Roller

I second that. Especially knowing that Ehrman brings Luke and Matthew to the argument (who omit the word completely).

Steven Avery

driver .. I've made it very clear that the Greek OT has minimal relevance to textual studies and that the canon of the Hebrew Bible (same books/chapters/verses as my King James Bible) has many powerful evidences.

Carrier is a mediocre source in general, and especially on issues like this. He bumbled all over the Greek OT issue in an article where he made unsupportable claims about what was available to Matthew and now is trying to do a rewrite. And Carrier uses Bruce Metzger as a major source and when Metzger was challenged (on this forum about the Syriac by judge)

Carrier just said, in essence -

"well I'm just quoting Metzger .. if he is wrong, its not my concern,
take it up with him.".

(This was before Metzer's passing)

For your other section.

My Bible is pure and perfect in English.
And the Received Text has been translated in language all over the world.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Sauron

How many of these classroom books have millions of followers claiming that their book is 100% without error? And how many of these other books are pushed on people as guidebooks for living, true history, as well as the

The claims are somewhat different, as well as the stakes.

Chock full? Unlikely.
And whatever errors are there can be corrected, and the book republished.

Try doing that with the bible.

Not hardly. The bible has mistakes in it - transmission, history, archaeology, etc. THe problem is that its followers don't want to hear such comments.

Nazaroo

<edit>

Julian

Hmmm, this thread seems to have many views which espouse extreme views of one kind or another.

We have praxeus who holds to a 100% correct KJV (or TR or Maj. Or Byz., never did find out which) based on divine inspiration. Such a view can be rejected out of hand since no actual mechanism can be demonstrated.

We have Roger who holds that the NT is reliable because, if we held it as unreliable to a significant degree due to transmission errors, we would have to reject all ancient manuscripts, since they all suffer from the same defects, actually more so, having fewer extant copies. This is entirely correct but misses the point almost completely.

Many others look at the sheer number of errors and conclude that anything with that many errors must be completely off. This shows a lack of understanding of the qualitative nature of the manuscript variants.

Roger has argued that more copies make us more likely to create a reconstructed text that enjoy a closer proximity to the autograph than one created from fewer exemplars. Sauron has argued that the number of copies have nothing to do with the autograph. Unfortunately, both views are correct. Many copies tracable throughout history give us statistically sound trajectories that can be seen to converge at some point in time which would presumably be some form of original. Lacking the original this is a mathematically sound approach and the only one available to us. In our case there is a big enough gap between the earliest extant mss and the original to bring some amount of doubt to the issue of accuracy. The geographical bias of papyrus preservation also clouds the issue. Even so, the approach is sound. Sauron is correct in that the number of copies is very much like the logical fallacy of argumentum ad populum. For all we know, wholesale, large-scale, monumental changes completely altered the early manuscripts during the turbulent infancy of christianity and the mss we have now bear no resemblance to the original. A million more handwritten old manuscript wouldn't change that or even expose it. Even though this is true it would make all discussion of ancient manuscripts pointless (as Roger pointed out) and can therefore be ruled out as counter-productive. It does, however, illustrate the point that Roger fails to consider, namely, the impact of the text in question on society and human history.

See, it doesn't really matter too much if Vegetius messes up a few lines about troop formations. But when a book is used to justify murder, warfare, laws, behavior, and many other important things; when people are persecuted, exiled and destroyed in its name; when multiple movements spring into being, destroy each other, and then yet more ideologies are born, and all manner of mayhem and destruction are visited on mankind based on the interpretation of even the simplest and smallest of sentences; then this text can no longer be treated as we would just any other text. When the existence (or absence) of a few words can mean life or death for millions, then I think we ought to seriously consider whether anything less than 100% is acceptable. I obviously think that it is not.

I realize that this doesn't mean that much to most of us who merely have a scholarly interest in the subject, most likely we are not disposed to go out into the world and start killing people over these issues. That doesn't change the fact that it has happened for a couple of millenia and that it is still ongoing, and will continue as long as the book can be used to promote one's own power.

So, we can treat the book like any other book from antiquity provided we react to it the same way. Once it becomes an instrument of power, we need to treat it as such. And for those of us on the receiving end of the cattleprod, we will expect nothing less than 100% as long as you keep shocking us with it.

I also think that Roger is mischaracterizing Ehrman. Ehrman does point out the many errors but he doesn't give the impression that the text is therefore completely unreliable, as evidence by his careful treatment of just a few single words on numerous occasions.

As for the 99% claims, Carlson pointed out why that number means next to nothing. To illustrate that point I am reminded of one time here on IIDB when someone said that 99% was great and that 1% meant nothing. I quoted his post and changed two words, which amounted to about 1% of his post. Those two words, of course, changed the entrie meaning of his post. "Thou shalt commit adultery," indeed.

Julian

spamandham

I'm confused. Are you arguing that there is a 100% perfect version extant today, or that the originals were 100% perfect?

Johnny Skeptic

That is not likely since hundreds of millions of people have died without hearing about the Bible. If a God exists, it is obvious that telling people about the Bible has never been one of his top prorities. If it was one of his top priorities, he would have told people about it himself, but there is no credible historical evidence that he has ever done that. In the first century, the only people who knew anything about Christianity were people who lived within a certain geographic radius of Palestine, which is exactly what the case would have been if the Gospel message was spread entirely by secular means.

Regarding "God did 1000x better, he gives us His pure word in the language that we know and read", if Adam and Eve were real people, writing had not yet been invented, so your claim is utterly absurd. Written records are a poor means for a God to communicate with humans since written records invite many different interpretations. Different interpretations have led to hatred, wars, and doubt. There is no substitute for a tangible God who is available for everyone to see and talk with.

By the way, what good is an inerrant Bible that can easily be changed? Are you not aware that it would be a simple matter for some skeptics to change parts of the Bible, take it to some remote jungle regions, and deceive at least a few people at least some of the time? You don't really have any credible evidence that the Bible is inerrant. You have merely made up a God who appeals to your emotional needs. Your emotional needs demands a God who acts like you want him to act.

Equinox

First off - Great post Julian. You covered a lot of good and important points.


***************************************
There are several factors that address the points you raised.

First, you wrote:

The religious motive is often a strong incentive to change the text. For instance, if the copyist “knows” what the correct doctrine is (which, as a believer, he does), then deviations from this could very well be perceived as previous “errors” – since the copyist would expect the apostolic author to have the “correct” doctrine. Thus, a copyist is copying a manuscript, and changes the text thinking he is correcting a corrupted document. Then another copyist may change that, and no one can know what was original and what was a later “correction”.

It’s not like there is any debate that this happened. Anyone with even a cursory reading of the Mt and Lk can see the many places where they “corrected” Mk, because the didn’t consider Mk completely right. Other examples abound, both in our manuscripts and in, say Marcion, where he cut out many passages of Lk because he considered them to be corruptions.


No, we don’t find ourselves there. There exists a whole range of options between tossing everything and thinking that the Bible (or the works of Tacitus, or whatever) are perfect, inerrant, or divine. You know as well as I do (I hope) that setting up a false dichotomy like this is not needed. There are a range of shades of gray in there, from being very sure of a text (like LOTR), to being very unsure (say, Marcion’s antitheses).

As others have done, it’s also important for me to point out that the fundamentalist view of God preserving scripture is tantamount to insulting God. It’s saying that God isn’t perfect, omnipotent, and well-intentioned, but rather that god is just a “pretty good god”. I don’t disagree that our NT is OK, even pretty good, in it’s preservation, or at least that I don’t have evidence that it isn’t.

Hmm.... Need a smiley for a "pretty good god". How about :redface: ?

Have a great day all-

-Equinox

Roger Pearse

I'm not clear what the point is that I am missing, tho.

True. Not to mention the existence of the same kind of errors even today in modern printed books (the novel that I was reading last night had several).

Note that I said that this is so, "other things being equal". It is of course the case that we can imagine a myriad of late copies, all corrupt. But again this leads us straight to the conclusion that we have no copies of the classics.

This to me involves the introduction of extraneous elements. There are few texts to which we cannot imagine some such objection. After all, Vegetius *must* have been updated as time went by -- as we can show textbooks were -- so clearly it can't be accurate, so we don't have Vegetius. You see? What text cannot be rubbished in these terms? Likewise we can assert (with rather more probability) that since anyone who altered the bible risked being tortured to death, it is highly unlikely that any change occurred, or, if it did, that it persisted given the number of copies, etc etc etc.

Now I don't ask you to believe any of what I just made up. I merely observe that I *did* just make it up, and that it is all *imaginary*. It's all excuses. And these excuses will not do. Yes, they do have some plausibility. But they ALL have some plausibility. So we cannot, again, selectively debunk the bible, or parts of it, using this excuse (or any other text -- and this process has been tried on many, many texts). Not unless, again, we wish to go straight to subjectivity.

Actually I was pointing out what effect his books have on those who read them, as evidenced by a post in this very thread. The careful polemicist may cover himself with weaselly sub-clauses. But what effect does he have? And intend to have?

Again, if true, this amounts to finding reasons why the classics do not exist. But I think we must resist them.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Johnny Skeptic

What about how accurate the originals were? If originals are not accurate, it doesn't matter how many copies are accurate.

Isn't how the New Testament Canon was put together a very important and relevant issue? In another thread Mountainman brought up some very interesting possibilities about Constantine and Eusebius, two people whose own personal agenda might have had more influence determining what writings were included in the New Testament Canon than anyone else.

There is not sufficient evidence that early Christians were anywhere near as well-organized as many fundamentalist Christians claim they were.