Shinobi

What is the sufficient info? Why did god, invent standards of rationality and create some people with a good sense of it then not live up to those standards that he created? Since the evidence is non existant it makes no sense to say atheists ignore the info god gave us. As for god not forcing beleif in him, I think the threat of hell counts as force. But of course it's true that god doesn't force beleif on us, there's no god there to force it.

Vorkosigan

For crying out loud! How many times do we have to refute this nonsense claim? The NT is not even close. The greatest textual "validity" would be for those texts which we have direct from the author's hand -- letters, purchase orders, and other mundanities from papyrus hoards, or diaries and numerous other documents yanked from ancient tombs in China. Any letter of the mundane "bring home two loaves of bread with you" found at Oxyrhynchus would destroy anything in the NT for textual reliability. Ditto for the dozens of diaries and other documents pulled out of the ground in China, or the millions of characters inscribed in various ways across the Old World.

Needham, writing in 1986, noted:

• Since the end of the 19th century, no fewer than 40,000 tablets of bamboo and wood have been uneartherd from various locations in China.[lists several major sites]...all documents from Loulan belong to the Chin dynasty [3rd century]. These tablets include official documents, private letters, calendars, lexicons for beginners, laws and statutes, medical prescriptions, literary texts, and miscellaneous records.[lists numerous other finds]..and some 20,000 wooden tablets dated from c. -119 to +26, from Chu-yen in Kansu.

Now, obviously such numbers and quality blows away anything found in the NT. And if you feel like qualifying that by saying "well, that's in the East" let's recall that treaty made by the Egyptians and the Hittites long before Paul and James cursed our world with their dream of a mad eschatological savior god. There are thousands of similar inscriptions throughout the remains of numerous empires across the ancient world, not to mention surviving original documents in a variety of media.

So let's see what this claim really boils down to. It consists of defining "textual validity" in such a way -- transmitted texts -- that only the Bible can win. It's the usual unethical Christian claim, a claim deliberately designed to give the NT some kind of halo of hoary authority.

So let's face a few facts: the monkish copy machine was nothing but a form of group madness, half-blind celibates practicing their writing skills by practicing thought control on themselves through copying only approved works over and over again. The sheer madness of committing so much precious time and effort to making 6,000 or 10,000 or 24,000 copies of the same 27 books, when so much was lost or destroyed over the years, ought to daunt anyone who thinks that this effort somehow redounds to the credit of the NT. It doesn't. The monks were doubly damned; first for the destruction of learning they engendered in the Old and New World, and second, for wasting their energy and talent mindlessly making copies of the same document over and over like robots in a factory where the owner has gone home and forgotten to turn off the machines, when so much was crying out for preservation and is now lost.

The really ironic thing about this nonsense claim of Metacrocks' is that the number of copies decreases, not increases, textual validity. This is because as copies multiply errors creep in; while the variety of documents ensures preservation of both error and different readings of the same text. Additionally, the existence of "lines" or "families" of manuscripts implies that the NT never had any "textual validity" -- it was a mess from early on. Certainly Acts and its 10% larger Western version hint at this. Far from being textually valid, all evidence indicates that the NT has been extensively edited, redacted and modified to create its current version. After all, the fidelity of 13th century copyists is irrelevant if second century editors hacked up the gospels, cutting out some parts and moving others to other gospels, while other redactors were hard at work making massive insertions in John, etc. Seen in that light, the current critical text must be seen for what it is: a construction based on the assumption that there was some unimpeachable "original" source text, when in fact redacted and forged versions were already circulating early and often. The modern critical NT is not the result of textual criticism, but a creation of it.

Vorkosigan

Shinobi

Nice post Vorkosigan. Your house.

lpetrich

In fairness, many medieval monks did copy other works, but their favorites were

Hymnals and the like

Largely fictional biographies of saints

Medieval saints were described as working large numbers of miracles -- several times as many as in the entire Bible, I'm sure, but I don't know of anyone who has tried to count how many.

But I have a suspicion that Metacrock and Magus55 are rigorous rationalists and stern skeptics about these alleged miracles.

CX

It wouldn't mean much if that is what I had said, but I didn't. I said oft refuted and I meant in general. The basic state of biblical scholarship is refutation enough.

Wrong about what? I'm not making a statement one way or the other about the "textual validity" of the NT based on sheer number of copies. It's a foolish argument. If I write a lie and make 10,000,000 copies it's still a lie. If I write the truth and make 1 copy it's still the truth. The whole argument is ridiculous. My only point was that there are not 24,000 "copies" of the NT if by copies we mean handwritten duplicates in the original Greek. There are on the order of 5600 or so. End of story. I'm not sure what your point is here.

Vinnie

The textual criticism claims are often puzzling to me. John was redacted, Q was redacted (probably several times), two-source proponents claim that Luke and Matthew probably didn't have the same version of either Mark or Q in front of them when writing. Scholars concede that Gospel composition was a fluid and continuos process early on as well. The total number of alterations made in the NT due to doctrinal reasons is difficult to assess (Metzger). Early on there appears to have been no slavish devotion to the exact wording and that is why we see so many alterations by 200 ad (Brown). The focus on exact wording came later with canonization and widespread acceptance of the NT.

To even show how dubious this claim is, it is coupled with the eyewitness approach which is utterly bankrupt. The NT material itself during the first oral stage of preaching was obviously altered and modified. Mark used pericopes and strung them together. There is no chronology and material was altered and revised to fit the needs of the community. This is easily demonstrated by form criticism and also looking at independent attestation of various sayings.

Further, we are lacking early manuscripts attestation. Though there are several manuscripts and citations of various NT works and Matthew and Luke can be used to check Mark and each other and so forth. Plus the tracing back of various textual families so I do not doubt the overall text of the NT but Josh Mcdowell can take those 25,000 manuscripts and, well, you can figure out what he can do with them. Blatant stupidity like that annoys me.

And then come the fundibots and evangelicals with their inerrancy nonsense: "God never promised the accurate transmission of scripture". I'll bet! LOL

Actually, their view of the Bible as the word of God (in a harder form) needs to be accompanied by such outlandish textual claims. Though it is often dismissed as irrelevant, textual criticism itself defeats harder forms of inspiration and inerrancy. At best it can be consistently held with either natural or qualitative inspiration. That is why we see so many bad apologetics here. They are necessary given their view on the Bible.

I have to agree with Vork when he says this: "It consists of defining "textual validity" in such a way -- transmitted texts -- that only the Bible can win. It's the usual unethical Christian claim, a claim deliberately designed to give the NT some kind of halo of hoary authority."

I'd change "unethical" to "misinformed" or "blinded by zeal to a sacred text" (which itself borders close to being unethical) though.

The early redactions of numerous documents, floating pericopes (e.g. woman caught in adultery), gospel formation and its fluid continuation and so forth should stop us from making outlandish textual assertions. And all these problems come up before we even consider the manuscript attestation chronologically.

Vinnie

Butters

This shows the problem. "I don't know, I don't care. But I STILL know!" How can you argue with people like this?