Mageth

The answer is simple. The Catholic Church doesn't hold the doctrine of Sola Scriptura as most (if not all) Protestants do, and as your argument assumes they should. Catholics believe in Tradition and the Magisterium as valid sources for doctrine, not simply scripture (or "scripture alone")

http://www.catholic-pages.com/dir/sola_scriptura.asp

You're simply illustrating your ignorance of Catholicism and the sources for Catholic Doctrine, specifically that the RC Church does not hold the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. (no offense intended).

Vorkosigan

RZF, the Catholic Church as a institution came later, and then back-read its own history into the New Testament. Writers in the second century could hardly appreciate the Church of the 9th century. Further, you seem to be unaware that many Churches (syriac, coptic, etc) possessed copies of these documents not under control of the Catholic Church.

Second, this position is rather naive. The kinds of changes that could be made in the text were limited by a number of factors. The evolution of Jesus' substance, for example, was constrained by various non-orthodox positions -- adoptionism (Jesus was a man adopted by God to be his son), doceticism, and gnosticism. Bart Ehrman, in The Orthodox Corruption of the Scripture, traces out a pattern of changes intended to enable a Jesus to emerge who could navigate between the Scylla of being human and the Charbydis of being only divine and apparently human.

Nobody claimed it was a "vast conspiracy" to invent a religion. Rather, we simply look at normal human processes of religious growth, and see there is nothing inexplicable about Christianity. For example, writing documents in others' names is a normal part of religious writings in every culture, and Christianity offers us many examples. For instance, except for the six or seven epistles of Paul scholars universally recognize as authentic, all of the New Testament epistles are forged in the name of someone else. Some documents, such as Acts, appear to have functions that are entirely political (reconciling Petrine and Pauline Christianity, and denigrating the role of James). This too is part of the normal development of any religion. Michael Goulder developed an interesting argument that Mark had been written to provide a yearly liturgy for the emergent proto-orthodox Church. And so on. Conspiracy is not necessary; normal development processes provide the impetus.

I recommend that you read some of the basic texts. See the sticky at the top of the forum for some good ideas, but you seem to be in need of a good introduction. My personal favorite is Helmut Koester's History and Literature of Early Christianity, Vol 2, a good basic introduction. Also extremely useful is Udo Schnelle's History and Theology of the New Testament Writings.

Vorkosigan

Joshua Adams

There is no prophecy of a Nazarene in the Old Testament, which is either an indication of Matthew's oversight or that the Old Testament was whittled down. Presumably, if an inspired Matthew said something was a prophecy, it must have been a prophecy--yet how could an errant text contain a real prophecy?

Another thing is how the Letter of Jude quotes 'Enoch', a pseudepigraphal work. Doesn't this count as a divine endorsement, if Jude was inspired? You don't quote something unless it is held as an authority. So we have to wonder about the so-called divine inspiration of the canon.

Like others, I find it likely that little errors crept in with each copying. A letter here, a letter there. Sometimes new versions would deliberately shuffle the text around, add things, subtract things (like the Septuagint, which again, the New Testament writers seem to have relied on--meaning that believers probably ought to be using the Septuagint, with such a stamp of approval. Of course, the LXX canon is different than the Protestant one, so...).

chapka

You're thinking in terms of the modern day. In a time where everyone literate copies their own bible from their neighbors, then once the bibles are in circulation, there's no way to make changes from a centralized location. It's not like there was a ninth-century Vatican printing plant that could switch out its plates every so often.

Plus, nobody's alleged a conspiracy or that the book was invented. It was collected from traditional texts in what was most likely an honest attempt to find the best ones. Nobody has seriously suggested that every Catholic priest was an atheist co-conspirator with Rome who was out to prove his religion by hook or crook. These were people for the most part who honestly believed that the bible was written by a god. Most of the changes that happened after canonization were probably the result of differences in the pre-canonization mss. and unintentional errors, or at worst copyists "correcting" "obvious" errors, rather than intentional fiddling by some Central Bible-Fudging Committee.

You're assuming the only choices are malicious or true. In my experience, in any human endeavor, misguided is generally a better bet.

Chili

Of course it is wrong to think that the Lord died first and then rose up because the Lord never died so he could be raised. The Lord was set free when Jesus the Jew died and Jesus was raised minus the Jewish part that was called Judas. Jesus as Lord will die the second death and this is long after the resurrection that gave him a life to live.

The second translation has a different twist. Here the emphasis is placed on life past the resurrection as being the only time that we are really alive and therefore we cannot die when we are not [really] alive but just die as in "wither away."

Vorkosigan

The Bible was altered by a great number of people, from redactors who edited the original writings, to those whose hands it passed through, and of course, its many translators.

To look at the New Testament, the Gospel of John (to take one example) has probable original sources (the Signs Gospel), worked on by the original writer. A later redactor married that gospel with philosophical discourses, and then at least one other redactor altered the gospel, adding and altering parts. The original chapter order has become so altered that reconstruction is almost impossible. Several people have argued that John 21 was originally the ending of Mark; most recently Evan Powell in The Unfinished Gospel, and regardless of source, John 21 was clearly added by a later redactor.

Another good example of this kind of evolution. In Mark 1:9 we find currently find "in those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan." The writers of Matthew and Luke are both known to have copied Mark, and their versions of this verse do not have the word "nazareth." That word, which is the only appearance of the word for the town, "nazareth," in Mark, appears to have been inserted by a later redactor who worked on the Gospel after the writers of Luke and Matt had seen it. Another clue here is that Mark invariably refers to Jesus with the definite article "the" in front of it ("the Jesus...."), but here the article is lacking. It appears that this verse has been worked over. The reason why it was worked over is obvious from the insertion: to retroject a certain history back into Mark.

There are a number of reasons. Alterations were made to protect the Church from gnosticism. Alterations were also made to defend doctrine, the most notorious being the famous Trinity statement in 1 John, which appears to be an insertion made in early Renaissance times. Some alterations are due to scribal error, or insertions of editorial comments that made their way into the text. The first chapter of Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, entitled "The text of scripture in an age of dissent" discusses this in some detail. I highly recommend this book by a major NT scholar.

Almost everything, from individual words and lines to the production of entire documents

If we accept that translation is a form of alteration, the most recent translation. The New International Version (NIV), makes numerous alterations in the text to bring it into accordance with evangelical doctrine and historical beliefs about Jesus.

Not conjecture, but sound scholarship and common sense.

Vorkosigan

TySixtus

Good points.

One of the main reasons "True Christians" attack Catholocism are for the problems mentioned above. However, Catholics have never believed in Sola Scriptura. In this instance only they gain my respect (minutely, mind you) as they realized that things/ times/ attitudes/ ideas change. Law must change with it. The caveat? If it truly is god's law, it is perfect. Perfection cannot, by it's very definition, change. So now we have the Catholics trying to have their cake and eat it too, by claiming that they have other sources of guidance (Pope, Bishops, kind of like Mormons have 'prophets') while claiming they are doing the will of god. It doesn't work, in my observation.

Most important, and a fact I think you are forgetting, is the sheer power these people had over the masses. These priests and popes could order the murder of a heretic, burn him alive, and need explain the deed to no man. They were accountable to only themselves. They didn't need to add confession to the bible. In their mind, who in the hell was this lowly dirt grubbing peasant to question the Mother Church? And just as equally, no "God Fearing" man or woman would ever question it to begin with. So the stuff stayed, and became canon. Much like a Latin mass, pre-Vatican II. Nowhere in the bible does it say "Mass must be in Latin". But it was always done that way, and by god or hellfire, it was going to stay that way. And it did, for well over a thousand years.

When talking about the Catholic methodology, one must never forget the immense power these people wielded over the western world. These are the ones that got people to believe in the Trinity: 1+1+1=1. A logical absurdity- but people happily defend it. Why? Because the Catholic church said it was so.

Ty

TySixtus

Whoops. You're right, of course.

Matthew 2:23
and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."

The problem is 'what prophet said he will be a Nazarene'? I worded my response wrong, thank you for the correction. Somehow, this is even more damaging than my original point. You'd think a prophecy of that magnitude would be in the bible some where. It ain't.
On the other hand, I seem to remember an older book of prophecy that can be 'interpreted' to mean that the Messiah will be a Nasarani, an Aramaic word meaning 'little fish'. We all see the connection there. Perhaps Matthew took a city in place of a cult called Nazarenes? "Little Fishes"? I read an interesting theory about it in The Hiram Key

Anyway, the point is that there either 1) Is no prophecy or 2) Matthew made shit up.

Ty

Joshua Adams

I seem to recall some Biblical cross references to Judges 13:5 on this. It is the story of Samson, which reads "the boy shall be a nazirite" (NASB). This is a different word, of course, but it's possible that Matthew misread it in his frantic search for Messianic prophecies that he could claim with a straight face (i.e. not the ones about world peace or a unified Israel--the actual Messianic prophecies).
Incidentally, those two options are one and the same.



As far as Catholicism goes, they value "Tradition" (capital 't' and everything) along side of scripture. Which is where a lot of things come from, for instance any information about the apostles' deaths. Also, they appear to hold council decisions as "inspired" (free will violation anyone?!?), hence the doctrine of the canon being nonarbitrary. Yet more is papal infallibility (though this is actually based on scripture: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:19)) for another source of information, but it is seldom invoked.


I guess no one pointed out the obvious yet... Some damn tamperers added 27 whole books right on the end of it at some point!

Common_Cents

But isn't it a valid question to ask why they didn't change the scripture to fit their teachings? I mean they could have tradition and sola scriptura to validate them then.

No offense taken. I know you are only making your points.