BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.
No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Show me objective empirical evidence of the supernatural. You can't. for that reason you can't say reliability what actually happened. You can demonstrate what some people may have written in order to further there theological views, objectives, and agendas. About the only certain thing you can say is there is no certainty with this type of years after the fact written record.Sam Lowry said:They are authentic in that they are reliable copies of what the original writers put on paper (or papyrus). If they cannot be authentic by their very nature, then the past is unknowable and every historian should find another job.TexasScientist said:Authentic to what? If you are saying they are reliable as to what the original writer who first penned them wrote, then no, they cannot be by their very nature. If you are saying reliable to what actually happened in the story they are trying to relate, then no, they cannot be by their very nature. Are they reliable in the sense that an apocalyptic preacher named Jesus was wondering around with a band of followers preaching repentance, and who was crucified, then I think yes.Sam Lowry said:I'm talking about reliable in terms of their authenticity. Whether you believe the faith claims is another issue (or at least it should be another issue). But if you don't believe the books are authentic, you don't believe in the study of history. That's not a very scientific position.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
If you believe they are authentic in that they were dictated or inspired word for word, version by version, then that certainly is a faith claim and has no support in science. You have to view the books of the NT for what they are primarily theological treatises, as opposed to history texts.
As for what actually happened, there's no certain way to determine that from the text itself. It has to be evaluated in light of historical corroboration, credibility of the witnesses, and so on. In this sense, when you say the text is unreliable by its very nature, you're engaging in circular reasoning. You're demanding evidence of the supernatural and then rejecting it precisely because it is evidence of the supernatural.
No. That's just not how it works at all.TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
That's reality.Sam Lowry said:No. That's just not how it works at all.TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
No, it's your subjective opinion of data from your sensory perception.TexasScientist said:That's reality.Sam Lowry said:No. That's just not how it works at all.TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
TS, SCIENCE, of all things, is lending support to the accuracy of the Bible. 99.5% is HUGE. It is sound scientific research.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliabil.%ity of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Again....
Textual criticism has revealed a 99.5% textual purity of the New Testament. You can't get around that.
Yes, textual criticism revealed errors, omissions, changes, additions... only 0.5% of the time. And the vast majority of those errors are insignificant to the meaning of the text- spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors.
Apparently, you are taking these minor errors to qualify your statements like: "There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same." No, none are EXACTLY the same. If two sentences differ by a single spelling error, then they are not the same. You also said, "The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this." No, I do not deny it. It's in agreement with what I said- there are errors, but the vast majority are insignificant. The game you are playing here is amateurish.
Of those that are significant changes, omissions, or additions, there is a lot of debate about them, but again, none significantly affect essential doctrine. The Comma Johannes regarding the trinity in 1 John is not the only doctrinal support of the Trinity in the bible. Regarding the virgin birth and being born again, I do not know of the textual variation that you are referring to that changes these doctrines. If you are referring to how the word "almah" is translated in Matthew as it relates to the prophecy of Isaiah- it does mean "virgin". If you are referring to how "born again" is translated- "born again" is correct. But these are issues of translation, not textual criticism.
The fact is, due to the extensive volume of manuscripts we have of the New Testament, we can perform textual criticism with a high degree of precision. Detecting major differences only ADDS to the strength and validity of textual criticism. Your statement, "There simply is no way to know the original text" is just plain false. That is exactly what the science of textual criticism does.
God's Word.Waco1947 said:
99.5% is true? What is your definition of true?
Begging the question.LIB,MR BEARS said:God's Word.Waco1947 said:
99.5% is true? What is your definition of true?
Jesus was the Word. Jesus' life is the Word.Polycarp said:Im not sure Jesus the Christ is the Word of God (or word of God). John certainly does not claim Jesus to the Word of God. John certainly does not claim that the Word of God became flesh. John does not claim that Jesus is the Logos of God.Waco1947 said:
But, the bible does say what the word of God is. Speaking of Jesus, the gospel of John makes it very clear that the word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. On top of that, the gospel says that the word (the Logos in Greek) was with God in the beginning and that everything that was created was done so by the power of the Logos, God's word.
Hence, the Logos, Christ, and nothing more, is God's word. To declare that anything else is God's word might even be called an act of idolatry.
47, what does the introduction of John claim about Jesus?
Waco, as long as your "litmus" test puts human opinion ahead of Scripture, you worship an idol, not Christ.Waco1947 said:
An oldie, but a good-y. An Occam's Razor for theology.
"If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology. "
Karen Armstrong, "The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness"
TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Waco1947 said:Jesus IS the Word.Polycarp said:Im not sure Jesus the Christ is the Word of God (or word of God). John certainly does not claim Jesus to the Word of God. John certainly does not claim that the Word of God became flesh. John does not claim that Jesus is the Logos of God.Waco1947 said:
But, the bible does say what the word of God is. Speaking of Jesus, the gospel of John makes it very clear that the word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. On top of that, the gospel says that the word (the Logos in Greek) was with God in the beginning and that everything that was created was done so by the power of the Logos, God's word.
Hence, the Logos, Christ, and nothing more, is God's word. To declare that anything else is God's word might even be called an act of idolatry.
47, what does the introduction of John claim about Jesus?
You have a mistranslation of the word for young woman to virgin. You have the word born again, which is a play on words in Greek. We know Jesus didn't say that because he most likely spoke Aramaic and not Greek. That same play on words doesn't work in Aramaic. So we know it is unlikely Jesus said you must be born again the way the story is relayed. These are two known discrepancies that are revealed through textual criticism. There are many scholars who have written and published about these discrepancies and others. The fact that we don't have purported complete copies until over a century after the fact, tells us there is no way to know exactly what the original author wrote. You can say the may approximate the original in some ways, but we know things were added and things were left out from one copy to the next. And in the case of the Gospels, and some of the Pauline letters, we don't even know who wrote the originals. There simply is no way to know the accuracy and reliability of their contents.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Again....
Textual criticism has revealed a 99.5% textual purity of the New Testament. You can't get around that.
Yes, textual criticism revealed errors, omissions, changes, additions... only 0.5% of the time. And the vast majority of those errors are insignificant to the meaning of the text- spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors.
Apparently, you are taking these minor errors to qualify your statements like: "There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same." No, none are EXACTLY the same. If two sentences differ by a single spelling error, then they are not the same. You also said, "The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this." No, I do not deny it. It's in agreement with what I said- there are errors, but the vast majority are insignificant. The game you are playing here is amateurish.
Of those that are significant changes, omissions, or additions, there is a lot of debate about them, but again, none significantly affect essential doctrine. The Comma Johannes regarding the trinity in 1 John is not the only doctrinal support of the Trinity in the bible. Regarding the virgin birth and being born again, I do not know of the textual variation that you are referring to that changes these doctrines. If you are referring to how the word "almah" is translated in Matthew as it relates to the prophecy of Isaiah- it does mean "virgin". If you are referring to how "born again" is translated- "born again" is correct. But these are issues of translation, not textual criticism.
The fact is, due to the extensive volume of manuscripts we have of the New Testament, we can perform textual criticism with a high degree of precision. Detecting major differences only ADDS to the strength and validity of textual criticism. Your statement, "There simply is no way to know the original text" is just plain false. That is exactly what the science of textual criticism does.
You can't teach what you don't know as fact. There is a difference.JXL said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Now that we have abolished the teaching of ancient history, what shall we do next?
Judging from your posts in this thread, TS, that's what you are trying to do.TexasScientist said:
You can't teach what you don't know as fact. There is a difference.
TexasScientist said:You can't teach what you don't know as fact. There is a difference.JXL said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Now that we have abolished the teaching of ancient history, what shall we do next?
TexasScientist said:You have a mistranslation of the word for young woman to virgin. You have the word born again, which is a play on words in Greek. We know Jesus didn't say that because he most likely spoke Aramaic and not Greek. That same play on words doesn't work in Aramaic. So we know it is unlikely Jesus said you must be born again the way the story is relayed. These are two known discrepancies that are revealed through textual criticism. There are many scholars who have written and published about these discrepancies and others. The fact that we don't have purported complete copies until over a century after the fact, tells us there is no way to know exactly what the original author wrote. You can say the may approximate the original in some ways, but we know things were added and things were left out from one copy to the next. And in the case of the Gospels, and some of the Pauline letters, we don't even know who wrote the originals. There simply is no way to know the accuracy and reliability of their contents.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Again....
Textual criticism has revealed a 99.5% textual purity of the New Testament. You can't get around that.
Yes, textual criticism revealed errors, omissions, changes, additions... only 0.5% of the time. And the vast majority of those errors are insignificant to the meaning of the text- spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors.
Apparently, you are taking these minor errors to qualify your statements like: "There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same." No, none are EXACTLY the same. If two sentences differ by a single spelling error, then they are not the same. You also said, "The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this." No, I do not deny it. It's in agreement with what I said- there are errors, but the vast majority are insignificant. The game you are playing here is amateurish.
Of those that are significant changes, omissions, or additions, there is a lot of debate about them, but again, none significantly affect essential doctrine. The Comma Johannes regarding the trinity in 1 John is not the only doctrinal support of the Trinity in the bible. Regarding the virgin birth and being born again, I do not know of the textual variation that you are referring to that changes these doctrines. If you are referring to how the word "almah" is translated in Matthew as it relates to the prophecy of Isaiah- it does mean "virgin". If you are referring to how "born again" is translated- "born again" is correct. But these are issues of translation, not textual criticism.
The fact is, due to the extensive volume of manuscripts we have of the New Testament, we can perform textual criticism with a high degree of precision. Detecting major differences only ADDS to the strength and validity of textual criticism. Your statement, "There simply is no way to know the original text" is just plain false. That is exactly what the science of textual criticism does.
Ehat are we going to do with all the unemployed science teachers. Science is constantly changing ideas as discoveries are made to prove previous theories incorrect.TexasScientist said:You can't teach what you don't know as fact. There is a difference.JXL said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Now that we have abolished the teaching of ancient history, what shall we do next?
TexasScientist said:You have a mistranslation of the word for young woman to virgin. You have the word born again, which is a play on words in Greek. We know Jesus didn't say that because he most likely spoke Aramaic and not Greek. That same play on words doesn't work in Aramaic. So we know it is unlikely Jesus said you must be born again the way the story is relayed. These are two known discrepancies that are revealed through textual criticism. There are many scholars who have written and published about these discrepancies and others. The fact that we don't have purported complete copies until over a century after the fact, tells us there is no way to know exactly what the original author wrote. You can say the may approximate the original in some ways, but we know things were added and things were left out from one copy to the next. And in the case of the Gospels, and some of the Pauline letters, we don't even know who wrote the originals. There simply is no way to know the accuracy and reliability of their contents.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Again....
Textual criticism has revealed a 99.5% textual purity of the New Testament. You can't get around that.
Yes, textual criticism revealed errors, omissions, changes, additions... only 0.5% of the time. And the vast majority of those errors are insignificant to the meaning of the text- spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors.
Apparently, you are taking these minor errors to qualify your statements like: "There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same." No, none are EXACTLY the same. If two sentences differ by a single spelling error, then they are not the same. You also said, "The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this." No, I do not deny it. It's in agreement with what I said- there are errors, but the vast majority are insignificant. The game you are playing here is amateurish.
Of those that are significant changes, omissions, or additions, there is a lot of debate about them, but again, none significantly affect essential doctrine. The Comma Johannes regarding the trinity in 1 John is not the only doctrinal support of the Trinity in the bible. Regarding the virgin birth and being born again, I do not know of the textual variation that you are referring to that changes these doctrines. If you are referring to how the word "almah" is translated in Matthew as it relates to the prophecy of Isaiah- it does mean "virgin". If you are referring to how "born again" is translated- "born again" is correct. But these are issues of translation, not textual criticism.
The fact is, due to the extensive volume of manuscripts we have of the New Testament, we can perform textual criticism with a high degree of precision. Detecting major differences only ADDS to the strength and validity of textual criticism. Your statement, "There simply is no way to know the original text" is just plain false. That is exactly what the science of textual criticism does.
A couple of thoughts before I get to my main point. You're assuming that the double entendre in "born again" is an essential part of the meaning of the passage, that it wouldn't work in Aramaic, and that Jesus couldn't have spoken Greek. None of these things are true. The translation of "virgin" may or may not be accurate, but it's a moot point since Isaiah probably wasn't referring to Jesus anyway.TexasScientist said:You have a mistranslation of the word for young woman to virgin. You have the word born again, which is a play on words in Greek. We know Jesus didn't say that because he most likely spoke Aramaic and not Greek. That same play on words doesn't work in Aramaic. So we know it is unlikely Jesus said you must be born again the way the story is relayed. These are two known discrepancies that are revealed through textual criticism. There are many scholars who have written and published about these discrepancies and others. The fact that we don't have purported complete copies until over a century after the fact, tells us there is no way to know exactly what the original author wrote. You can say the may approximate the original in some ways, but we know things were added and things were left out from one copy to the next. And in the case of the Gospels, and some of the Pauline letters, we don't even know who wrote the originals. There simply is no way to know the accuracy and reliability of their contents.BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:TexasScientist said:It's through scrutiny and textual criticism their reliability is called into question. All you have is pieces and fragments of early copies until well over 100 years after the fact. And those fragments were not contemporaneous to the time they were writing about. It's not until years later that you have what's purported to be a complete copy of anything, and even those are not the same. They are copies of copies of copies etc.There are discrepancies, errors, omissions and additions. You even have other gospels and acts that are written, some of which almost made cannon. There is nothing reliable about who Jesus was or claimed to be other than possibly in broad generalities. This problem continues right on up to today, where you have the Book of Mormon claimed by some as reliable scripture.Oldbear83 said:Yes actually, we can say the Scriptures are the most reliable, due to centuries of scrutiny from experts from every age. Only when rejection of religion became a popular assumption, replacing objective analysis, has the authenticity of Scripture ever been doubted.TexasScientist said:I don't think you can make the statement that they are the most reliable set of ancient texts. You don't know that, and even if you could make the statement they are more reliable than other texts, that doesn't translate to them being reliable.Sam Lowry said:You say second century like it's a bad thing. The earliest copy of Julius Caesar doesn't appear until a thousand years after his death. By any ordinary standard, the NT is the most reliable set of ancient texts you're going to find. Why fear using the ordinary standard?TexasScientist said:Only pieces and fragments of writings by unknown authors, except for some of Paul's letters, with no complete versions until late second century at best.Sam Lowry said:They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.TexasScientist said:All assembled (NT), recognized and written as the words of God 100's of years later by politically appointed men. Seems to me to be the words of men from the minds of men.Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
In simple terms, Scripture has been tested and examined far more rigorously than any other ancient documents, from any time or place. It therefore has earned confidence as reliable on the strength of such examination.
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Regarding the reliability of the NT:
Copies of the original manuscripts were not done in linear fashion, where one copy was made, then a copy of the copy, and so on. In this fashion, errors can be compounded, and the reliability would definitely suffer. But what we have with the NT, rather, is that copies of the original were made geometrically: from one original, 5 copies were made, then 5 copies of each of those 5 were made, etc.
Because of this, the amount of manuscript evidence for the NT dwarfs that of other ancient, historical texts, and so its textual criticism can be very rigorous and precise. There are over 5300 manuscripts of the NT, compared to the closest non-biblical ancient text, Homer's Illiad, which has only 647 existing copies. Also, to your point about the earliest biblical manuscripts being 100's of years after the fact- this is the closest compared to all other ancient texts. Caesar's Gallic Wars and Herodotus' History exist in only a handful of manuscripts that date over a 1000 years after the fact. Josephus and Tacitus survive in only a handful of manuscripts 500 years or so after the fact.
The results of NT textual criticism has revealed that only 2% of the New Testament manuscript evidence have discrepancies. And it is important to note, that most all of these errors are simple spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. And even more importantly, NONE of the errors have any doctrinal significance.
So... we can most certainly say that the New Testament we have today is reliable.No, I'm not joking. The copies we have were all written years after the originals. It's precisely through textural criticism and outright observation the errors, omissions, changes and additions from one copy to the next have been revealed. There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same. There are minor scriveners errors, there are major differences, some of which affect actual meaning and may have doctrinal implications.The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this. There are many textual scholars who have written extensively on this subject. It wasn't until the printing press came about that the final version(s) (yes versions because there were various competing ones) began to be settled. It is precisely through textual criticism that many of the major additions and changes have been exposed. This cannot be denied. It is for these reasons that no one can know what the originals actually said, and it is for these reason that they cannot be relied upon as the original text. There simply is no way to know the original text. The Trinity, virgin birth, and being born again are prime examples of potential doctrinal issues.Quote:
Are you joking? It is through textual criticism that the reliability of the New Testament is solidified! Textual criticism of the NT has revealed that about 99.5% of what we have as the NT today is textually pure, meaning it is the same as the earliest original manuscripts. If you doubt that what was recorded is what actually happened, then you are questioning its accuracy, not reliability. And you are basing that on assumption, not anything scientific, I might add.
Again....
Textual criticism has revealed a 99.5% textual purity of the New Testament. You can't get around that.
Yes, textual criticism revealed errors, omissions, changes, additions... only 0.5% of the time. And the vast majority of those errors are insignificant to the meaning of the text- spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors.
Apparently, you are taking these minor errors to qualify your statements like: "There thousands of copies, and virtually none are the same." No, none are EXACTLY the same. If two sentences differ by a single spelling error, then they are not the same. You also said, "The copies, linear and geometric all reveal errors, omissions, changes and additions. You cannot deny this." No, I do not deny it. It's in agreement with what I said- there are errors, but the vast majority are insignificant. The game you are playing here is amateurish.
Of those that are significant changes, omissions, or additions, there is a lot of debate about them, but again, none significantly affect essential doctrine. The Comma Johannes regarding the trinity in 1 John is not the only doctrinal support of the Trinity in the bible. Regarding the virgin birth and being born again, I do not know of the textual variation that you are referring to that changes these doctrines. If you are referring to how the word "almah" is translated in Matthew as it relates to the prophecy of Isaiah- it does mean "virgin". If you are referring to how "born again" is translated- "born again" is correct. But these are issues of translation, not textual criticism.
The fact is, due to the extensive volume of manuscripts we have of the New Testament, we can perform textual criticism with a high degree of precision. Detecting major differences only ADDS to the strength and validity of textual criticism. Your statement, "There simply is no way to know the original text" is just plain false. That is exactly what the science of textual criticism does.
Waco1947 said:
"Realiable copies of the original?" How in the world would you know that?
You're a minister. How in the world would you not know it?Waco1947 said:
"Realiable copies of the original?" How in the world would you know that?
Apparently I don't know. Enlightenment me with knowledge.Sam Lowry said:You're a minister. How in the world would you not know it?Waco1947 said:
"Realiable copies of the original?" How in the world would you know that?
Very.JXL said:Waco1947 said:
"Realiable copies of the original?" How in the world would you know that?
Are you familiar with the importance placed by the Jewish culture on the accurate transmission of biblical manuscripts?
Waco1947 said:Very.JXL said:Waco1947 said:
"Realiable copies of the original?" How in the world would you know that?
Are you familiar with the importance placed by the Jewish culture on the accurate transmission of biblical manuscripts?
Are you aware that there were 4 written sources to the Old Testament. All with a different slant.
J - written via oral tradition Uses Yahweh for God
E - Elohim - written via oral Tradition used Elohim for God
P - Priestly - The Priests' redactions
D - The final redactor Mostly Deuteronomy
R - Redactors who put four sources together
Oral tradition goes back to events 2,500 BC
But not written down and redactor until nearly 2,000 years after the actual events.
And with a decidedly faith and Hebrew prejudice.
Do you suppose 47 has any notion of the Church Undivided? SMH... engaging with him is very much like beating one's head against the wall. And, yet, I still do from time to time. What the heck is wrong with me?Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
I'm curious, why does everyone keep referring to Waco1947 as a minister or a preacher. He is an atheist, right?curtpenn said:Do you suppose 47 has any notion of the Church Undivided? SMH... engaging with him is very much like beating one's head against the wall. And, yet, I still do from time to time. What the heck is wrong with me?Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
Given his statements, Waco is a maltheist.ShooterTX said:I'm curious, why does everyone keep referring to Waco1947 as a minister or a preacher. He is an atheist, right?curtpenn said:Do you suppose 47 has any notion of the Church Undivided? SMH... engaging with him is very much like beating one's head against the wall. And, yet, I still do from time to time. What the heck is wrong with me?Sam Lowry said:The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.Waco1947 said:
There were hundred of manuscripts copied - each with a translation to the writers prerogative.
As I said in OP
"In fact, when the books of the bible were finally gathered together into one printable volume, starting with Johann Gutenberg back in the 1500's, publishing houses began to compete with one another. One of the sales points they used in pushing their particular product was to say, "Our bible is the word of God" (as opposed to what our competition is printing). As time went by people simply accepted that as fact, rather than understanding that the bible is simply words about God that the Church collected together and declared "sacred scripture," even though even the main branches of Christianity haven't even agreed upon a single list of books that should be included to this very day!"
