Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 03-28-2011, 12:54 PM

Changes to the Bible through the ages are being studied by New Orleans scholars

Quote:

Working in a cluster of offices above the LifeWay Bookstore in Gentilly, Bible scholars are buried in a 20-year project to codify the thousands of changes, verse by verse, word by word — even letter by letter — that crept into the early New Testament during hundreds of years of laborious hand-copying.

...

Their research is of particular interest to evangelical Christians who, because they regard the Bible as the sole authority on matters of faith, want to distinguish the earliest possible texts and carefully evaluate subsequent changes.

The first phase of the researchers’ work is done. They have documented thousands of creeping changes, down to an extraneous Greek letter, across hundreds of early manuscripts from the 2nd through 15th centuries, said Bill Warren, the New Testament scholar who leads the project at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

hjalti · 03-28-2011, 01:15 PM

Well, inerrantist biblical scholars have to have something to do

aeebee50 · 04-01-2011, 07:04 AM

It will be interesting to find out what they find. It seems like when someone gets an idea about the Bible, they start changing things. Maybe too many hurricane drinks at the French Quarter gave them ideas.

Toto · 07-17-2011, 10:16 PM

How Bible Stories Evolved Over The Centuries

Quote:

Many Christians believe that the words of the New Testament are set in stone. But scholars at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary are chronicling just how much those words have evolved over time.

For 11 years, they've combed through the earliest Greek manuscripts of each book in the New Testament and found more than 17,000 pages of variations. Their ultimate goal: the world's first comprehensive, searchable online database showing how the New Testament has changed.

The database is already up. The first explanations go live this fall with two books of the New Testament — Philippians and First Peter.

Horatio Parker · 07-19-2011, 01:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

How Bible Stories Evolved Over The Centuries

Quote:

Many Christians believe that the words of the New Testament are set in stone. But scholars at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary are chronicling just how much those words have evolved over time.

For 11 years, they've combed through the earliest Greek manuscripts of each book in the New Testament and found more than 17,000 pages of variations. Their ultimate goal: the world's first comprehensive, searchable online database showing how the New Testament has changed.

The database is already up. The first explanations go live this fall with two books of the New Testament — Philippians and First Peter.

I'm reading Robert Prices' The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (or via: amazon.co.uk). Fascinating stuff about how many of the Gospel tales were motivated by the concerns of the early church. It'll be interesting to see if a database will shed any light on those strands...

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03-28-2011, 01:15 PM	#2
hjalti Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Iceland Posts: 761	Well, inerrantist biblical scholars have to have something to do

04-01-2011, 07:04 AM	#3
aeebee50 Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Texas Posts: 5,810	It will be interesting to find out what they find. It seems like when someone gets an idea about the Bible, they start changing things. Maybe too many hurricane drinks at the French Quarter gave them ideas.

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