Bede

FWIW, we have soundly trashed the Jesus Mysteries here and even found the gem on the cover is probably a fake. They are an object lesson is dishonest popularism. I'm working on a new review that will be on my own site and thus avoid many of Jacob's criticisms that enabled him to avoid the serious issues.

Pagels is OK though...

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

long winded fool

I meant that the notion of particular books of the Bible being altered by early power-hungry Catholics is highly unlikely. We have manuscripts from the middle ages during the rule of the Church and power-hungry Popes, and we have found those same manuscripts from the second century when Christians were persecuted and put to death for their beliefs, and nothing has been altered in these cases. In addition, the oldest of the manuscripts are almost always the ones chosen for translation, wherever possible. And even when this is not the case, no alterations and very few inconsistencies present themselves. This, in conjunction with the fact that the books of the Bible are considered holy texts and not to be altered under any circumstances, and the fact that the scribes historically were, in most cases, Christian monks, makes the alteration of the books of the Bible so unlikely that no reputable, unbiased historian would consider this possibility as anything other than an unfounded conspiracy theory designed to discredit the religion of Christianity.

Toto

The books of the Bible were so holy, and Christian monks so pure that we can trust them? I doubt it.

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament

Amaleq13

Could you be more specific with regard to these "second century" manuscripts?

"St. Augustine found lying among the clergy so prevalent that he wrote two books (De Mendacio in 395 A.D. and Contra Mendacium in 420 A.D.), urging that it stop." -- Gordon Stein, A Second Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism,p. 65

Chili

Well I can certainly see why you agree with him, especially if you think that lying can get you enough power to built the greatest civilization that ever existed.

Ever though maybe that God was on their side, and still is?

Vorkosigan

Yes, that seems to be a problem with Christians of whatever flavor.

Vorkosigan

Ted Hoffman

Robert Funk is not quite that honest. His 'honesty' is suspended when he encounters anything that challenges his 'ten convictions' in pg. 4 of the book.

No. 4, for example, says: "I am inclined to the view that Jesus caught a glimpse of what the world is really like when you look at it with God's eyes."

Yeah, right!

Or No. 8: "I believe in original sin, but I take original sin to mean the innate infinite capacity of human beings to deceive themselves."

Original sin? Is this an apologetic for the Adam and Eve nonsense?

Plus, his analysis of Q is not rigorous and is rife with assumptions and . I intend to lump his work with Crossan's and Burton Macks when I take out the so-called Historical Jesus methodologies. It seems the work requires more than one grunt :banghead:.

Funk places the birth of Jesus during the time of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. How does he know this? Not from Mark. Matthew's infancy narrative is placed during the reign of Herod and Matthew does that so that he can use Herod to supply the drama, a drama which is derived from midrashic reworking of the birth of Moses. Herod's attempt to kill the child through his slaughter of the first-born of Bethlehem parallels Pharaoh's attempt to eradicate Moses the promised deliverer of the Hebrews by killing their first-born sons. Escape to Egypt to escape Herod, and their return to Palestine, dovetails the Hebrew sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus to the Promised Land.

Funk's resolute 'honesty' blinds him to this and he goes as far as concoting 'reverse christology'. A wooly, unsubstantiated concept. Luke's nativity, also placed in Herod's reign, but without the Magi, or star or slaughter of innocents (which Matthew has), places the birth in Bethlehem. This is based on Micah 5:2 which says the future king of Israel will be born in Bethlehem.

Ths bottom line is, for all his purported honesty, Funk starts his work with an a priori assumption which the evidence does not allow us to take for granted: that there was any historical Jesus to be honest to.

Bede,
I am glad you learnt your lesson and I am glad to see you no longer peddle your anemic pretence of a review as any semblance of criticism.

The book The Jesus Mysteries was written as a popular work and the authors have admitted as much. Huffing and puffing over the Jesus Mysteries just shows you have your priorities backwards and have lost sight of serious works that need to be addressed. At best, you get to 'wet' yourself when you write 'a new review that will be on your own site'.

Unless your ego got wounded and you feel you need to salvage some lost dignity by patching up that huge hole I bore in back parts of your trouser to reveal...

Oh, by the way, what makes you think that having 'a new review that will be on your own site' will make you avoid my criticisms? Are we now blaming Holding for our losses?

Amlodhi

Hello lwf,

Here is a brief summary of the extant fragments dating up to the beginning of the 3rd century C.E.

From: "The Text of the New Testament", Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, William B. Eerdmans Pub., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1995.

From "Descriptive List of Papyri" (ibid. pg. 96) + Uncials


2nd century:

p52.............John 18:31-33 & 37-38

p90.............John 18:36 & 19:7

c. 200:

p32..............Titus 1:11-15 & 2:3-8

p66..............John 1:1 -6:11; 6:35 - 14:26, 29-30; 15:2-26; 16:2-4,6-7; 16:10 - 20:20,22-23; 20:25 - 21:9

64/67...........Matt. 3:9 - 15; 5:20 - 22,25-28; 26:7-8,10,14 -15,22-23,31-33

p46..............Pauline epistles- Rom. 5:17 - 6:14; 8:15 - 15:9; 15:11 - 16:27. I Cor. 1:1 - 16:22. II Cor. 1:1 - 13:13. Gal. 1:1 - 6:18; Eph.1:1 - 6:24. Phil. 1:1 - 4:23. Col. 1:1 - 4:18. Thess. 1:1;1:9-2:3; 5:5 - 9 & 23 - 28. Heb. 1:1 -13:25.

2nd/3rd century:

p77..............Matt. 23:30 - 39

0189............Acts 5:3 - 21 (Uncial)


p52 - The fragment itself is only about 9 cm. by 6 cm. (at its widest) and contains only about 104 +/- legible letters. Although p52 is listed as representing 5 verses, these verses are very fragmented and must be conjecturally reconstructed. The actual fragment would look and read basically like this (in transliteration):

p52 - recto:

OIIOYDAI[..] HME[.........................]
OYDENA INA O L[.........................] -
IIEN XHMAINW[.............................] -
TNHXKEIN IX[................................] -
RION O P[.....................................]
KAI EIP[........................................] -
[..]IO[.....


p52 - verso:

[.............................]TO G[ ]NN[ ]AI
[.........................]XMON INA MARTY
[.................................]THX ALHTE[.]
[..................................]LEGEI AYTO
[...........................................TOYT[.]
[.......................................]TOYX I[..]
[..............................................]MI[..]


p90 is badly damaged and contains only a part of a single leaf, about 15 cm. by 6 cm. with many of the extant letters illegible and reconstruction highly conjectural. Though (I think) there is actually too little text available here to categorize, the one comparative study I have read reported the following percentages of agreement between p90 and the following later manuscripts:

p90>> p66 - percent agreement - 45%
p90>> Sinaiticus - 64%
p90>> Alexandrinus - 9%
p90>> Vaticanus - 27%

Though conjectural, here again it is important that Oxyrhyncus p90 may show a greater affiliation to Sinaiticus (and B) than to Alexandrinus (A).

p32 - dated c. 200, representing 11 verses of Titus. If Paul (allegedly) wrote this pastoral epistle as early as c. 50 A.D., this fragment is dated c. 150 years after the autograph.

p66, listed in Aland as "free text", which is described as having a greater degree of variation than what he terms "normal text" (whatever that is). In the "text family" assignment, p66 has most often been categorized as Alexandrian, however, in some sections, it should more likely be considered a "mixed" text. For instance, in John 1 - 14, p66 shows agreement with the modern TR 47.5% of the time, with Sinaiticus 44.6%, and with Alexandrinus (MT) 45.6%.

There are many variant readings in p66 and some scholars have also seen a docetic/gnostic element. Some of the variants are:

In p66 Jn. 1:18 reads "only begotten God" instead of "only begotten Son".

In p66 Jn. 3:13 omits the phrase ". . . even the Son of man which is in heaven".

In p66 this entire verse (Jn. 5:4) is omitted, "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water; whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had".

In p66 Jn. 7:53 - 8:11, the story of the adulteress, is completely omitted. Since p66 had numbered pages, we know it wasn't simply lost.

In p66 Jn. 19:5 omits the sentence, "And Pilate saith unto them, 'Behold, the man' ".

p64/67 (p67 is classified as a fragment of p64) dated to c. 200 A.D. contains 24 verses representative of the gospel of Matt., specifically Matt. 3:9 - 15; 5:20 - 22,25-28; 26:7-8,10,14 -15,22-23,31-33. Likely because these pieces are also fragmentary and contain significant lacunae, I have never discovered any scholarly treatise that ventured to commit itself as to text type.

p46 - dated c. 200, collection of Pauline epistles. Literary comparison has convinced some scholars that the pastoral epistles are not authentically Pauline. Interestingly, the pastorals are missing from this collection.

[Note on p46: I'm aware of Young Kyu Kim's paper and some of what he says is compelling. I'm not, however, convinced of his absolute terminus ad quem (i.e. Domitian). There is manuscript attestation of the gradual abandonment of the EY (epsilon gamma) structure (before certain compounds, i.e. B,D & L) in the early 2nd century, but the remainder of his argument seems to be based on ornamental style. I find this unconvincing since earlier style can be retained in copy (especially so in religious documents). For instance, though we can trace the structural components of the English language through history, the KJV bible still tends to retain some of the basic style, which I think might be even more pronounced in handwritten (i.e. scribal copyists) documents than modern printing processes allow for.]

p77 may date to the late 2nd or early 3rd century. It is generally considered to be a "Proto-Alexandrian" text type, which means, again, that it appears to be closest to the Codex Sinaiticus and (B). However, out of the only 10 verses which are represented by this fragment, there are at least four (and likely five) points of disagreement with the 4th and 5th century codices. Such as:

John 1:34 "And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God". P5 and P77 read: "God's chosen One".


It is, then, only well into the 3rd century C.E. dating that we begin to have a significant collection of extant fragments.

3rd century:

p1................Matt. 1:1 - 9, 12, 14 - 20

p4................Luke 1:58 & 59; 1:62 - 2:1, 6 & 7; 3:8 - 4:2, 29-32, 34-35; 5:3-8; 5:30 - 6:16

p5................John 1:23-31, 33-40; 16:14-30; 20:11-17, 19-20,22-25

p9................I John 4:11-12, 14-17

p12..............Heb. 1:1

p15..............I Cor. 7:18 & 8:4

p20..............Jas. 2:19 - 3:9

p22..............John 15:25 - 16:2, 21-32

p23..............Jas. 1:10-12, 15-18

p27..............Rom. 8:12-22, 24-27; 8:33 - 9:3, 5-9

p28..............John 6:8-12, 17-22

p29..............Acts 26:7-8, 20

p30..............I Thess. 4:12 - 5:18, 25-28; 2 Thess. 1:1-2

p39..............John 8:14-22

p40..............Rom. 1:24-27; 1:31- 2:3; 3:21 - 4:8; 6:4-5, 16; 9:16-17, 27

p45..............Matt. 20:24-32; 21:13-19; 25:41 - 26:39. Mark 4:36 - 9:31; 11:27 - 12:28. Luke 6:31 - 7:7; 9:26 - 14:33. John 10:7 -25; 10:30 - 11:10, 18 - 36, 42 -57; Acts 4:27 - 17:17 [Free Text category]

p47...............Rev. 9:10 - 17:2

p48...............Acts 23:11-17, 23-29

p49...............Eph. 4:16-29; 4:31 - 5:13

p53...............Matt. 26:29-40; Acts 9:33 - 10:1

p65...............I Thess. 1:3 - 2:1, 6-13

p69...............Luke 22:41, 45-48, 58-61

p70...............Matt. 2:13-16; 2:22 - 3:1; 11:26-27; 12:4-5; 24:3-6, 12-15

p75...............Luke 3:18 - 4:2; 4:34 - 5:10; 5:37 - 18:18; 22:4 - 24:53. John 1:1 - 11:45, 48-47; 12:3 - 13:1, 8-9; 14:8-30; 15:7-8

p80...............John 3:34

p87...............Philem. 13 - 15, 24 - 25

p91...............Acts 2:30-37; 2:46 - 3:2

p95...............John 5:26-29, 36-38

0212 (Uncial)..Matt. 27:56 [w/parallel - Fragment of a Greek gospel harmony]

0220 (Uncial)..Rom. 4:23-53


3rd/4th century:

p13................Heb. 2:14 - 5:5; 10:8-22; 10:29 - 11:13; 11:28 - 12:17

p16................Phil. 3:10-17; 4:2-8

p18................Rev. 1:4-7

p37................Matt. 26:19-52

p38................Acts 18:27 - 19:6, 12-16

p72................I Pet. 1:1 - 5:14. II Pet. 1:1 - 3:18. Jude 1-25

p78................Jude 4-5, 7-8


namaste'

Amlodhi

long winded fool

Amlodhi answers this much more specifically than I could.

The question was not whether the Catholic church lied, or even whether they altered some texts at the time. It was whether their version of the Bible could be trusted. It is a common misconception that the Bible we have today comes to us solely from completed translations in the middle ages. This is not so. The authenticity of the Bible can be trusted, as far as any ancient historical documents go, not simply because the Catholics have said so, but because we have mountains of external evidence. In fact, the Bible is more trustworthy than any other documents from the time period, simply because the books therein appear so many times in so many places in history. The Catholic Church is not powerful enough to alter manuscripts before they are unearthed so that they coincide with some secret agenda. The things we read in our Bibles today are more likely to be the things that were in the books when they were first published than any other greek texts. The Catholic Church no longer has any power to influence this, and any past influence no longer applies.

Amaleq13

I did not understand that you meant "fragments" when you used the word "manuscripts".

Where ancient fragments match extant text, we are justified in concluding those specific portions of text have been reliably transmitted.

However, greater difficulty arises when apparent quotes from ancient manuscripts by early Church Fathers are compared to extant text. John Mill published a Greek New Testament in 1707 which took into account the discrepancies of over 100 manuscripts and writings of the early Church Fathers. He listed over 30,000 variants in readings. Leon Wright (Alterations of the Words of Jesus, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952) completed a study on the hundreds of discrepancies between the second-century Apostolic Fathers and the fourth-century canonical texts concerning the words of Jesus.

These can be taken in addition to the excellent recent work linked in this post