Peter Kirby

Joe,

I took a look at that website. The first two "errors in Acts" that I saw were:

# 672

Acts 6: (KJV)

3 “Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.�

For “the Holy Ghost� above which a majority of moderns use there is no “the� or Holy� in the Greek.


# 673

Acts 6: (KJV)

5 “And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:�

Almost all moderns translate “the Holy Ghost� above but it’s “spirit holy� in the Greek.

To call these errors in Acts is ridiculous. The author has evidently needed padding to round out his 1001 figure.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

JoeWallack

JW:
Peter,
I took a look at the above. To say "To call these errors in Acts is ridiculous. The author has evidently needed padding to round out his 1001 figure." is ridiculous. The author has evidently needed an excuse not to look at the other 999 errors.

best wishes,
Joseph

INTERPRETER, n.
One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Errors...yguid=68161660

http://hometown.aol.com/abdulreis/myhomepage/index.html

Peter Kirby

Of course, what I wrote isn't ridiculous. It is true that I am a busy person who estimated it to be a "Crap AOL Website" after clicking through to that page and seeing the first two items I looked at to be, well, crap. If you'd like, I will start a new thread that goes through all of the claimed errors in Acts on the site and estimates how many of them are actually errors--which should be a positive number, I think. Would you like that?

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

JoeWallack

JW:
Well since we are being honest Peter I think Price's article is shit and he is a [edited - mod] for Jesus. More Amazing to me though than the supposed Resurrection is why you are accomodating to people who promote superstitous nonsense like Price and reserve your Irish Ire for people like Abdul Reis who courageously risk bodily harm to publicize all errors in the Christian Bible including ones like translation issues not normally discussed.

I don't consider Price's article serious scholarship anyway but specific claimed errors in Acts is directly relevant to this thread and exactly what Price has dishonestly avoided in his article. I'm busy right now with Hoffman's dissertation on P.22 (it may not have occurred to you that I'm busy also). But I welcome your attention to the 1001 list here or in a new thread. I really do think your criticism above is ridiculous and I'll tell you why when we get to those errors.

I've had many Apologists come to my site and do just what you did, cite 1 or 2 claimed errors as ridiculous and then conclude that all 1001 are as well. Even though I've never had any censorship at my site none of these Apologists have ever stayed to argue more than about 20 errors. If your primary objective here is to discredit me than come to my site and do it in front of my minions. That's what it's there for.



Joseph

"I though I made an error once but it turned out I was wrong." - JoeWallack

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Error...?yguid=68161660

http://hometown.aol.com/abdulreis/myhomepage/index.html

Toto

Gentlemen, please moderate your language to befit this Upper Forum.

Thank you.

Vinnie

Peter, Peter, Peter. What are you doing wasting your time? I clicked the link too. As soon as I saw "1,001 errors in the Bible" it was obvious that pressing the little x at the top right hand corner of the screen was my top priority....

Abdul "courageously risks bodily harm?" A Greek Romance in the works.... :notworthy If his neighborhood is that bad, tell him to pack his stuff and move. If he is financially unable to, instead of wasting countless hours with this list a second job would have been in order.

Furthermore, you write:

You throw out a big number and a link and then try to fluff the assertion with a basing in "the majority of the available evidence." The website doesn't do what you claim and itself poses a glaring caveat:

Primary purpose of the 1001 Errors In The Christian Bible List is to briefly identify potential errors in the Christian Bible.

Potential. These aren't even "errors" by the creators own admission. Surface anomalies is more like it.

Kirby runs websites on Christian Origins which feature scholarly comments and he hopes, articles attentive to detail. At least 90% of the field consists of self-identified Christians. Is he supposed to have a website composed of Grant, Carrier and Doherty quotes only?



So, can we actually come up with a listing of errors in Acts? I'll start with my basics:

1) Anything supernatural cannot obviously be taken as history.
2) The connection with Luke is a start. Since Mark has lots of problems and Luke used Mark we obviously have a whole lot of problems if we try to view Luke as historical. We must not commit guilt by association though. Luke may have in fact been a part of those "we" passages and it probably should be granted that details which overlapp with those found in the Pauline corpus should be granted as accurate in so far as Paul represents contemporary primary data.

3) Some//Most//All(?) of the speeches in Acts look like creation (speech making was quite popular at the time wasn't it?).

Sanders and Davies SSG: "Ancient historians regularly supplemented their narratives with freely created material of various kinds. They paid especial attention to the creation of suitable speeches for their heroes. Staying with Josephus, we may comment especially on the great speech which he attributes to the rebel leader Eleazar just before he and other defenders of Matsada committed suicide rather than be captured (War 7.323-336, 341-389). Eleazar's speech holds up the ideals of Josephus himself (though Josephus did not live up the them); and this, the concluding event of the last battle of the great revolt, is marked by suitable oration, though Josephus could not have known what Eleazar had actually said." (SSG)

4. It also cannot be dismissed that Luke wrote a "ficticious history". This is especially possible in light of Luke, which is a long way from being "historically accurate".

Whatever historical core may or may not have been there, Luke certainly got things right and he certainly created and embellished. The real question is determining what is history and what isn't. In my view:

Miraculous gets nixed.
Speeches are suspect.
Luke has a tendency to smooth things over (e.g. chuirch conflict) and pretend it was all or more unified from the beginning than it actually was.
What Paul shares with LK is strong tradition.

Aslo one major point of church accuracy that can be tested in Luke occurs early and that pertains with the "twelve". Is the twelve historical? Was Judas replaced right away? I think a good case for fiction can be made right here at the beginning and thats not good for claims about Acts overall historicity since Luke starts out of the gate doing church apologetics....

Vinnie

JoeWallack

JW:
Yes, let's just accept your Testimony on Faith that "1001 Errors In The Christian Bible" should Sumerianally be dismissed without detailed discussion. Isn't that how this Hole Christianity thang got started in the first place?

JW:
I may be overly sensitive here since most of my relatives were murdered about 65 years ago by a Country where Christianity was the dominant religion.
So when will you be appearing on Letterman to explain that Christianity is superstitious nonsense?

JW:
I added potential to recognize that just because I think they are all errors some may not be and as an invitation to try and convinnie me otherwise. Strangely, most criticisim has been along the lines of what you and Peter have offered so there aren't very many that I've changed my mind on so far.

One objective is to emphasize the quantity of errors. Statistically, you would take the probability of each individual error and add them all up. I haven't even listed all the potential errors that are think are less than 50%. Even if you rate all of the 1001 as having a probability of less than 50% the sum is still going to be pretty big huh? Most people (including you and Peter apparently) have no idea just how many errors there are. Does advertising this hurt or help the Skeptical cause? If you and Peter convince me that some are not errors and I have to change my Title to "999 Errors In The Christian Bible" so what? That's what it's there for, discussion. Does Carrier discredit himself because he changed his mind on the MJ issue?

JW
Kirby has an excellent website and I applaud his effort. I also understand that he thinks he can do more for the Skeptical effort by being Polite to Christians. My point is that he is giving Price a courtesy that is not deserved based on the article. Price has neglected to provide evidence that Acts is not historical while implying that he has made a thorough investigation. This is a serious problem. Claiming that Christian English translations have mistranslated (the) spirit/holy is not. You should know by now how many Lawyers for Jesus are going to parrot Price's article as Gospel.

JW:
Claiming that going through a list of 1001 Errors In The Christian Bible is a waste of time in a Forum devoted to Errors In The Christian Bible doesn't upset me so much because I just assume that you are also the Type of person who doesn't like to eat during meals or grind out ernies in the WC. On the other hand of God, when people read my posts and copy some of my ideas without mentioning my post...I just go Berserk!



Joseph

WARNING - The Skeptical General has determined that the 1001 Errors In The Christian Bible contains dangerous amounts of Tarivial and Nitpicotine. Skeptics should be advised that using it in order to convince a Fundie to count to ten before murdering an abortion provider because murder is always a sin, could be Hazardous to your credibility.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Error...?yguid=68161660

http://hometown.aol.com/abdulreis/myhomepage/index.html

Vinnie

Yes, let me just find a huge list with obvious elements of simplicity and liberal application of nitpicking such as "there is no holy in the original". How does that even relate to the historicity of the ontent of Acts?

I am sure many of those are in fact discrepanis and I am sure that many of them are the author grasping at straws. But anytime a skeptic or apologists posits a huge list on the internet, scholarly methods are not evident.

Not anytime soon since 99% of the world believes superstitious nonsense to be true: whether its religion, astrology or the act of being superstitious. All humans are prone to magical thinking at times. So when I get up there and criticize Wade Boggs and a thousand other professional athletes for their "superstition" beliefs, when I criticize anyone who accepts astrology, believes you can communicate with the dead, accepts alternative medicines, thinks miracles happen, believes in witches or gods and goddesses and mysterious forces (pagans of wiccans) or the Pygmies living in Africa who posit their forest as God and so on....

The fact is that virtually everyone I know is prone to some form of magical thinking and in my everyday experiences I see people make countless leaps in logic and fallacies throughout the day. But I generally know that these superstitious people, are good decent, trustworthy people, despite their tendency to believe obvious falsehoods (as exposed by modern science).

Plus not all xianity is SN. I don't merely define a religion by "the facts of fact literal western Christians ca 2005" but as in the whole of Christianity ranging from uintellectual beliefs, to devotion, to their ethical systems and so on. I would never be as mean or as dismissive to someone in IRL as I can be on the internet or as many posters here are. Maybe thats because evoltuion has not pre-conditioned me to deal with impersonal human reactions on tiny screens where I am anonymous and separated from a person by thousands of miles. I am conditioned to be more pleasant in person because kindness, generosity and reciprocal altruism have been a part of human life for so long which was largely centered around face to face contact. Its too easy to reduce someone to "believes x-y and z" or reduce a religion down to that then infer "such and such is stupid". Those games are silly and are for people who hide behind the internet.

See? Your post is filled with same type of magical thinking and superstition you criticize. My fallacy detector is buzzing. When did I ever say going through contradictions is not appropriate for this forum? I also simpyl agreed with some of your six general points. It was only your "specifis points" that warranted critique.

First, inundating someone with 1,001 errors is not a useful means of debating with someone. You don't actually discuss anything. You just drown them with more information than they can be bothered to process--regardless of how true or false it is.

Second, we are discussing specifically Acts and its historicity. You claimed the site has 109 errors in Acts. Where are they? Peter found the first two and they have NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. These textual or interpretation differences in no way reflect on the historicity of Acts. If you want to raise valid instances of errors in Acts fine, but you are raising red herrings and imagining errors not really relevant to this discussion

Third: those lists are usually more accurately described as quantity rather than quality. The nature of the proposed "errors" demonstrate this. No one believes manuscript differences or translating errors are "errors in the autograph" or are sufficient to overturn inerrancy or the Bible as God's word. I think they are right on this much at least.

You have misread what I said and basically caricatured what I wrote. And I just finished saying: "The fact is that virtually everyone I know is prone to some form of magical thinking and in my everyday experiences I see people make countless leaps in logic and fallacies throughout the day."

Keep a sober head, be respectful, and focus on the issue at hand and try to understand what your opponet is saying//where they come from and these misunderstandings won't occur as frequently.

I am genuinely sorry for you that your family has suffered losses at the hands of a system run by Christians and in that light I can understand why you are very sensitive to this stuff.

However, when God punishes humanity or holds them accountable on account of Adam's sin we think he is an unjust tyrant. Likewise, I do not feel I, a son, should be punished for the sins of my father or ancestors. I am responsible for my own actions. It is because of this that you should drop the guilt by association fallacy. Chris did not persecute your family and would probably be against physically persectuing people of different faiths and he wrote this here paper that--if nothing more--deserves to be critiqued in the same conciliatory manner that it was written in.

Vinnie

Peter Kirby

Nota bene, they were the first two I found, not the first two.

Joe seems to think that my "primary objective here is to discredit [him]" and invites me to some other site where he has "minions." His assumption is egotistic and his approach agonistic, so I won't be analyzing the "1001 list" with him.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Toto

I have split this off. If anyone wants to go through the errors in Acts, they appear to start on page 103 of the website.