Prester John

First i'll admit that i'm something of a newbie on this whole area, but its an interesting subject. I am interested in feedback on my impressions gained so far in this subject particuarly as regards to faith.

My initial laymans impression of the bible (NT) gained over many years was that the Gospels were written by Jesus's disciples, with Acts and the letters fitting in afterwards. It reads like a story almost. The NT is thus the word of God, divinely inspired writings about Jesus and the early Church. I'm willing to bet that this impression is widely held by many people.

However my most basic reading has overturned this impression. It may be the biased sources i have read, it may be that my old impressions are wrong.

The gospels were written many years after the death of JC. They were not written by his disciples. Acts was written latter still ? The bible as we know it was put together by some sort of vote. All this however can still be explained by divine inspiration.

The part that really blows this out of the water for me is the interpolations. There seems to be good evidence that many parts have been changed, corrected or deleted. How can this be so if the original writings were inspired. Did god get it wrong the first time? Most dammingly how can you have confidence in the book when it has been changed so many times, how do you know which parts are the true word of god, and which are man made alterations ?

The Bible is Yahwehs SOP. If one piece of writing should have evidence that it is divinely inspired and not just the collected tales of multiple authors gathered over a couple of hundred years and gradually changed to the "correct" version, the piece should be the Bible.

yes/no/go read some more?

regards
PJ

rlogan

It is rather the point, is it not?

Do a little reading on the testimonium flavianum now. Your interest in interpolations will carry over.

www.earlychristianwritings.com has lots of stuff there for you and the threads/library here has lots of interesting stuff too.

This is an exceptionally important issue because it is purportedly the one first century non-christian reference to jesus.

Then google Jesus Puzzle by Doherty.

Enjoy!

judge

I don't think anyone has ever demonstrated that any part of the Peshitta ws ever changed. The greek translations may have been changed in parts but not the original Aramaic wrtings.
I would be interested to see any evidence that it has undergone any change.

Prester John

Thankyou both. Doherty certainly pens a persuasive argument.

Wrt the conspiracy of silence:

Is it likely that Christ cults were around before Jesus? Thus at the time Jesus appeared the Christ cults were widespread, with various interpretations, possibly the majoritory viewing Christ as the heavenly intermediatory. This being the viewpoint reflected in the conspiracy of silence. Jesus then appears and declares himself the Christ and the cult of Jesus Christ appears. (Feelings of divinity are not an unknown delusion). This cult would compete directly with the heavenly Christ, even more-so after the passing of Jesus.
The construction of the bible to contain these two (?predominant) views then becomes a natural unification process. Competition of opposng views would seem to explain Ignatius remarks (re Pontius Pilate), that look aimed towards a christian audience.
It would be a small an undetectable change to he writings of Paul et al to change Christ to Jesus Christ every now and then?

Perhaps that eg Paul did not consider Jesus to be a man (ie real in existence) says nothing more than that. To extend it to saying Jesus did not exist could be a step too far?

My knowledge is very limited so i could be well off the mark be gentle!

rlogan

Depends on exactly what you mean. There were numerous would-be Christs. The Bible refers to them obliquely, and the writings of Josephus attest to many leaders that were actually named Jesus - as the name is a title and not just a "joe" or "fred". Means salvation, roughly.

The "righteous teacher" referred to in the Damascus Document has been offered by some as at least in part a century-prior Jesus model for the gospels.

Consider that the 1st century was a stupendous upheaval for the Jewish faith, with the destruction of the Temple serving as such a poignant event. Opportunity and motive big time.

Certainly the so-called new testament reflects a consolidation/survival of the politically fit views. Long after the purported life of J.C. There are some older threads discussing the battles between the various "schools" in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Ebionites. Marcionites. Gnosticism. You can peruse various theories here too:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

But if he did exist, it cannot be in accordance with the being portrayed by the gospels in any case. Miracles and such.


Oh, one would not do so on the basis of the conspiracy of silence alone. We bring in science to contradict the miracle-worker rubbish. We demonstrate that the Christians were willing to forge/suppress and etc. to put forward their politically determined view.

I think whatever did "exist" is actually more of a concept than a particular man, and occurred numerous times rather than once.

In some ways this is like arguing about whether the prodigal son ever existed. I imagine some of the early Church fathers are amazed that we would argue about whether their fable was real or not. Because the point of the fable is to convey ideas, regardless of whether it is partially, fully, or completely grounded in any real events.

Dominus Paradoxum

If you're interested in interpolations, I think a good book would be The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.

PDH5204

Prester John:

At the risk of being branded a heretic, two points, First, the Dead Sea Scrolls establish fairly well that while an occasional copyist's error may have intruded, the copied texts are/should be very close to the original. Second, there is always the cross-check [as it were]. To take just one example, that other Paul is reported to have said that women are to remain silent in the church. Funny, though, how just a "chapter" or so earlier, that other Paul reports women in fact speaking in the church. So which is it? Well, there are those other words which most scholars now believe to be part of the baptism ritual, to wit, there is not Jew nor Greek, there is not slave nor freeman, there is not male and female....So if there is no male and female, why would we be making distinctions on that basis with respect to our church?

One can say the same thing about the Jews. There is that one rather poisonous passage [the killers of Christ passage as I call it] that if left out would not be missed and otherwise runs head on into that other passage reporting something about us Christians being without offense both to Jews and to Greeks, and to the church of God [and note that this last part confirms that there is no Jew nor Greek in the church of God and only exist outside of the same][oh, and never mind that the entire letter to the church of God at Rome is a plea by that other Paul for the Roman church to not join hands with the imperial household and their lackeys in scapegoating the Jews].

As a final item, there are those words from Isaiah, to wit, Lord, who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Notice that it does not say, Lord, who has believed our infallible and inerrant text decided on after Yeshua came and went [or some other such thing].

P.S. Concerning that arm of the Lord, now you also know why the NT often reports something about my Lord being at the right hand of the Lord.

Chris Weimer

Minor differences exist, and not just copyist's errors, although that does make for a large margin of it. But we are dealing with about 300 years where the Bible was still in working process (from the return from exile to the LXX).

Vivisector

The text of the "Old Testament" was well established by the time the DSS were composed, and OT scholarship was relatively mature. In addition, as you point out, there were controls on the copying process to ensure faithful transmission. In short, there was a system in place.

Until perhaps the mid-fourth century CE and the development of the Byzantine Text, the situation with regard to the "New Testament" was markedly different. Manuscripts had to be copied under conditions of lower quality control, not all writings were initially regarded with the same degree of authoritativeness, scholarship was in its infancy, and Christianity faced significant internal and external challenges to doctrine. Textual critics point out that the majority of transmission errors most likely occur within the first century of composition, and it is not difficult to imagine this happening in the case of the NT. This is why the apparatus of a critical Greek NT reports not only relatively small textual variations but also more significant variations that do (in contrast to the usual Christian position) affect doctrine. I'd reiterate a previous poster's suggestion to read The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture on this point (a "must have" for anyone with interest in the topic).

To your comment on Paul and women, I've read several suggestions that the admonition to keep silent was an interpolation. I'm not aware of any variants on the passage, but it does seem likely in the context of the culture and Paul's other reference to a female apostle.

Chris Weimer

The Tanakh wasn't truly set down at the time of the DSS, at least not what we know it today. The Masoretic text is the bastard version, for instance, and the Samaritan and the LXX were also highly regarded, some if not most of the apocrypha were used as canon, but Nehemiah wasn't, etc... It was very different.