Ibelieve

Well it's good to talk to you on more of a philosophical level for a change. Do you have a wife and kids? I have learned alot from them over the years. My son is 18 and in his first year of college. I remember a confrontation that we had just last year. I said to him "I want you to go clean your room." He looked at me an immediately said "Well, what do you mean?" I became angry and said, "I mean, GO....AND CLEAN....YOUR...ROOM!" So he did.

Now after thinking about this event, it helped me understand what people do with what God says. Interpretation is 100% in the hands of the receiver not the sender. The sender always understands what he is saying, and what he means by what he is saying. The receiver of those words may or may not have a clear understanding. That's because of interpretation.

My son was asking a perfectly legitimate question. He wanted clarification as to deep cleaning or just making the bed and straightening. Me personally, I didn't care which. I just wanted him to move in that direction. Have you ever said something to you wife, and she heard something totally different? This can cause real problems can't it?

In your above statements, it is clear to me that you want to have a legitimate reason to reject those words in that book. That's fair, and that's reasonable. But those words are still there after your rejection. And someone did pen those words, and there was communication behind them.

Adam and Eve knew God personally. He communicated with them. He gave them a commandment regarding a particular tree. They probably honored that commandment for a period of time. Then someone else came into the picture who had a different interpretation on those words. They chose to accept that interpretation, which was a rejection from the senders point of view.

This happens every day in every conversation. Do you even know that I really exist? You sure have dealt with me in conversation alot. You have rejected alot of my words in another thread...maybe all of them. But some of my words were true in the end. They are just words. With meaning from me. Often you have interpreted my words. You even interpreted my name. I am the sender, and you are the receiver. You believe that I exist, based on some level of evidence. This forum I guess. But you have never seen me. You have never talked to me. All you have is my words. You don't even know if they are "my" words.

Isn't philosophy fun?

Anaximanchild

I think you demonstrate the point very well here.

You wanted your son to clean his room, so you told him to clean his room. You stood right in front of him and told him using words he would understand. If he didn't understand you, he could ask clarifying questions and get direct answers.

What you did not do is find someone else (unknown to your son, and speaking a different language), tell them you want the room cleaned, have them "interpret" your demand, then they write it down, someone else translates it into english, then your son reads the translated text and "interprets" what he reads. Oh, and there is no one available to answer any questions he may have, except maybe another person who has no more to base his answers on than your son does. Why didn't you do it this way? Because it was important to you that he get the message error-free, and this way is grossly inefficient and rife with errors.

So, if god wants us to live a certain way, with the fate of our eternal souls at risk, then why would he choose such a ridiculous method of propogating his message (keep in mind that the bible stories probably passed through many more hands than the simple example above)? Why doesn't he just hook up with everyone and tell them, so the message is clear, and answer any questions we may have? If Santa Claus can visit every little child in the world in a single night, surely god can have a meet'n'greet with everyone.

You have very deftly pointed out one of the reasons it is so ridiculous to consider the bible to be of divine origin. And you didn't even have to refer to any of the content!

deadman_932

Thanks, Anaximanchild -- you covered the issue nicely.

The only addition I'd make is that Ibelieve's scenario assumes without warrant that "Adam and Eve" were real, along with his version of God.

mountainman

The first bible was lavishly published by the despot Constantine 331 CE from his City of Constantine, and fifty copies were supplied in short order by his trusted and faithful "Ecclesiastical Minister" Eusebius. Most scholars are in agreement that the three oldest surviving Greek codices of the Bible are in fact either one of these c.331 CE Constantine Bibles, or, more likely, a very bad and poorly transcribed copy of one of these original fifty Constantine Bibles.

So who decided the canon of the Constantine Bible?

Subsequent "Ecclesiastical High Summits and Councils", officiated by Constantine's son Constantius did next to nothing to change the canon that Eusebius, via Constantine, had earlier established by the physical acts of binding these books together for the benefit of posterity (and COnstantine's Emperor Cult).

The Shepherd of Hermas (which may have been one of Constantine's favorite fables, was dropped from the canon of later bibles, but everything else was pretty much left just as the Boss had published it - back in the good olde days.

Mainstream likes to think the canon was created later in the fourth century, but this is a euphemistic historical reality. Squabbling christians certainly did their thing in the fourth century, but they stayed with the Constantine Bible. Ammianus describes the situation c.350 CE well:

The highways were covered with galloping bishops.

The tax exempt christian bishops acted as tax informers.
Land tax in 350 CE had tripled in living memory.
Times were tough for the citizens of the empire.
With its secure place in the emperor's court since 325CE,
Christianity had hit the streets at a gallop.


The Biblical Canon is historically Constantinian by virtue
of the very existence of the Constantine Bible.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Iasion

Pardon?
The canon was NOT chosen by 170 at all.
The process had barely STARTED by that time.

The very FIRST NT canon to match our modern one dates from 367 CE - two CENTURIES after your claim.


Iasion

-Jay-

He's referring, most likely (although in typical form he hasn't come out and said it explicitly) to the canon of Melito of Sardis, which was a mostly complete OT/Hebrew Bible canon* put forth around 170 AD (it left out Esther, and included the Book of Wisdom). The major NT canons, of course, are the same (except for some issues of order), and, of course, date to the 4^th Century AD.

This is, of course, a cause/effect issue. Orthodoxy drives canon, and canon drives orthodoxy.

Now where I think Ibelieve may be headed is towards a claim that the canon was inevitable - that it had to take the form it has now - and was revealed or discovered by the early church, vice being essentially ratified by committee.

*mostly complete from the perspective of the Western Protestant canon. It left out some books from the Catholic canon. I point this out only to drive home the point that there is more than one Bible.

regards,

NinJay

Crimson Glory

Where is the counter point of view? In such responses as this?: "Must all people have all of God's word at every moment for it to be possible to believe that God 'wanted people to have his actual words'? Or will it suffice to believe that God wanted some people to have some of his words for some of the time? Just what are the conditions that Ehrman is demanding for inspiration to be logical? He does not say. Ehrman's whole emphasis here, however, is on human reception. Yet there is no need for reception of the whole of God's word by the entire human race for it to function as his word. God may speak through a single verse that someone encounters, or through a single book of the Bible that has been translated into a particular language."

Human reception???? Who was the "word of God" intended for????

A counter point of view should bear real powerful arguments, shouldn't it?

Roger Pearse

The same applies to every literary text transmitted from antiquity, tho, so this is obscurantism -- "we can know nothing...".

I was afraid that Ehrman was encouraging obscurantism; it is depressing to see that I was right. Such statements seem carefully crafted to confuse and obscure rather than inform. The number of trivial deviations is always a function of the number of physical copies. Obviously if you only have one manuscript there are none, but that doesn't mean that the text is well-preserved; if you have very many manuscripts, your text is very likely to be much better preserved but a fool or a knave could then jeer "oh, look at how many differences there are between them".

All the best,

Roger Pearse

-Jay-

Roger, Ehrman is fairly clear that many of the errors are minor and trivial. He isn't trying to make the bald assertion that the 200,000 (or 300,000, or 400,000 that others tally) errors are all of equal weight and equally damaging to the NT.

I don't think he's being as obscurist as you may be suggesting.

regards,

NinJay

Roger Pearse

I'm glad to hear it, but you notice that none of these qualifications made it into the report of what he said. There, the reader is invited to consider just such a conclusion.

All the best,

Roger Pearse