Roger Pearse

Or, indeed, as large an incentive not to, or to correct an corrupted exemplars.

But are we really sure that no-one Jewish had any motive to change Josephus; no-one in all history had any motive to rubbish Tacitus; no-one in all history wanted to rewrite material about Caesar? You know, once we start to argue from "what must have happened" (in our opinion, of course), we can say anything.

I know it's possible. It must happen from time to time, human beings being what they are. But again we can't go down this route, since we promptly find ourselves back in a position indistinguishable for practical purposes from "history is mostly bunk".

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Thanks for your comments, but I don't think that you actually picked up the point that I was making. So I can't sensibly respond to them, other than by repeating what I wrote, which would be tedious.

Just as an instance -- dealing only with your first comment as an example -- I suggested that we can see that what people actually take away from Ehrman is the idea that we don't actually have the text of ancient literature. This is evident from the post to which I responded, and I said so.

It is a perfectly consistent position to assert that history is mostly bunk. What it is not, IMHO, is an intellectually respectable position.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Sauron

Actually, the weak point is in the way you set the scenario up.

You assumed the existence of such a thing as an "inspired book", without defining it, describing its qualities, or proving that it could (or does) exist. And for someone who earlier bemoaned people who mix theology into the study of history, it's transparently hypocritical for you to invoke inspiration here.

Another attempt to sneak one of your desired conclusions into the discussion without proving it, in the hopes of getting it accepted as a stipulated fact.

Sauron

Perhaps you are confused with some other thread. The post you were responding to did not make that claim, nor did it appear that the poster got any such idea from Ehrman.

No, it's something you read into the post, which wasn't there. And if there were any question about it, the poster (anevilpettingzoo) had follow-up comments to make his point crystal-clear. Why you persist to create a strawman of his post is unknown.

Well, not really unknown.

An even *less* intellectually respectable position is to create a strawman out of someone else's argument, and then expect them to bring it to life and make it dance.

Sauron

Nonsense.

When was the last time that a council was set up with the missing of stamping out errant versions of Josephus?
When was the last time that a war was fought over Tacitus?
When was the last time that a crusade was launched over Caesar's diaries?

Your attempt to equate (a) the temptation to change a holy text to (b) the temptation to change a work of historical literature is audacious, but poorly reasoned. You also deliberately mischaracterize the situation. We do not argue "what must have happened" from opinion; we argue it from the physical evidence.

I must say, I expected more intellectual integrity from someone who has railed against mixing history and theology. For someone who (allegedly) dislikes polluting the study of the former with the motives of the latter, you seem to be quite industrious at carving out an exception for your own religious viewpoints.

Johnny Skeptic

By the same token, God should not tell us what we should and should not do. If he exists, there is no credible evidence that he has that right.

S.C.Carlson

The idea that a text is 99% "textually accurate" may be reassuring, but it does make a big different where the 1% is. For example, there was once an edition of the AV (King James) that omitted the word "not" from "thou shalt not commit adultery."

RAFH

Or, it may be 99% pure bullshit because this non-believer finds 100% of it troubling.

Johnny Skeptic

Will somone please tell me what "textually accurate" means?

Riverwind

Ah...the "Adultery Bible", as it is affectionately known...I actually saw one in a travelling exhibit once. Funny, that.

You know... I was thinking about this point, and I think that it shows the potential flaws in the "art" of textual criticism as it has been practiced over the past couple of hundred years or so.

For instance, if the "thou shalt commit adultery" *slip* had been in an early manuscript, some textual critics would be prone toward saying that it was the "difficult reading". Of course, contextually, most people would understand that that society and their God would not have condoned did not condone adultery. However, not seeing any good reason for the "not" to drop out, they would declare that it would be much more reasonable for this reading to be "smoothed out" and changed because it was "embarrassing".

Since we have so many manuscripts, we can at least isolate where that 1% textual inaccuracy is. I think this is what allows many conservative scholars to say that there is no variant that significantly affects Christian doctrine, and even where it does affect doctrinal issues, there is usually another textt that can be referred to for the same doctrine.

Ugh...sorry if this post is horribly worded. It's getting late, and I'm very tired...not the best combination for making sense.