Sparrow

The earliest complete copy of any book in the NT is from the 4th century IIRC. The earliest fragment of any part of the NT is likely P52, dated to 100-150 CE, which contains a total of 112 Greek letters forming parts of 7 verses. Some links to resources:

previous IIDB thread on NT manuscript evidence
Another previous thread from IIDB
another link to discussion of P52 with link to an image of P52
list of NT papyri with links to images

How are you certain that the text you have from 300-399 CE is identical to what surrounded the fragment P52. IOW, how do you rule out additions, deletions and changes to the text?

How are you certain that the fragment P52 truly represents any testimony whatsoever of an eyewitness to an historical Jesus?

How are you certain that the text which claims 500 people saw Jesus alive was not changed by a copyist (accidentally or otherwise) from 50 or 5?

How are you certain that the text you have is not a fictional account?

Is the idea that a human could be dead for 48 hours or more then get up and walk away consistent with reality where you are? It's not common where I live, so I'd want to see some pretty extraordinary evidence to convince me it really happened. Do you think you can find such evidence?

How do you investigate the parts you don't have? Do you make something up? We don't have the rest of P52. It could have begun with Greek words to the effect 'The following is totally fictional, but sounds like a good basis for a religion.' The point is, assuming P52 to be a fragment of GJohn, we don't know what the text was in 100 CE. It might have been the same or very different.

Clivedurdle

A comparison with King Arthur is probably appropriate. If he existed in the first place - unlikely but possibly around Hadrian's Wall - Arthur has been reinvented throughout history for the needs of the times - very similarly to Jesus. The first one is as a Welsh (British) Celtic hero against the English. (There might be an earlier part Roman one!)

The later one is an English romantic hero! I.e he's moved to the enemy!

The next is again Welsh - Tudor - to unite the English and Welsh.

Again with Elizabeth I, then again he becomes female with Victoria, Burne Jones, Morris et al, and today with Hollywood, Monty Python, Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones.

Myth is touching very powerful dreams in us - the once and future king, the yearning for justice, for peace, the reality of our passions. We are superb at story telling.

norma98026

Hi Sparrow,
There are several reasons I accept the Bible as true, not a fictional account, although as you've pointed out, we have only copies, not originals to go by.

1. The Bible's uniqueness and integrity are unmatched by any other book in history. Written by dozens of authors over some 1500 years, the 66 books of the Bible form an integral whole that fits together, explainable only by its claim to be inspired by God. Who else could have made sure his thoughts were recorded accurately? It doesn't make sense to me that one or more authors would set out to create a religion that would depict them as disobedient, stubborn people and their god as someone whose ways are unsearchable. Nor do I think it's logical that subsequent authors in and of themselves would come along to propagate such a religion. What would be their motivation? The only explanation for the existence of this unified document written by diverse writers who lived hundreds of years apart is that God inspired them, as the Bible claims. Science and math always point to the elegance of the simplest, most straightforward solution. What could be more simple than the truth?

2. The Bible has been shown to be reliable in areas where it can be verified. It talks about real people in recognizable places, people like us. Without being scholars in ancient history, we can see that it's depiction of us rings true. We're intelligent beings who have the potential to do great things but are prone to do bad things. We're so important to God that he provided a way for us to know him.

3. The Bible provides answers to the big questions of life -- Where did we come from? Where are we going when we die? What is the difference between right and wrong? What is the meaning to life? Major themes of the Bible concern God and his nature, man, goodness, evil, a prophet greater than Moses who would save mankind, love, sacrifice, obedience, choice, truth, betrayal, justice and injustice, mercy, redemption, the brevity of life, sureness of death, the unfolding of history, and hope.

4. The Bible gives instructions on how to know God, who, if he exists, is THE person to know. Faith, a supernatural eyeopener, is what ultimately causes a person to trust the Bible as God's message. It's the inner certainty that it's true. No one can convince anyone else. Rather, faith comes by absorbing the concepts in the Bible. To find God -- according to the Bible -- we have to seek him with all our hearts.

All for now,
Norma

Toto

In the first place, the various books do not fit together that well. in the second place, there are many other non-supernatural explanations - e.g., a good editor.

Personal incredulity is not a good argument. And you realize that most of the later writers had read the earlier writers?

Science and math do not point to a supernatural explanation of a simple literary phenomenon.

The Bible has not been shown to be a reliable record of early cosmology or early history - for instance, there is no archeological record of the Exodus. Otherise, this paragraph sounds like an argument, but it has no content.

It provides the wrong answers.

So it's good literature.

Um, no, it doesn't give instructions on how to know God, at least not instructions that work.

Diogenes the Cynic

What's "unique" about it? What "integrity?"
More like 700 years.
Actually, they really don't fit together very well at all. They're massively inconsistent and contradictory, sometimes within the same book. The Hebrew Bible is a compilation of many different books of many different genres and intentions - teleological myths, political propaganda, archaic tribal law, folk tales, mythic histories, dirty poems, harranging sermons, etc. all of which were composed independently of each other with no thought or intention of contributing to a unified, contiguous canon and all of which are connected by a loosely shared culture and religious system. The NT consists of four contradictory Gospels, one romantic novel, a whole bunch of letters to different communities and churches expressing a range of theological views and agendas, and one (probably Jewish) apocalypse complaining about the Romans. There is nothing remarkable in any of that except perhaps that early Christianity produced a larger than average amount of religious literature.
What about any of the Bible requires anything other than a human explanation?
What makes you think his thoughts are recorded accurately? How do you know? And how do you explain the contradictions?
That's pretty much common to all theistic religions and it's explainable by religious and political authorities needing to blame the rabble when things go wrong. It's also to be expected by religious systems which are rooted in prehistoric notions of appeasement and sacrifice. If things don't turn out right, people figure they must be displeasing the gods. They need to give them better cuts of meat, or maybe it was because that lamb had a blemish. Let's find a perfect one next time. And the men all have their beards trimmed to look like those heathens over the next hill. Let's have no more trimming of beards. God doesn't like it. It's childish and silly, but hey, they didn't have science back then.
What's the motivation for propagating any religion? Why is it more remarkable for Christianity than for Vedic Hindusim?
There's nothing unified about it.
The simplest explanation is that the books of the Bible are the collected religious writings of an ancient tribal culture in Palestine. That's exactly what they look like, that's is what all of the known evidence shows us, and it would be completely irrational and unscientific to posit supernatural explanations for a body of literature which is 100% explainable and understandable purely in mundane human terms. A hypothesis of "Divine authorship" would actually raise more questions than it would answer, starting with all the stuff that's provably false.
This is not even close to true. The evidence shows just the opposite. Almost everything which can be tested has been shown not to be historically accurate.
The same is true of Homer, Shakespeare, the Mahabarata and The Sopranos. It is no trick for humans to write realistically about humans. That's only to be expected. I can't fathom why anyone would consider that to be remarkable. Who knows more about humans than humans themselves?
3. The Bible provides answers to the big questions of life -- Where did we come from?[/quote]
It gives the wrong answer about that, so what does that tell you?
The Bible is actually not very consistent or clear about that but even so, how could you possibly know that it's accurate?
Speaking of inconsistency in the Bible....it doesn't get any more wildly variable than what is right or wrong. The Bible says that if someone else's ancestors threw rocks at your ancestors 300 years ago, then not only is it right for you to kill all their living descendants -- including all children and infants -- but that's it's wrong if you don't. That's all you need to know about the Bibles' reliablilty as a source for ethical wisdom.
Another question with no consistent answer in the Bible.
Just like all the rest of human literature.
This is all just empty witnessing which has no debatable content and does not address the topic.

John A. Broussard

You have incredible patience. I started to answer norma98026 but finally just tired out.

Thanks for doing a thorough job.

Agemegos

Besides which, it would make the census results useless for any practical purpose.

Skeptical

First, let's be clear on our definitions. There is a large continuum between "true" and "fiction". The "bible" is of course not one book and even within a single book there may be multiple stories, so it doesn't make much sense to talk about the Bible as true or fiction as a whole.

Also, if you are using the term Bible the way most Christians use it, this division is even more pronounced between the "Old Testatment", more accurately the Hebrew Bible (HB) and the "New Testament", or Christian Bible (CB). The only real relationship that the CB has to the HB is 1) Jesus of Nazerth was Jewish (assuming he existed) and 2) Most of his early followers were Jewish. The similarities end there, despite tortured attempts to "find" Jesus in the HB. (and yes, I'm aware of the supposed prophecies about Jesus in the HB which clearly aren't so let's not go there)

Additionally, something can be not literally true without being fiction. A story can be allegorical in nature and thus be "true" in the sense of conveying a certain message without being factually based.

In other words, your already starting off with a false dichotomy and multiple erroneous assumptions, and nothing good can come from that.

On what facts do you base this? First, its obviously inaccurate in the way you have phrased it because we don't have copies of every book ever written, so we cannot possibly know if this statement is true if you mean to include every book ever written. Second, even if you said "any other book we know of", you'd have to define "uniqueness" and "integrity".

Even after you define these, your still talking about the Bible as if it is _a_ book, which it clearly is not (see above). The closest modern equivalent is an anthology, a collection of related works. It is not "a book" in any sense other than that it is bound between 2 covers.

With all respect, this is sugary nonsense. I have an anthology collection of Greek poetry and plays that has about 60 collected works from nearly as many authors written over hundreds of years. It forms an "integral" whole that "fits together". Why is this? Like all anthologies the works:

1) Stem from a common theme or themes
2) Generally, but not always, have authors with shared values and backgrounds
and
3) (Most Important) Have been _chosen_ by an editor for inclusion and arrangement so that they _do_ form an "integral" work that "fits together"

Applying these criteria to the HB alone it is clear that the books meet all 3 criteria in spades.

You do realize that the books the comprise the HB and CB were CHOSEN for inclusion by editors and didn't just magically appear together, aren't you? Once you understand this fact, their relationship is far from mysterious and, in fact, its quite trivial.

I'll go you one better. I have an anthology of social/political works that spans over 2,000 years and includes works from authors with backgrounds and values far different from anything in the HB/CB, from Plato to Stalin to Jefferson and Ghandi, and it is an "integral" work that "fits together" simply because there is a common theme running through it and the works were carefully selected for inclusion based on content and message.

Just like the "Bible".

You clearly aren't familiar with history or religions other than your own to make statements like this. There's nothing mysterious about this, these ideas are commonplace.

Again, you clearly don't understand religions or just don't care to do the research. Religions exist in all cultures in all times in all places, although the forms vary quite a bit. If you cared to look at some basic cultural anthropology sources that talk about religions and psychological motivations I can assure you that you wouldn't find any of this very mysterious.

An anthology of various books loosely connected by common religious themes from people of homogeneous backgrounds is extraordinarily simpler than attributing it to supernatural forces. By your criteria, I have many books laying around my house that can only be explained by supernatural forces, despite their announced human authors and editors.

This argument is quite simply extraordinarily weak. Not to mention that calling the HB/CB a "unified document" is an oxymoron. The anthology is not _a_ document in any sense of the term. (I might add "obviously")

Most of the HB cannot be verified, the track record in those areas that can be verified is iffy. The HB references some people who definitely lived, but often the chronology is poor. Some of the references are very dubious, such as Pharaoh and the flight from egypt, an account no where found in the Egyption records we have. There are many others that can be trivially found by examining a good historical background on the HB by someone who is not fundamentally wedded to an outcome that the HB is "true".

What exactly does this idea that "its depictions ring true" have to do with anything? I have hundreds of works of avowed fiction on my bookshelves that have completely fictional characters that the "depictions ring true". What relevance does this have to anything? Evidentiarily speaking, this is meaningless.

Those are major themes from almost every relegion and philosophy on the planet over the entire course of human history. Again, from an evidentiary standpoint this is meaningless. If your going to claim singularity, you need to show some level of "uniqueness" and this isn't even close.

Ah, at last we have it. This is at last an honest revelation. You should have just started and ended with this, because the rest is just post-hoc rationalizations, and poor ones at that.

Faith is the "evidence of things not seen", i.e. belief without reason or evidence.

For some this is sufficient or even necessary. You seem to be one, so fine, stick with that. When you attempt to say that your reasons are based on rational evidence, it can only lead to trouble because clearly it is not as your other "reasons" illustrate.

For most people all that is necessary is to be born into the Western world and brought up to believe that bronze age goat herders for some reason have more authority to speak about religion than they do. It's the ultimate argument from authority and simultaneously an abdication of moral responsibility to seek a spiritual or non-spiritual path on ones own.

No reason to go seeking, its usually ingrained in people long before they have the barest idea of what critical thinking is, and then it may be too late or people may be brought to think for themselves only after a long and arduous journey. Plato and the parable of the cave comes to mind.

No magic involved, just straight forward idealogical demagoguery with an ample supply of fear. Quite simple yet effective.

"The lure of the marvelous blunts our critical faculties" - Carl Sagan

John A. Broussard

I agree with Skeptical, norma98026. If you cherish your faith, turn tail and run. You can't defend it in any reasonable way and certainly haven't done so here. So if it gives you comfort, just believe and go on your merry way.

norma98026

A expedition documentary called The Exodus Revealed shows archeological evidence, including coral in the shape of chariot wheels common to Egypt during the time of the Exodus.

You say the Bible gives the wrong answers. What is your criteria for which answers are right or wrong?

Which instructions about knowing God are you referring to?

Norma