jakejonesiv

You will need to prove the originals are error free, which you can't do because you don't have them.
it is quite a real world proble. Once you admit that the Bible contains errors, then you have opened a door. Ever tried to let in just one dog?

Smokey glass won't do unless you want to give up the notion of God preserving his word. I am asking for you to identify the innerant text in the Greek, not a translation.

Jake

mdarus

The debate about inerrancy is primarily a debate among Christians about how to interpret the Bible. In this debate, the basic presuppositions are
1) God exists
2) He self reveals
3) He uses human agents
4) The Bible is a record of God's revelation

In that context, it is consistent to also hold that the written record is accurate and authoritative. On this most Christians agree. Those that believe inerrancy posit that this revelation is infallible and therefore inerrant. It seems pointless to try to prove inerrancy in the context of this blog where all the preceding presuppostions are regularly denied. I would not expect this entire subject to make much sense to "outsiders" reading other people's mail.

Jake,
The only approach to this that I am aware of that goes down the road you suggest are those that believe that the Received Text (the Greek text used to translate the King James Version) is the preserved inerrant text. However, this is an extreme minority position among Christian who support inerrancy. The others are content that God sufficiently "preserves his word" in the mix of extant texts and their variants. In defense of this position, the vast majority of textual variants have absolutley no substance. The few variants that do have substance deal with subjects that have supporting texts without textual questions. Because of these observations, the smokey glass is only an imagined problem, not a real issue.

I know there are those who wish for a theological world where no dogs get in. I am not threatened by a couple of poodles.

Steven Avery

Hi Doug, your post was a good read.
There are a few points I would like to work with.

In many cases neither side will over "prove" their case, even with additional evidence. We are talking preferences and probabilities and paradigms, not proof. (There are a lot of "p"s in this pod).

> Prax : there are methodologies that are designed to create an
> errant text, such as by abject overuse of lectio difficilior

Actually you are criticizing me here for speaking carefully and accurately, not for "begging a question" (whatever question you think is being begged). lection difficlior is a primary tenet of modern textcrit, and it creates errancy even when the fabricated error has very little textual support. In fact almost all of this is abject overuse. That does not mean the concept is completely worthless, it probably has some real use in evaluation in a % or 2 of the times it is used today. (Especially when the manuscript evidence is far more even than is normally the case, Professor Maurice Robinson has interesting discussions of its usage in the Mark 1:2 discussion).

A lot of times lectio difficlior claims have lots simpler explanations.
Example.

Gerash, the scribes (especially in Egypt) would have heard of that major city, while far less likely the regions of the Gergesenes, that would be a stumper for them. So they could simply made a little blunder, "seeing" the region name they know, and using that in changing the text, a common cross-cultural error. Lectio difficlior places this in reverse, that the Gospel writers would have made the error (presumption of errancy) and the copyists would have corrected it. The presumption of errancy is unneutral and unwarrented.

Agreed

That is why I gave you a clear example.

The current "scholarly" or "scientific" "best means" is GIGO for the errancy discussion, since it fabricates the very errancy that is later proclaimed.

The Received Texts. In the Tanach the Masoretic Text, in the NT the Textus Receptus. In the vast majority of readings this represents the large majority of a diverse textual geography and usage. Of course there are a lot of issues that can be discussed here. The King James Bible, the Geneva Bible, Tyndale, Luther and the early Reina-Valera are well known examples of the historic Bible.

Which is why I don't let the skeptics define the Bible for me :-)
Tis a Received Text.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Chris Weimer

Of course not. You're satisfied with an uncritical and corrupt version that is only accepted because of your faith. Of course you have no room for scholarship! If you did, what would you do with your faith?

Steven Avery

Actually I was pointing out that from Doug's view, even thousands of early manuscripts would not matter. The modern textcrit mentality simply is clueless as to the identity of the NT text.

jakejonesiv

As long as you admit that the Bible contains errors (received text, King James and all) we are on the same page.

Jake

Jack the Bodiless

praxeus: I'm somewhat confused about why you apparently hold both the Masoretic text and the KJV in high regard. How do you handle cases where the KJV contradicts the MT?

For instance, there's the well-known Septuagint mistranslation of "almah" as "virgin" (Isaiah 7:14). The KJV was based on the MT rather than the Septuagint because the MT was "more accurate": yet, for ideological reasons, the Septuagint mistranslation was reproduced in the KJV (because it's convenient for Christians to have a "virgin birth" in there).

And I see there's already a thread running on the contradictions between the MT and the Dead Sea Scrolls. But most of the Bible's major errors are right there in every version we have, and aren't version-dependent at all.

Steven Avery

I used to think there might be such cases. (e.g. brother of Goliath). In fact, the more I study it out the less I hold to a view of any concerns in the Ben Hayim Masoretic Text. Keep in mind that while the MT is quite homogenous, there is some variation.

Ultimately my view is the King James Bible is the scripture, translated from accurate underlying original language preserved texts. And the search for variations from the King James Bible and the Ben Hayim MT has turned up little.

Technically as parthenos, a word that implies virgin more strongly than almah. However, the King James Bible really doesn't care about the Greek OT at all. Its translation of almah --> virgin is a direct translation.

Actually the translation of almah as virgin is a discussion with layer upon peel upon glasses. It involves everything from a Rashi reference to analyzing the usages in Tanach, to contextually exegesis, to modern-day redefining, to translation philopsophy to a ton more. It is wrong to say that one Hebrew word means virgin and another does not, leaving the translation issue of Isaiah 7:14 wide open. While I have some good references on the topic, I find that sincere discussions are sparse, few and far between.

Actually the discussion has been more about supposed internal contradictions or corruptions within the MT. Rarely if ever do those claims get any support whatsoever from the DSS. Afaik, when the verses in question are in the DSS (often they are not) they simply match the Masoretic Text.

The textual variance between the DSS and the MT (and between the DSS and other DSS) is its own topic. Personally I believe that the main thing the DSS shows us is that the Masoretes were not tamperers with the text, there is tons they could have tried to do with Isaiah 7 and 9 and 53, and yet the Great Isaiah Scroll was transmitted for 1000 years with no doctrinal textual tampering whatsoever, in fact the whole 66 chapters are, for the most part, identical (putting aside dialect differences) and the variances are often simply pretty obvious scribal faux pas on the DSS side.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Jack the Bodiless

A direct MIS-translation then.
...Pfft! The desire to support Matthew's Septuagint-inspired context-ripping never entered their heads? Or is that desire dressed up in pseudo-respectable clothing as "contectual exegesis"?

"Almah" means "young woman" (quite probably virginal), whereas "betulah" specifically means "virgin". This is well-known to all of us, I'm sure.
...And, yes, it's also rather well-known that Isaiah was translated early and its close agreement with the MT raised false hopes among apologists that the rest of the DSS would be a similar close match.

This is Apologetics 101, Steven.

Jack the Bodiless

BTW, my "But most of the Bible's major errors are right there in every version we have, and aren't version-dependent at all" seems to have been overlooked.

Let's try an analogy here: suppose I choose to believe that the Moon is a cube rather than a sphere. I can argue that the Moon appears spherical due to some sort of refraction effect in the atmosphere, and provide links to sources detailing NASA's faking of the Apollo missions. But if someone asked me WHY I choose to believe that the Moon is a cube, I know they won't be satisfied with "because it IS a cube", or "because the evidence indicates this", or even "because I have found or concocted explanations compatible with this view".

...Yet those are the sort of answers we typically get. The Bible certainly doesn't appear to be inerrant: there are many errors, some of them rather obvious. Inventing excuses for them won't make them go away, it merely raises the question "why invent those bizarre excuses to defend the indefensible?". Why make the assumption of inerrancy in the first place, and why cling to it subsequently when the difficulties pile up relentlessly?