Wayne Delia

...hmmm.... a definition must be around here somewhere...

Ah! So it has nothing to do with "tasting", or "sampling", but rather, with uncritical acceptance, or at least an acceptance of the majority of the material. It's a particularly bad analogy. One does not "taste" a sample of food as though they were starving and this might be the last meal they'll ever have - that's the urgency conveyed by your analogy "as though the destiny of your life and soul depended upon what lies therein." That wouldn't be a mere "taste", that'd be a complete devouring of that which is to be tasted.

You are making a very common mistake: that unbelievers have never previously been believers. (rhutchin has made, and continues to make, that mistake.) That would be wrong in my case. I was a sincere, devout, born-again Christian for about a dozen years, who believed it strongly enough to be unafraid to examine the claims in the Bible deeply, extensively, and critically - if it was as much of the truth as I believed it was, it would stand up under close scrutiny. It didn't. In fact, it fell apart. What was promoted as infallible truth began to require all manner of alibis, excuses, and apologetics. A phrase was mistranslated. The Bible isn't meant to be a scientific textbook. God works in mysterious ways. Humans can't understand why God's behavior is supremely good, even though it fails human standards of behavior.

Essentially, I "tasted" - and it "tasted" like vinegar. I was smart enough to spit it out instead of trying to fake a Christian smile and claim it tasted as sweet as anything.

Don't sweat it... nobody else can meaningfully enlarge on anything he's proposed, either.

Yeah - generally a quote offered as support of the claim made in the same quote is circular reasoning.

WMD

Wayne Delia

You're not totally clear on how a debate works, are you? There's a proposition, a main point being discussed. One side - you - argues for the affirmative, and the other side - us - argues for the negative. You're making and supporting an assertion (specifically, "Nothing in the Bible is meaningless or gibberish"), and we're refuting your argument, by showing what is wrong with it. You're trying to shift the burden of proof, and you're losing badly, while being unable to recognize or admit it. Others have already pointed out you're playing the "you have faith, I have faith" alibi game for being unable to support your own argument.

That, too, is ridiculous and pitiful: you are begging your debate opponents to relieve you of your own burden of proof. That's a horrible debate strategy. It's no wonder you're doing as badly as you are.

WMD

John A. Broussard

Fair enough.

Now explain why there's such a great divergence from one bible translation to another, with some HOLY BOOKS completely omitted in some instances.

Remember we're dealing with divinely inspired writing, so it's rather important to have the true, accurate, translation, especially since we don't have the originals and the copies we do have are copies of copies of copies.

Right?

rhutchin

As far as translation goes, we are dealing with languages that existed thousands of years ago and are not spoken today. That makes it tough to translate particularly where words appear rarely in the Bible and other writings don't generally exist that use these words. Then you have instances where comparable words/concepts do not exist in the language into which the original documents are being translated.

Nonetheless, I think the disputed sections are small in number and do not affect our understanding of the major themes and ideas presented.

Not sure what you meant by "...some HOLY BOOKS completely omitted in some instances." Are you thinking of the Catholic Bible which contains several books not in a Protestant Bible? If so, just ratchet down to the lowest common denominator and use the Protestant Bible. As I understand it, the additional books do not add anything new to what exists in the smaller number of books.

rhutchin

As I understand the argument, the assertion is that the Bible is, or contains, meaningless and gibberish statements. The burden is on those who assert such to support the assertion. That support should be substantive and not of the form, "I don't understand..."

Julian

One of my special areas of interesting is textual criticism and I, therefore, have a good amount of sources on this topic and I can assure that your assessment is incorrect. Now, it is true that far and away most of the differences are inconsequential and most likely the result of the scribe being half asleep or half deaf, if taking dictation. There does remain, however, a substantial number of theologically very important divergences that are still being hotly debated. This is largely due to the large number of sects in the first few centuries which interpreted the bible in order to support their views. This was also true for books outside the NT, which is not so relevant here. The NT books were slowly 'fixed' to become more and more orthodox.

We have no good way of really knowing what the gospels said originally. The text we have is probably close in most cases but it certain that large gaps of understanding and text are currently lost to us. The early centuries saw the most changes and we have almost no fragments from the period.

Anyways, I don't want to get too long winded on a topic I feel strongly about. Suffice it to say that the texts we have are probably very close to the originals but important sections are almost certainly incorrect or heavily edited.

Part of the problem is that many textual critics are heavily christian and don't want to mess with their beloved text and even in the face of superior evidence they prefer their traditional reading. Sound like someone you know?

Julian

Wads4

-or on the other hand, improved knowledge may confirm that they were gibberish all along.

pharoah

It's not quite that simple Rhutchin. Either the extra books that the Catholics have are divinely inspired or they aren't. If they are, then the Protestants are committing the grave sin of subtracting from God's Word and you are all doomed. If they aren't then the Catholics are doomed.

BTW, if you really want to ratchet down to the lowest common denominator then you should use the Jefferson Bible.

rhutchin

Sounds like the Alexandrian crowd.

John A. Broussard

Here we go again.

JOSHUA10:13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

If you were to read that in other divine scriptures such as the Rig Veda, wouldn't you immediately say that the claim that "the sun stood still" at the command of a human being was gibberish? Or a fairy tale? Or meaningless?

Be honest, now. You are reading it in the Rig Veda. Do you believe that this verse in the Rig Veda is a literally true statement?

Don't put a spin on it. Just answer the questions truthfully.

Did Joshua make the sun stand still or not?

Would it be more or less believable if some creature in the Rig Veda were reported to have made the sun stand still?