jdlongmire

I have seen and heard this statement in various places:

What is the skeptic's reasonable and considered response?

Vinnie

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

After laughing hystericlaly for a good hour or two here is the reasoned response:

First, all that statement even applies to is the textual stabilitiy of the texts. It has nothing to do with the reliability of the material on the texts. It only tries to argue they are textually reliable---meaning they are like the originals. This says NOTHING as to how "accurate" the originals may have been (they simply were not accurate at all!)

Yes its true the NT has lots more manuscripts but we have tons of evidence of alteration and forgery in these texts and in Christian writing in general during the respective time periods. Texts also are most unstable in the formative years--something biased-creedal NT scholars are hesitant to admit. Surprisingly texts from the formative years of a works life are all completely absent save possibly a VERY SMALL fragment of GJohn which we know went through redaction and probably large scale changes anyways!

But yes, overall the textual integrity of the NT works are not majorly disputed by most scholars. Historians tend to have to assume this or they would be jobless. This shows how biased this statement is.

But a less biased and less creedal formulation of htis will note the MANY MANY textual ifficulties with these texts, the many known instances of forgeries, writing in another's name, false attributions, known redactional additions and interpolations, church father's accusing one another of corrupting the scriptures and so on.

Here is a text I put together on the Gospel of John alone:

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/johntext.html

Theists can blather on about having so many manuscripts all they wish. In the end all they have is copies of copies. The copies are useful historically but the naive fundy knows not how riddled with problems they are. Josh Mcdowell also conveniently forgets to tell his readers this (he uses that quote in Netdav).

I guess God let his word be lost, corrupted and altered and is now in a state of significant doubt. He also let a psunami kill 200k people. He also let....ad infinitum.

Vinnie

ficino

There is much debate whether the Seventh Epistle of Plato is by Plato. There is no more doubt about the text of that work than there is about the text of any undisputed Platonic dialogue; the manuscript tradition strong for Ep. VII. That tradition assures us that the words of the document are probably close to what their author wrote. We don't know whether their author was Plato. That's because there is stuff in it that is hard to harmonize with other accounts of the history of the events and with Platonic philosophy found in the dialogues. But the philosophy is not infected by Neo-Platonism. If Ep. VII is a "pious" forgery, it's fairly early.

Ditto the NT documents. We can't use textual criticism to tell us more than that the copies we have go back to an archetype in antiquity. Papyri are close enough to the text of the earliest parchment manuscripts to give confidence about the reliability of the wording of the latter. Nothing follows about the reliability of the claims made therein about historical events.

Note: some people claim the KJV is more authentic because it's based on many Byzantine manuscripts rather than a few manuscripts from the late Roman period, as are other translations. This follows from no rational assumptions, as one can see when one realizes that the KJV proponents dismiss late Roman parchment manuscripts by saying they must have been full of errors and therefore were thrown out - so why did they survive? To be consistent with their assumptions, the KJV people should really follow the Vulgate, which is older than any of the manuscripts the KJV is based on.

Vinnie

The problem everyone overlooks is the first 100 years or so is probably when an anonymous text such as this was most fluid and prone to much alteration. Copyright laws were nil and anyone who had means could take a text and make a copy and alter it as he or she saw fit.

The best evidence for NT stability-IMO- is Marcan priority. It shows that Mark did not change that much by the time MT and Lk used it but they used it shortly after it was created and many scholars will tell you that there are several different versions of Mark in existence.

Another good evidence is probably that someone like Paul would retain a copy of his own letter for himself as well when he dispatched one to a church. These letters were probably copies and spread immediately as well.

But for many of the works large-scale alterations are very much possible. Several of Pauls letters (at least one!) is actually a few letters combined into one. If thats not "textual instability" I don't know what is.

Vinnie

johntheapostate

It is only by the authority of the early Catholic church that the books of the New Testament have any more authority than any other book that claimed to be a true record of events as witnessed by some eyewitness.

The existance of these other gospels and the admission of the church that they were fraudulant makes it possible that they were all pious frauds the only differance is the testemony of the church. A church which interestingly the Protestant tradition holds as untrustworthy in there interpretation of there own book.

The gospels have no real internal evedence of having been written by the people the Christian tradition has attached there names to. This alone shows a indication of deception. And if the gospels are shown to be accounts written long after the events, they amount to little more than hearsay.

If there was no evedence of the events it would be less difficult to believe that those events did not take place than if those claims are backed up by documents that in many ways contridict each other and at the same time have evidence of being plagerised from one another.

The gospels show evidence of deliberate inclusion of falsehood. For example,at the moment of Jesus's death Mathew 27:51-53 " At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottem. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs and after Jesus's resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.

An event of such monumental significance if it had been true would have convinced every person in the country. Why did they only appear to anonomous many in the city and then conveniantly disapear from the face of the earth.

If this had been true volumes would have been written recording there testemony for Christ

If it had been true Mathew would have devoted more than two verses recording the event

If it had been true it would have been trumpeted from one end of the New Testement to the other . Yet not one other author in the New Testament considers it worthy of even the glancing mention of Mathew.

Mark considered the tearing of the curtain important enough to mention yet he did not mention the resurected holy people.

In this great earthquake and the breaking open the tombs did no one go inspect the tombs and discover all the resurrected folks milling around patiantly waiting for the resurrection of Jesus so they could enter the city.

I am sure that had such a thing happened someone would have noticed and reported it to Pilate. We have Pilate making arrangements to guard the tomb of Jesus, yet no provision was made to keep the resurected saints guarded.

If there had been many resurected bodies milling about, the gaurding of one dead one would have been of little importance.

If the testemony of a witness is found to contain a deliberate lie why should anyone be compelled to believe any of it.

Vinnie

To reiterate:

In context I believe the actual author is arguing solely on textual grounds. To be textually skeptical of NT texts is to be skeptical of all texts of classical antiquity.......That is what the quote means. It has little or nothing to do with the actual reliability of the putative originals themselves in the events they record.


Of course, establishing that the comparison is accurate is another matter. Every work is different. Certain works may be more prone to alteration and editing than others. For example, anonymous docs being passed around to different Christian schools.

Vinnie

Naked Ape

jd,

what follows is the skeptic's reasonable and considered response: Prove it.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

judge

If this were the case we would expect there to have been widely different versions of Mark.

But contrary to this we have the exact same text preservtically by at least one geographically, theologically and ecclesiastically independent group, that being the COE.

How is this explained?

CX

"Prove it."

Gooch's dad

We do have widely different versions of gMark. One is titled the Gospel of Mark, the other is interspersed throughout what is called the Gospel of Mattew, and the other is interspersed throughout the Gospel of Luke.