long winded fool

Maybe we're in disagreement about the word 'altered.' Different wordings, missing passages and the like are to be expected to some extent in different copies of ancient manuscripts. This is not evidence of 'alteration' but is merely symptomatic of the age of the documents. There were no printing presses when these manuscripts were written. If this inconsistency indicates a deliberate alteration, then the question arises: Who altered it and for what purpose? While I don't deny that there are multiple interpretations of the books of the Bible, different opinions on the authenticity of said books and portions of them, and that there are books from the time period not contained in today's Bible, one would be hard pressed to claim that at some point in history Catholics altered the Bible that we buy in stores today. Historians that subscribe to these theories are and have always been a fringe minority and generally disreputable.

Amlodhi

Perhaps. To be concise, I'm using the word "altered" in the sense that words and phrases were deliberately changed to make the text better conform to the editor's theological preference.


At several points in history the "bible" (i.e. that we buy in stores today) was altered in the sense defined in my response above. Whether said alterations (i.e. editing) was performed by Catholics or catholics depends to some extent on how you are using that term.


This type of statement is commonly referred to as a "sweeping generality", i.e. nothing specific to respond to.

I will be glad, however, to discuss specific citations with you; if you wish.


Amlodhi

Damian

Are you thinking of the New Testament Translation by Richard Lattimore? It is the one I am currently reading.

long winded fool

But do you agree that ALL of those points in history where you claim the text was altered, and remains so to this day, predate the earliest manuscripts that we have of the altered books? Wouldn't this date most of the supposed alterations before the rise of Catholicism? And if the Bibles we have now coincide with the oldest manuscripts, how can we know that any alterations took place before said manuscripts were written?

My claim is that any alterations that may have been made by the Catholic church after the date of the earliest manuscripts we have avaibible are no longer present in Bibles today, and that the earliest manuscripts we have predate Catholicism in most cases. The notion of Catholic alteration is made even more improbable by the fact that earlier manuscripts than the ones that were used in the middle ages have been found which coincide closely with what the Catholics had translated, and also with what we read today. This shows that there is no precedent upon which to base accusations of deliberate alterations made to further a particular ideology, since so far their record is clean.

And perhaps the most convincing evidence against alteration is the fact that the Bible itself specifically warns against any alteration of its text (it is a holy book after all) and in the middle ages it was transcribed solely by devout monks who honestly believed in the words of the Bible and who feared God's retribution. This makes it highly unlikely that there were ever any deliberate alterations made by Catholics or even Christians in general. While there may be nothing physically impossible about altering a holy book, it is poor historical investigation that comes to the conclusion that monks who devote their lives to the word of their god which they believe was divinely inspired and recorded in a holy book are likely to alter parts of it to fit their own agendas.

I was confusing this one with the translation by David Stern. However, David Stern is a Messianic Jew, therefore he cannot be said to be unbiased. I don't think Lattimore is a Jew, but I would consider an expert on Greek to be as unbiased and accurate anyone else. Like his translations of other Greek classics, his goal was not to promote ideology, it was to capture the syntax of the greek texts and translate it as accurately as possible. I would say that this translation, at least, is as trustworthy as any that have surfaced after the earliest manuscripts that we've found to date were written.

Amlodhi

No, not ALL of them. See this thread for instance: "The trinity and early church fathers".


lwf, I have no interest in bashing the modern Catholic denomination. However, the Catholic church didn't just poof into existence complete with their own God given inerrant bible. The Catholic church developed out of a process in which a particular line of doctrine became dominant. Eventually, in the mid-4th century, some of the final issues were hashed out and Constantine commisioned the production of 50 "standardized" bibles. This process of "dominance" to "standardization" eventually developed the universal orthodoxy of the Christian church, i.e. there was "the church" and there were "heretics". Thus, the term "catholic", which simply means "universal".

So where does one place the "rise of Catholicism"? Shall we simply date the beginning of the capital "C" Catholic church to whatever time all (or most) of the revisions and standardizations had already been completed? And thus contend that the Catholic church doesn't (usually) change things . . anymore . .?


Our bibles don't necessarily coincide with the oldest manuscripts; the critical process is more complex than that. We do know that if two otherwise very similar manuscripts have variant readings in critical places, either there were two original autographs each with their own slant on doctrine, or, the later manuscript was revised. And since there are often more than just two, the multiple original autograph option is not very likely (nor would it be desirable to most Christians).

As to any revisions that may have occurred before the date of our earliest extant witnesses, there are clues, but that would be a thread in itself. Here, it is enough to say that since we know there were later revisions, there is little reason to doubt that there were earlier revisions. Especially since the earlier revisions would have been easier to make than the later ones when there were more manuscripts available for comparison.


I hope that a careful reading of my responses above has already informed you of the incongruity inherent within that statement. I particularly refer to the part about dating the "rise of the Catholic church" to whatever time all (or most) of the revisions and standardizations had already been completed.


And yet, the fact remains that we can see the alterations in black and white with our own eyes, and it is "poor historical investigation" indeed to continue to ignore that.

Also, a fallacy in your argument here is that you are mixing things that don't go together. The circumstances under which these scribal monks copied texts that were, by that time, standardized and considered inerrant cannot be conflated with the circumstances that prevailed in the earlier years of the development of the doctrine. In many cases, the scribes of these early years were already (i.e. by the time they became scribes) indoctrinated in a particular theology. Thus, already "knowing" what the text "should" say, they would sometimes "improve" the text by rewording it for "clarification". This is what is known as "pious revision", or as Bart Ehrman puts it, "orthodox corruption". IOW, the pious scribe doesn't feel as though he is falsifying the document, he just wants to make sure the text actually says what he "knows" it really meant to say.


I realize that you have some apparent motivation to defend the Catholic church and, as I said, I have no desire to pick on them. If you want to specifically define the Catholic church as an institution that didn't come into existence until after most of the texts had already been standardized, and then use that custom definition to state that the Catholic church never changed anything, you're welcome to the rationalization.


As ever, namaste'

Amlodhi

long winded fool

I can't find the thread, but from the title I can already see that it most likely deals with interpretation rather than translation, since the notion of the trinity is no where explicitly spelled out anywhere in the Bible. It is an interpretation of the existant text, not an alteration of it. Certainly particular interpretations exist in order to further a particular ideology, but this does not indicate that text alteration is taking place, especially in the face of a divine command not to alter the text.

This all seems to operate from the assumption that older versions were more accurate and that newer versions were altered and are therefore less accurate. This is simply untrue. Newer versions of the Bible, i.e. those that are translated and published in this and the last century, are more accurate than earlier Bibles because, rather than there being more manuscripts available for scrutiny in the dark ages, there are more manuscripts available now thanks to greater technology in archeology and geology, and also to a lack of modern day restrictions placed on Bible translation by dogmatic religious authority.

So far I've been arguing that deliberate text alteration that has survived to the present day (meaning that it apparently slipped by virtually all of the past theologians who meticulously studied every word of the Bible) was simply highly unlikely, and therefore requires a large ammount of evidence to substantiate, and that this evidence does not exist in sufficient quantity to conclude that the text has indeed been deliberately altered, but I'll agree to your premise that this has occured. So, what are some examples that I can find in my Bible published two years ago that represent alterations from the original text in order to further Christian ideology?

Okay, but if we have an earlier manuscript that has different words used to describe certain things, then that is the one used for translation by the most reputable scholars today. I totally agree that, when Bibles are simply translated from the last version, there is ample room for corruption of the original text. Where I disagree, is that this is the case in most modern Bibles. Perhaps you can find a few that are, but they are the exception to the rule. MOST modern Bibles are not translated from the last version, they are translated from the oldest versions available, usually the original parchment written in Greek or Hebrew, which prevents this type of corruption of the text from remaining for long.

And, how can there be proof that the oldest examples of the books that we have are alterations from previous examples unless older examples exist to compare?

Toto

Trinity and Early Church Fathers

Vorkosigan

1. Anachronisms. Where the introduced or altered material contains knowledge of an event that occurred after a writer's death. For example, in I Thess. 2.14-16 there is a passage where Paul apparently refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened after the date he is generally have thought to have died.

2. Style and usage: where the altered material contains word usage and language style that are not characteristic of the writer. For example, in Mark 1:9, the definite article "the" is omitted in front of the name "Jesus." The writer of Mark nearly always uses the term "the Jesus." This may indicate that this passage has been altered.

3. Where another text exists that may preserve an earlier version. For example, Matthew copied Mark, and Matthew's version of Mark 1:9 does not contain the word "Nazareth." This, coupled with the evidence in (2) above, indicates that Mark 1:9 has probably been tampered with by the addition of "Nazareth."

4. Where the text has an author saying something he probably wouldn't. For example, in the famous Josephus passage about Jesus, he praises Jesus. Yet Josephus typically gave short shrift to would-be messiahs.

5. Where there is a sudden break or jump in the text, indicating material has been deleted or altered. For example, there is a famous one in Mark 10:46 where material has apparently been deleted: Then they come to Jericho. [gap here] As he was leaving Jericho with his disciples...". In some cases material has been inserted into a gap.

6. Where the resultant text makes no logical sense. For example, Jay Raskin on the Jesus Mysteries Discussion List recently has been arguing that there is significant tampering with Josephus' The Jewish War. He wrote in a recent post:

I hope this helps.

Vorkosigan

Amlodhi

Toto has kindly provided you with the thread link.


The words in bold above do not appear in any known manuscript of the bible until Erasmus' publications c. 1466-1536. Thus, these words were added to the text in the 15th century despite the divine command not to alter the text.

That our most modern critical bibles either make note of this or omit the interpolation, does not change the fact that it was added, and it was added for a religiously motivated purpose. (i.e., if I forge an extra clause into a legal contract, and get caught, that doesn't change the fact that I forged it.)



But it has survived to the present day. The extant variant manuscripts are by definition surviving copies of the alterations. That there were alterations is beyond dispute. All you are saying here is that you think your modern bible contains all the proper choices from among the selection of variants available. That is a whole different conversation than saying there were no alterations.


I don't know, which version of the bible do you have?


You will have to choose one or the other of the above statements for me to respond to.


Vorkosigan addresses this admirably above.

But also: see post #28 above for a brief synopsis of some of the earliest textual variants. Now, if the earliest fragmentary witnesses that we have show variations between one another, wouldn't you suspect that, somewhere between the autographs and these variant witnesses, somebody changed something?


Also, again, the fact that textual alterations have been made is indisputable in that we have actual copies that disagree with one another. Please clarify whether you are simply stating that our modern critical bibles have somehow managed to correctly reconstruct the autographs.


Amlodhi

judge

One particular ancient version of the NT place we know was altered for theological reasons is the western peshitto used by the SOC. The eastern peshitta text conatins the original reading

Hebrews 2:9 was changed from apart from God to by the grace of God.
Acts 20:28 was changed from .Be shepherds of the church of Christ which he bought with his own blood, to Be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood.

Both these changes were to reflect the theology of the western Syriac church which differed from that of the COE in Persia.
I know this has little to do with the Catholic church
I would be interested in seeing any other examples as clear as this more relevant to this thread.