itsdatruth

All "contradictions" can be "solved" through either examination of the text for hints that clue to copyist errors, or through a careful interpretation of the text with other portions of Scripture for cross-referencing, or a correct understanding of the situations and cultures the people at the time lived in, or a combination thereof. You might note that the Hebrew numbering system was crude and lent itself for errors. Numbers are much more likely than letters to be copied wrong. Thank God we now use Arabic #’s!

dado

Hebrew numbers ARE letters, they would have been copied "wrong" at the same rate as any other parts of the text. but this is beside the point: unless you're claiming we don't have anything resembling the original texts, Hebrew is irrelevant because none of the currently canonical gospels were written in Hebrew.

itsdatruth

This was a lay-man's book. I considered consulting a theological text from my pastor-which I know explains the issue similarly, but time was short and my mom was making me go to bed. I am leaving tomorrow, and might be able to look up the exact details in a week or two. Until then, try Google. I will say that the dating issue could also be solved another way: the Greek letters for 3 and 6 do look like each other, and the situation could be a copyist error. The two events could have been happening in the same hour-both in Hebrew style, but one with a copyist’s error.

itsdatruth

Well, lets see- take something that you are familair with-Latin numbers-If a single I is off in an extreamly long word, the whole number is wrong. If you actually read Hebrew numbers, you would see that they are way more confusing than when the letters form works. They are really long. To make matters worse, some scholars have suggested that for much of the text's history, a line type of numbering was likely in use. Editorial updating DID occur in Biblical text, and that is why the current form is seen.

itsdatruth

It was written in Greek because that was the common written language of the area. You need to remember that by this time in history, followers of Judaism used the Greek translation of the OT text for synagogue usage. Many Jews and followers of Judaism (known as Greek Jews-Greek in culture, Jewish in Ethnicity and religion) could not understand Hebrew as much as they could Greek. You need to remember that the common spoken language in Palestine at the time of Christ was not Hebrew, it was Aramaic-as is reflected in the Aramaic spoken portions of the Gospels. The Revelation to John was written somewhere from A.D. 70 to 90 , and our oldest text (although there may be ealier ones-I don't know) is from about A.D. 206. The Christian Church's growth after starting in Jerusalem occurred especially among Greek Jews. However, the knowledge of apocalyptic interpretation, including the numbers, was entirely Jewish. It was written in that format, I believe, to help protect it from Roman censure. I have read that John likely wrote a few other letters from his imprisonment on Patmos that were found and destroyed. The Revelation to John contains a reference to the fall of the Roman Empire; that was grounds enough for destruction.

Now, you might suggest that early Christians were too divorced from Jewish culture to understand it. This is not true because the Septuagint was read in churches even before Paul's letters became widely circulated. This includes the apoptylptic books. One of them Jesus referred to one in his prophecy of the Destruction of Jerusalem; cross reference Daniel 9; that chapter also predicts the exact year of Jesus’ ministry's beginning and the year of his death besides the A.D. 70 incident. Anyhow, I read that the Christians fled the city before hand because they remembered Jesus' prophecy (which cited Daniel chapter 9) So apparently, apocalyptic literary knowledge WAS present in at least some Christians.

itsdatruth

Two things:
1. the book was at least a thousand pages-disecting Greek phrases and refering to ancient documents right and left. Not a tract at all. It was ment for pastors and people who have years of seminary training.
3. The Lutheran Church-Missori Synod (which owns the publisher) is not fundamentalist. It has no fundamentals! The Bible, it claims, was not ment to be reduced into fundamentals, as some denominations claim it should be.

itsdatruth

I meant that 1600 was 4 squared by 10 squared. 16 x 100 is 16,000-not what the Bible says

itsdatruth

If you actually read this extreamly heavy reading book, you would realize it accepts no authority. It relies on Scripture and on a handful of Early Church writings. It doens't even accept the non-scriptual writings as flawless. It gave a good overview of the various writings dealing with the authour of Rev.-including those that say that it didn't. The truth is that the non-John writings came much later, and were limited to one guy and than a later guy who followed in that guy's footsteps

itsdatruth

I do acknowledge that Anti-Semitic is a word with a confusing definition. I remember an Arab acknowledge “We are all Semites� –as the Bible agrees with that, I have no problem with that. However, the media presents it as an anti-Jewishness, and I figured that would be your perspective. I must have miscalculated.

itsdatruth

I will point out that I said the Gospels were written by either eyewitnesses or people close to eyewitnesses. I never tried to say that Mark was written by an eyewitness-instead, he got his information from Peter. You cite no ancient documents about the question of the writers of the Gospels and the book of Acts. These people undoubtedly knew the texts better than the historical critical people in universities today, who can say anything without further refutation by the people who knew the writings well in the first and second centuries. At 180 A.D., the only apostle not to be killed by others, John, had only been dead for 90 years. People who knew the disciples of the apostles were still alive. Today, written texts are a much larger source of info than they were back then. Even so, the cumulative memory of the Christians manifested itself in a variety of documents.
The Internet Christian Library has put many such documents online for your reference.

http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/...n-history.html

It is interesting to note that, as far as I have seen in both modern and ancient history and everything in between, nobody has willingly gone to a certain death for something they know isn’t true. I suggest that as dumb as people are, they don’t waste their life on something they know for a fact to be a lie. If you look at some of the martyrdom accounts, you will know that many Christians willingly died rather than curse Christ. Some did-and kept their socio-economic status and life, but many did.

Now, some people DID question the author of the Revelation of John, so you can’t say that everybody accepted everything from a hierarchy that didn’t actually exist at the time. For years the bishop of Rome denied authority and precedence over others.