Freethought & Rationalism Archive

dog-on · 05-15-2008, 03:15 AM

How difficult would it have been to actually make changes to existing works during the 2nd century and to have all exisiting evidence of such changes disappear over the course of the next few hundred years?

How many copies of Mark do modern scholars suppose where actually penned from the original? How about Paul?

An example from modern times of significant changes to a published work, in a similar genre would, of course, be the Book of Mormon. I will admit, that the changes to this work have been very difficult to hide do to the fact that the original edition still exists. The Mormons use the phrase "continuous revelation" to try and limit the cognitive dissonance, I suppose.

Would the early church have had the means, motive and opportunity to rewrite the holy books, based on their own, then current, theological understanding and make the evidence of such rewriting simply disappear?

sschlichter · 05-15-2008, 04:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

Would the early church have had the means, motive and opportunity to rewrite the holy books, based on their own, then current, theological understanding and make the evidence of such rewriting simply disappear?

I tend to think this is unlikely. What would have been the motive? The thrill of being killed for an illegal religion. They decided to ignore what Jesus originally taught, in a conspiracy, teach something else that they all agree on and results in their likely death. They managed that and to decieve another generation (or couple generations) whom also faced death. In only looking at the motive, I cannot see one.

~Steve

Steven Carr · 05-15-2008, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sschlichter

I tend to think this is unlikely. What would have been the motive? The thrill of being killed for an illegal religion. They decided to ignore what Jesus originally taught, in a conspiracy, teach something else that they all agree on and results in their likely death. They managed that and to decieve another generation (or couple generations) whom also faced death. In only looking at the motive, I cannot see one.

'That they all agree on'?

Have you read the bitter hatred of Christian-on-Christian in 2 Peter and Revelation?

But not even those works think many Christians are being killed.

To rectify the fact that their Christian enemies were just not being killed, some of the authors looked forward to the Lord coming and killing the Christians they themselves hated.

Revelation 2:20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.

21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.

22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.

23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.

I guess the author is really telling us that these other churches preached the same thing he himself did, and that it was the Roman Emperors who searched the hearts and minds of Christians, killing them if they departed from what he believed.

Who knows?

GakuseiDon · 05-15-2008, 04:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

Would the early church have had the means, motive and opportunity to rewrite the holy books, based on their own, then current, theological understanding and make the evidence of such rewriting simply disappear?

Celsus certainly believed so:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...origen162.html

Quote:

Originally Posted by Origen's Contra Celsus

After this he [Celsus] says, that certain of the Christian believers, like persons who in a fit of drunkenness lay violent hands upon themselves, have corrupted the Gospel from its original integrity, to a threefold, and fourfold, and many-fold degree, and have remodelled it, so that they might be able to answer objections.

JEST2ASK · 05-15-2008, 04:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sschlichter

I tend to think this is unlikely. What would have been the motive? The thrill of being killed for an illegal religion. They decided to ignore what Jesus originally taught, in a conspiracy, teach something else that they all agree on and results in their likely death. They managed that and to decieve another generation (or couple generations) whom also faced death. In only looking at the motive, I cannot see one.

~Steve

I have often wondered about the accuracy and scope of such claims that a significant percentage of early "Christians" were martyred for their faith. I also wonder if the orginal letters which circulated were accurately and completly transmitted and complied. I think the idea of a unified conspiracy (except with relation to Saul / Paul) is highly unlikely.

That however does not say say that so called heratical groups did not exist from the very earliest stages. There seems to be some crediable evidence that there were other jewish (& non-jewish) messiahs, god-men in the region considerable before and after the time of the biblical Jesus.

GakuseiDon & Steven Carr Much covered my thoughts , quicker and more in details ...
I should have been patient.

dog-on · 05-15-2008, 04:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sschlichter

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

Would the early church have had the means, motive and opportunity to rewrite the holy books, based on their own, then current, theological understanding and make the evidence of such rewriting simply disappear?

I tend to think this is unlikely. What would have been the motive? The thrill of being killed for an illegal religion. They decided to ignore what Jesus originally taught, in a conspiracy, teach something else that they all agree on and results in their likely death. They managed that and to decieve another generation (or couple generations) whom also faced death. In only looking at the motive, I cannot see one.

~Steve

I do not understand the relevance of your answer to the question I asked.

Here's a hypothetical:

2nd century AD;

Church A has some books;

Church B has some other books;

These books are similar, but do have certain significant theological differences.

Church A absorbs Church B, but in doing so must, initially, take Church B's "baggage".

How difficult would it be for Church A to then "adjust" Church B's books to better fit Church A's view of things, using terms like "heresy" to help convince the former Church B's membership that any such edits, (if such changes where even realized by the mass congregation itself, which is another question entirely), where in fact, a restoration?

How long would it then take for the old Church B books to simply disappear?

Toto · 05-15-2008, 04:58 AM

From William Walker on interpolations in the Pauline epistles (my summary)

Quote:

In support of the possibility of interpolations, Walker cites Ehrman, who says that the early years of Christianity were a period of creativity, while later years tended towards strict reproduction. He also cites Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament: "until the beginning of the fourth century the text of the New Testament developed freely" and "this was all the more true of the early period, when the text had not yet attained canonical status, especially in the earliest period when Christians considered themselves filled with the Spirit". Koestler apparently agrees.

In short, there was ample opportunity, means and motivefor interpolations.

Why is there no surviving text critical evidence of variant readings? Walker replies with a question. Why are there no early texts of any Pauline letters? And no earlier collections? It is clear, he says that Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp and the author of 2 Peter were acquainted with more than one letter [unless, of course, those references were forged, something that should be considered, especially with Ignatius] and the early appearance of the pseudo-Paulines suggests that Paul's letters were known outside the communities they addressed. No earlier forms of any letters have survived, although 2 Cor is widely regarded as composite.

Walker lists two possibilities: the final edited version of the letters made all earlier versions obsolete, or Christians suppressed all earlier versions.

The idea that Christians suppressed all variant texts of Paul's letters is rejected by some as a conspiracy theory, but Walker points out that Marcion's version is missing. [If Marcion's version of Paul?s letters could be suppressed, so could other variant texts.]

Marcion accused his opponents of interpolating material; his opponents accused him of deleting material. "As a matter of historical principle, we cannot simply reject the word of Marcion about this." P-L Couchoud argued that Marcion preserved the original text. It seems at least possible that Marcion deleted some material, and his orthodox opponents added some.

All we know is that the surviving text is the text promoted and perhaps produced by the winners in the struggles of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The capacity of Christians to suppress manuscripts is shown by the example of Tatian's Diatesseron, which the Syrian episcopate made a determined effort to put an end to, so that no copy has survived except for a single leaf of vellum.

An additional factor supporting the possibility that orthodox Christians successfully eliminated any variant copies of Paul's letters is that the church of 180 was more centralized and united that it had been before or after, so the emerging orthodox leadership was in a position to standardize texts.

Malachi151 · 05-15-2008, 05:10 AM

I don't think that much of this went on. It went on a little bit, but not out of any conspiracy.

First of all, there are so many contradictions between the scriptures and places where they contradict the teachings of the people using them that if they had really been making major revisions then these issues would have been resolved long ago.

Some changes crept in for a variety of reasons. The Johannine comma is a good example for a change to a Gospel work, but then again, we know about this don't we...

I think the place where there was the most revision was in the letters of Paul. This is also the place that's hardest to completely discern the changes because we don't have copies of the text that are as early or as complete as we do for the Gospels. In the case of the letter of Paul, though, these weren't even considered "scripture" for the first couple hundred years of their existence, so changes to them were not viewed as anything out of the ordinary. I think that different groups edited them to suit their own needs, which was considered perfectly fine and above board to a certain extent.

We have a good suspicion about some of the changes today, but we have little in the way of solid proof.

Also, look at the various epistles that we have traditions for which contradict the letters themselves. If they really wanted to make all of this stuff fit together they would have done a better job. For example the epistles of James don't actually state they they were written by "James the brother of Jesus", in fact the letters actually contradict that notion. However the tradition has always been that they were written by the actual brother of Jesus. So if people were intent on making the material fit the beliefs they would have changes those letters to make them more consistent.

So, overall, I think that what you are talking about is a very minor issue and didn't happen very much.

dog-on · 05-15-2008, 05:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

So, overall, I think that what you are talking about is a very minor issue and didn't happen very much.

I'm not really asking what was done or was not done, I am asking if it was actually possible to do so.

Malachi151 · 05-15-2008, 05:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

So, overall, I think that what you are talking about is a very minor issue and didn't happen very much.

I'm not really asking what was done or was not done, I am asking if it was actually possible to do so.

Well I'm sure it would have been possible. It may not have been possible to completely and 100% cover the tracks, but at the time it wouldn't have mattered much and they would have still been able to make it not completely possible to absolutely prove later on.

I think its pretty clear that no one in the 2nd century that we have any knowledge of today had access to "the originals" of any of these works, nor did they actually have any idea of where they really came from. Given that environment it must have been impossible to determine what was the "true text" and what wasn't, so they could have made changes and claimed their text as the true one I would think.

As I said though, all of the evidence indicates that this didn't happen, or at least didn't happen to any meaningful degree.

05-15-2008, 03:15 AM	#1
dog-on Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 3,397	Means, Motive and Opportunity How difficult would it have been to actually make changes to existing works during the 2nd century and to have all exisiting evidence of such changes disappear over the course of the next few hundred years? How many copies of Mark do modern scholars suppose where actually penned from the original? How about Paul? An example from modern times of significant changes to a published work, in a similar genre would, of course, be the Book of Mormon. I will admit, that the changes to this work have been very difficult to hide do to the fact that the original edition still exists. The Mormons use the phrase "continuous revelation" to try and limit the cognitive dissonance, I suppose. Would the early church have had the means, motive and opportunity to rewrite the holy books, based on their own, then current, theological understanding and make the evidence of such rewriting simply disappear?

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05-15-2008, 05:10 AM	#8
Malachi151 Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Colorado Posts: 8,674	I don't think that much of this went on. It went on a little bit, but not out of any conspiracy. First of all, there are so many contradictions between the scriptures and places where they contradict the teachings of the people using them that if they had really been making major revisions then these issues would have been resolved long ago. Some changes crept in for a variety of reasons. The Johannine comma is a good example for a change to a Gospel work, but then again, we know about this don't we... I think the place where there was the most revision was in the letters of Paul. This is also the place that's hardest to completely discern the changes because we don't have copies of the text that are as early or as complete as we do for the Gospels. In the case of the letter of Paul, though, these weren't even considered "scripture" for the first couple hundred years of their existence, so changes to them were not viewed as anything out of the ordinary. I think that different groups edited them to suit their own needs, which was considered perfectly fine and above board to a certain extent. We have a good suspicion about some of the changes today, but we have little in the way of solid proof. Also, look at the various epistles that we have traditions for which contradict the letters themselves. If they really wanted to make all of this stuff fit together they would have done a better job. For example the epistles of James don't actually state they they were written by "James the brother of Jesus", in fact the letters actually contradict that notion. However the tradition has always been that they were written by the actual brother of Jesus. So if people were intent on making the material fit the beliefs they would have changes those letters to make them more consistent. So, overall, I think that what you are talking about is a very minor issue and didn't happen very much.

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