaphor I see.  And when it's something you like its real.  With that type of mentality it will take you a long time to realize how much crap is in the bible.  You are just trying to dismiss my answer since you challenged me to find a passage and i did.

Anyway this week i'm really gonna try to get that copied for you.  Hopefully it will be up monday.

Okay I have a little time now to sum up the section of Misquoting Jesus:

Quote from: "Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman"STARTING ON PAGE 57

Complications in knowing the "Original Text"

And so, all kinds of changes were made in manuscripts by the scribes who copied them.  We will be looking at the types of changes in greater depth in a later chapter.  For the moment, it is enough to know that the changes were made, and that they were made widely, especially in the first two hundred years in which the texts were being copied, when most of the copyists were amateurs.  One of the leading questions that textual critics must deal with is how to get back to the original text--the text as the author first wrote it-- given the circumstance that our manuscripts are so full of mistakes.  The problem is exacerbated by the fact that once a mistake was made, it could become firmly embedded in the textual tradition, more firmly embedded, in fact, then the original.

That is to say once a scribe changes a text--whether accidentally or intentionally--then those changes are permanent in his manuscripts (unless, of course, another scribe comes along to correct the mistake).  The next scribe who copies that manuscript copies the mistakes of both his predecessors and adds mistakes of his own, and so on.  The only way mistakes get corrected is when a scribe recognizes that a predecessor has made an error and tries to resolve it.  There is no guarantee, however, that a scribe who tries to correct a mistake corrects it correctly.  That is, by changing what he thinks is an error, he may in fact change it incorrectly, so now there are three forms of the text, the original, the error, and the incorrect attempt to resolve the error.  Mistakes multiply and get repeated; sometimes they get corrected and sometimes thy get compounded.  And so it goes. For centuries.

Sometimes, of course, a scribe may have more then one manuscript at hand, and can correct the mistakes in one manuscript by the correct readings of the other manuscript.  This does, in fact, improve the situation significantly.  On the other hand, it is also possible that a scribe will sometimes correct the correct manuscript in light of the wording of the incorrect one.  The possibilities seem endless.

Given these problems, how can we hope to get back to anything like the original text, the text that an author actually wrote?  It is an enormous problem.  In fact, it is such an enormous problem that a number of textual critics have started to claim that we may as well suspend any discussion of the "original" text, because it is inaccessible to us.  This may be going to far but a concrete example or two taken from the New Testament writings can show the problems

EXAMPLES OF THE PROBLEMS

For the first example, let's take Paul's letter to the Galatians.  Even at the point of the original penning of the letter, we have numerous difficulties to consider, which may well make us sympathetic to those who want to give up on the notion of knowing what the "original" text was.  Galatia was not a single town with a single church; it was a region in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) in which Paul had established churches.  When he writes to the Galatians, is he writing to one of the churches or to all of them?  Presumable, since he doesn't single out any particular town, he means for the letter to go to all of them.  Does that mean that he made multiple copies of the same letter, or that he wanted the one letter to circulate to all the churches of the region?  We don't know.

Suppose he made multiple copies.  How did he do it?  To begin with, it appears that this letter, like others by Paul, was not written by his hand but was dictated to a secretarial scribe.  Evidence for this comes at the end of the letter, where Paul added a postscript in his own handwriting, so that the recipients would know that it was he who was responsible for the letter (a common technique for dictated letters in antiquity): "See with what large letters I am writing you with my own hand" (Gal. G:11).  His handwriting, in other words, was larger and probably less professional in appearance then that of the scribe to whom he had dictated the letter. (here he marks a note for the end of the book which reads:  On only one occasion does one of Paul's secretarial scribes identify himself; this is a man named Tertius, to whom Paul dictated his letter to the Romans. See Rom. 16:22)

Now, if Paul dictated the letter, did he dictate it word for word?  Or did he spell out the basic points and allow the scribe to fill in the rest?  Both methods were commonly used by letter writers in antiquity. (He marks another note here which says: See, esecially, E. Randolph Richards, The Secretary in the Letters of Paul Published 1991 [by a person which characters in his name that i can't type]).  If the scribe filled in the rest, can we be assured that he filled it in exactly as Paul wanted?  If not, do we actually have Paul's words, or are they the words of some unknown scribe?  Bet let's suppose that Paul dictated the letter word for word.  Is it possible that in some places the scribe wrote down the wrong words?  Stranger things have happened.  If so, then the autograph of the letter (i.e., the original) would already have a "mistake" in it, so that all subsequent copies would not be of Paul's words (in the places where his scribe got them wrong).

Suppose, though, that the scribe got all the words 100% correct.  If multiple copies of the letter went out, can we be sure that all the copies were also 100% correct?  It is possible, at least, that even if they were all copied in Paul's presence, a word or two here or there got changed in one of the other copies.  If so, what if only one of the copies served as the copy from which all subsequent copies were made--then in the first century, into the second century and the third century, and so on?  In that case, the oldest copy that provided the basis for all subsequent copies of the letter was not exactly what Paul wrote, or wanted to write.

Once the copy is in circulation--that is, once it arrives at its destination in one of the towns of Galatia--it, of course, gets copied, and mistakes get made.  Sometimes scribes might intentionally change the text, sometimes accidents happen.  These mistake-ridden copies get copied; and the mistake-ridden copies of the of the copies get copied; and so on, down the line.  Somewhere in the midst of all this, the original copy (or each of the original copies) ends up getting lost, or worn out, or destroyed.  At some point, it is no longer possible to compare a copy with the original to make sure it is "correct," even if someone has the bright idea of doing so.

What survives today, then, is not the original copy of the letter, nor one of the first copies that Paul himself has made, nor any of the copies that were produced in any of the towns of Galatia to which the letter was sent, nor any of the copies of those copies.  The first reasonably complete copy we have of Galatians (this manuscript is fragmentary , i.e., it has a number of missing parts) is a papyrus called P46 (since it was the forty-sixth  New Testament papyrus to be cataloged), which dates back to about 200 C.E.

(Another note is here and its long so i'm going to separate this paragraph into two paragraphs for the sake of readability. : Even the New Testament indicates that the Gospel writers had "sources" for their accounts.  In Luke1:1-4, for example, the author states that "many" predecessors had written an account of the things Jesus said and did, and that after reading them and consulting with "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word," he decided to produce his own account, one which he says is, in contrast to the others, "accurate."  In other words, Luke had both written and oral sources for the events he narrates--he was not himself an observers of Jesus's earthly life.  The same was probably true of the other Gospel writers as well.  On John's sources, see Ehrman, The New Testament, 164-67)

That's approximately 150 years after Paul wrote the letter.  It had been in circulation, being copied sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly, for fifteen decades before any copy was made that has survived down to the present day.  We cannot reconstruct the copy from which P46 was made.  Was it an accurate copy?  If so, how accurate?  It surely had mistakes of some kind, as did the copies from which it was copied, and the copies from which that copy was copied, and so on.

In short, it is very complicated business talking about the "original" text of Galatians.  We don't have it.  The best we can do is get back to an early stage of its transmission, and simply hope that what we reconstruct about the copies made at that stage--based on the copies that happen to survive (in increasing numbers as we move into the Middle Ages)--reasonably reflects what Paul himself actually wrote, or at least what he intended to write when he dictated the letter.

As a second example of the problems, let's take the Gospel of John.  This Gospel is quite different from the other three Gospels of the New Testament, telling a range of stories that differ from theirs and employing a very different style of writing.  Here, in John, the sayings of Jesus are long discourses rather then pithy, direct saying; Jesus never tells a parable, for example, in John, unlike in the other three Gospels.  Moreover, the events narrated in John are often found only in this Gospel: for example, Jesus's conversations with Nicodemus (in Chapter 3) and with the Samaritan woman (Chapter 4) or his miracles of turning water into wine (chapter 2) and raising Lazarus from the dead (chapter 10).  The author's portrayal of Jesus is quite different too; unlike in the other three Gospels, Jesus spends much of his time explaining who he is (the one sent from heaven) and doing "signs" in order to prove that what he says about himself is true.

John no doubt had sources for his account--possibly a source that narrated Jesus's signs, for example, and sources that described his discourses. (Another Note: Later we will see how some manuscripts can be established as "better" than others)He put these sources together into his own flowing narrative of Jesus's life, ministry, death, and resurrections.  It is possible, though, that John actually produced several different versions of his Gospel.  Readers have long noted, for example, that chapter 21 appears to be a later add-on.   The Gospel certainly seems to come to an end in 20:30-31; and the events of chapter 21 seem to be a kind of afterthought, possibly added to fill out the stories of Jesus's resurrection appearances and to explain that when the "beloved disciple" responsible for narrating the traditions in the Gospel had died, this was not unforeseen (cf.21:22-23)

Other passages of the Gospel also do not cohere completely with the rest.  Even the opening verses 1:1-18 which form a kind of prologue to the Gospel, appear to be different from the rest.  This highly celebrated poem speaks of the "Word" of God, who existed with God from the beginning and was himself God, and who "became flesh" in Jesus Christ.  The passage is written in a highly poetic style not found in the rest of the Gospel; moreover, while its central themes are repeated in the rest of the narrative, some of its most important vocabulary is not.  Thus, Jesus is portrayed throughout the narrative as the one who came from above, but never is called the Word elsewhere in the Gospel.  Is it possible that this opening passage came from a different source then the rest of the account, and that it was added as an appropriate beginning by the author after an earlier edition of the book had already been published?

Assume, for a second, just for the sake of argument, that chapter 21 and 1:1-18 were not original components of the Gospel.  What does that do for the textual critic who wants to reconstruct the "original" text?   Which original is being constructed?  All our Greek manuscripts contain the passages in question.  So does the textual critic reconstruct as the original text the from of the Gospel that originally contained them?  But shouldn't we consider the "original" form to be the earlier version, which lacked them?  And if one wants to reconstruct that earlier form, is it fair to stop there, with reconstructing, say, the first edition of John's Gospel?  Why not go even further and try to reconstruct the sources that lie behind the Gospel, such as the signs sources and the discourse sources, or even the oral traditions that lie behind them?

These are questions that plague textual critics, and that have led some to argue that we should abandon any quest for the original text--since we can't even agree on what it might mean to talk about the "original" of, say, Galatians or John.  For my part, however, I continue to think that even if we cannot be 100% certain about what we can attain to, we can at least be certain that all the surviving manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts, which were themselves copied from other manuscripts, and that it is at least possible to get back to the oldest and earlieest stage of the manuscript tradition for each of the books of the New Testament.  All our manuscripts of Galatians, for example, evidently go back to some text that was copied; all out manuscripts of John evidently go back to a version of John that included the prologue and chapter 21.  And so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether or not we have reached back to the "original" text.  The oldest form of the texts is no doubt closely (very close) related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the basis of our interpretation of his teaching.

There is another section I want to copy but I will do that later.  I want to continue this to the next section.  Hopefully you found this enjoyable, or someone did.

I think you are taking far too large of a step. I understand that some changes have been made, but I think it would be wrong to jump to such conclusions about what the very first copies probably said. It seems to me like you are saying "x changes have been made, therefore, for all we know, the first gospels could have said Jesus was a purple rabbit who liked eating carrots". If we have a painting that looks like a vase of flowers, and 95%-98% of it is original (but with thousands of tiny dots of random color), I think we can say with some certainty that in the beginning, the painter painted a vase of flowers.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"So changing Jesus from essentially a prophet (like the Muslims believe) to God (like some Christians believe) isn't a big change?  Really?  Is that because of your preconceived notions?  Um.. these people are trying to reconstruct the original gospels word for word.  It turns out when you do it that the words actually matter.

How do the gospels portray Jesus as only a prophet?

Quote from: "LoneMateria"It depends on what you define as big.  One of the big ones I can think of off the top of my head is the virgin birth.  The word virgin was similar to young woman and it got changed.  Originally Jesus was supposed to be born of a young woman but it got changed to virgin.  As I mentioned before they changed the NT because of it.  This difference is roughly equal to the difference in our language between "maid" and "maiden".  Both are close in spelling and sound alike but mean two very different things.

The conclusion I come to with this information is that Jesus could have been born from a virgin OR a non virgin. In my mind, this doesn't invalidate the Bible. Besides, was this mistranslation made in the gospels or the OT?

Quote from: "Reginus"\It is absurd to accept a claim before any evidence is presented.  If I were to give you a book about the Flying Spaghetti Monster would you accept it as true before you read it?  No.  Why is it any different with the bible?  The virgin birth actually discredits the events because we know there is no way for a virgin human being to give birth.  Either the story is wrong or its made up ... or both.  We can use what we currently know about physiology and anatomy to tell you that the claim is wrong.  Since there is no proof for a the claim of any supernatural influence then one must assume the virgin birth story is either wrong, or made up, or both.  Backing up absurdities with superstition and belief is plain silly.  If the story of Muhammad in the Koran said he was born of a virgin which meant he was another son of God would it be believable?

Ok, let's say I pick up a book about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and it says that the FSM created a man out of a meatball. I think to myself "hmmm... can this book be considered reliable? Is there reason to believe that the FSM exists?" If the answer is no, then obviously the meatball becoming man myth is ridiculous. After all, can people really make other people out of meatballs? No. Have we ever seen a meatball become a man? No. However, if the reliability of this book proves satisfactory, and we come to the conclusion that there really is an FSM, then the meatball myth is no longer ridiculous. The first step is identifying the reliability of the book. As for if the Koran said Muhammad was born of a virgin, it honestly would not make it either more or less believable to me.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"First off i'm not exactly sure what point you are trying to make here.  The 2nd part of your statement are you saying because some Christians believe in Nationalism that Christ was a nationalist?  I'm going to need some quotes to figure out what exactly you are referring to.

Just saying that the people would have had a motive for changing the gospels (in favor of Jewish beliefs). For the second part I was giving an example of a mix between culture (patriotism) and Jesus, as can be seen here: http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/vi ... ce_id=353# (http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom/?artpiece_id=353#)

If someone came out with a Bible that said that Jesus said "God loves the US more than any other nation," we can point to the patriotic culture and say "hmmm, maybe there was a little mixing between culture and Jesus's words going on there." I think we can do the same with some of the Jewish themes in the Gospels.

Quote from: "LoneMateria"I never actually saw Religulous so you will have to fill me in.

In the video, the man says something to the effect of "the father, the son, and the holy spirit are all god in the same way that ice, water, and steam are all H2O"

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Oh so when its something you don't agree with it's metaphor I see.  And when it's something you like its real.  With that type of mentality it will take you a long time to realize how much crap is in the bible.  You are just trying to dismiss my answer since you challenged me to find a passage and i did.

Was the notion that Jesus saw a flat Earth the point of the passage, or was it a component used to express the temptation that the Devil tried to get Jesus to give into?

Quote from: "Reginus"I think you are taking far too large of a step. I understand that some changes have been made, but I think it would be wrong to jump to such conclusions about what the very first copies probably said. It seems to me like you are saying "x changes have been made, therefore, for all we know, the first gospels could have said Jesus was a purple rabbit who liked eating carrots". If we have a painting that looks like a vase of flowers, and 95%-98% of it is original (but with thousands of tiny dots of random color), I think we can say with some certainty that in the beginning, the painter painted a vase of flowers.

What if the dots cover up the face of the person completely?  Again i've been nice about this but seriously can you come up with proof for that 95%-98% number?  Boyd doesn't count since it looks like he made it up.  What do textual critics/non-apologists say?  

Quote from: "Reginus"How do the gospels portray Jesus as only a prophet?

First off I said Muslims see Jesus as a prophet.  Next how would you define Prophet?  Dictionary.com defines it as such

â€"noun
1.   a person who speaks for God or a deity, or by divine inspiration.
2.   (in the Old Testament)
      a.   a person chosen to speak for God and to guide the people of Israel: Moses was the greatest of Old Testament prophets.
      b.   (often initial capital letter) one of the Major or Minor Prophets.
      c.   one of a band of ecstatic visionaries claiming divine inspiration and, according to popular belief, possessing magical powers.
      d.   a person who practices divination.
3.   one of a class of persons in the early church, next in order after the apostles, recognized as inspired to utter special revelations and predictions. 1 Cor. 12:28.
4.   the Prophet, Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
5.   a person regarded as, or claiming to be, an inspired teacher or leader.
6.   a person who foretells or predicts what is to come: a weather prophet; prophets of doom.
7.   a spokesperson of some doctrine, cause, or movement.

Number 1 can be said for Jesus.  Number 2 (if you take the words Old Testament and specific references to Israel) then it too defines Jesus.  Number 3 (if you take out the specific reference to the apostles) it defines Jesus as well.  Number 4 ... well Jesus isn't Muhammad so it doesn't apply to him.  Number 5 easily depicts Jesus.  Number 6 depicts Jesus again.  And number 7 is most definitely Jesus.   So out of all these definitions only 1 doesn't apply.  You interpret this how you want.

Quote from: "Reginus"The conclusion I come to with this information is that Jesus could have been born from a virgin OR a non virgin. In my mind, this doesn't invalidate the Bible. Besides, was this mistranslation made in the gospels or the OT?

It sure does invalidate some of the bible.  It invalidates one of the big claims for that person.  If Jesus wasn't born a virgin it destroys Catholicism.  Also this is a place where science and the bible clash (and one of the sources for the stigmas attached to sex) since a virgin birth is impossible (unless assisted by modern technology).  The mistranslation (if memory serves) was in the OT.  They changed the NT on purpose to fulfill that prophecy.  

Quote from: "Reginus"Ok, let's say I pick up a book about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and it says that the FSM created a man out of a meatball. I think to myself "hmmm... can this book be considered reliable?

Ok, let's say I pick up a bible and it says that God created man out of dirt.  I think to myself, "hmmm... can this book be considered reliable?"

Quote from: "Reginus"Is there reason to believe that the FSM exists?" If the answer is no, then obviously the meatball becoming man myth is ridiculous. After all, can people really make other people out of meatballs? No. Have we ever seen a meatball become a man? No.

Is there a reason to believe that God exists?  If the answer is no, then obviously the dirt becoming man myth is ridiculous.  After all, can people really make people out of dirt?  No.  Have we ever seen dirt become a man?  No.

Quote from: "Reginus"However, if the reliability of this book proves satisfactory, and we come to the conclusion that there really is an FSM, then the meatball myth is no longer ridiculous. The first step is identifying the reliability of the book. As for if the Koran said Muhammad was born of a virgin, it honestly would not make it either more or less believable to me.

However, if we can prove this book was originally written by its followers and come to the conclusion that there really is a God then the dirt myth is still ridiculous.  The first step is using science and reason and determining the reliability of this book depicting events accurately.  And the reason I don't believe in Muhammad is because I was told he was wrong.

Quote from: "Reginus"Just saying that the people would have had a motive for changing the gospels (in favor of Jewish beliefs). For the second part I was giving an example of a mix between culture (patriotism) and Jesus, as can be seen here: http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/vi ... ce_id=353# (http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom/?artpiece_id=353#)

If someone came out with a Bible that said that Jesus said "God loves the US more than any other nation," we can point to the patriotic culture and say "hmmm, maybe there was a little mixing between culture and Jesus's words going on there." I think we can do the same with some of the Jewish themes in the Gospels.

What does this have to do with George Washington?  

I'm still lost here.  Which Jewish themes?  That Jesus was a Jew or that Jews are evil?

Quote from: "Reginus"an says something to the effect of "the father, the son, and the holy spirit are all god in the same way that ice, water, and steam are all H2O"

This seems inverted to me.  Ice, water and steam are all made out of the base element di-hydrogen oxide H2O.  There is no base element for the trinity.  They have 3 separate personalities.  God is a prick who enjoys blood, gore and murder unless his subjects are doing it to each other (thou shalt not kill was meant for Jews telling them not to kill other Jews).  Jesus was kind (most of the time) and made healed people.  And the holy spirit just watches and does nothing.  There is no base element they are just said to be the same thing when they aren't.   What are they all made out of which is the same?

Quote from: "Reginus"

Quote from: "LoneMateria"Oh so when its something you don't agree with it's metaphor I see.  And when it's something you like its real.  With that type of mentality it will take you a long time to realize how much crap is in the bible.  You are just trying to dismiss my answer since you challenged me to find a passage and i did.

Was the notion that Jesus saw a flat Earth the point of the passage, or was it a component used to express the temptation that the Devil tried to get Jesus to give into?

Thank you for making my point.

Yup. She's got you there, Reginus.

Quote from: "Renegnicat"Yup. She's got you there, Reginus.

she?

WELL HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW Y'ALLS GENDER WHEN U R SO DAM ANDROGYNOUS!?

Quote from: "Renegnicat"WELL HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW Y'ALLS GENDER WHEN U R SO DAM ANDROGYNOUS!?

Well I figured the Halo picture would give it away.  Well its really a picture of Caboose from Red Vs Blue but whatever.