Jagella

I don’t necessarily think Peterson made a “good� case, but you didn’t ask for a case: You asked for a person.

I see that you put a lot of faith in your translations and “known historical context.�

No to both questions. Manuscripts from those times are very fragmentary and sometimes are in conflict.

Maybe not, but I do hope that you realize that language—especially classical Greek and early Hebrew—are quite ambiguous. Words are subject to various meanings, and as language evolves these meanings often change. To say that there is one and only one meaning for “Gehenna,� is quite doctrinaire in my opinion.

I’m no defender of the honesty of fundamentalists, but you didn’t ask for honest people: You asked for people who can read Greek who disagree with you on the inclusion of hell in the New Testament.

You failed to convince me. Sorry!

I’m making no claims that I know who wrote Mark. I don’t know who wrote it, and as far as I can tell, neither do you.

As for demolishing arguments, allow me to close with an interesting quotation from
http://www.cesame-nm.org/Viewpoint/c.../versions.html

So it would appear that all this fuss over the supposed advantages of “knowing the original Greek� is perhaps not so impressive after all.

Jagella

Diogenes the Cynic

No, I asked for an argument.
Why would either of those things require "faith?"
Qualifying your lack of evidence does not help when you are the one making an assertion.
Show me another meaning.

And it is not necessary for you to lecture me about ancient languages. I actually do have some formal training in Classical Languages at a university level. I'm hardly an expert but I know something about what is ambiguous in Koine Greek and what is not. Geenna is not.
I asked for a rebuttal of my translation or a reasoned argument as to why Gehenna should be read as hell. You have offered neither.
Well, you are the ome making the assertion that Mark was a Jew. I'm still waiting to hear a single reason why such an assumption is credible.
I never said I knew who wrote it, but we can tell some things about who wrote it. One of those things is that he wasn't very Jewish.
I don't think you understand your own citation very well. This quotation is talking about the reliability of Greek texts as it pertains to their relationship to the autographs. It's saying that the "Original Greek" is not really an error free descendant of the original manuscripts. The whole piece is an argument against Biblical inerrancy. It says that even the Greek is "errant" in that every manuscript has copy errors. That is irrelevant to our own conversation because I'm not arguing the inerrancy of the Greek manuscripts, I'm just translating some of it into English.

The English translations of the Bible still come from these same "errant" Greek manuscripts (or worse- the Textus Receptacus). A mistranslation of an errant Greek manuscript is no less a mistranslation than if it comes from an inerrant one.

Jagella

You seem to be placing your opinions on a pedestal of being factual when in reality they are highly questionable, in my opinion. Also, you are either unaware of alternate viewpoints or are quick to dismiss them.

Evidently, the New Testament writers changed the meaning of Gehenna to mean a punishment after death for unbelievers.

Nope. You asked for people who can read Greek that disagree with your definition of the word Gehenna in the New Testament. Your question as anybody can verify by reading your earlier post is:

You are demanding that I provide information and upon my providing that information, you then change your demand!

I made that assertion? I said that the writer of Mark was probably a Jew.

You might say the same thing about Woody Allen, but he’s nevertheless kosher. I believe you may be simplifying what it means to be Jewish. Like any other group, the Jews are not easily pigeonholed, and I think it’s fair to say that their religious beliefs have never been monolithic. Even their own Bible tells us that many of them worshipped pagan gods.

If the manuscript contains errors, and you admit it does, then how good can your translations be especially considering that you’re trying to overthrow the belief that the New Testament teaches that there is a hell?

You claim I don’t understand what I read on that apparently informative web page, and I think you’re probably right to some extent. Much of it was rather technical. Nevertheless, there is one statement it made that I believe I understand quite well:

I do know better, and that’s why I’m not buying much of what you say.

Jagella

Amaleq13

The original meaning of the words does not appear to be an "opinion". Do you know of any scholars who argue against this original meaning? What does appear to be an opinion is that the word was intended to meaning something other than what it originally meant. It is the evidence for this opinion that appears to be lacking. The Christian scholars who put this opinion forth seem to be doing so primarily because they assume the Gospel authors shared their own beliefs. What I don't understand is why you believe them.

It doesn't really change the meaning of the word to use the image of it in description of the afterlife.

Diogenes the Cynic

Translations are not opinions. Neither is it my "opinion" as to what Gehenna meant in ancient Jewish eschatology.
How so? Could you name a chapter and verse and explain precisely how it's different?
Correct. I asked you name someone who disagreed with my translation. You offered no one who rebutted the translation itself, only a couple of fundies who asserted a biased interpretation of Gehenna as hell. They did not say that Gehenna should not be translated as Gehenna.
You haven't actually provided information. I don't know if this is a communication problem or what. I specifically want you to find somebody who can make either a linguistic or historical argument as to why Gehenna in the gospels should not be read as the Valley of Hinnon.
Same difference and just as baseless. I will ask once again what you find in GMark to suggest that the author is even "probably" a Jew.
Don't be silly. First of all, Woody Allen self-identifies as Jewish. GMark does not. Mark is also hostile to Jews and doesn't know Jewish law. What do you find in GMark that suggests he is Jewish?
The proximity of a Greek manuscript to its autograph has no bearing on whether it is possible to do an accurate translation.

At the risk of talking down to you I'm going to explain this as simply as I can because I really do think you're misunderstanding something. What your link is talking about is copy errors and variations in Greek manuscripts which make it difficult to call any of them definitive or presume that any of them are perfectly preserved as they were orginally written.

For instance, let's start with Mark's original autograph, the first Greek manuscript written in his own hand. Someone makes a few copies of it and spreads them around. Someone makes copies of the copies and so on. After a few hundred years, you have many different copies which all have their own line of succession. Sometimes there are copy errors or slight differences which get preserved in the next copy. Eventually you have a bunch of copies that are slightly different from each other and you no longer know which, if any of them, is closest to the autograph. That's what your link is referring to. It's saying that fundies can't claim the Greek manuscripts are inerrant (unchanged from Mark's autograph) because they're all slightly different from each other.

However, this has no bearing on the accuracy of English translations for any one particular manuscript. In the context of this discussion, they all say "Gehenna" so there really isn't any issue of selective variance. I guess you could speculate that since we don't have the autograph, all of the manuscripts could be wrong and the autograph originally said something else. This would be a rather far-fetched hypothesis and I have no idea how you could support it.

In any case, the Greek manuscripts that are available to us say Gehenna and that's how they should be translated into English. Whether thos manuscripts are at significant variance from the autograph is really neither here nor there. They are the mauscripts that are used for translation so we can either study them as they are or give up on Biblical criticism and translation altogether.

Jagella

I don’t know of any scholars who argue against the original meaning of “Gehenna� which is no problem for me because I accept the original meaning of that word. It originally referred to a garbage dump.

Just check the New Testament to see how the word Gehenna evolved into a place in which “lost souls� are punished.

I usually agree with Christians when they make some claim about their beliefs. Normally, I don’t assume that they’re being untruthful about what they believe. Since there is an age-old tradition among Christians believing that their hell is an eternal place of punishment for sinners, then I accept that this belief extends back as far as the first century. Of course, I would change my mind if I came across evidence that would convince me otherwise.

Jagella

Jagella

If translations are not opinions then why don’t you accept the English Bible’s translation of Gehenna as “hell� as being factual? Or is it only your own translations that are factual?

I already posted several Bible passages that refer to hell, and you dismissed them as “mistranslations.�

And, of course, your own interpretations are not biased.

I may visit my local library to research the matter. Not that it would make any difference to you, but I’m curious to see what the latest beliefs about hell may be. Like anything else, religion evolves, and it seems that belief in hell is in decline.

I’m going with the traditional stance that Mark was probably a Jew. Basically, I see critical thinking as adhering to the established opinions unless some very good evidence casts much doubt on these opinions. I’d be fascinated to learn that the writer of Mark was a gentile, but so far I haven’t seen good evidence for that position.

The writer of Mark saw Jesus as the Jewish messiah. Gentiles, in my opinion, would not normally fuss over Jewish religious beliefs. Do you know of any good reasons that gentiles would claim that some guy was the messiah of a religion not their own?

I’m missing something, all right.

Are you saying that the very word “Gehenna� should be used in place of the word “hell� whenever it appears in the New Testament? Or perhaps the passages that refer to hell should say something like: “If you sin, then you’ll be cast into a garbage dump.� And if this state of being cast into this garbage dump is not eternal, then sinners should be warned that they may die in Gehenna? Granted, such a threat might scare people, but how much fear could it inspire among people who know that they’re going to die anyway—especially if they are gentiles and have little knowledge of what the hell (sorry) Gehenna is?

Getting back to Woody Allen, your version of the New Testament sounds like something he might make up.

Jagella

Amaleq13

As we have seen, there does not appear to be anything in the Gospel texts requiring a different interpretation. An eternally burning fire does not mean an eternally suffering victim burned in that fire. An asserted sin that will always be a sin or a punishment that is asserted as never changing as a consequence of a sin do not require an eternally suffering sinner. That later Christians choose to interpret the text in this way does not suggest, let alone establish, that this was intended by the original authors.

That is your argument but it does not appear to be evident in the texts, themselves. It only appears to be evident in the translations of those texts by later Christians.

This is not a claim by Christians about their own beliefs. It is an assertion that the beliefs of the Gospel authors was identical to be beliefs of later Christians.

I suggest that you are granting them too much of the benefit of the doubt given the apparent absence of support in the actual text. There are numerous examples of later traditions falsely attributed to the Gospel authors. That a tradition can be indentified in the beliefs of the early Church Fathers does not establish or even suggest that the same beliefs were held by the Gospel authors.

Amaleq13

A misleading translation is an error, not an opinion.

Sure. I would expect a gentile convert to Christianity to make that claim.

You keep attributing this to Diogenes as though he is the originator. Did you read the article I linked? This is not a new realization. Read Young's Literal Translation here.

No, they are being threatened with dying in a place like the familiar and horrible garbage dump. Are you at all familiar with Jewish sensibilities with regard to the disposition of one's body after death? The idea that one's body would be thrown into a communal grave to be picked over by scavengers was a worse threat to a Jew than the crucifixion, itself.

Jagella

Oh sure. All those sinners will be cast into a garbage dump.

Hmmm. I suppose that those everlasting fires are some kind of a memorial to all those unbelievers that were burnt up there an eternity ago. Is this perhaps the origin of the saying: “Keep the fires burning�?

Once a sin—always a sin? I guess you can’t change the past.

True, but then to really know what the New Testament writers believed about hell we must turn to an atheist or two who boasts of his ability to read “the Greek.� We can then publish a book and hope it has the perceived credibility of The Bible Code.

Which texts are you referring to? If you mean “the Greek,� then which one? I understand that seven Greek New Testament texts are available.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but did not the “later Christians� derive their beliefs from the Gospel authors? This eternally burning torture chamber idea had to come from somewhere.

Jagella