Freethought & Rationalism Archive

WILLOWTREE · 07-23-2004, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NOGO

This is a very interesting statement and I would like to explore it a bit further.

First Question:
When was Matthew's day ?

Here is a passage from Luke 4

You will agree that Jesus was not reading from the LXX.

So Matthew's teacher had a different Bible than Matthew, right?

Second question
Why does Matthew quote from the LXX and not from the same Bible as his teacher?

And do answer my previous posts as well.
Tell us why Matthew abandoned the LXX when he did not like what he found.

I eagerly await your answers.

Matthew began following Jesus in Matthew 9:9

Codex Mayerianus 48 AD was dictated by Matthew to Nicolaus the Deacon. Paleography results confirm the stated date in the fragments of 48 AD. This source completely ignored by Jesus Seminar types - why ? Because it refutes their invented fraud of pseudepigrapha.

source: Dr. Gene Scott, who owns the largest mss, paryri , Torah scrolls, and Bible collection in private hands. Only surpassed by the British Museum/NY Central.
Dr. Scott has surpassed the Huntington. He is a major player in the ancient mss market and has his treasures displayed in a 14 story museum.

But even without Codex Mayerianus the plethora of sources and scholars have dated every N.T. source before 70 AD., including famed archaeologist William Albright.

It IS ONLY secular atheist scholars, and pseudo-christian scholars who capriciously shit on the N.T. all because of their personal hatred of Jesus and His followers.

How can persons who do not believe in the supernatural be objective with a religion that bases its existence on a miracle - the Resurrection. They cannot.

Why is it that every "scholar" who happens to not believe in the Resurrection/miracles ALL agree contrary to Evangelical scholars ?

The point is that we all coddle sources that confirm our worldview.

Jesus Seminar sources are proven liars because they ADOPT the self -description of consisting of christians. You cannot be a christian and deny miracles/Resurrection. This exposes in itself the fraud of Jesus Seminar, that is the CLAIM that christians are confirming their claims, THIS IS ONLY DONE TO FOOL A SECULAR WORLD WHO IS READY FOR ANY TRASHING OF CHRISTIANITY.

Anyone can call themself a christian and then assert miracles don't exist/pseudepigrapha - these are ravening liars who have no conscience about lying just to trash christianity.

The point is secular scholars and "christian Jesus Seminar scholars" are ax-grinding agenda against all the evidence. It is laughable to listen to sources who are not christians to trust that they would speak the truth concerning things which confirm christianity.

The LXX was the "Bible" in N.T. times.

In Luke 4, Jesus read from an Isaiah scroll - the LXX.

The LXX was produced from 300 to 100 BC this is a fact.

When Jesus read from it, (listen close) WHATEVER HE READ AND HOWEVER IT DIFFERS FROM HOW WE KNOW IT TODAY MEANS JESUS READ WHAT IT SAID OR SHOULD OF SAID.

Because, He is the Word Incarnate - the Logos.

If Isaiah differs from what Jesus said in Luke 4 then Luke 4 is the correct translation and the "other" incorrect. Why ? Because Jesus validated the LXX by using it and whatever He read is the correct rendering. The same with Paul. He used the LXX and however he quotes it is the correct rendering because he is communicating the inspired word of God. This is the claim of the Canon, therefore, whatever the N.T. personages quote, then that quote is the correct rendering of whatever verse or passage they are quoting from.

We evangelicals SIDE WITH JESUS AND PAUL - period. WE know they are correct and every atheist/Jesus Seminar scholar is asserting opposite only because of their personal bias.

The LXX was Holy Writ in Palestine in the First Century - this is a fact that revisionists/frauds want to cover.

When Jesus read from Isaiah, you will notice he stopped in mid-sentence and DID NOT READ "the day of vengeance...."

This is because the day of vengeance is yet to come - the Great Tribulation.

Isaiah prophesied thousands of years encompassing one or two sentences.

When Jesus returns for the Battle of Armageddon - the sword which proceeds from His mouth will be the vengeance that eliminates this present kosmos of anti-christ representation.

How do we recognize the authority of Jesus ?

Because He resurrected - everything He said prior validates those statements.

Those statements are found in the Gospels.

How do we know He resurrected ?

The evidence is voluminous - another subject.

I know I owe many responses - CX, Ameleq, and others - ASAP

NOGO · 07-23-2004, 02:48 PM

Quote:

WILLOW
When Israel/Northern 10 tribe Kingdom broke free of Assyrian captivity they fanned out across Europe and landed in Britain eventually. They are not Jews, but Hebrews who have lost their Palestinian Hebrew identity, yet they certainly retained many of their ancestral customs and ways. Yet in this state of being "lost" and "not having mercy" they became known as sons of the living God: Christians.

You have a race problem here.
The British are caucasion. Hebrews are not.

The 10 lost tribes is largely a myth.
Much of the population of the northern kingdom fled to the south and Judah.
The rest were assimilated by the assyrian people. Yahwehism, as we know it today, did not exist then. It was created on the return of the Jews to their ancestral land.

Genetics has shown that Europeans, central Asians, American natives all share a common ancestry which is separate from the semitic peoples. This ancestry goes back 40,000 years; that's more than 37,000 years before the Israelite deportation.

Toto · 07-23-2004, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

. . .Codex Mayerianus 48 AD was dictated by Matthew to Nicolaus the Deacon. Paleography results confirm the stated date in the fragments of 48 AD. This source completely ignored by Jesus Seminar types - why ? Because it refutes their invented fraud of pseudepigrapha.

source: Dr. Gene Scott, who owns the largest mss, paryri , Torah scrolls, and Bible collection in private hands. Only surpassed by the British Museum/NY Central.
Dr. Scott has surpassed the Huntington. He is a major player in the ancient mss market and has his treasures displayed in a 14 story museum.
. . .

Willow - when I google "Codex Mayerianus" the only hit is from something you posted on another board:

Quote:

CODEX MAYERIANUS 48 AD

From the Dr. Gene Scott Bible Museum, Los Angeles, California:
1862 [London] reproduction:

Codex Mayerianus is several papyrus fragments from Thebes, Upper Egypt found by Rev. Henry Stobart, sold to Joseph Mayer of Liverpool.

One fragment containing the end of the 28th chapter of Matthew (in greek):

"The writing by the hand of Nicolaus the Deacon, at the dictation of Matthew, the apostle of Jesus Christ. It was done in the fifteenth year after the Ascension of our Lord, and was distributed to the believing Jews and Greeks in Palestine."

Eminent scholar Constantine Simonides Ph.D. carefully sorted for Mayer all the Stobart manuscripts.

This is more proof that extinguishes spurious claims of decades later pseudepigrapha.

Willowtree
pyramidial@yahoo.com

As pointed out there, Constantine Simonides was a noted 19th century forger.

Quote:

Constantine Simonides was an exceptionally skillful calligrapher who is alleged to have sold spurious documents (as well as possibly some that were genuine) in England in the 1850s and 1860s. Among his clients were Sir Frederick Madden at the British Museum and Sir Thomas Phillipps. Simonides resided in the monasteries on Mount Athos between 1839 and 1841 and again in 1852, during which time he may have acquired or sold some of the manuscripts that he later sold. He was in England between 1853 and 1855 and then in France and Germany. In 1862 Simonides published in English journals his claim to have written the Codex Sinaiticus, which the scholar Constantine von Tischendorf had discovered at Mount Sinai some years earlier and maintained had been be written during the 4th century C.E.

What did Dr. Gene Scott say when you asked him about this? Could you ask how and why he had a 19th century forger sort his collection? Could this possibly be a hint that something is not quite right here?

Javaman · 07-23-2004, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

Codex Mayerianus 48 AD was dictated by Matthew to Nicolaus the Deacon. Paleography results confirm the stated date in the fragments of 48 AD. This source completely ignored by Jesus Seminar types - why ? Because it refutes their invented fraud of pseudepigrapha.

source: Dr. Gene Scott, who owns the largest mss, paryri , Torah scrolls, and Bible collection in private hands. Only surpassed by the British Museum/NY Central.
Dr. Scott has surpassed the Huntington. He is a major player in the ancient mss market and has his treasures displayed in a 14 story museum.

He's apparently not very selective. As was pointed out to you weeks ago elsewhere, Dr. Scott owns a reproduction of this particular codex supplied by a known forger. Which, I assume led you to write this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

But even without Codex Mayerianus the plethora of sources and scholars have dated every N.T. source before 70 AD., including famed archaeologist William Albright.

A plethora! I would say only that there is a range of opinions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

It IS ONLY secular atheist scholars, and pseudo-christian scholars who capriciously shit on the N.T. all because of their personal hatred of Jesus and His followers.

Now why'd you go and do that? You've slung this term around before and it bothers the crap out of me. There's no hatred of Jesus from non-believers. There's very little hatred (and none from me) for "christians". Heck, I don't hate anybody.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

How can persons who do not believe in the supernatural be objective with a religion that bases its existence on a miracle - the Resurrection. They cannot.

They can. Remember, there is a huge difference between believing in the supernatural generically and having ever seen evidence for the supernatural. It follows that those that don't hold a god belief and have never witnessed anything of the non-worldly will want more evidence when told magical stories. This is not a question of objectivity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

Why is it that every "scholar" who happens to not believe in the Resurrection/miracles ALL agree contrary to Evangelical scholars ?

The point is that we all coddle sources that confirm our worldview.

I think you forget that there are those, like me, that simply haven't seen evidence of a god, yours or anybody else's, and don't actually have religion as part of their worldview. The rest of your post was circular reasoning in the highest degree. Holding to that view will make debate very difficult.

Toto · 07-23-2004, 03:19 PM

OK - here's your Codex Mayerianus:

University of Delaware exhibit on forgeries and hoaxes

Quote:

Constantine Simonides, 1824?-1867.

Fac-similes of Certain Portions of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and of the Epistles of Ss. James & Jude, Written on Papyrus in the First Century, and Preserved in the Egyptian Museum of Joseph Mayer, Esq, Liverpool, with a Portrait of St. Matthew, from a Fresco Painting at Mount Athos, edited and illustrated with notes and historical and literary prolegomena ..., by Constantine Simonides. London: Trübner & Co., 1861.

Constantine Simonides was one of the most controversial figures of his time in museum and scholarly circles. Already a convicted forger, Simonides issued this manuscript facsimile of papyri texts which he claimed to have discovered in a private collection. It was denounced immediately as a forgery because of his controversial past; however, it has never been definitely proven to be one of Simonides's forgeries.

How much did the good Dr. Scott pay for a document that the rest of the world considers a forgery? Could he possibly be pulling your leg?

More here:

Quote:

The stately quarto of Constantine Simonides, published in 1861, and full of fac-similes, at first sight imposing, but rapidly crumbling away under examination, is a much more remarkable achievement; it imposed for a time upon men who had pretensions to be called learned.[10] What was attempted in it was not the floating of long spurious histories, but the production of early fragments of the Gospels and Epistles containing remarkable readings, and of inscriptions and colophons serving to confirm the Apostolic origin of the New Testament books. There are quotations from Hegesippus, part of a record of Christian chronology from an inscribed stone at Thyatira, fragments of a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel written in A.D. 48, and, in a footnote, a set of directions in Greek for taking photographs by a writer of the fifth century. There is no lack of enterprise about Simonides.

and here:

Quote:

Constantine Simonides [1820? - 1867?], a Greek monk from Mount Athos, came to England in 1853. Soon after his arrival he offered five manuscripts, four of them 'scrolls' or vellum rolls, to Sir Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum. Madden rejected these as modern, but did purchase other works, mostly fragmentary but all genuine, including a tenth-century chronicle (Add. MS 19390) and an important collection of geographic texts (Add. 19391). Later in the year Simonides sold to Sir Thomas Phillipps, the 'vellomaniac' baronet of Middle Hill, the Hesiod scroll that Madden had rejected, as well as other pieces, and he agreed to copy others (which were 'difficult' to read); next year he offered him an even greater treasure, a vellum roll purporting to be 2,000 years old containing the first three books of Homer's Illiad. Phillipps, though by now not unsceptical, bought this too.

From 1854 to 1858 Simonides was in Europe, where he produced numerous other manuscripts, including an ingeniously simulated palimpsest, an early text partially erased and written over later; in this case the later text was genuine, and the 'early' text was added by Simonides [details?]. In Leipzig he also produced his most famous text, Uranius on the Kings of Egypt, which, if genuine, 'would have revolutionized Egyptian chronology'. At first accepted as genuine by Dindorf and the Egyptologist Karl Lepsius, it was later rejected. Simonides was arrested and charged with forgery, but then released.

By 1858 he was back in England, and in 1860 called on the Liverpool antiquary Joseph Mayer and his friend and curator John Eliot Hodgkin, by whom he was allowed to unroll papyri acquired by him six years earlier in Egypt. They included two genuine hieratic ["ancient Egyptian writing simpler than...hieroglyphic"] texts relating to tomb robberies, to which were now added 'fragments of a Greek text of the Gospel of St Matthew, purporting to have been written by Nicolaus at the dictation of the Evangelist in the fifteenth year after the Ascension', and other improbably early texts. These were examined and condemned in 1863 by the Royal Society of Literature [Christians?]; C.W. Goodwin pointed to fragments of red blotting-paper, relics of the removal of the hieratic text for which Simonides had substituted Greek.

funinspace · 07-23-2004, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

Matthew began following Jesus in Matthew 9:9

Codex Mayerianus 48 AD was dictated by Matthew to Nicolaus the Deacon. Paleography results confirm the stated date in the fragments of 48 AD. This source completely ignored by Jesus Seminar types - why ? Because it refutes their invented fraud of pseudepigrapha.

source: Dr. Gene Scott, who owns the largest mss, paryri , Torah scrolls, and Bible collection in private hands. Only surpassed by the British Museum/NY Central.
Dr. Scott has surpassed the Huntington. He is a major player in the ancient mss market and has his treasures displayed in a 14 story museum.

Another pointer to it's being a forgery:

Quote:

MAYERIANUS: codex (historical forgeries)
[B_162,rvw] CATNYP# *YN+(Sim onid es [Simonides], K. Fac-similes of certain portions of the Gospel of St. Matthew), “Fac-similes of certain portions of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and of the Epistles of Ss. James & Jude, written on papyrus in the first century, and preserved in the Egyptian museum of Joseph Mayer…�?
London, 1861.

Quote:

But even without Codex Mayerianus the plethora of sources and scholars have dated every N.T. source before 70 AD., including famed archaeologist William Albright.

It IS ONLY secular atheist scholars, and pseudo-christian scholars who capriciously shit on the N.T. all because of their personal hatred of Jesus and His followers.

Well beyond this simply being patently false, I'm not sure what to bother saying. A huge portion of Christian scholars (who also accept miracles) do not agree with your statements. It's hardly just the heritics saying this.
This is from the New Bible Commentary:

Quote:

The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in AD 70 is a prominent concern of Matthew. But it is always spoken of as a future event (naturally so, since it is Jesus who is presented as speaking of it). Some commentators believe that the language used (e.g. in 22:6–7) reflects Matthew’s knowledge of the event itself, not just of its prediction by Jesus, and therefore date the gospel after AD 70. Others have no difficulty with such ‘circumstantial’ prediction, and point out that the language used is similar to that of other such prophecies in the OT and elsewhere, so that it need not depend on observation of the event. There are also some passages in Matthew which presuppose that the temple was still intact (5:23–24; 17:24–27; 23:16–22); and these have not been edited out in the way a writer after AD 70 might have been expected to do.

Other arguments depend on the relative scheme of dating in both the writing of the NT documents and the development of Jewish—Christian relations which is presupposed. There is little room for dogmatism here, and some scholars regard a date in the early 60s as an attractive alternative to the more commonly proposed date around AD 80.

The main point is: even the best scholars out there pretty much agree that it's a big unknown.

Quote:

How can persons who do not believe in the supernatural be objective with a religion that bases its existence on a miracle - the Resurrection. They cannot.

Why is it that every "scholar" who happens to not believe in the Resurrection/miracles ALL agree contrary to Evangelical scholars ?

And your logic would defend the papacy 500 years ago very nicely...

Amaleq13 · 07-23-2004, 05:58 PM

Apparently, it will be difficult to engage Willow in any discussion without questions of the credibility of Dr. Scott being relevant. All I ask is that everybody make an effort to restrict their criticisms of Willow's authority to the specific arguments offered. How hard can that be?

Quote:

Originally Posted by WILLOWevcTREE

But even without Codex Mayerianus the plethora of sources and scholars have dated every N.T. source before 70 AD., including famed archaeologist William Albright.

It IS ONLY secular atheist scholars, and pseudo-christian scholars who capriciously shit on the N.T. all because of their personal hatred of Jesus and His followers.

This is untrue. The Catholic Study Bible dates Mark as the earliest Gospel as written somewhere around 70 with all others dating later. Unless you are circularly defining "Christian" as "those who agree with Dr. Scott", your claim appears to be incorrect. If you are defining it in that way, you are applying a logical fallacy in the creation of the definition. The fact is you are choosing to follow a very small minority of scholars in accepting such early dates. You should at least be honest enough to admit this obvious fact.

Calling professed Christian scholars who disagree with you "pseudo-christian scholars" is an example of the logical fallacy known as No True Scotsman.

Quote:

The point is that we all coddle sources that confirm our worldview.

Again untrue. Most, if not all, of the Christian scholars would clearly prefer it if the Gospels could be dated earlier but they clearly feel the evidence does not warrant it. I respect and appreciate that kind of honesty. Just as I would respect and appreciate the honesty involved in admitting that one is choosing to accept a minority view among professional scholars.

Vorkosigan · 07-23-2004, 06:11 PM

Wow! Thanks for the pointer to Constantine Simonides. I had never heard of him before. Another forger for my collection. I'll have to do some research on this fine fellow.

Vorkosigan

NOGO · 07-23-2004, 11:34 PM

Quote:

WILLOW
In Luke 4, Jesus read from an Isaiah scroll - the LXX.

Jesus spoke Greek and so did all those who were listening to him?

Quote:

The LXX was produced from 300 to 100 BC this is a fact.

I agree. Do you qualify this statement as "a fact" in order to differentiate it from some of the other things that you say?

What evidence do you have that the Jews of the first century used a Greek translation for their Bible?

You are also implying that the current version of the Septuagint is wrong because it differs from what Matthew says about the Bethlehem prophecy. Is this a personal view point or can you give a reference?

Amaleq13 · 07-24-2004, 12:15 AM

Please forgive this brief break from this thread:

I think many participants in this thread might be interested in this debate challenge.

This is not the most direct route but it does take you through the thread that inspired the challenge. No harm in a little backstory, I always say.

You may now return to the thread.

07-24-2004, 12:15 AM	#130
Amaleq13 Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Eagle River, Alaska Posts: 7,816	Undeniably made of brass Please forgive this brief break from this thread: I think many participants in this thread might be interested in this debate challenge. This is not the most direct route but it does take you through the thread that inspired the challenge. No harm in a little backstory, I always say. You may now return to the thread.

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07-23-2004, 06:11 PM	#128
Vorkosigan Contributor Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Barrayar Posts: 11,866	Wow! Thanks for the pointer to Constantine Simonides. I had never heard of him before. Another forger for my collection. I'll have to do some research on this fine fellow. Vorkosigan

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