Does it really matter if the Bible is the Word of God?greenspun.com : LUSENET : The Christian Church : One Thread |
My latest "According to John" article for your perusal. Hope you like it.
Does it really matter if the Bible is the Word of God? Recently, I have been having conversations with a person who claims to be a Christian, but does not believe the Bible is reliable. Since the beginning of Christianity, the Bible has been under attack. One of the more recent attacks comes within, from people calling themselves "Christian"; from so-called "liberal" scholarship. They put forward the idea that the Bible is not the literal Word of God, it merely contains the word of God, along with a lot of error, myth, folklore and legend. It is a man-made collection of documents, not a divinely inspired work. It is just another man-made, fallible, corrupted book.
I wrote in a previous article that the Bible is an incredibly reliable document (see "Is the Bible True"). Now I am a pretty open-minded person, and am quite open to giving other Christians liberty and freedom on a lot of issues. But there are certain fundamental, foundational doctrines of Christianity I will never compromise on, which I will continue to "earnestly contend" for; for if you remove any one of those, you no longer have Christianity, you have a watered-down, feel-good religion. First and foremost of those foundational truths is the integrity of Scripture.
Some people seem to think that sound doctrine and Scriptural authority are somehow divisive; that all we need for Christian unity is "Jesus." It almost seems that just dropping the name itself makes us united. But that is a lie. Technically that's called a "mantra," a majick word. It's a New Age concept, not a Biblical one. If the Bible doesn't matter, if it is corrupt and unreliable, and we are to accept anyone who claims the name of Jesus, then we would let all sorts of heresy run roughshod over the church. Indeed, that has already happened in many churches: witness all the churches that are now accepting homosexual unions, for instance. And we would also have to make a formal apology to the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, for they believe also in the Bible, but believe it is corrupt, and believe in "Jesus." But we make no such apology. Paul testified that there was another Jesus, and another gospel, and Jesus himself said that not everyone who called out "Lord, Lord" would be saved in that day.
Now some will say that it is Jesus who is the Word of God. And I will agree that the Bible does call Jesus the Word. But it also calls ITSELF God's Word. It has not ceased to be God's Word now that Jesus has come! Jesus said, "Sanctify them through thy truth: THY WORD (the Bible) is truth" (John 17:17). David said that God's words (the Scriptures) were PURE words. And Paul went so far to say that all Scripture (the entire Bible) is inspired .... literally, in the Greek, BREATHED by God (2 Timothy 3:16).
If the Bible is indeed just a man-made book, how is it then any different than the Qu'ran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon or any other man-made religious book, and how then is Christianity in any way superior to the other religions of the world? And if it is fallible and corrupt, how then can anyone come to any agreement on what it means? Why then cannot the Mormons be correct in their interpretations of it? Or the Jehovah's Witnesses? How can people "twist the scripture to their own destruction" if it is twisted already? What do those words then mean?
What does "Sola Scriptura [Scripture Only]", the foundational doctrine of the Reformation, mean at all, if you consider the Scriptures a non-essential? Abandon that, and you no longer have any basis for dialog, any basis for doctrine. Everyone can "do what he thinks is right in his own eyes," as indeed people do today: the legacy of liberal "Christianity". I can say "well I don't believe in this part, so maybe it isn't inspired, so I won't follow it." You end up as the cults have done, believing the Bible "only so far as it has been translated correctly." You end up as the Jesus Seminar has done, actually VOTING on whether or not Jesus actually said what he said. It is the same LIE that Satan himself got Eve to buy into in the Garden of Eden. "Hast God said ...?" Casting doubt on the integrity of the word of God it is the foundation of all error. It is THE original Lie, which Jesus said Satan was the father of (John 8:44).
If the Bible is myth (and I am using this in the conventional sense of the word, not the theological sense), and for example the account of creation and the garden of Eden never happened, then Christianity is at a loss to explain sin in the world. The entire point of Jesus' mission, his death on the cross, makes no sense. As Paul wrote, "sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men" (Romans 5:12). "For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man" (1 Corinthians 15:21). And if the story of Christ, his death, burial and resurrection is in question, we are without hope. "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you ... By this gospel you are saved ... Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures ... If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." (1 Corinthians 15:1-4,14).
Churches all over the world that accept this liberal scholarship are dying, while evangelical Christianity is the fastest growing religious movement in the world. That is indisputable, documented fact. Why is this? Because once you remove the Bible, you remove the foundation of Christianity itself, and the house crumbles. As Jesus himself said: the wise man builds his house upon a solid foundation, while the foolish man builds upon sand.
-- Anonymous, September 21, 2000
Alan....Your statement that "According to Christian scholars, the Torah was put together by many different hands over a long period of time".....is a "straw man."
Yes....many, maybe even a majority of "liberal" Christian scholars view the Torah, and all of the O.T. in this way....(follwing the Julius Wellhausen...."cut and paste" method).
But Conservative biblical scholars, such as myself have always rejected this approach to the N.T. Don't cloud the issue by throwing all Christians into one category....and then "smash the straw man."
That would be kind of like saying..."All Jews are Zionist."
Also....it might be interesting to note....that even among "liberal" biblical scholars.....the trend at least sense the mid 80's has been towards a more "unified approach towards the authorship of the Pentateuch."
They still refuse to see Moses as the author of the Pentateuch....but they are more open to idea of its unity.
By the way John Wilson......a very fine article.
-- Anonymous, September 24, 2000
Alan....I reject the redactionary approach to the authorship of the Pentateuch.
I would appreciate that you do the same in speaking of the Gospels.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Alan....Your theological axe to grind is so apparent....as well as your broad brush strokes.
No one....and I repeat no one has been more up front and honest with their scholarship than has Christian scholars in regards to the canon and textual criticism.
First, you fail to mention the papyrus fragments of the epistles of John dated to the late first century (approx. 96 A.D.).
Second, you fail to mention that the vast majority of variations in text have to do with spelling....(i.e., sale or sail....sea or see). But....due to the extreme honesty of Christian textual critics....THEY STILL LISTED THEM AS VARIANTS!!!
Which by the way, is one of the reasons that the N.T. has more documentable and sustainable evidence than any of the writings of Homer....and many other ancient writers....yet everyone accepts them as history.
And third Alan....you fail to mention...that absolutely none of these variants affect any of the major doctrines of Christianity.
Bruce Metzger....professor of textual criticism at Harvard (or Princeton....I forget right now)....the world's leading expert on textual criticism and the editor of the Greek N.T. summed it up when he pointed out that.....and I quote...."when you add up all the variant readings (including the spellings, grammar, etc.)....they amount to just less than one half of one percent of the total N.T." And he added...."of that one half of one percent....none of the variations affect any doctrine of the Bible."
The case can and has been made many times.....that the N.T. is one of the best documented books of antiquity.....and that the believer in Christ can rest with certainty in the knowledge that the Bible they hold in their hands is indeed the Word of God.
By the way.....Marcion is a poor source for you to quote....for again....most conservative (and even liberal) Christian scholars reject his "anti-O.T." point of view.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Connie.....I say this with the utmost earnestness.....PLEASE.....don't....HELP!?!?!?
Alan...
Forgive her....she hasn't the faintest idea what she is saying.
I do appreciate the dialog Alan as it helps to sharpen thinking.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Alan....I would not presume to answer on behalf of Dr. Metzger....however, I will conjecture a response.
In the words of a teacher, and friend of mine....that is probably one of the most renouned O.T. scholars in the U.S....when asked if he would serve on the N.I.V. translation team....he responded..."Who needs it??"
His point being....that the NASB was so superior....why bother.
Possibly Metzger feels the same way about the aforementioned subject. It would be kind of like a new "Whitewater Investigation" of Clinton....no new material.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Alan....You speak way too highly of yourself. You are not the Messiah of biblical criticism!!:) Many of us have heard this, studied it, and got advanced degrees in it.....we just don't buy it.
By the way......the gospel of John, chapters 14-16 which gave the apostles the promise of Holy Spirit guidance is much older than the 13th century.....and you know that. You confused (I hope unintentionally) two passages.
Also Alan....please be more honest about the problems of the O.T. as well. In fact, before the Dead Sea scrolls were found, the oldest extant copies of the O.T. only dated to 900 A.D.
Now here is the interesting thing about that. This fact, was the reason that for most of the 19th and 20th centuries the battleground of biblical criticism was not the N.T......but the O.T.!!! The N.T. was on sounder grounder than the O.T.!! Alan, you know that!!!!
Only when the Dead Sea scrolls came along were we able to wipe away almost 1000 years of doubt from the text.
Yet....in spite of the find, conservative Christian scholars never doubted the authenticity and claims of the O.T. (including the Torah.....which was often the most abused) to in fact be....the Word of God.
Sooooooo.....having manuscripts that only date to the 3rd or 2nd century (as we have in the N.T.) should be no cause for concern.....since before the Dead Sea scrolls find......the oldest copies of the O.T. only dated to 900 A.D......almost 1,000 years after the fact.
By the way, much of your argument is based on the hatred of "SOME" early Christians towards the Jews. Historical honesty demands that you point out this was not the case in general. And for the record, not all of us think everything Constantine did.....was a good thing.
-- Anonymous, September 26, 2000
Alan....You're not running from me are you?? :)
Alan....does the phrase "one half of one percent" ring any bell with you?? Any??
It should.....because I've already gone on over this COMPLETELY!!!!
That is all the textual differences we are talking about in the N.T......and as Dr. Metzger again points out...."NOT ONE OF THEM AFFECT ANY MAJOR DOCTRINE OF THE N.T."
If you think the "scribal insertions" that have caused some of these "differences" are the only ones......you are sadly mistaken. Through the years those involved in the preservation of the text have removed many scribal insertions.
Why were some allowed to stay? Very simply....because they were in accordance with the rest of the N.T.
For instance, the text where Jesus said on the cross "Father forgive them...etc."....is a "spurious passage." However, it was allowed to remain.....because....it is perfectly in line with what Jesus would do.
Concerning Christian "honesty" on the subject......the vast majority of translations (be it NASB, NIV, etc.)......show these as "spurious" by putting them in brackets.....or italics.....and indicating at the bottom of the page that they are later additions to the text.
Go ahead Alan......take out all the spurious passages of the Bible.....and do you know what you still would have......CHRISTIANITY!!!
Now quit spewing out the "smokescreen" that noone is answering your assertions. This is now the second time I have personally done so.
-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000
Well, John, you hit the nail on the head. Is the Bible reliable? That is one of the most divisive questions facing Christianity today....
When Paul spoke of "The Holy Scriptures" in 2Tim. 3:16, he was not speaking about the New Testament...he was speaking of the Tanach, which is the Hebrew term for what the Christians called the "Old" Testament. Remember: at the time of this epistle, around 64 C.E., most of the NT had not yet been written, let alone compiled into a corpus of "Scripture". That would be many centuries into the future...
The problem with the integrity of the text lies in how the New Testament was written. In the sixth decade of the Common Era, tensions in Judea and the surrounding areas were rising to a head, and many of the Jews were organizing themselves into a Maccabean-type revolt to throw out the Roman invaders. War broke out which culminated in the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. By this time, Paul and the other leaders of the new sect were dead or in exile. The small groups of gentiles, who now were starting to call themselves Christians (the Hellenized form of the Hebrew word Meshiach) found themselves bereft of Jewish leadership. Most Jewish Christians, dismayed at the destruction of the Temple, realized that the return of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef, the man we call Jesus, would not happen in their lifetimes. They left the sect and returned to mainstream Judaism, which was now Pharisaic Judaism, the only kind which survived the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem. How the scattered gentile Christian sects handled the sudden loss of the Jewish leadership of Paul and the main group centered in Jerusalem was a crucial factor in what happened next to the foundling religion. Without Hebrew-speaking teachers to give them a rabbinic and Hebraic interpretation of the terms in the Jewish scriptures, the gentile believers had to turn to the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Tanach which had been compiled "at Alexandria about the middle of the third century B.C.[E.]" (Kelly, J. N. D. (1959) Early Christian Doctrines. New York: Harper & Brothers). Greek words used for concepts such as "prayer", "messiah", "salvation", and "savior" did not have the same connotations in Greek as they did in Hebrew, and so new meanings were given to these words. It would be well over a hundred years before the new religion could come up with any elder or leader who could read or speak Hebrew. The same problem arose in interpreting the Judaic and Rabbinic thoughts and teachings of Yeshua ben Yose [Jesus] and Paul. Thus, within a generation of the destruction of the Temple, the non-Hebraic sects found themselves cut off from the Hebrew Torah, the basis of all the teachings of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef.
With Gentiles in control of the new religion, the power struggle between Christianity and Judaism began. Offices of leadership localized around the major centers of the main groups located in Asia Minor and Greece such as Antioch and Galatia and Corinth. The greatest problem the new religion faced was the void left by the absence of the tremendous body of rabbinic interpretations which Yeshua ben Yosef and Shaul had been able to draw upon for their teachings. To be able to keep control of the new faith, this meant the gentile leaders had to come up with a non-Jewish system which would work on interpreting the Jewish scriptures and the Jewish teachings of the sect's original founders. This new system would have to be palatable to its now gentile-dominated audience or else the Jews might gain back control of the sect. There was, in fact, still a remnant of the original Jewish believers of Yeshua ben Yosef as the messiah. Later known as the Ebionites, they criticized the gentile groups for mixing non-Jewish elements into the teachings of the new faith, further separating themselves from the gentile sects.Since Judaism at this time was heavily engaged in proselytizing and siphoning off many potential converts, it was looked upon as Christianity's greatest rival religion. To counter this, church fathers developed theological concepts which "proved" that Christianity was a "better" religion, such as the idea that Israel had been replaced by the church, and the church was now the "new Israel". Words such as "Messiah", "salvation", "Bible" took on new meanings. This re-defining of Judaic terms was necessary in supporting the emerging theology. As the churches grew, there was a developing consensus that a new body of scripture was needed. The only scriptures available were the Jewish scriptures, which the Jews claimed as their own. Macrion, a second century Christian Gnostic who was the first to assemble a corpus of Christian writings, alarmed the mainstream Christians who quickly dubbed him a "heretic". " [Gnosticism] (was) the enemy whose dangerousness resided in the evidence that it had on its side a more consistent systematization of the biblical premises" (Blumenberg, Hans. (1983) The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Cambridge: MIT Press. p.126). The urgency for a body of Christian writings was further heightened by the writing of the Mishna in 200 C.E. by Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi, which became an instant classic in Jewish literature; more importantly, a rallying point for the Jews.
During the decades following the destruction of the Temple, the new religion had floundered along with no set doctrine, no set institutionalized structure, and no set leadership. Most of the sects, especially in the peripheries of the Empire, came under Gentile leadership who were woefully unfamiliar with the teachings of Judaic Law and the Rabbinic interpretations of the scriptures, and they began to interpret the purely Jewish teachings of Jesus and Paul by non-Jewish means such as Greek philosophy or by theological concepts of other religions. Large numbers of different sects, such as Gnosticism, Valentinianism, and Marcionitesm, began to develop. These spun off from the early Christian communities which had been founded by Paul and the other apostles. These sects had no set theology, no set ideology, no clear purpose or direction. Christianity, for many decades after the fall of the Temple, was in a liquid flux. No single theology or group was dominant in the early struggle for power and authority. What is clear here is that the line of tradition was irretrievably broken in the decade after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., when the Jewish leaders of the Christian sect were killed or driven off. The result was that the oral teachings of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef and Rabbi Shaul lost their Jewish interpretations.
Yet, the most important product of this power struggle of the early sects was the development of the body of sacred writings which would become the New Testament. As the oral teachings of Jesus were written down, problems arose due to the way theology developed during the first few centuries. With the Church Fathers interpreting teachings based on the religion of Judaism, which they knew little about, they became aware of discrepencies with what they were teaching. Often, their theological ideas were not supported by the literal interpretation of the texts. Instead of changing their theology to conform to the teachings of Jesus, they instead altered the texts to fit their theological interpretations . This trend in Christianity continued down to modern times, where the translations from Greek to English were altered to fit theological ideas. The only problem the Church had was the danger of an alternate body of interpretations which would challenge the theology of the Church. Since Judaism was the only source which could effectively produce a challenge to the Churchs teachings, steps were taken to ensure that this did not happen. Even to this day, in-depth rabbinic interpretations are not taught, to my knowledge, in any seminary in any Christian country [and by rabbinic interpretations, I mean teachings from the Jewish point of view, and not teachings about Jews and Judaism from the Christian point of view].
The main problem the early Church faced with developing a body of sacred Christian literature was not a lack of material, but an excess. The Church had taken the oral teachings of Jesus and then had them committed to writing in the second century. These writings reflected the various nuances of the societies in which they were produced. The Christians then had collected them into one body of work, edited them, and assembled the ones which would support their theology. There were many different gospels, epistles, and teachings that had been floating around, all with a different slant. Every viewpoint imaginable was repretsented; from anti-Judaic Gnosticism, which opposed not only the Jewish Scriptures and the Jewish God, to pro-Judaic writings which threatened the developing theology about Jesus' divinity. There was no clear consensus as to what was canonical or non-canonical. Books which are known because they were mentioned by the early church fathers [such as the Gospel of Barnabas, the Gospel of Andrew, the Revelation of Peter, the Gospel of Peter, an Epistle of Christ to Peter and Paul, and the Gospel of James] were discarded. The books which are now part of the canon of the New Testament, such as the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Revelation of John, were disputed for centuries. Not until the end of the fourth century was there even a list of the books which agrees with that of the present-day New Testament canon. Other books, such as the Epistle of Barnabas, written sometime in the early second century, were held to be authoritative throughout the first centuries of Christianity's formative period. Writings told stories of how Jesus, as a young boy, made clay figures of birds come to life and made children who bullied him drop dead with a word. Other writings taught that the Jews were damned by God and the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people from the Holy Land proving that the Church was the "new Israel". These new theological ideas were used in the sermons and preaching of the Christian Fathers and had a direct effect upon the developing theology. This New Testament was then used by the Church to justify its authority and achieve power over its constituents. In the early fourth century, the Roman emperor Constantine formally adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Thus the Church achieved great political power. One of the first uses of this new power was to prohibit Jews from teaching the Torah to gentiles, often under the penalty of death. Christianity thus claimed a clear victory over its main religious competitor.
The most critical factor which must be grasped is that the New Testament did not produce the church, but that the church produced the New Testament. The overwhelming amount of evidence of this process of writing, re-writing, and editing the books of the New Testament is something the Church does not like to talk about, yet it is critical to the understnading of the divisions of why the Church is so divided today....
-- Anonymous, September 24, 2000
Alan;The fact that the New Testament has NOT been altered in any significant way is an undisputable fact of textual criticism which I covered in my article "Is the Bible True" (if you bothered to read it). We have manuscripts of the greek dating back to the first century, we can compare what we have today and see if it is the same or not. The church would have had the impossible task of recalling all manuscripts from the far-flung empire and altering all of them if it wanted to pull off the massive hoax you claim.
When Peter mentioned "Scripture", he included more than the Tanakh, he also included all of Paul's writings (2 Peter 3:15). And God said He would preserve His Word ... all Scripture. Again, I say, if you cast doubt on all or part of the New Testament (which there is no documentary basis to do), your God is too small, your faith is useless.
-- Anonymous, September 24, 2000
Mr. Wilson:
In your article, "Is the Bible True?", you wrote:
the Bible boasts over 25,000 manuscripts, some of them dating to within 25 years of the autograph! By comparing the various copies, scholars have shown the Bible to be almost 100% reliable. The fraction of a percentage where there is question is largely related to spelling and grammar, and in no case where there is a disputed rendering is a single doctrine affected.
This sounds much like the disclaimer found in the preface to the Thomas Nelson Open Bible, one of the most popular Christian study bibles:
Differences in the Greek manuscript of the New Testament, such as omission or inclusion of a word or a clause, and two paragraphs in the Gospels, should not overshadow the overwhelming degree of agreement [emphasis theirs] which exists among the ancient records. Bible readers may be assured that the most important differences in the English New Testament of today are due, not to manuscript divergence [emphasis mine], but to the way in which translators view the task of translation...(Thomas Nelson, 1983)
This is the placebo which the church uses to calm any fears that a believer might have about the "problem" of manuscript divergence. What the statement above represents is a gross distortion of fact. The truth is, with over five thousand ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts, no two copies of any of the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are in complete agreement. Even the most ancient, most accurate, most closest-to-the-original manuscripts have considerable amounts of textual changes, doctoring, and errors. Again, this is not theoretical conjecture, but an empirical fact which Christianity has gone to great lengths to deny, downplay, and hide from its followers; that the text of the New Testament, the only account of the life and teachings of Jesus the Christ, the foundation for Christian theology, doctrine, and practice, is simply not reliable. True, many of the differences come down to innocent scribal errors. But even these raise important questions, such as; how could Christians be so careless in the transmission of, what they consider, the Word of God? On of the greatest differences between Christianity and Judaism is the way both religions treat their respective "Testaments". In Judaism, when writing a Torah scroll, utmost care is taken to make sure that not one word, one letter, even a silent letter such as a yud or an aleph, is wrong. One tiny mistake, and the entire Torah scroll is considered invalid. Torah scrolls written in different and isolated Jewish communities such as Poland and Yemen, scrolls written centuries apart, are virtually identical. This shows the tremendous respect that the observant Jews have had for the Word of God throughout history. In stark contrast to the way Jews treated their Scriptures, the New Testament was treated more like church propaganda than Holy Scripture. It was, for over a century, oral tradition supported by written core matierial (the Q sources). These oral traditions were written down in the second century, much the same time the Mishna was written. Of course, each "Church Father" probably paraphrased the oral traditions, which can explain why there are so many different texts.
Also, there is a marked duplicity in how the Christian Church employs a double standard when dealing with the way the "Old" Testament and the "New" Testament, especially the Torah, were written. According to Christian scholars, the Torah was put together by many different hands over a long period of time.
In a popular college textbook on religions which came out not long ago, the chapter on Judaism begins with the accounts in the "Old" Testament, the Christian term for the Tanach. However, while telling the history of the Jewish religion, the authors subtly question the validity of the stories found in the Jewish scriptures, and punctuate many accounts with disclaimers such as "scholars are uncertain of the historical accuracy of the accounts" or "[c]ontemporary biblical researchers disagree [upon certain Biblical accounts]" or "the accuracy of many of the stories has not yet been independently documented" (Fisher 1991). This is a very discernible difference in their treatment of Christianity, where there is not even a hint of questioning the validity of Christian accounts.
The problem with this argument is that this theory of a "developed" Torah comes solely from textual analasis. There is absolutly no physical evidence for the theory of "higher criticism"; no ancient documents which show any alterations of any kind. To the contrary, as I have shown, the Jews took great care in making sure there were no alterations of any kind in the text of the Scriptures. The point I am making here is not a defence of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah, but rather the way Christians use two different approaches, systems, and analysis of the Old and New Testaments. Although you can weave a good argument based upon textual analysis, you cannot prove your thesis beyond a shadow of a doubt without the hard, physical evidence of the ancient manuscripts which show that changes were made in the text. In direct contrast to the total lack of hard evidence of "Old" Testament manuscripts, the physical evidence for the alterations and the doctoring of the New Testament is as abundant as the evidence for the "Old" is lacking. Yet the Christian attitude has always been that of looking the other way, of burying its head in the theological sand. If the Church was to turn up an ancient manuscript of the "Old" Testament which showed only a minor change in just one verse, the Church would have a field day with the "hard" evidence that their claims about the "Old" Testament being written by a multitude of authors. Yet, with the literal hundreds upon hundreds of examples of New Testament texts showing thousands upon thousands of scribal "corrections", we get this:
Textual critics use the multitude of ancient copies of a manuscript that still exist as one way of testing their reliability. For instance, if there are 500 parchments of a particular passage, and 499 say "thou shalt not kill," and one says, "thou SHALT kill," the textual critic can reliably say that "thou shalt not kill" is the correct reading. Similarly, the age of the documents assist in the process. If older documents read one way and newer documents another, the older documents are considered to likely be the more accurate. So how does the Bible fare using these criteria, and how does it compare to other ancient works of literature? Most ancient documents have just a few copies remaining, dating hundreds of years after the original writing. But the Bible boasts over 25,000 manuscripts, some of them dating to within 25 years of the autograph! By comparing the various copies, scholars have shown the Bible to be almost 100% reliable. The fraction of a percentage where there is question is largely related to spelling and grammar, and in no case where there is a disputed rendering is a single doctrine affected.
Now we will take a look at the hard evidence, starting with the very words of Jesus himself. In over a hundred different places in the New Testament, the words of Jesus Christ, whom Christians believe was God Almighty in the flesh, had his very own words edited, changed, and deleted. Let us take the time to compare two of the most popular New Testament translations, the King James Version and the New International Version for a quick overview on these changes. Keep in mind that these differences are strictly due to the differences in the Greek manuscripts, not from differences in translation. Compare two popular English Bibles; the King James Version (from the Byzantine group of manuscripts) and the NIV (from the Alexandrian) and you can easily see the differences in text. Not just a word or a clause here or there, but whole phrases [Matthew 19:17, 20:16, 20:22-23, 24:36, 25:13; Mark 2:17, 6:11, 7:8, 9:49, 10:24, 12:4, 14:27; Luke 4:4, 4:8, 4:18, 6:45, 11:4, 11:44, 20:23, 22:18, 22:30, 22:68, 24:46; John 17:12; Revelation 1:8, 1:11, 2:20], whole sentences [Matthew 6:13, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:45-46, 11:26, 12:30; Luke 9:55-56, 11:2, 11:11, 17:36, 23:34], even whole paragraphs Mark 16:15-18; John 7:53-8:11 added or deleted in various manuscripts at the whims of the Christian scribes.
More importantly, many of these changes occur in theologically sensitive areas, which arouses a good deal of suspicion, to say the least. To give an example: in the King James Version, the passage of John 9:35 is translated as: Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when He had found him, He said to him, "Do you believe in the Son of God?" The phrase Son of God, which has the theological connotation of divinity, and is quite different from the phrase the son of man, which does not. However, son of man is how the verse reads in the earlier versions of newly discovered texts Papyri 66 and 75, which have been dated about the year 200 C.E., a good two hundred years before any text which contains the phrase the Son of God. To say that changing the word "man" to the word "God" does not "change the meaning of the passage" is certainly stretching the truth. Furthermore, this is not an isolated incident by any means.
In Matthew 24:36, early manuscripts have Jesus talking about the "second coming", saying: But of that day and hour no one knows, no, not even the angles of heaven, nor the son, but my Father only. This is also how the verse reads in Mark 13:32, which most New Testament scholars agree is the earliest of the four gospels. But in later manuscripts of Matthew, the phrase nor the son has been removed. If these are the true words of Jesus, then he must have said them for a reason. Yet, it is obvious that they do not mesh well with theological ideology, for if Jesus is God, and he has just gotten through giving many specific details of what is to happen during the second coming, why does he not know the exact time? Again, we see that the editing process of the Christians indeed changes the meaning of the text.
In the story of the Last Supper, Jesus passes a cup of wine around to his disciples, Matthew has Jesus saying: Drink from it, all of you. For this is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins [Matthew 26:27-28]. In Mark, it says: This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many [Mark 14:24]. This is how it reads in the earliest manuscripts. In later manuscripts, Christians inserted the word new in front of the word covenant in order to make sure the correct theological meaning is grasped by all who read it (the phrase new covenant is found in all of the Last Supper accounts of Luke).
Another important place of manuscript divergence is in the Lords Prayer [Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4]. The last sentence in the version in Matthew, For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen does not exist in early manuscripts. The version in Luke has even more additions. Since the lords prayer is the most important prayer in Christendom, the prayer that Jesus himself taught his followers to recite, editing this part of the New Testament is tantamount to adding or deleting sentences in the Shema. Yet, the importance of faithfully transmitting Jesus most important prayer did not stop the Christian scribes. Of course, there are many more examples. But, Bible readers may be assured that the most important differences in the English New Testaments of today are due, not to the way in which translators viewed the task of translation, but to manuscript divergence.
-- Anonymous, September 24, 2000
Alan,What you have written seems to be inaccurate in many areas.
For one thing, can you show us a reference to an early church document, from the formative years of Christianity which tells a story about Jesus turning clay figures into birds when he was a boy? I've read that this story shows up in a third century Gnostic psuedo gopsel, the gospel of Thomas. Do you have earlier references to it.
You wrote, >>> Not until the end of the fourth century was there even a list of the books which agrees with that of the present-day New Testament canon.<<<<
Ireneaus, who lived in the late second and early third centuries had a list of New Testament epistles that are very close to the New Testament canon, minus Revelation.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Also,In regard you wrote that after the destruction of the temple, most Chirican Jews converted to Pharisaical Judaism. Where is your evidence for this?
I had a conversation with someone in the Messianic movement, and he told me about some of his studies in the area. (I'm not an expert in this myself, btw.) He says that when the temple was destroyed, the Christians, seeing Jerusalem being encompassed about by armies, fled. Some went to that city carved out in the rock that was used as the resting place for the Holy Grail in the Indiana Jones Last Crusade movie. When they came back, there were more tensions between them and the rest of the Jewish community. Some of the Christians were interested in backing Bar Kochva when he came along, until he was declared to be the Messiah by Akiva, and so they fled again. I don't know what happened to all the Jewish Christians when the Jews were forced to leave their homeland. They may have assimilated in with the Gentile Christians over time. Some may have left their faith. But I'd like to see some proof for your assertion that most left their faith after 70 AD.
Some feel that the Jewish Passover was recovered among the Jews by taking customs back from the Christian Jews. There was no temple, so when they wanted to do a Passover ceremony again, the theory is tha they adapted it from the Messianics, who still celebrated it. The earliest church liturgies involved eating a meal and partaking of the Eucharist at the end of the meal. For the Passover, Jews take three pieces of unleavened bread-matza. They take the middle matza and break it. Then the matza is hidden, and the children try to find it.
Eusebius writes of the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem in which Judes children or grandchildren were leaders. the church in Jerusalem did not die out in 70 AD.
Some of the theories about how the gospels were written seem rediculous to me. What seems even more rediculous is that people take these theories as fact. I don't see any good reason to believe that Matthew and Luke added on to Mark's gospel. Considering the way bards tell stories, and can remember details, and repeat memorized stories, I think it is much wiser to see the New Testament in this light. Jesus preached and taught, then He sent the apostles to teach what He had commanded them. They taught and preached in the temple courts. The apostles were together, around each other. It shouldn't be any surprise if each of their stories of Christ that each apostle presented should be laid out in a similar way to another apostle's, and that the gospels would tell the same story, but with a bit of variation.
I think it does help Christians to realize that the Gospel was preached and taught as an oral message early on. Some Christians nowadays have the attitude that it is impossible to have Christianity without the New Testament canon. The New Testament canon is a set of inspired books which express the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But many early believers were able to grow in the truth without the written scriptures, hearing preaching and teaching of the oral message. There are still Chrisitans today, who, because of lack of translation in their own language, illiteracy, or inavailability of the Bible for whatever reason, do not own copies of the scriptures.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Link:
As far as Thomas being a "pseudo-Gospel", that is my point. All the Gospels are "pseudo-Gospels". How do we know which sayings of Jesus are authentic, and which are not? Matt. 18:11 appears in NO Greek manuscript prior to the fifth century...Acts 8:37 appears in not a single Greek manuscript before the sixth century..etc. The pericope of John 8:1-11 does not appear until the third century...and then in Luke. No Greek mss. of John has it before this time...and no church father that quoted John (such as Origen) ever quoted from it.
Yes, the Oral tradition of Jesus' teachings certainly got mixed and matched, but that is not the problem I am adressing here. I'm speaking of how the texts were edited after they were written down.
You speak of Iraneaus not accepting the book of Revelation. Many of the second and third century church fathers did not look at Revelation as part of the canon. James, 2Peter, and Heberews were also under suspicion for many years. But other books, such as the Diadache, or the Shepard of Hermes, were taught right alongside Luke, and Romans...Scholars look at the Gospel of Thomas as being written around the time of John, since some of the early church fathers mention it. It..along with many other books that are no longer in the canon...were taught in the churches for hundreds of years. You speak of it as being a "pseudo-Gospel", but to the early church, Thomas had as much authroity as did Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
As far as the early church, most of what you say is true. Many of the Jews fled the destruction of Jerusalem...the Talmud tells that Rabbi Zadok was snuck out in a coffin...I pointed out that the "Jewish" followers of Jesus were known later as the Ebionites; they died out in the fourth/fifth century, making true the prediction of Gamaliel in Acts 5:33-39. The movement did indeed die out...
As far as the Jews "re-discovering" the Seder from the Christians, no, they never forgot it. It was the early church copying the Jewish practice...not the other way around.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Apples and oranges. The Torah is on a much higher level than are the Gospels...The Torah is what Jesus taught. Jesus also believed in the Mosaic authorship of the Torah (cf. Matt. 19:7-8, Luke 20:27-38). The problem I have is not "redactionary" approaches, but the two very different approaches used by most theologians. The original copies, or autographs, of the New Testament; the actual letters of Paul, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke, and the epistles of James and Jude and Peter, no longer exist. They vanished long ago, in the very earliest years of the church, probably worn out by handling, and all we have left are the copies of the copies, many generations old. Out of the historical haze of the first century, when the church was in its infancy, we have small, tantalizing scraps of information; and later, letters from the Church "Fathers", the early Christian leaders: Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the new science of archaeology was unearthing ancient manuscripts and shreds of papyri of the New Testament in the middle-east which had been buried in tombs and hidden away in desert monasteries. For the first time, Biblical scholars were given an opportunity to study the New Testament from actual writings from the early centuries of Christianity rather that the Latin translations made over a thousand years after the events of the New Testament took place. This increased our knowledge of the New Testament tremendously, of both how it was put together and what the different beliefs were of the people who wrote these early fragments. Unlike the Old Testament, of which no manuscripts earlier than the ninth century C.E.survived, the Christian scholars who studied the New Testament had this wealth of documentation to put together a very accurate picture of how the New Testament was assembled and developed. The manuscript evidence of the New Testament falls into three categories: the early Greek manuscripts, the translations made into other languages (such as the Latin Vulgate), and the writings of the Church fathers. Of the Greek manuscripts, the earliest are the papyrus fragments which have been collected in the past century. Less than fifty of the papyrus fragments can be placed, with any certainty, prior to the fourth century. Of these, only a few have more than just a handful of verses, and none of the papyri contains the entire text of the New Testament. Perhaps the most important discovery in the field of manuscriptual evidence came in the year 1844, when a young German scholar from the University of Leipzig named Constantin von Tischendorf was visiting the monastery of St. Catharine in the Sinai peninsula, and discovered to his horror that the monks were lighting their oven with the leaves of an ancient manuscript of the Bible called the Septuagint. Although much of the Old Testament had been destroyed, the New Testament remained intact. Codex Sinaiticus, as it came to be known, is considered to be the oldest complete copy of the New Testament, and because of its position as the oldest and most accurate of all ancient manuscripts, and according to Christian scholarship the closest to the originals, it is doubtless one of the most, if not the most important manuscript in Christianity. Yet the term "accurate" must be implied loosely, for this early document shows the process of how the Church edited the books of the Bible, a fact which the Church does not like to advertise. This manuscript (Codex Sinaiticus) was "corrected" by several scribes before it left the scriptorium, and around the seventh century "a group of correctors working at Caesarea entered a large number of alterations into the text of both Old and New Testaments before it left the scriptorium" (Metzger, 1964). Altogether, there are no less than nine different correctors that, by Tischendorfs own estimate, made over 14,800 corrections in the text. No, that is not a typo: over fourteen thousand corrections in Codex Sinaiticus alone. How and why the New Testament was put together is also an interesting tale. For the first hundred years of the church, the only Scriptures that were used were the Jewish Scriptures, the Tanach (i.e., the Old Testament). In the middle of the second century, only a decade after the Jewish revolt by Bar-Kochba put an end to any Jewish hopes of wresting their land from Roman rule, a Christian named Marcion went to Rome and soon developed a following. His teachings were not well received by the mainstream churches, however, and he eventually broke away from them and organized his own church, which would last several centuries as a rival to the Catholic Church. More importantly, Marcion compiled a list of Christian "Scriptures". This was the first attempt at producing a "New" Testament, and it consisted of the Gospel of Luke and the Epistles of Paul, which he stripped of all references to the "Old" Testament and of anything which suggested that Jesus' background was Jewish. Another important development was the Diatessaron, written in the late second century by Tatian, a Syrian from Mesopotamia and a former disciple of Justin. The Diatessaron was a single Gospel that was formed out of the other Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Tatian chopped them up and spliced them all together into one continuous narrative. This "Harmony" of the Gospels was very popular, particularly in the Eastern Churches, and for centuries was considered the official Gospel. Although neither Marcion's "New" Testament or Tatian's Diatessaron survived the Catholic Church's purges of "heretical" materiel (including the Talmud and other Jewish works), we know enough about them from the writings of the other church fathers. What we don't know is the amount of influence that these works had on the substance and the development of the New Testament, for there has never been an extensive study on the effect these two works had upon the Christian Scriptures. There is no question that these two works altered the books which we know as the New Testament, if not by directly altering the text, then by the precedent of manipulating the text to conform to theological ideas. The only defense the church had for the changes is that the monks and scribes and church fathers were "guided" by the Holy Spirit in altering the text. The Christians taught that God Himself was the inspiration for the changes, as if the Church need a Heavenly hand to perfect an imperfect text. The weakness with this argument is that it rests upon the authority of the Church and on Christian claims. There are several different types of text, and although there is often not a pure text (especially in the earliest manuscripts), they can be placed into certain categories: the first is the Koine or Byzantine test, which scholars believe is a later text, since there is no manuscript evidence of it existing before the fourth century, although it does appear in some of the early writings of the church fathers. This is the text upon which the King James Version of the Bible is based. There is also the Western text, the Alexandrian text, and the Caesarean text, which is more or less a mixture of the Western and the Alexandrian. The Alexandrian text is considered by modern Christian scholars to be the closest to the "autographs" or the originals, and is best represented by Codex Sinaiticus (designated codex @) and Codex Vaticanus (designated codex B ), both of which are dated around the mid-fourth century. Yet the Western text, represented by Codex Bezae (designated codex D) which although is a fifth century text and at least a hundred years younger than codexes @ or B, is just as ancient (if not indeed more ancient) as the Alexandrian text since it was used by many of the earliest Church fathers. Codex @ also has a strong Western influence, particularly in the book of Acts. It is true that many of the papyrus are in the Alexandrian text, but it is also true that most of the papyrus fragments were found in Egypt, where the climate was conducive to their preservation. Obviously, since the papyrus came from the vicinity of Alexandria, the text would have a high proportion of Alexandrian texts. Which text is the closest to the original autographs has been the subject of major scholarly debates for well over a century. Even today, there are heated arguments over which text is the most authoritative (such as the Byzantine versus the Alexandrian). So when a Christian opens up their copy of the New Testament to defend their faith, there is a major point too often disregarded and overlooked by Christian (and non-Christian) scholars: the credibility of the Christian religion is based upon documents which were extensively altered. Of course, it is understandable why Christian scholars have traditionally been reticent on this subject. How could one explain to their congregation that such-and-such theological principle was based on a bogus passage in the New Testament, put in there by some nameless monk hundreds of years after the New Testament was written? Or trying to explain to a Christian who is trying to witness, that is, to convert someone to Christianity, and he or she is quoting from the New Testament (playing proof text), and the text is known to be a late insertion? The simple fact of there being different types of text, all with different content, is enough for one to question the validity of any of the texts. Adding to this problem is that all the texts have been altered, changed, and corrected to the point that no two texts match up exactly.
Here endeth the lesson....
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Dr. Jon Dewey mentioned a concern when delving into what happened with the various translations. My trust is that God has preserved the message he wanted us to have ~ salvation in Jesus, by His shed blood and resurrection.posted 09-25- 11:19 AM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- The following is from another site. The author is from the Netherlands, so has a different way of expressing things. He reads both Hebrew and Greek, as well as several other languages.
The Bible
How to view and study the Bible
When you believe the following:
That the first Adam was created perfect and without sin but fell for satan's temptation. Became a sinner and lost his perfectness.
That the second Adam, Yeshua the Messiah, was born perfect without sin and did not fall for satan's temptation and thereforewas and still is perfect without sin, which means He is absolutely righteous.
That the second Adam was executed innocently for the sins of the first Adam and his decendants.
That hereby the possibility of redemption for mankind was opened.
.....................................................<*><*><*><*>..... ..................................................
When you believe this, read on.
If you do not believe this, to you the Bible might be just a book of sages and legends and the following would not be of interest to you.
Unless you read on and are stimulated to read the Bible and come through reading the Bible to believe the foregoing to be true.
.........................................................<*><*><*><*>. ..................................................
Yeshua the Messiah, being completely righteous and unable to sin, could only bring to us the word of His Father, the Almighty Creator and Divine Being. The one who told us that His name is Yahuweh.
Yeshua could never bring the words of sinful beings, words that are derived from human philosophies and tuned to human desires.
We must also consider that satan uses the truth to get our attention, but inter mixed with enough lies to make us fall for his scheming.
He, satan, makes humans believe that they are acting piously, while he makes them to ignore the commandments of Yahuweh!
Yeshua is completely opposite and brings only the pure word of Yahuweh!
Being a Rabbi, He would go to the Synagogue, just like the Rabbis from His time, and read from the Hebrew Scriptures. He would explain them to the listeners, in Hebrew and Aramaic the language of His people. See Matt.4:23, Matt.13:54 and Luke 4:15-22 and many other Scriptures.
Most Rabbis explained the Scriptures according to man-made philosophies (targoom).
See Isaiah 29:13. This says literally:
"And said Adonai on this account this people come near. In their mouth and on their lips is honor to me but their heart keeps far away from me and with them respect for me are commandments (mitzvot) taught by men".
Rabbi Yeshua taught the pure word of Yahuweh, because it was impossible for Him to do otherwise because He would have sinned according to Deuteronomy 4:2.
The few quotations from Him, which are passed on to us, see John 21:25 , are all taken from the Books of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, from the original Hebrew documents.
He would not have used the Septuagint, that is the Greek translation, because He taught in Hebrew and Aramaic.
Unfortunately translators and copyists have used the Septuagint to translate the original Hebrew quotations. This has caused some differences between the Tanakh and the Gospels and Epistles.
Yeshua's use of these Scriptures indicates that:
The original Scriptures He quoted from are genuinely the Word of Yahuweh.
The Manuscripts available at His time were still reliable copies of the originals.
None of Yahuweh's words were altered, because Yeshua had no other righteous option but to explain any alteration and the authority behind the alteration.
Therefore, we can be sure that the Books of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms are unaltered and can be considered to be the Inspired Word of Yahuweh when read in the original Scripts and language.
Since Yeshua did not denounce any other part of the written Torah, like He did with the Oral Torah, see Mark 7:7 and Luke 11:52, we might say that the whole Torah is inspired by Yahuweh.
We can be very sure that the copies we have now of the Hebrew text, are almost exactly alike the first manuscripts, with some minor unimportant differences. When we take in consideration the miraculous way in which the Scripts of the Tanach are conserved and how they match each other, we can say that Yahuweh gave us the Tanach.
Some of the quotations, which Yeshua made from the Tanach, are recorded in the New Testament.
We must accept that Yeshua had no other option but to quote them verbatim. Otherwise He would have sinned, (Deut.4:2).
Therefore, the original manuscripts of the New Testament must have contained the verbatim Hebrew of the Tanach.
We can therefore be sure that the words of Yeshua as recorded in the original manuscripts are the words of Yahuweh. Compare Matt.11:27.
By comparing the rest of the New Testament against the Tanach, we can be sure that the original manuscripts are reliable as far as these quotations are concerned.
We however, have a problem.
We do not have the original New Testament manuscripts.
We also have another problem, not all of us can read or understand the original Hebrew.
People had to translate the original.
People who did the translations might have had the best intentions. Unfortunately, they were all biased by doctrines based on human philosophy .
One of the most horrifying doctrines, was the one that taught that:
"God has done away with Israel and put the Church in its place".
This doctrine and other matters had as a result that the Church tried to remove everything Jewish from the Bible.
While the name Yahuweh is still kept in the Original Hebrew Tanach, translators removed the name Yahuweh and substituted pagan titles, when they did translate the Old Testament in our languages.
This is pure falsification and any excuse for this, has no Biblical foundation.
Because the Church, which was behind the translations, moved away from the Jewish roots they lost the ability to grasp the meaning of the original text.
We have many different translations of the OT in English and no one is the same. The same goes for translations in other languages.
We also have a very great variety of manuscripts of the NT. But they are only copies of copies of translations of the original.
The Greek of these copies suggest that the originals must have been in Hebrew/Aramaic. Since Yeshua quoted the Tanach verbatim, the original New Testament manuscripts must have contained the name Yahuweh.
However, just as they did in our OT translations, the translators or copyists have substituted the name Yahuweh in the NT with various epithets. This is also obvious from the fact that, in the various manuscripts of the same book on the same spot, different substitutes are used. This shows that the substitution is depending on copyist or translator.
So as with the OT translations, the NT translators have been biased by doctrine and Church traditions.
To camouflage the fact that Yeshua is, was, and shall be a Jew, they did not translate the Greek Christou in Anointed but anglicized it into Christ!
However, the title Christou, used as a name in the NT, is not an exact equivalent for the Hebrew word Moshiyach,which means: "Deliverer."
To get rid of Hebrew names, the Church may have changed the word Moshiyach in the early documents into Christou from chri = to anoint.
They deliberately, or mistakenly, said that moshiyach actually is mashiyach which came from mashach = to anoint.
But when we look at the Hebrew Tanakh we find that He is referred to as the Moshiyach and this comes from the Hebrew verb yasha= to deliver.
The Jewish nameYehoshuah or in Aramaic Yeshua, which comes from the same root yasha and means : "Shall deliver", has been substituted by the Latin name Jesus. This name has no such, or any other, meaning and is probably the result of trying to change Yeshua into something that sounded Greek. Some people even claim that it comes from Zeus. Taking in account the pagan influence on the church, I would not be surprised if they are right.
There is evidence that Yeshua was called Ha Moshiyach and HaTorah by the first believers. However, all traces of this are removed from the later NT manuscripts. We must consider that the first copies we can trace from the NT manuscripts, are from the fourth century. At this time, the Church already had distanced themselves from their Jewish roots.
Many words are also translated in such a way that they agree with Church traditions that have no OT Biblical bases.
It is also almost certain that the Church adapted the writings of the first Church fathers, to make them agree with later Church doctrines.
This leaves us with a translated Bible that differs greatly from the reliable originals. This is what satan tried to accomplish. But Satan did not succeed because Yahuweh uses His word in His own marvelous way.
What ever satan tries, he can not obstruct Yahuweh.
To understand why Yahuweh can use our adulterated translations for His and our benefit, we have to read what Yahuweh revealed to the Apostle Paul.
First let us read Romans 15:4:
"For whatever things were previously written for our teaching were written, in order that through abiding under and the calling beside us of the writings, we can set our expectations."
How can we use our translations for this purpose?
For this we have to look at 2Timothy 3:16 .
Most translations which we have to day of this text, had their origin in the time when the Church was the ruler and it had to enforce its doctrine on the people.
This worked fine for the Church, when their translations where adapted to the Church doctrines.
However, the way in which these text were translated, is not much of a help to alleviate our problems with polluted translations.
We must therefore try to find out what Paul really is saying. We must consider that Paul spoke many languages, see 1Cor.14:18, but he was a Hebrew scholar, see Phil.3:5-6.
His thoughts and reasoning were based on that language.
The Greek text of 2Timothy 3:16 has a word that is not really Greek and it appears in the whole Bible only once, here in this text.
It is the word "theopneustos." It is not a pure Greek word and was used to try to bring forward a concept, unknown to the Greeks.
The word is a contraction of the Greek words; Theos (God) and pneustos (active wind).
This word is an idiom and has been translated as:
"God's breath" "God's spirit" or "God breathed" and explained as meaning, "God inspired."
We have to take in to consideration that the original notion behind the word, is from out of the Hebrew thought. Paul, or his translator, is trying to use the Greek form of pneuma for the not completely comparable Hebrew expression "Ruach."
A word, meaning scent, which is used for, spirit, wind, and breath.
Ruach, like rain, is a noun, which is really a verb. It describes something that is happening, which we can not directly observe. We cannot see rain, we can see and feel the movement of water drops, but the drops themselves are not called rain. It is the action of falling drops, which is rain. We cannot observe this action, only the result of it.
The same with Ruach as wind. When a Hebrew speaker sees the leaves on a tree moving or feels some force which tries to blow him of his feet, he says "Ruach." The root meaning of Ruach is:
"A force or action which itself cannot be observed, only the effect of the action can be observed."
If Yahuweh is at work, we cannot see Yahuweh actually doing things. We can however, observe the result of Yahuweh's actions. In this case the action is ruach or spirit in English, which is also not completely comparable.
The context has to show us, in what way Ruach is meant, wind or spirit.
The Holy Spirit is an activity of Yahuweh in the lives of His children. The result of this activity is, or should be, noticeable in them.
Yeshua the Messiah, makes a comparison between wind and spirit in John 3:8. This confirms the principle of what I am trying to explain.
The expression theos is probably used for the Hebrew El or more likely, a substitute for Yahuweh. We could therefore say that theopneustos expresses the Hebrew "Yahuweh's Ruach"or "Ruach Yahuweh" as it is called in the Hebrew Tanakh.
We could translate 2Timothy 3:16 therefor thus:
"All Scripture under Yahuweh's Ruach (spirit) can be profitable for teaching, for reprove, for correction, for training in righteousness."
Paul could not have been talking about the present Tanach. It had not been defined in its present form before the year 90. He neither could he have been talking about the New Testament. This was not defined until the year 367. Neither does he specify the Torah only.
Here is were satan gets his rebuff!
Yahuweh can use anything written. Therefore also our polluted translations. We need Yahuweh's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, to guide us by reading the Bible. Yahuweh will use our Bible to communicate with us. He being active in us, will show to us, what He actually is telling us, through the writings.
It helps a lot when you can read the originals, but with the help of the Holy spirit we get all the blessing and teaching we need, from our translations.
Others can help us by studying the Bible, but the Holy Spirit has to Give us the conviction about what we read. That can no one else do.
We need to have a personal relation with Yahuweh, our Father, for this. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------
To make it easier to understand the Bible, we have to follow some rules, they are:
Remember the Jewish background of the Bible. Try therefor to learn as much as possible of the Jewish way of life, from Abraham up till the time of Jesus the Messiah.
Beware! a lot of the Rabbinic teaching is based on Human philosophy
NEVER take a text out of context
Take it literally as it has been written.
Do not look for hidden meanings behind the text.
Do not assign a spiritual meaning to the text (allegories).
It is not necessary to find pictures of something else in a text
Take in consideration, who wrote it, why was it written and to whom was it written.
Most of the words in the Bible are not directly written to us, but are recorded and kept for us to learn from.
Consider the historical setting and try to get as much as possible historical background from the Bible itself and other sources.
Get in the habit of talking to Yahuweh when you are reading the Bible. You may find that He starts talking back through the Bible in His own unique way.
The Jewish sages say that there are 4 levels of understanding for the Takakh.
P'shat= Simple, the plain meaning of the text.
Remez= Hint, an allusion withing the text.
Drash= A searched out meaning, a deeper meaning of a text
Sod= The Secret Meaning, this is the deepest and most mystical.
Each level has a set of rules that has to be adhered to.
However, this is Human philosophy which they invented in order to outsmart each other in wisdom and insight. This is the wisdom of the world Compare 1Corint. 1:20-21.
Just keep in mind that Yahuweh did not give us our Bible to impress or dominate others. Yahuweh gave us our Bible to teach us personally.
In His mercy and wisdom, Yahuweh sometimes gives some people the ability to help others in a better understanding of the teachings of Yahuweh, by pointing them in the right direction.
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Have a Good night
Last updated 08/05/2000 16:39:28
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From Connie:
It seems strange that since the 'early church fathers' had a penchant for saving whatever they wanted to, that the original manuscripts cannot be found.
Also, I believe the reason we have so much disagreement over the meaning of different passages of Scripture is because the manuscripts have been tinkered with. A plot of satan. Fortunately, as this author says, God overcomes this by the Spirit of His Power.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Alan,I would like to know if you believe in Yeshua Ha Mochiyach? (SP?)
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
haha...well, Connie has just as much right to her opinions as do I. What can I say?
Anyway, my only answer is this: Jesus did in fact teach "rabbinc opinions". Many of his teachings were from the Talmud...such as Matt. 12:1-8. Both Jesus and Paul knew the Talmudic Law quite well...
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Yes, I know of Bruce M. Metzger's work quite well...(he is the head of the theology department at Princeton). His book "The Text of the New Testament" is a must-read for any Christian. As far as p.52 is concerned (the earliest scrap of John), most scholars (including Metzger) date it to the mid-2nd century at the earliest....in fact, these are the Papyri that are pre-4th century: Papyri # 1, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 37, 39, 40, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 75, 77, 80, 87, 90, 91, and 95 (Metzger, "The Text of the New Testament", 1964).
I don't argue with Metzger's facts...just his conclusions. For one thing, both Metzger and Kurt Aland admit that Marcion and Tatian's work had quite an impact on the texts of the NT, yet no serious study of this impact has ever been attempted.
"The necessary definitive research is lacking here [for Tatian's Diatessaron] just as for Marcion's New Testament" (Aland 1993).
"Marcion and Tatian undoubtedly had a certain corrupting influence upon the transmission of the New Testament text..." (Metzger, 1964).
The question I want to ask here is: Why? And Metzger tells that the Western text, which is as early (if not earlier) than the Alexandrian text, contains over 10% MORE material than the Alexandrian text! So, why is this text not translated into English? Why is this text not studied? These are some serious questions that have yet to be answered...
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Alan, I would like to know if you believe in Yeshua Ha Mochiyach? (SP?) Connie
I believe in Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef, not Yeshua ha Moshiach.
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Alan,Doesn't that mean Jesus son of Joseph, not Jesus the Deliverer?
In other words, do you just believe that Jesus was only human? Because that would make a huge difference in whether I would accept your words.
In reading your material, I did not see you make a reference to Jesus as God, so it made me wonder.
Well?
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Mr. Cecil:You have said:
Well, John, you hit the nail on the head. Is the Bible reliable? That is one of the most divisive questions facing Christianity today....
Well, Mr. Cecil, This opening sentence is about as ridiculous as is the rest of what you have to say in this post. I am sure that one holding your views on the reliability of the Bible would like to convince the Christian world that the reliability of the Bible is so seriously questioned that it has become one of the most divisive questions facing the church today! With this statement you congratulate yourself and those like you with far greater success than you have actually attained. Lack of faith in the inspiration, authority and integrity of the entire body of inspired scripture from Genesis to Revelation is not one of our prominent problems since all faithful Christians believe the Bible in it's entirity to be reliable.
Then you attempt to make it appear that the apostle Paul had confidence in the Old Testament that he did not have in the inspired writings of the New Testament of which he is the divinely inspired author of at least half with your following words:
When Paul spoke of "The Holy Scriptures" in 2Tim. 3:16, he was not speaking about the New Testament...he was speaking of the Tanach, which is the Hebrew term for what the Christians called the "Old" Testament. Remember: at the time of this epistle, around 64 C.E., most of the NT had not yet been written, let alone compiled into a corpus of "Scripture". That would be many centuries into the future...
This well-known statement of the apostle Paul, in 2 Timothy 3:16,17, has been translated into English in various forms. The King James Version translates it, all scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, etc. The American Standard Version and the Revised Version Render it, Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching etc; And they both give as an alternative rendering, every scripture is inspired of God, and is profitable, etc. If the King James Version rendering is correct, then the word scripture undoubtedly means the Old Testament and the apostle asserts that it is ALL inspired of God. Something, which it appears you agree with since it, seems that you are intending with your arguments to deny only the inspiration of the New Testament. However, it has been my experience in my dealings with men who doubt the inspiration and integrity of the New Testament that they also deny the same to the Old Testament. But you may be a New Breed of infidel even though your arguments are not new and have long since been answered and forsaken by more knowledgeable critics. Nevertheless, Paul affirms what most of those that doubt the reliability of the Bible deny. He, in this passage, regardless of the rendering asserts the inspiration of the Old Testament. If either of the renderings in the American Standard and the Revised Version are correct, the term every scripture if it stood alone, might mean any scripture or writing whatever, whether the Old Testament or not. But it does not stand alone. It is connected in the immediate context with the sacred writings or the Holy Scriptures in which Timothy had been instructed from his childhood, and these are undoubtedly the Old Testament writings. Now, whether Paul, speaking of these, says, every scripture is inspired of God and is profitable, or every scripture inspired of God is profitable, he in either case recognizes the inspiration of writing referred to, in the one case assuming it and in the other asserting it. All three of the renderings, therefore, convey the positive testimony of the apostle Paul to the divine inspiration of the Old Testament. While the rendering in the text of the American Standard and Revised Version carries with it the idea that if any other scripture is inspired of God, it is also profitable for the same purposes of instruction, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness.
Now, it becomes apparent that though you doubt that the words of Paul are inspired or reliable and are therefore without any authority you nevertheless rely heavily upon them to establish your case. In order for you to make your argument from the inspired words of Paul you must prove that the rendering of the King James Version is the most reliable and accurate. I am sure that such would be distasteful to you but it is a pill you must swallow before your case can be accurately made that Paul was here speaking only of the Old Testament. So, do tell us which rendering is the most accurate in your estimation and why? For when you give the answer your position in reference to the inspiration and integrity of the Bible will in either case become completely untenable. For if the King James rendering is the most accurate then you must accept, if Paul is your authority, the entire Old Testament as being inspired of God and therefore reliable. Thus you would then admit to accepting more than one half of the Bible as being reliable. And if you accept the translation of the Revised and American Standard (One might also include the NIV just here). Then you must accept the idea that he is speaking of the divine usefulness of all scriptures that were inspired of God including the ones that God inspired Paul himself to write.
Now, since it is Paul that you are apparently willing to accept as an authority on this matter let us read some of the things that he has to say about his own words. Which I again remind you that make up at least thirteen and in my opinion 14 of the 27 books of the New Testament that you consider so unreliable.
Paul has somewhat to say on the subject of inspiration in the second chapter of First Corinthians. Paul introduces the subject by saying, My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of mans wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. (2 Cor. 2:1-4). By Demonstration of the Spirit and of Power he means the working of miracles, which demonstrated his possession of the power of the Holy Spirit. When the people on such faith believed their faith rested not in philosophy, or Judaic or rabbinical teachings or traditions of the Jews but in the very power of God. Then he speaks of things that had been hidden from others but unto us God revealed them through his Spirit: For the spirit searches all things yea the deep things of God with these words he claims for himself that he received revelations through the Spirit. And this agrees with the promise given to the other apostles in John. (John 14:26,John 16:13).
Paul said concerning his own words, But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him. But God HATH REVEALED THEM UNTO US BY HIS SPIRIT: for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of man that is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit, which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things ALSO WE SPEAK, not in words which mans wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. (1 Cor. 2:9-13). There cannot be a more explicit assertion the inspired men of whom Paul was one were guided by or taught by the Holy Spirit than these words. Here, the apostle Paul claims for himself and others inspiration from the Holy Spirit. Since he wrote almost half of the books of the New Testament he therefore, if you accept him as an authority as you have done in the presentation of your argument, claims inspiration for half of the New Testament. That portion which he wrote he wrote and all of the New Testament written by any other similarly inspired persons. And he claims this inspiration not only for himself but for the other apostles also and inspired men of his time. Now this fact gives credibility to the inspiration of others who were with him and spoke as he did on these same subjects. We therefore have for Paul good reason to accept the book of Luke and Acts as the inspired word of God. Mark is also included in this and as you can see the inspiration of the entire New Testament can be asserted and supported by the testimony of this apostle PAUL upon whom you seek to rely to support your infidel assertions concerning the reliability of the New Testament.
Now if this passage stood alone as in the apostolic writings all that we have said thus far would be true. But it does not stand alone in the least. This thought echoes throughout the Epistles. In regard to receiving revelations through the Spirit Paul says concerning his knowledge of the gospel, that he neither received it from man nor was he taught it but that it came to him through revelation of Jesus Christ. (Gal. 1:12). Then speaks of the mystery of the call and equal rights of the gentiles in the gospel that it was made known to him by revelation. He says of these subjects that it hath now been revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit. (Eph. 3:1-5). He introduces his prediction of the great apostasy, with the words, "But the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith. (1 Timothy 4:1). A prophecy which your words establish as being true even to this day. He says concerning his journey from Antioch to Jerusalem with Barnabas, I went up by revelation ( Gal. 2:2) thus showing, as Luke records in the book of Acts, that on some occasions his travel was controlled by the Holy Spirit. (Acts 16:6-8). Then he speaks of his thorn in the flesh as being a messenger of Satan to buffet him and that it was given to him to prevent him from being exalted overmuch by the exceeding greatness of the revelations which he had received. (2 Cor. 12:7). Pauls assertion, We have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) reverberates in another part of the Corinthian letter. It reads as follows: If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet or spiritual let him take knowledge of the things which I WRITE UNTO you, that they are the commandment of the Lord. 1 Cor. 14:37). He thus not only asserts that what he wrote was the command of the Lord, which it could not be unless he had the mind of Christ. But he assumes that any man in the church who was a prophet or spiritual man, that is, a man possesed of spiritual gifts, could know and verify that what he wrote was from the Lord.
The very speaking in tongues was in itself both a demonstration of the Spirits power, and an instance of speaking as the Spirit gave them utterance (Acts 2:1-4). In other words it was a case of the Holy Spirit actually taking control of the mind and body and speaking through another person and thus choosing the exact words that they spoke and the language in which they would speak. Paul himself said, I thank God that I speak with tongues more than you all. (1 Cor. 14:18,19). He claims also to have imparted to the Corinthians miraculous gifts of the spirit, including the gift of tongues, and to have done the same among the Galatians. (1 Corinthians 1:5,6; 12:7- 11; 12:27-31; 14:1-5; 14:15-17; 14:22,23; Gal: 3:5). Paul also claimed to have wrought wonders signs and mighty works in support of his preaching throughout the whole field of his labors. (2 Cor. 12:12; Romans 15:18,19). Now about these physical miracles he could not have been mistaken, and they were the demonstration, both to himself and to others that he was not mistaken in claiming to be inspired.
The epistles of the other apostles are so much less voluminous as Pauls but what they do say upon the subject of inspiration, when taken in consideration with these sources form this apostle Paul upon whom even you attempt to base your own argument is decisive! Peter in speaking of the Old Testament Prophets, says: To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto you did they minister the things which now have been announced to you through them that preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven; which things Angels desire to look into. (1 Peter 1:12).
John in almost the very language of the promise of Christ that the apostles would be guided into all the truth and that when He came he would bear witness of Jesus says, It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one. (1 John 5:7,8).
Likewise, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, an apostolic writer even if he were not the apostle Paul (though I believe he was the apostle Paul) says that the great salvation which was at the first spoken by our Lord was CONFIRMED unto us by them that heard. Signs and wonders confirmed these things and MANIFOLD powers, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will. (Heb. 2:4).
More evidence than the above which we have given should not be required. He who cannot accept this must deny the testimony of the apostles, both as to their own experiences, and as to the promises, which they claim to have received from Jesus. Thus if you are going to deny the reliability of the scriptures you will have to base your argument on something other than the words of the apostles and Paul in particular. It is indeed interesting that those who deny the inspiration, integrity and reliability of the scriptures must rely upon the very words of scripture to prove their point. But if they are unreliable how can they be trusted as evidence in support of any proposition? Why not at least be as honest as the infidels that do not wear the sheeps clothing appearing hypocritically as a Christian and come out boldly against the reasonableness of this unreliable book and doubt anything and everything written in it as nothing more than a bunch of fairy tales? The reason is that you could not be used by Satan to accomplish his purpose of destroying the faith of those who are new Christians and have not fought in these battles before. But your cowardly pretense of being a Christian is useless because whether you claim to be a Christian or your are and open infidel your outdated and often answered arguments will fail.
Now, I could have understood if you wanted to discuss the reliability of the transmission of the text as your reason for doubting the reliability of the New Testament. And such reliability can be established beyond any reasonalbe doubt. But you would have at least been arguing about something that is a concern and needs to be understood. But you, or rather whoever you are quoting, say the problem is not with the transmission of the text but the way the text was written as follows:
The problem with the integrity of the text lies in how the New Testament was written.
You do not say that the problem lies in the fact that we cannot be sure that it has been faithfully recorded and transmitted. Rather you say that the problem resides in the way it was written. We have shown you from the words of the inspired writers themselves the way it was written. It was written by the Holy Spirit speaking in the apostles and other inspired men and it was confirmed by mighty works, wonders, signs and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his will. Now you tell us just what is wrong with this way in which it was written? Then you proceed to tell us, without offering the slightest amount of proof just how it was written. You do this, it seems by quoting from Early Christian Doctrines By (Kelly, J. N. D.) (1959). He demonstrates in his words a pathetic attempt to explain what God did by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven in terms of human developmental theology. The idea is to explain how the scriptures came to be written by a group of ignorant and unlearned men, of whom Paul was the exception, and how they came to develop ideas contrary to the Jewish concepts and rabbinical thought. This is not new and it is as ridiculous as it appears upon the surface. This appears to be that quotation though you do not enclose it in quotation marks:
In the sixth decade of the Common Era, tensions in Judea and the surrounding areas were rising to a head, and many of the Jews were organizing themselves into a Maccabean-type revolt to throw out the Roman invaders. War broke out which culminated in the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.By this time, Paul and the other leaders of the new sect were dead or in exile. The small groups of gentiles, who now were starting to call themselves Christians (the Hellenized form of the Hebrew word Meshiach) found themselves bereft of Jewish leadership. Most Jewish Christians, dismayed at the destruction of the Temple, realized that the return of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef, the man we call Jesus, would not happen in their lifetimes. They left the sect and returned to mainstream Judaism, which was now Pharisaic Judaism, the only kind which survived the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem. How the scattered gentile Christian sects handled the sudden loss of the Jewish leadership of Paul and the main group centered in Jerusalem was a crucial factor in what happened next to the foundling religion. Without Hebrew-speaking teachers to give them a rabbinic and Hebraic interpretation of the terms in the Jewish scriptures, the gentile believers had to turn to the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Tanach which had been compiled "at Alexandria about the middle of the third century B.C.[E.]" (Kelly, J. N. D. (1959) Early Christian Doctrines. New York: Harper & Brothers).
Now, since this appears to be a quotation from Mr. Kelly and not your own words I will simply deal with what he has said and on the assumption that you agree with his arguments I will ascribe their impact and results to you. If you do not agree entirely with what he has said you will have to tell us because you quote him here as if you believe what he says to be true.
Now Mr. Kelly begins by telling us, In the sixth decade of the Common Era, tensions in Judea and the surrounding areas were rising to a head, and many of the Jews were organizing themselves into a Maccabean-type revolt to throw out the Roman invaders. War broke out which culminated in the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.
Now this may be true of many of the Jews but it would not have been true of any of the faithful Christians who heeded the warning of our Lord Jesus Christ when he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem approximately 40 years prior to its actual occurrence. Now just what this matter has to do with the integrity and reliability of the New Testament he does not make clear.
But then he tells us:
Greek words used for concepts such as "prayer", "messiah", "salvation", and "savior" did not have the same connotations in Greek as they did in Hebrew, and so new meanings were given to these words.
Now that is a fine assertion which he offers without any proof that it is true and even if it were true why would that cause anyone to doubt the integrity of the New Testament? Those who translated the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) during the time of Alexander the Great did read and speak Hebrew and also were fluent in Greek. They were much like the apostle Paul whom you use as an authority that you must later reject. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews and he was educated and would have had no problem with the languages. Then when you consider that he was miraculously endowed as were many in the Church with the miraculous ability to speak in tongues. There would not have been in the church the slightest language problem at all.
Then he says:
It would be well over a hundred years before the new religion could come up with any elder or leader who could read or speak Hebrew.
Now that is a bold and absurd assertion and anyone with a brain could see that it is ridiculous! The very idea that no one in Jerusalem after the destruction of the city and temple could speak Hebrew is laughable! Only an absolute idiot could believe such a thing, even if the idiot has excellent educational attainments and credentials! There were plenty of Christians of Jewish birth that escaped the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 becuse they heeded the warnings of Jesus concerning this coming destruction. That these Jewish Christians could not read understand and speak and write in Hebrew is just plainly absurd! The apostle John died well after the destruction of Jerusalem and he was an apostle and there is no question that he could speak Hebrew. The very idea that it was 100 years before the church could "come up with any elders or leaders that could "read or speak Hebrew" is a pathetic statement that cannot be supported by the facts. But even if one were to grant that such a ridiculous assertion were true what impact would that have upon the inspiration and reliability of the New Testament which was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew! Furthermore, the Old Testament had been translated into Greek during the time of Alexander the Great and this is the translation that Christ and the apostles often quoted so that we can see no reason that anyone in the Church would have needed to read Hebrew in order to understand the teaching of the Old Testament.
The same problem arose in interpreting the Judaic and Rabbinic thoughts and teachings of Yeshua ben Yose [Jesus] and Paul.
Again, I will point out to you that those thoughts had been long since been translated into the Greek language. And had long since been taught to the strangers in the gates that there is little doubt that any of the Greek speaking people had any trouble understanding Judaic and Rabbinical thoughts. Nevertheless, it was not Judaic and Rabbinical thought that had any bearing upon the teaching of the early Church. For they were preaching the GOSPEL OF CHRIST and had little concern for Judaic and Rabbinical thought except to confound it as did Paul and Barnabas and Apollos often. A great example of how much the early Christians understood the Old Testament can be seen in the words of Steven, a man full of the Holy Spirit and of power in his speech of Acts 7. But anyone reading the Book of Hebrews with even the slightest bit of reasoning ability can see that the understanding of the Hebrew Old Testament was so clear that only inspiration can account for it. For even non Christian Jews who spoke Hebrew Prior to the destruction of Jerusalem did not have such a clear grasp of the teaching of the Old Testament as did the writers of the New Testament. Only the Judising teachers prior to the destruction of Jerusalen attempted to teach any to follow the Old Law and Paul resisted them vigorously. Christianity was not ever a sect of the Jews but those who did not understand Christianity referred to them as the sect everywhere spoken against and the enemies of Christ today seek to keep them as a sect of the Jews and ensure that they are everywhere spoken against. But anyone reading the Sermon on the Mount who can reach the conclusion that Christ was seeking to establish a new sect among the Jews is just an idiot incapable of comprehending even the simplest idea when it passes before his eyes when reading.
Now what seems to be the implication just here, not of your own thoughts but some book that you have read somewhere, is that the early Christians could not accurately interpret the Judaic and Rabbinical thought of Yeshua ben Yose [Jesus] and Paul. Jesus Christ, the son of God, the emannuel, which being interpreted is God with us revealed the thoughts through the Holy Spirit to Paul and the other writers of the New Testament therefore writings of the New Testament did not depend in the least upon their being able to understand any "thoguhts" and certianly none of the "Rabbinical" thoughts were essential to the revelation of the gospel of Christ. You see this entire problem you present is base upon the gospel being developed by man alone with no assistance from God. You can rest assured, if that is how the New Testament was delveloped it would not have even become known past palistine. In fact, those who doubt it have a very hard time explaining the rapid growth and spread of the Kingdom of God on this earth. In fact, upon your hypothosis, it cannot be explained. But on the idea of the miraculous intervention of almighty God it is easily explained and without it no one can imagine how Christianity could have even spread much less survive till this day in such strength.
I will return when I have more time to respond. This is just the beginning. I will respond to every single word that you have written into this forum on this subject, Mr. Cecil. For now I must pay attention to my family.
For Christ our Lord and my Brethren who love Him,
E. Lee Saffold
-- Anonymous, September 25, 2000
Dear Mr. Saffold:
Well, that was quite a post there. I'll try to answer the best I can.
This opening sentence is about as ridiculous as is the rest of what you have to say in this post
What a nice, objective statement...
So, do tell us which rendering is the most accurate in your estimation and why? For...if the King James rendering is the most accurate then you must accept, if Paul is your authority, the entire Old Testament as being inspired of God and therefore reliable. Thus you would then admit to accepting more than one half of the Bible as being reliable. And if you accept the translation of the Revised and American Standard (One might also include the NIV just here). Then you must accept the idea that he is speaking of the divine usefulness of all scriptures that were inspired of God including the ones that God inspired Paul himself to write...
You need to re-read what I wrote. I have yet to deal with the translations of the NT, which is a subject in itself. I have been dealing with the Greek texts that the translations are based upon...mainly, the three main families; the Alexandrian, the Byzantine, and the Western. Read Metzger.
Now, since this appears to be a quotation from Mr. Kelly and not your own words
Sorry. It's all my own words. Only the last quote, compiled "at Alexandria about the middle of the third century B.C.[E.]" is Mr. Kelly's.
Now that is a bold and absurd assertion and anyone with a brain could see that it is ridiculous! The very idea that no one in Jerusalem after the destruction of the city and temple could speak Hebrew is laughable! Only an absolute idiot could believe such a thing...There were plenty of Christians of Jewish birth that escaped the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 becuse they heeded the warnings of Jesus concerning this coming destruction. That these Jewish Christians could not read understand and speak and write in Hebrew is just plainly absurd! The apostle John died well after the destruction of Jerusalem and he was an apostle and there is no question that he could speak Hebrew. The very idea that it was 100 years before the church could "come up with any elders or leaders that could "read or speak Hebrew" is a pathetic statement that cannot be supported by the facts....
You really need to sit down and re-read what I wrote. You are being way too emotional. Take a few deep breaths, and read it agian...." In the sixth decade of the Common Era, tensions in Judea and the surrounding areas were rising to a head, and many of the Jews were organizing themselves into a Maccabean-type revolt to throw out the Roman invaders. War broke out.....By this time, Paul and the other leaders of the sect were dead or in exile. The small groups of gentiles, who now were starting to call themselves Christians (the Hellenized form of the Hebrew word Meshiach) found themselves bereft of Jewish leadership. Most Jewish Christians, dismayed at the destruction of the Temple, realized that the return of Yeshua ben Yosef would not happen in their lifetimes. They left the sect and returned to mainstream Judaism, which was now Pharisaic Judaism, the only kind which survived the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem. How the scattered gentile Christian sects handled the sudden loss of the Jewish leadership of Paul and the main group centered in Jerusalem was a crucial factor in what happened next to the foundling religion. Without Hebrew-speaking teachers to give them a rabbinic and Hebraic interpretation of the terms in the Jewish scriptures, the gentile believers had to turn to the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Tanach which had been compiled "at Alexandria about the middle of the third century B.C.[E.]" (Kelly, 1959.). Greek words used for concepts such as "prayer", "messiah", "salvation", and "savior" did not have the same connotations in Greek as they did in Hebrew, and so new meanings were given to these words. It would be well over a hundred years before the new religion could come up with any elder or leader who could read or speak Hebrew. The same problem arose in interpreting the Judaic and Rabbinic thoughts and teachings of Yeshua ben Yosef and Shaul. Thus, within a generation of the destruction of the Temple, the non-Hebraic sects found themselves cut off from the Hebrew Torah, the basis of all the teachings of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef. With Gentiles in control of the new religion, the power struggle between Christianity and Judaism began. Offices of leadership localized around the major centers of the main groups located in Asia Minor and Greece such as Antioch and Galatia and Corinth. The greatest problem the new religion faced was the void left by the absence of the tremendous body of rabbinic interpretations which Yeshua ben Yosef and Shaul had been able to draw upon for their teachings. To be able to keep control of the new faith, this meant the gentile leaders had to come up with a non- Jewish system which would work on interpreting the Jewish scriptures and the Jewish teachings of the sect's original founders. This new system would have to be palatable to its now gentile-dominated audience or else the Jews might gain back control of the sect. There was, in fact, still a remnant of the original Jewish believers of Yeshua ben Yosef as the messiah. Later known as the Ebionites, they criticized the gentile groups for mixing non-Jewish elements into the teachings of the new faith, further separating themselves from the gentile sects...
I quite clearly explain that it was the Gentile churches that were without Hebrew-speaking leadership. Please read my posts before commenting....you'll save yourself a lot of embarassment...
. Nevertheless, it was not Judaic and Rabbinical thought that had any bearing upon the teaching of the early Church. For they were preaching the GOSPEL OF CHRIST and had little concern for Judaic and Rabbinical thought except to confound it as did Paul and Barnabas and Apollos often...
Well, I can tell by that statement that you are pretty clueless as to what "rabbinical thought" really is. Forming strong opinions about something you know very little about is unwise, and makes you look, well, foolish....
But anyone reading the Sermon on the Mount who can reach the conclusion that Christ was seeking to establish a new sect among the Jews is just an idiot incapable of comprehending even the simplest idea when it passes before his eyes when reading
Aw, don't sell yourself too short...I'm sure it's not your fault you've never heard this side of the argument before...I know well it is a subject that the church wants to keep under wraps...
The problem with your argument is that it is circular. You base your argument on the very texts that I call into question... John in almost the very language of the promise of Christ that the apostles would be guided into all the truth and that when He came he would bear witness of Jesus says, It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one. (1 John 5:7,8). This verse, 1 John 5:7-8, is quite a late insertion. In fact, Not a single Greek manuscript prior to the 13th century contains this verse! Nope, not one! I'm not asking anyone to believe me, just to look this up for yourself. Look in your study Bibles! Read Metzger! Find out the facts for yourself! But please, to say that I am wrong because the New Testament, verses like 1John 5:7-8 say so, is absurd. You merely strengthen my argument, pal...
Here endeth the lesson....
-- Anonymous, September 26, 2000
Goodness, it's late. I forgot to close an HTML tag. Sorry....
-- Anonymous, September 26, 2000
Try it again....
-- Anonymous, September 26, 2000
Danny:
You speak way too highly of yourself. You are not the Messiah of biblical criticism!!:) Many of us have heard this, studied it, and got advanced degrees in it.....we just don't buy it.
Advanced degrees in what? Theology? I'm not here to debate theology.
By the way......the gospel of John, chapters 14-16 which gave the apostles the promise of Holy Spirit guidance is much older than the 13th century.....and you know that. You confused (I hope unintentionally) two passages.
No, my beef was with 1John 5:7-8. But John 8:1-11 is a later addition...
Also Alan....please be more honest about the problems of the O.T. as well. In fact, before the Dead Sea scrolls were found, the oldest extant copies of the O.T. only dated to 900 A.D.
....um, I said that already, scroll up..."Unlike the Old Testament, of which no manuscripts earlier than the ninth century C.E.survived". The reason for this was that old, worn out copies of the Torah were destroyed, which reduced the number of ancient Hebrew manuscripts. Also, the church had often carried out programs to systematically destroy all Jewish writings it could get its hands on during the middle ages. The point I was making, in my previous post, was that there is a dearth of manuscripts from the Tanach, as opposed to a wealth of manuscripts from the NT
Now here is the interesting thing about that. This fact, was the reason that for most of the 19th and 20th centuries the battleground of biblical criticism was not the N.T......but the O.T.!!! The N.T. was on sounder grounder than the O.T.!! Alan, you know that!!!!
Yes, I agree....most Christian scholarship of the past 150 years has been united in its attempts to discredit the Torah, ala Wellhaousen...
Only when the Dead Sea scrolls came along were we able to wipe away almost 1000 years of doubt from the text.
Whose doubt? Not the Jews....
Yet....in spite of the find, conservative Christian scholars never doubted the authenticity and claims of the O.T. (including the Torah.....which was often the most abused) to in fact be....the Word of God. No. They simply destroyed its position of importance, teaching that the Laws of the Torah had been "done away with" by Jesus "fulfilling" them...
Sooooooo.....having manuscripts that only date to the 3rd or 2nd century (as we have in the N.T.) should be no cause for concern.....since before the Dead Sea scrolls find......the oldest copies of the O.T. only dated to 900 A.D......almost 1,000 years after the fact.
We have scraps that date back (possibly) as early as 140 C.E. (p. 52). But the oldest COMPLETE NT is the Codex Sinaiticus...
By the way, much of your argument is based on the hatred of "SOME" early Christians towards the Jews. Historical honesty demands that you point out this was not the case in general. And for the record, not all of us think everything Constantine did.....was a good thing.
This thread is starting to get too long...I'll start a new thread....
-- Anonymous, September 26, 2000
Mr. Cecil:You have said:
Dear Mr. Saffold:
Well, that was quite a post there. I'll try to answer the best I can. This opening sentence is about as ridiculous as is the rest of what you have to say in this post What a nice, objective statement...
Well, if you thought I was being nice you are just as wrong as you are about the Bible being unreliable. I had no intent to be nice. It was my intent to state what was an obvious fact. As far as the statement being objective it was indeed quite objective and most important it was accurate.
Then in response to my question, after quoting it, you say the following:
You need to re-read what I wrote. I have yet to deal with the translations of the NT, which is a subject in itself. I have been dealing with the Greek texts that the translations are based upon...mainly, the three main families; the Alexandrian, the Byzantine, and the Western. Read Metzger.
I did read what you wrote, Mr. Cecil, and that is the reason that I asked the question. You made an argument from the divinely inspired words of Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16 and your argument is effected in the different ways that I described depending upon which rendering of the text you accept. Now it does not matter which one you accept the passage will support the inspiration and therefore the reliability of the Old Testament or both the Old and New Testament. And you know very well the effect that this has upon your argument regardless of how you answer the question and for that reason you simply tell us that you have not discussed translations of the NT which is a subject in itself. But you have not been asked to discuss translation in detail. You have been asked concerning the argument that you made from 2 Timothy 3:16 to tell us just which rendering do you accept as being accurate? That is an easy question for you to answer, Mr. Cecil, and it would not involve you in a lengthy discussion of translations. We can go into them later if you wish but you have only been asked concerning the argument that you made from one of the translations which rendering do you believe is accurate? It is a simple question that is easily answered. It the answer that you give will have you admitting the inspiration and therefore the reliability of the Old Testament or both the inspiration and reliability of at least the writings of the Apostle Paul and the Old Testament. So it does appear that you have some ulterior motive for avoiding the answer to that question. It seems that you are avoiding facing the truth in this matter.
Yes I have read Metzger and know of the families of manuscripts and the details of them but they have nothing to do with the question that you were asked. We can talk about the manuscripts after you have finished with answering questions asked of you concerning what you have thus far written. So do try to answer the question that I have asked you about this matter instead of deliberately avoiding it.
Then you correct me as follows:
Now, since this appears to be a quotation from Mr. Kelly and not your own words
Sorry. It's all my own words. Only the last quote, compiled "at Alexandria about the middle of the third century B.C.[E.]" is Mr. Kelly's.
I appreciate the correction and apologize for the misunderstanding. At least now I can refer to these arguments as your own words and you will not complain that I have ascribed someone elses arguments to you.
Then you refer to my words concerning the absurdity of the idea that there were no Hebrew speaking Christians in the church after the destruction of Jerusalem as follows:
You really need to sit down and re-read what I wrote. You are being way too emotional. Take a few deep breaths, and read it agian...
Well, Mr. Cecil, do not worry too much about my emotions. Most in this thread will readily tell you that I am devoid of such and am basically heartless as some have accused me of being. You can rest assured that those words that you consider emotional were only designed to indicate how you have insulted your own intelligence with such nonsense. You can rest assured that there was no emotion involved in those words. You will find that I care nothing about my own feelings and even less about yours. If you do not believe me ask anyone who has read much of what I say in this forum. I care about the facts. And because of that I have read again, without the slightest need to take any deep breaths what you said only to see if I have misunderstood you. After reading what you have said I continue to maintain that your statements are devoid of any good reasoning or sense. It would help if you offered evidence to support your assertions. For example, you assert:
Most Jewish Christians, dismayed at the destruction of the Temple, realized that the return of Yeshua ben Yosef would not happen in their lifetimes. They left the sect and returned to mainstream Judaism, which was now Pharisaic Judaism, the only kind which survived the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem.
Now what proof do you offer that MOST Jewish Christians were so dismayed at the destruction of the Temple that they left the sect and returned to mainstream Judaism? You merely assert this but do not prove it. And this assertion overlooks the fact that none of the Jewish Christians should have been dismayed at the destruction of Jerusalem. For Christ predicted it 40 years before it happened (Matthew 24) and many of the Jewish Christians had already been scattered (Acts 8) by the persecution that came about after Stephens death. Your statement neglects to explain the fact that there were Jewish Christians scattered all around the world prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. And they most likely were not there when it happened such as the Ethiopian Eunuch from Egypt and Phillip and his daughters and the Apostle John who was not in the city and most certianly did not return to Judaism because of any dismay over the destruction of the city. And many others that were scattered abroad that we have no reason to believe would even consider a return to Judaism. This would especially be true of those with miraculous gives that were given through the lying on of the apostles hands. It is doubtful if they would even consider a return to the dead letter of the Law after being made partakers of the Holy Spirit and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come.
Your notion also ignores the importance and necessity of the city of Jerusalem and the Temple in that city to the faithful practice of Judaism and the impact that the destruction of both the city and the Temple had upon the Jews and their ability to actually practice Judaism. The Jews themselves had nothing to return to and therefore the Christian Jews, with the exception of the Judaising teachers with whom Paul fought constantly would have seen this event as a fulfillment of the prediction of Christ. Thus it would have only strengthened their faith in Christianity which was diametrically opposed to Judaism.
Then you tell us:
How the scattered gentile Christian sects handled the sudden loss of the Jewish leadership of Paul and the main group centered in Jerusalem was a crucial factor in what happened next to the foundling religion. Without Hebrew-speaking teachers to give them a rabbinic and Hebraic interpretation of the terms in the Jewish scriptures, the gentile believers had to turn to the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Tanach which had been compiled "at Alexandria about the middle of the third century B.C.[E.]" (Kelly, 1959.).
Now this overlooks the fact that the Jewish Christians were just as scattered before the destruction of Jerusalem as were the gentile Christians. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they WERE ALL SCATTERED ABROAD throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles. (Acts 8:1). And it ignores the fact that many of the leaders among the Jews had been obedient to the faith and not all of them were from Jerusalem. We are told that there were those in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost that were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men from EVERY NATION UNDER HEAVEN. (Acts 2:5). And it even names some of the places where they were from, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, Capadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphilia, in Egypt, and in parts of Libya, about Cyrene, and STRANGERS OF ROME, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians (Acts 2:10). And among these people 3, 000 of them obeyed the gospel of Christ and became Christians and were added to the Church (Acts 2:38-47). And this was only the beginning. We are told that Many signs and wonders were done by the Apostles and multitudes of believers were added to the Lord both men and women. (Acts 5:12- 14). Then we are told of a great number of the priest that became obedient to the faith, And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a GREAT COMPANY OF THE PRIEST WERE OBEDIENT TO THE FAITH. (Acts 6:7). So, unless you can prove that this entire great multitude of Jews that were converted to Christ returned to Judaism because they were dismayed at the destruction of Jerusalem. You have no basis upon which to base your assumption that there were no leaders or elders in the church that could speak Hebrew. Now it is true that your average Jewish person even in Jerusalem was not taught Hebrew. But the best educated ones were- Paul is an example of such a person. And even if most of the Jewish converts returned to Judaism as you claim, but do not prove, it most likely would have been the leaders in the church that remained. And they would have been the most educated and thus would have spoken Hebrew and if such was not the case where is your proof of it? For if your assertion that there were NO Hebrew speaking Christians in the scattered gentile churches. Then you most prove that most of these Jewish Christians returned to Judaism and that of those that did not return none of them were either leaders in the church or capable of speaking Hebrew. This is a tall order for one accustomed to nothing more than infidel assertions devoid of evidence and proof. So you see, Mr. Cecil, you assert but do not prove and we question and all you do is tell us that we are too ignorant to have this conversation with you.
But you say:
I quite clearly explain that it was the Gentile churches that were without Hebrew-speaking leadership. Please read my posts before commenting....you'll save yourself a lot of embarassment...
I did read you post, Mr. Cecil, and understood that you were talking about Gentile Churches that were without Hebrew Speaking leadership. But that is what you have not proven, now have you.
Then you complain of my words again as follows:
. Nevertheless, it was not Judaic and Rabbinical thought that had any bearing upon the teaching of the early Church. For they were preaching the GOSPEL OF CHRIST and had little concern for Judaic and Rabbinical thought except to confound it as did Paul and Barnabas and Apollos often...
Well, I can tell by that statement that you are pretty clueless as to what "rabbinical thought" really is. Forming strong opinions about something you know very little about is unwise, and makes you look, well, foolish....
Well, I am amazed that you can know so much about my knowledge of rabbinical thought by reading my words stating that such thought had no bearing upon the revelation of the gospel of Christ. For you see it is your contention that Jesus and the apostles just took this rabbinical thought and used it to develop there own Jewish sect and formulated their own doctrine. But you do not prove it to be true. You merely assert it. But I on the other hand had just finished showing from the scriptures that they received the gospel and their doctrine by revelation miraculously from Christ through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, regardless of what rabbinical thought really is the doctrine of Christ, which he received from God and gave by the Holy Spirit to the apostles did not come from any other source. But you ignored that part of my argument entirely. But since we are so unwise and foolish why do not you just tell us what you think rabbinical thought is and PROVE to us that the gospel and the doctrine of Christ actually was derived or even remotely influenced by it. This doctrine it is my contention came from God and He did not have to consult any rabbinical thought to develop it for the doctrine of Christ was not developed instead it was once for all delivered. (Jude 3). And this was by revelation, which I proved from my last post in arguments that you chose to ignore.
Then you do not like the argument from the Sermon on the Mount and instead of answering it you can only say:
Aw, don't sell yourself too short...I'm sure it's not your fault you've never heard this side of the argument before...I know well it is a subject that the church wants to keep under wraps...
Do not worry about me, Mr. Cecil, I never sell myself short. I have heard this side of the argument and am well prepared to deal with it. Since you think that the church is keeping it under wraps why do not you just try to answer that argument and at the same time expose it to us poor, ignorant, and unwise souls that just do not know very much. We wait for your illumination but I do warn you that we insist upon evidence. You current procedure thus far has been to do noting more than assert without any evidence. I suppose that you expect us to believe you because of your self -perceived superiority in knowledge of facts. But we can see that if one has mastery of the facts he should be able to marshal them into a cohesive argument that proves a point rather than a bundle of assertions that amounts to nothing more than raw material that has never been used to build anything. In fact some of this raw material has been lying around so long that it has become rotten. Take your so-called knowledge of facts and build a case against the scriptures if you can. But mere assertions will not support your conclusions. Nothing short of concrete evidence will do that, Mr. Cecil, and we have not hear any of that from you yet though you have multiplied words to little or no effect.
Then you complain that my argument is circular:
The problem with your argument is that it is circular. You base your argument on the very texts that I call into question... John in almost the very language of the promise of Christ that the apostles would be guided into all the truth and that when He came he would bear witness of Jesus says, It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one. (1 John 5:7,8). This verse, 1 John 5:7-8, is quite a late insertion. In fact, Not a single Greek manuscript prior to the 13th century contains this verse! Nope, not one! I'm not asking anyone to believe me, just to look this up for yourself. Look in your study Bibles! Read Metzger! Find out the facts for yourself! But please, to say that I am wrong because the New Testament, verses like 1John 5:7- 8 say so, is absurd. You merely strengthen my argument, pal...
I am aware that most doubt the verse from 1 John 5:7,8 because what they consider to be the only manuscript evidence for it is in the 13th century. But if you had read my words you would have seen that my argument is from the promise of the Holy Spirit given to the apostles in the gospel of John. And, I mention only that the language of the verse quoted is almost the very language used by the same apostle in the gospel of John. Therefore the statement, even if it is an interpolation or a late insertion as you say, its words are true because they are the same as what the apostle John records Jesus as saying in John 14:23; and 16:13 which I had referred to earlier in my argument.
But as far as being circular is concerned you are reasoning in that fashion. It was you that took to the scriptures and quoted the apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16 when you have stated that you do not believe the Bible to be reliable. Since you used the scriptures in your argument it was natural that I should use them in defense of the arguments that you made from them. You do not think the scriptures are reliable but you rely upon them to support your argument. If they cannot be trusted they cannot be used to prove either position. Now if you want to argue from external evidence, fine, we will do so. But do not expect us to accept your view that the scriptures are unreliable and refuse to use the scriptures when you use them in your arguments. So you decide. If you argue from the scriptures that they are unreliable then we will argue from the scriptures that they are reliable. We are not obligated to reject the reliability of the scriptures just to argue with an infidel who denies that they are reliable. If you do not like me arguing from scriptures that you doubt are reliable then do not argue from those same scriptures yourself. But the moment that you use them we will use them as well. In fact we will use them whether you like it our not. But you have not made any external arguments yet. In fact all you have made is a bundle of unsupported assertions.
So we wait for you to actually attempt to prove that all of your assertions are true. Especially in the case of the ones that we have challenged and you have so far ignored in your responses.
For Christ our Lord and my brethren who love Him,
E. Lee Saffold
-- Anonymous, September 26, 2000
My goodness, Mr. Saffold, how full of hate and anger you are; how typically Christian. I have to go to work soon, so I don't have time to pick apart your arguments in detail...
...but a few points. First of all, your binary reasoning (typical of Christian thinking--the "either/or" mind set) just doesn't work. I use the NT, not because I think it is inspired or not inspired, but because it is the sole basis for your religion. All your theology, all your "proofs", everything goes back to the Greek texts of the NT, for that is ALL that we have. Period. You keep giving me a circular argument, saying "the inspired words of blah blah blah...the holy blah blah blah..." etc. ad nauseum.
Let me explain something to you: Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. His "faith" was Judaism. He taught the Torah. I don't look at Jesus through theological interpretations. I deal with the facts, not fantasy....
-- Anonymous, September 27, 2000
Mr. Cecil:You have said:
My goodness, Mr. Saffold, how full of hate and anger you are; how typically Christian. I have to go to work soon, so I don't have time to pick apart your arguments in detail...
Now just what my being full of hate has to do with the subject under discussion none can tell. The simple fact that I care nothing about either your emotions or my own is hardly an indication of personal animosity toward you. I simply make it clear that such matters have nothing to do with the discussion at hand. But I must tell you that it is indeed typically Christian to hate every false way. Your teaching concerning the reliability of the Bible is a false way and I do not hypocritically pretend that I have anything other than pure hatred for it. Now there are those who will talk sweetly to you. And it is certainly your preference to chose discussing these issues with them instead. But I will not yield to your false doctrine in these matters unless you offer conclusive evidence that your assumptions and mere assertions are in harmony with the facts. Thus far you have not done so. In fact you have done nothing more than assert your position without offering the slightest shred of evidence to support them. I understand your having to go to work, I have this same opportunity to earn a living but I do look forward to your efforts to pick apart my argument in detail, something that you have failed thus far to even attempt.
Then you discuss a few points as follows:
...but a few points. First of all, your binary reasoning (typical of Christian thinking--the "either/or" mind set) just doesn't work.
I do not know about that. All I know is thus far it has worked quite well inasmuch as you have failed to deal with this binary reasoning. At least you have not shown that you are capable of answering, now have you? In fact all you do is complain of the nature of the reasoning of my argument but you have not answered the question that I asked you yet, now have you? You again do nothing more than assert that my binary reasoning does not work. But your complete unwillingness to even attempt an answer to that reasoning is evidence that it is working thus far. Merely complaining of how I reason is nothing short of a refusal to reason on the subject. That is nothing more than a feeble excuse for your failure to answer my question put to you and deal with my arguments by picking them apart in detail as you boldly and arrogantly put it.
Then you tell us why you use the New Testament:
I use the NT, not because I think it is inspired or not inspired, but because it is the sole basis for your religion.
Now I readily admit that the entire Bible and the New Testament in particular is the basis of my faith in the resurrected Christ because this is the means by which he has communicated His will to me. Thus Christ is the ultimate authority in my life and it is His will that I will do.
But given your view that the scriptures are unreliable and your apparent admission that you do not believe it to be inspired you show us no basis for you to have any religion at all least of all the Christian religion. It makes one wonder just why any of this discussion matters to you in the least.
Nevertheless, it is only reasonable that since you use the New Testament in your arguments against its reliability that I should use it in defense of its reliability. I believe in the inspiration and authenticity of the New Testament and it therefore is reasonable for me to allow it to speak in its own defense. Even in our courts of Law the accused is allowed to testify in his own behalf and to face his accusers. You have accused the New Testament of being unreliable and based your accusation upon something that was said by the defendant (i.e. the New Testament). The defendant has every right to answer such accusations in his own words. But you are attempting to accuse the defendant, in this case the New Testament, without allowing the accused to testify before the Jury in his own defense. As an advocate for the accused I simply refuse to allow this injustice, period. Like it or not when you quote the scriptures to argue that they are uninspired and unreliable I will allow the accused to speak for himself in defense by quoting the word of God in response to your nonsense. So, like it or not, if you discuss this matter with me you will just have to live with that situation.
Then you say:
All your theology, all your "proofs", everything goes back to the Greek texts of the NT, for that is ALL that we have. Period. You keep giving me a circular argument, saying "the inspired words of blah blah blah...the holy blah blah blah..." etc. ad nauseum.
I have said nothing about Theology, by the way. It is you that are concerned with that word. I am talking about the reliability of the Bible, the subject of this thread. If you want to discuss theology I will be happy to do so once we have settled this particular question. The following response from me will explain why you continue to hear me speak of inspired words and Holy words. And if you think that I am in the least bit concerned for your nauseous condition you are sorely mistaken. If you are nauseous then do not ride a small helpless boat in the powerful storm tossed sea of evidence that supports the inspiration of the word of God. If you are nauseous call a physician otherwise stop your crying and complaining and get on with the discussion by at least attempting to offer evidence to support your assertions.
It is interesting that you say all of your proofs go back to the New Testament. Then you say, for that is all WE have. Period. Well if that is all that WE have then why is it that you speak as if it is only all of my proof that comes from this source? When you admit that even you have nothing else in your arsenal but the same type of ammunition that I have in mine? Though I would simply point out that thus far my ammunition certainly appears to be of a better caliber. In fact we both have a gun but the difference is that mine is loaded and I can and will shoot straight. Thus far all you have done is brandish an empty gun by making nothing more than assertions without proofs.
Then you wish to explain something to me as follows:
Let me explain something to you: Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. His "faith" was Judaism. He taught the Torah. I don't look at Jesus through theological interpretations. I deal with the facts, not fantasy....
Let me explain something instead to you. Jesus Christ was God with us. And He is the author and finisher and the object of our faith, rather than a mere adherent or follower of any faith. You say you deal with facts not fantasy yet so far all you have dealt to us in this forum is nothing more than the assertions of the fanciful notion that Jesus was nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi whose faith was Judaism. You have not shown any facts to support your fanciful assertions. For one who deals in fact and not fantasy you certainly avoid all effort to present any facts in support of your assertions and you are still avoiding facts, which we have presented that are contrary to your assertions. That you are a man who deals with fact and not fantasy is nothing more than your own personal fantasy! The facts thus far in this forum show that you do not deal in facts very much. All you can do is assert. We want proof of your assertion if such exist.
Well you have told us this for some time now but it has little effect because you have done nothing more than assert it. And now all you can do is assert it again. You said you were going to explain it to me yet all you do is simple assert it! I ask you again to explain how you mean that he was a Jewish rabbi and that his faith (I have no idea why you enclosed this word in quotation marks, it seems that you meant something by doing so) was Judaism. And I ask you to prove from whatever evidence that you have at your disposal that such is the truth.
Let me explain something to you, which I am only asserting just now but will prove when I have time to write again. Let me explain to you that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that he is the OBJECT and Author of our faith rather than the follower of any faith, especially Judaism. Our Lord was not a mere Jewish Rabbi and a human adherent of the Jewish faith. And this draws the real line of difference between you and I. And your claims that the Bible is unreliable is nothing more than a cunning way to ultimately lead us all to accept that Christ is nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi. And that he was an adherent of the Jewish faith. And that his followers did nothing more than start a sect of Judaism in His name and over a period of years developed this new religion into what came to be known as Christianity.
But we are firm in our belief that Jesus Christ was not actually a Jewish Rabbi but instead was the Emmanuel or God with us and that he through the Holy Spirit in the apostles he DELIVERED the faith to us. And because this miraculously revealed and confirmed faith began with the declaration of Christ as the Son of God by his resurrection it spread like a flame throughout the known world within approximately 23 years. It has since been the faith once for all delivered. And with the destruction of Jerusalem genuine Judaism was nailed to the cross and died with the destruction of the temple and was taken away by God himself. Now there is neither neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, bond of free for we are all one in Christ Jesus. We are therefore one in THE FAITH that was once for all delivered. WE have no part nor lot in any faith that was DEVELOPED and borrowed from Judaism. Though the Law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that Law was delivered to Moses not developed by a bunch of unknown writers as described by the "documentary hypothesis. And Christ was a Lawgiver just like Moses and His law was DELIVERED and that delivery was attended by even more miraculous confirmation than the Law of Moses. But it, as well as the Law was not developed, it was delivered.
In fact it does seem that those two words, DELIVERED and DEVELOPED, indicate much about the difference between you and I on this subject. I believe that the Old and New Testaments were delivered by God through the Holy Spirit. You believe that they were religious thoughts developed by mere uninspired men over long periods of history without any help from God whatsoever.
Yet we allow you to state your assertions that are repugnant to all faithful Christians. We wait for you to offer whatever evidence you may think proves that they are true. And if you ever get around to offering any evidence we will examine it. And we will test it that we may determine if it can bear up under the same scrutiny that the Bible has withstood all these many years. Indeed that book is like the rock of Gibraltar and many an infidel hammer has been worn out upon it. Men with far greater talents than you display in this forum have failed miserably in their attempts to sustain the position that you hold. But at least they attempted to prove their point, which you have yet to even begin doing.
We wait for your response to our questions and your attempt to support your assertions with EVIDENCE.
For Christ Our Lord and My Brethren Who Love Him,
E. Lee Saffold
-- Anonymous, September 27, 2000
Saffold:
A simple question for you. If [A.]Jesus was G-d (as you say), and [B.] Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, then [C.] What does that make G-d? Hmmm?
We wait for your response to our questions and your attempt to support your assertions with EVIDENCE
Earth to Saffold....earth to Saffold...come in, Saffold....
I have given pleanty of evidence. I asked the questions first. You have dodged them. Why? The Tanach is not the problem with "reliability"....it is the NT that is the problem. I gave you many passages of Jesus' own words that have been altered...hey, don't believe me, look at the differences between the KJV and the NIV in these verses: phrases [Matthew 19:17, 20:16, 20:22-23, 24:36, 25:13; Mark 2:17, 6:11, 7:8, 9:49, 10:24, 12:4, 14:27; Luke 4:4, 4:8, 4:18, 6:45, 11:4, 11:44, 20:23, 22:18, 22:30, 22:68, 24:46; John 17:12; Revelation 1:8, 1:11, 2:20], whole sentences [Matthew 6:13, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:45-46, 11:26, 12:30; Luke 9:55-56, 11:2, 11:11, 17:36, 23:34], even whole paragraphs Mark 16:15-18; John 7:53- 8:11
And NO, these differfences are NOT due to "translation"..they are differences in the GREEK TEXTS THEMSELVES!You have failed to explain verses such as Matt. 18:11 or 23:14....you have failed to explain why, if the NT was "divinely inspired", WHY the church altered Jesus' words to make it sound more "theological"...
I await your explaination. And for heaven's sake...try to be civil!
-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000
Mr. Cecil:You have asked:
Saffold: A simple question for you. If [A.]Jesus was G-d (as you say), and [B.] Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, then [C.] What does that make G-d? Hmmm?
Well, let us put your argument in the form of a syllogism.
Major Premise: Christ is God
Minor Premise: Christ was a Jewish Rabbi
Conclusion: Therefore, God was a Jewish Rabbi
Now, I accept your major Premise as being absolutely true. However, I have my doubts about your minor Premise. This is the thing you are trying to prove to us but I am not yet convinced of it. For you have not proven it to be true. In reality you have been arguing that Christ was NOTHING MORE THAN A JEWISH RABBI. But lets say for the sake of the argument that your minor Premise is true. If it were true then it would mean that God was a Jewish Rabbi. I would have no problem with that fact, if it were a fact, than the idea that Christ was Emmanuel which means God with us. If God took on the form of man in the person of Christ, I would have no problem with his being a Jewish Rabbi than I have that he was a humble carpenter. But I would most certainly not make the same error that you make and conclude that because God took on the form of man He was NOTHING MORE THAN A MERE human being. For he would still be God, now wouldnt he? God is sovereign and if He chose to take upon himself the form of man that He created it is His business but it would not make him any less God.
So, the answer to your simple question is that if Christ is God and if he were in fact a Jewish rabbi then it would most certainly make it true that God was a Jewish Rabbi. But it would not be true, as you claim that He was nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi.
The big IF for you to prove is that Christ was, in fact, a Jewish Rabbi. And even if you should prove that such were true you would be a very long way from proving that he was nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi. Thus, I could accept your above argument completely and your case is still not made. In fact, if you accept your own conclusion then you would be admitting the very thing that I contend to be the truth, that Christ was God. Though you would believe that he was God in the form of a Jewish Rabbi and I would believe that he was God in the form of man.
So do tell us Mr. Cecil, do you believe that God was a Jewish Rabbi based upon your above argument? I do doubt it. But if you do honestly believe that God is a Jewish Rabbi in the form of the Messiah then you have come a long way from your original position! Ha! I sincerely hope that you have moved this far toward faith in Christ as God. For if you have then we can discuss whether Christ was in fact a genuine Jewish Rabbi! HA!
Now, it does seem however that you think that anyone who teaches from the Law of Moses or the Torah is therefore a Jewish Rabbi. If this is your position then almost everyone could be considered a Jewish Rabbi except atheist and pagans and witches and devil worshippers and such like them. For Example, the Muslims accept the Law of Moses as being from God and they teach from it. Are they therefore Jewish Rabbis? I was taught the Law of Moses from Childhood and believe every word in it to not only be the truth of God but that God miraculously delivered it to Moses who gave it to the Children of Israel. I have taught from it most of my life. Does that make me a Jewish Rabbi? There is a Judge over here in Alabama who has a great regard for the Ten Commandments. He hangs them up in his courtroom and was in great political difficulty over the matter and went to court to prove that he had a constitutional right to keep them there and he won. Because he believes in the Law of Moses and the Ten Commandments in particular and teaches from them on Sunday at Bible class are we to consider him a Jewish Rabbi. Thus far your only argument that Christ was a Jewish Rabbi goes like this:
Major Premise: All who teach from the Law of Moses (Or the Torah) are Jewish Rabbis.
Minor Premise: Christ taught from the Law of Moses
Conclusion: Therefore Christ was a Jewish Rabbi.
But the problem with your argument is your major Premise. Is it true that all who teach anything ever from the Torah or the Law of Moses are Jewish Rabbis? I doubt it. I am sure that there is much more to being a Jewish Rabbi than merely teaching anything from the Law of Moses. And if you believe that your major Premise is true then almost anyone, including God who not only taught the Law but also delivered the Law to Moses would be a Jewish Rabbi. In fact, the Samaritans believed only the Torah and taught it to their Children were they therefore Jewish Rabbis? Every Christian teaches the doctrine of Christ and therefore teaches the same things that He taught from the Law. Is it true therefore that all Christians are Jewish Rabbis? What proves too much proves too little, Mr. Cecil. If your only reason for Believing Christ to be a Jewish Rabbi is that he taught from the Law of Moses then you prove all of us Christians to be Jewish Rabbis. You even make God himself to be a Jewish Rabbi.
Thus, Mr. Cecil, you are far from proving that Christ was nothing more than a man serving as a Jewish Rabbi. WE are willing to listen to your EVIDENCE, if you have any but simply showing us that Christ taught from the Law of Moses is not sufficient to establish that He was a Jewish Rabbi. I am certain that you know that there is more to being a Rabbi than simply teaching from the Law.
So, do try to give us good reasons for believing that Christ was a Jewish Rabbi. Then show us evidence that he was nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi. For that is your contention, isnt it? You are not simply trying to prove that Christ was a Jewish Rabbi. You contend that he was a Jewish Rabbi and nothing more. Thus far you have failed miserably to prove such nonsense.
Then you make a brilliant statement! In fact it is so brilliant that no one can see just what it has to do with the subject at hand or even how it in any way supports your argument. You said:
Earth to Saffold....earth to Saffold...come in, Saffold....
Ha! Now that argument is so brilliant I do not know if any Christian could ever answer it! Ha! Why that argument settles the matter completely. Now that we are sufficiently intimidated and convinced that we are so stupid that we appear to be out in space somewhere we may as well go home and accept the fact that Mr. Cecil has thoroughly trounced us into the dust. Why, Brethren, cant you feel the weight of such powerful reasoning? How could we be right about Christ or anything else when we are in the presence of one as omniscient as Mr. Cecil? He says nothing to prove his case and when we ask questions that he cannot answer he complains and makes it clear to us that he actually made such brilliant arguments that we were too stupid and spaced out to have the slightest ability to understand. WE will just have to realize, Brethren, that we are no match for the educated elite. Why, dont you know that they can win arguments without even making any arguments? Such power! I am just overwhelmed, arent you?
But this particular fool is too stupid to go home. I will still continue to ask questions that Mr. Cecil is too Brilliant to answer. I will just have to accept his elite status as a teacher of fools like me, now wont I?
I am on break and must return to my work. I will discuss the rest of your post, Mr. Cecil, when I have time to write again.
A Fool for Christ,
E. Lee Saffold
-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000
Mr. Cecil:You have asked:
Saffold: A simple question for you. If [A.]Jesus was G-d (as you say), and [B.] Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, then [C.] What does that make G-d? Hmmm?
Well, let us put your argument in the form of a syllogism.
Major Premise: Christ is God
Minor Premise: Christ was a Jewish Rabbi
Conclusion: Therefore, God was a Jewish Rabbi
Now, I accept your major Premise as being absolutely true. However, I have my doubts about your minor Premise. This is the thing you are trying to prove to us but I am not yet convinced of it. For you have not proven it to be true. In reality you have been arguing that Christ was NOTHING MORE THAN A JEWISH RABBI. But lets say for the sake of the argument that your minor Premise is true. If it were true then it would mean that God was a Jewish Rabbi. I would have no problem with that fact, if it were a fact, than the idea that Christ was Emmanuel which means God with us. If God took on the form of man in the person of Christ, I would have no problem with his being a Jewish Rabbi than I have that he was a humble carpenter. But I would most certainly not make the same error that you make and conclude that because God took on the form of man He was NOTHING MORE THAN A MERE human being. For he would still be God, now wouldnt he? God is sovereign and if He chose to take upon himself the form of man that He created it is His business but it would not make him any less God.
So, the answer to your simple question is that if Christ is God and if he were in fact a Jewish rabbi then it would most certainly make it true that God was a Jewish Rabbi. But it would not be true, as you claim that He was nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi.
The big IF for you to prove is that Christ was, in fact, a Jewish Rabbi. And even if you should prove that such were true you would be a very long way from proving that he was nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi. Thus, I could accept your above argument completely and your case is still not made. In fact, if you accept your own conclusion then you would be admitting the very thing that I contend to be the truth, that Christ was God. Though you would believe that he was God in the form of a Jewish Rabbi and I would believe that he was God in the form of man.
So do tell us Mr. Cecil, do you believe that God was a Jewish Rabbi based upon your above argument? I do doubt it. But if you do honestly believe that God is a Jewish Rabbi in the form of the Messiah then you have come a long way from your original position! Ha! I sincerely hope that you have moved this far toward faith in Christ as God. For if you have then we can discuss whether Christ was in fact a genuine Jewish Rabbi! HA!
Now, it does seem however that you think that anyone who teaches from the Law of Moses or the Torah is therefore a Jewish Rabbi. If this is your position then almost everyone could be considered a Jewish Rabbi except atheist and pagans and witches and devil worshippers and such like them. For Example, the Muslims accept the Law of Moses as being from God and they teach from it. Are they therefore Jewish Rabbis? I was taught the Law of Moses from Childhood and believe every word in it to not only be the truth of God but that God miraculously delivered it to Moses who gave it to the Children of Israel. I have taught from it most of my life. Does that make me a Jewish Rabbi? There is a Judge over here in Alabama who has a great regard for the Ten Commandments. He hangs them up in his courtroom and was in great political difficulty over the matter and went to court to prove that he had a constitutional right to keep them there and he won. Because he believes in the Law of Moses and the Ten Commandments in particular and teaches from them on Sunday at Bible class are we to consider him a Jewish Rabbi. Thus far your only argument that Christ was a Jewish Rabbi goes like this:
Major Premise: All who teach from the Law of Moses (Or the Torah) are Jewish Rabbis.
Minor Premise: Christ taught from the Law of Moses
Conclusion: Therefore Christ was a Jewish Rabbi.
But the problem with your argument is your major Premise. Is it true that all who teach anything ever from the Torah or the Law of Moses are Jewish Rabbis? I doubt it. I am sure that there is much more to being a Jewish Rabbi than merely teaching anything from the Law of Moses. And if you believe that your major Premise is true then almost anyone, including God who not only taught the Law but also delivered the Law to Moses would be a Jewish Rabbi. In fact, the Samaritans believed only the Torah and taught it to their Children were they therefore Jewish Rabbis? Every Christian teaches the doctrine of Christ and therefore teaches the same things that He taught from the Law. Is it true therefore that all Christians are Jewish Rabbis? What proves too much proves too little, Mr. Cecil. If your only reason for Believing Christ to be a Jewish Rabbi is that he taught from the Law of Moses then you prove all of us Christians to be Jewish Rabbis. You even make God himself to be a Jewish Rabbi.
Thus, Mr. Cecil, you are far from proving that Christ was nothing more than a man serving as a Jewish Rabbi. WE are willing to listen to your EVIDENCE, if you have any but simply showing us that Christ taught from the Law of Moses is not sufficient to establish that He was a Jewish Rabbi. I am certain that you know that there is more to being a Rabbi than simply teaching from the Law.
So, do try to give us good reasons for believing that Christ was a Jewish Rabbi. Then show us evidence that he was nothing more than a Jewish Rabbi. For that is your contention, isnt it? You are not simply trying to prove that Christ was a Jewish Rabbi. You contend that he was a Jewish Rabbi and nothing more. Thus far you have failed miserably to prove such nonsense.
Then you make a brilliant statement! In fact it is so brilliant that no one can see just what it has to do with the subject at hand or even how it in any way supports your argument. You said:
Earth to Saffold....earth to Saffold...come in, Saffold....
Ha! Now that argument is so brilliant I do not know if any Christian could ever answer it! Ha! Why that argument settles the matter completely. Now that we are sufficiently intimidated and convinced that we are so stupid that we appear to be out in space somewhere we may as well go home and accept the fact that Mr. Cecil has thoroughly trounced us into the dust. Why, Brethren, cant you feel the weight of such powerful reasoning? How could we be right about Christ or anything else when we are in the presence of one as omniscient as Mr. Cecil? He says nothing to prove his case and when we ask questions that he cannot answer he complains and makes it clear to us that he actually made such brilliant arguments that we were too stupid and spaced out to have the slightest ability to understand. WE will just have to realize, Brethren, that we are no match for the educated elite. Why, dont you know that they can win arguments without even making any arguments? Such power! I am just overwhelmed, arent you?
But this particular fool is too stupid to go home. I will still continue to ask questions that Mr. Cecil is too Brilliant to answer. I will just have to accept his elite status as a teacher of fools like me, now wont I?
I am on break and must return to my work. I will discuss the rest of your post, Mr. Cecil, when I have time to write again.
A Fool for Christ,
E. Lee Saffold
-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000
Excellent work at logic, brother Saffold. Alan, this is what we mean when we speak of logic. Whether you work it into a commentary or put it plainly as premises. Not making assertions and then saying that since you have made them they must be so.I think the absolute best class I ever took in high school was Analytic Geometry. You were forced to prove mathematical theorems using logic, rather than just accepting them because they were in your textbook. Your logic had to be accurate and precise, as Lee's is. The second best were my computer programming classes, where again you had to think problems logically through from beginning to end. The problem with America today, more than any other save their need for Christ, is that Americans have forgotten how to think critically and logically. Training in this kind of rational thought is sorely needed today. Kudos to you, Lee, and keep up the good work.
-- Anonymous, October 04, 2000
After reading a number of your assertions and responses, I have to say that my study of Christianity has led to many of the same conclusions as Mr. Cecil has reached. A word to you, Mr. Cecil, if I may: perhaps if you lost a bit of your arrogancy, others would come to see things as they are. Arrogancy breeds hostility, which results in people refuting the truth for no objective reason.Cheers to you all.
Luke Hodgkinson
-- Anonymous, December 11, 2000
Gentlemen,I’m interested in your topic and have been for some time.
Does it really matter if the bible is the word of God? I happen to be Agnostic so it doesn’t really matter to me. But to a brood spectrum of people who use it to influence their thoughts and justify their actions, it is suppose to matter. It matters to me what standards I base my morals, but those who use the bible as a moral compass, well, they should take lesson in blind faith. Blind faith that a story in the bible has no apparent relevance in today’s high standards is yet taken with some value. Racism, treatment of women, Holy wars, and slaughtered children by the hand of God are just a few of the ridicules themes and stories by which we have built our morals in western culture.
Take Noah’s story of his son Ham finding him drunken and passed out naked. Ham finds his father and sees his genitals. He then goes to his brothers for help in covering him up. When Noah awakes, he later finds out that his sons saw him naked and then curses Ham’s son Canin to forever be the servants of mankind. This story later becomes the Christian sword in defense of slavery and racism because the tribes of Africa are attributed to the children of Ham. Now what moral or possible good can we get out of this story? I challenge the reader… fore there is none. Today, we are taught not to be ashamed of our bodies, that racism and slavery are bad, that cursing our grandchildren for something good our son did is just plan stupid.
But lets not get ahead of the cart. If one with good retention skills were to read the bible they would find that the word of god is not written for everyone. In the Old Testament, we have the chosen people and the tribes of Israel. No other people were aloud to worship god except gentile women taken during battle for wives. In the New Testament, Jesus said to his 12 disciples, “Go no where among the gentiles or towns of Samaritans But only to the sheep of Israel and tell them the kingdom of God is at hand”. There are other people dividing quotes by Jesus, but why continue.
I could go on, but let me make my point if not already apparent. It is written all over the bible that it is the indisputable word of God. In the last chapter of revelations, it states that whoever should not accept the entire book as the word of god and if who should ever change or except but a portion of the text will burn in hell. You have to believe the nonsense in order to join the club. What about the Gnostics who were slaughtered by Constsintine? What about the fact that there are several secular messiah stories around the Mediterranean that match the story and life of Jesus to a tie and were written around his time. Pagan messiahs born of virgin birth before Sheppard. Dieing for the sins of those who followed. Read the book “The Jesus Mysteries”.
Thank you
-- Anonymous, February 10, 2001