BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Waco1947 said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Waco1947 said:

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"Realiable copies of the original?" How in the world would you know that?

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You're a minister. How in the world would you not know it?

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Apparently I don't know. Enlightenment me with knowledge.

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We know because the progression is geometric and not linear. Say that person A writes a text and copies it for person B, B copies it for C, C copies it for D, and so on down to Z. All we have is Z's copy. In that case there's no way to know how accurately it reproduces the original. That's not the case with the NT. There you have person A, who copies it for B1 and B2, who copy it for C1, C2, C3, and C4, who copy it for D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7, and D8, and so on until there are thousands of copies. When those copies agree with each other 99.5% of the time, the chances that it's a coincidence are infinitesimal. It would mean that thousands of copyists all made the same mistakes independently of each other. So it's almost mathematically impossible for the extant copies not to be accurate.

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The problem is the copies made for c1, c2, c3, and c4 are not the same. The copies d1 through d8 are not the same, so you have thousands of copies that are not the same. It's clear that things were added, changed, and omitted, sometimes years later. There is no way to know what the original copy actually said.

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again....(sigh)....which is why we employ textual criticism, by comparing the copies. When they virtually agree 99.5% of the time, yes, we DO have a really good idea what the original actually said (for the umpteenth time!)

When they don't agree, you look at the copies- if among c1, c2, c3, c4... cn, only ONE out of those copies says something that the others don't, you know that part is an addition, and should not be considered authentic. This is the painstaking procedure that was undertaken for thousands upon thousands of manuscript evidence that still exist today. This process has led to a pretty darn good idea what the original text said. You are trying to exaggerate the impact of the differences, saying that because of them we're completely in the dark about what was said. This shows an utter lack of understanding of textual criticism, and/or a predisposition to casting doubt on the reliability of the New Testament regardless of the facts.

Rinse, repeat, recycle.

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Again, the answer is not as simple as you say. For a limited number of copies, you may be able to deduct what was in an earlier copy or not. But, the problem is that the earlier copy was not the original, because there were no purported complete copies of individual books until the third century. Before that its fragments and pieces of books. There are thousands of textual variants between them. There is no way to know what the very first written version actually said.

" Smart man fights imaginary foes, again."

TexasScientist said:

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JXL said:

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TexasScientist said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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TexasScientist said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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TexasScientist said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Waco1947 said:

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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!"

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The canon was assembled and recognized as the word of God more than 1,000 years before Gutenberg.

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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.

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They were written 20 to 50 years after Christ's death, give or take a few years in some cases.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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1. "There is no instance where it can be proved that 'alm designates a young woman who is not a virgin. The fact of virginity is obvious in Gen 24:43 where 'alm is used of one who was being sought as a bride for Isaac." (R. Laird Harris, et al. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, p. 672.)

2. Assuming of course that Jesus, a resident of an area (Galilee) with a high Greco-Roman population, did not speak Greek, one of the standard languages of commerce in the area ... and also assuming that the idea of being born again could not be conveyed in Aramaic.

3. There is no reason to assume that the Gospels were not written by the people to whom authorship has been universally and unanimously ascribed. Even if we assume these authors were invented (for some reason which has never been explained), there would be no reason to invent these particular people as authors of Christianity's most important books.

Look who they are - a hated tax collector, an obscure secretary, a Gentile, and a teenager (at the time the events took place). Why would anyone invent these people? It makes more sense to do what the Gnostics did when they wrote their fake pseudo-Gospels - - they used famous people that everyone would know. The pseudo-Gospels of Thomas and Peter and Mary (among others) were given famous names, but were known to be fake and rejected by the church from the earliest times.

4. Likewise, the evidence of non-Pauline authorship of certain letters is in most cases pretty flimsy to say the least. The argument I've run across most often comes from the vocabulary of the letters, which is plainly nonsense.

5. I've read Bart Ehrman. His arguments rely primary on speculation, conjecture, and guesswork, accompanied by simply omitting data he does not like. For example, in Misquoting Jesus, he talks about his devotion to the textual theories of Westcott and Hort, so important he requires his students to learn them. He also discusses other 19th century textual critics - but he completely omits any mention of Burgon, perhaps the foremost textual critic of that time, much less any mention of the fact that Burgon completely demolished Westcott and Hort's theories (for more information on this, see Burgon's work The Revision Revised).

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1. "There is no instance where it can be proved that 'alm designates a young woman who is not a virgin. The fact of virginity is obvious in Gen 24:43 where 'alm is used of one who was being sought as a bride for Isaac." (R. Laird Harris, et al. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, p. 672.)

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The writer of Matthew in many places, as here, is trying to show that Jesus fulfills prophecy. Here he is trying to say that Jesus virgin birth is a sign from God, i.e. "God is with us" and is a fulfillment of prophecy. So, Mathew is quoting the Greek translation of from the Hebrew Isaiah 7:14 which is a prophecy involving a young woman who has already conceived. The Hebrew word "Alma" for young woman is what is found in Isaiah. The Hebrew word for virgin is Bethulah. It's obvious when Matthew quoted the Greek he used the version with the Greek word Parthenos (i.e. virgin). The writer of Matthew obviously took the word Alma to mean virgin. However, Isaiah 7-8 is clearly talking about a young woman who has already conceived, and therefore could not be talking about a virgin.

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2. Assuming of course that Jesus, a resident of an area (Galilee) with a high Greco-Roman population, did not speak Greek, one of the standard languages of commerce in the area ... and also assuming that the idea of being born again could not be conveyed in Aramaic.

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It is pretty well understood that the native tongue of the Jewish population in first century Palestine was Aramaic. Being fluent and literate in Greek was not the rule.

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3. There is no reason to assume that the Gospels were not written by the people to whom authorship has been universally and unanimously ascribed. Even if we assume these authors were invented (for some reason which has never been explained), there would be no reason to invent these particular people as authors of Christianity's most important books.

Look who they are - a hated tax collector, an obscure secretary, a Gentile, and a teenager (at the time the events took place). Why would anyone invent these people? It makes more sense to do what the Gnostics did when they wrote their fake pseudo-Gospels - - they used famous people that everyone would know. The pseudo-Gospels of Thomas and Peter and Mary (among others) were given famous names, but were known to be fake and rejected by the church from the earliest times.

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The fact is the original copies did not have an author. Authors were assigned to the gospels years later. This isn't disputed. None of them claim to be written by the assigned author. We simply do not know who wrote the first version (written years after-the-fact), and we simply do not know how much the original was altered over time. For this reason, we cannot know with certainty what the originals did or did not say. We do know that no two are the same until the printing press came about. We do know that there were a lot of different ideas about who Jesus was and his nature in the early church, which was not thoroughly hashed out until centuries later after the fact, and to some degree is still not resolved.

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4. Likewise, the evidence of non-Pauline authorship of certain letters is in most cases pretty flimsy to say the least. The argument I've run across most often comes from the vocabulary of the letters, which is plainly nonsense.

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. Not so flimsy that most scholars agree for a variety of reasons, Paul did not write many of the letters attributed to him. Writing under someone else's name wasn't an unheard of practice in ancient times. Quite simply, none of the books in the NT were written for historical purposes. They were not meant as disinterested historical sources of the past. Rather, they were very intentionally slanted messages written with the purpose of shaping a theological idea and faith.

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5. I've read Bart Ehrman. His arguments rely primary on speculation, conjecture, and guesswork, accompanied by simply omitting data he does not like. For example, in Misquoting Jesus, he talks about his devotion to the textual theories of Westcott and Hort, so important he requires his students to learn them. He also discusses other 19th century textual critics - but he completely omits any mention of Burgon, perhaps the foremost textual critic of that time, much less any mention of the fact that Burgon completely demolished Westcott and Hort's theories (for more information on this, see Burgon's work The Revision Revised).

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I'm not familiar with Ehrman's views on Burgon. I do know that Ehrman is considered an authoritative and respected critical scholar despite your characterizations. Much of Ehrman's views are alike and similar to many of his peers and other recognized critical scholars.

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1. Yes, the word is 'almah. And as I said, there is no instance in the Bible when the word refers to anything other than a virgin. Where you got the notion that Isaiah was speaking of "a girl who had already conceived," I have no idea. The text certainly does not say that - here is Young's Literal Translation:

Therefore the Lord Himself giveth to you a sign, Lo, the Virgin is conceiving, And is bringing forth a son, And hath called his name Immanuel, 15 Butter and honey he doth eat, When he knoweth to refuse evil, and to fix on good.

2. As I said, Greek was widely spoken in Galilee.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2015/09/gle398009.shtml

3. You still offer no reason to doubt that the Gospels were written by the authors to whom they are universally ascribed. Since you didn't respond to the question of why they would be falsely ascribed to those particular individuals, here's another point to consider - it's generally known that Mark's Gospel was Mark's account of what Peter told him. If this was untrue, why didn't they just say it was Peter's Gospel? Everyone knew Peter, but who knew Mark?

4. Don't just look at the scholars who say Paul's letters are not authentic - look at the evidence on which they rely. Such "evidence" as the use of certain vocabulary words is hardly enough to support the thesis. The idea of inauthenticity didn't even come about until a German theological school devised it in the early 1800s.

5. Bart Ehrman is a very smart man - smart enough to have figured out that by writing books undercutting Christian theology, he can win the favor of the people who write the New York Times Review of Books. He certainly has scholarly credentials but his books rely heavily on speculation and guesswork (as I saw when I read Misquoting Jesus last year).

https://bible.org/article/gospel-according-bart

BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Tarp duster and others have already discussed the language issue

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His arguments don't hold up. First of all the early " copies" are not complete copies, and are not believed to be originals. They are fragments, some of which fragments show up in later copies and some of which do not show up in later copies. It isn't until years later that so called complete copies begin to show up. They have differences, some of the hundreds of thousands of variants are inconsequential, others are significant. So there is no way to know for sure what was in the original. His argument that comparing incomplete copies assures you have the original, where if you had the original the possessor could change it, doesn't make sense. If a possessor changed the original, it would only be by changing it through another copy. You would still have the original copy to compare unless it was destroyed or lost. In the case of the NT, we only have early fragments, which likely are not original fragments, but are likely fragments of early variant copies. There is no way to know when and what any, especially the gospels, of the original texts said. All these variants indicate that the theology of Christianity was evolving and being hammered out over time by various theologians. The questioner in the video correctly points out one of these conundrums on salvation. I don't believe the lecturer is accurately characterizing Bart Ehrman as saying there are no doctrinal isssues arising from these textual variances. I would like to see him document that statement. I believe the lecturer it is out of context.

By way of example, 1 John 5:7-8 is the only place in the NT that outright says there is a Trinity, three in one. There is no other explicit statement of this doctrine in the NT. However, this verse was not original to the NT, but is a later addition.

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His argument that comparing incomplete copies assures you have the original, where if you had the original the possessor could change it, doesn't make sense.

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His point was that if someone had the original, that one person or group could doctor it/change it, perhaps out of their biased interpretation, and then no one except that person or group would know what was originally said. On the other hand, if NO ONE had the original, but rather 10 people had copies of the original, then if one person tried to make a change, the 9 others have textual proof that he did so, because none of the other copies would show the change. This way, the integrity of the original is protected, rather than being subject to the whims of the one person or group who controls the original. It wasn't that hard to understand.

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I don't believe the lecturer is accurately characterizing Bart Ehrman as saying there are no doctrinal isssues arising from these textual variances. I would like to see him document that statement. I believe the lecturer it is out of context.

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Here is what Bart Ehrman said in his book, Misquoting Jesus, in the appendix:

"Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in 'Misquoting Jesus' does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger's position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament."

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Here is what Ehrman has to say on variants:

"There are many (many!) textual variants that are (virtually) impossible to replicate in English. That is to say, if a verse is worded in two different ways, they mean exactly the same thing, even though in Greek they appear different.

So variants like *that* don't matter much. And that's most variants.

But there are other variants that matter a *lot* variants that change what a verse means or even what an entire *book* means. That matters!

Before explaining that, let me deal head on with the objection that no variants threaten any "significant Christian doctrine." I'm not sure that's *entirely* true depending on what one means by the term "threaten." For example, there is only one verse in the entire New Testament that explicitly teaches the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, 1 John 5:7-8 "There are three in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one." That's the Trinity three persons who are all one. The doctrine is explicitly stated nowhere else. But this verse was not originally in the New Testament. It is a later addition.

But does the fact that the only verse explicitly to teach the Trinity was not in the NT "threaten" the doctrine of the Trinity? Of course not. Theologians will turn to other passages that do not explicitly teach the doctrine in order to provide support for their views that there is a Trinity (for example: verses that say that Jesus is God and that God is God; but the problem is that these verses do not lay out the doctrine that the three are one so they don't teach the doctrine of the Trinity [since there are *other* non-trinitarian ways of thinking that both Jesus and God could be God]. Or verses that mention Christ, the Father, and the Spirit: but again the problem is that *these* verses don't say that Christ and the Spirit are God and that there is only one God in other words, again, they do not lay out the doctrine of the Trinity. Only this one verse, which was not originally in the NT, spells out the doctrine of the Trinity). That's the thing about theology: it is not dependent on any one verse for any of its views, but on an entire panoply of verses on a range of topics that are interpreted in light of each other and in light of the Christian tradition to produce a view that is seen as theologically acceptable. Because of the way that theology *works*, a textual variant by its very nature cannot "threaten" any doctrine. Even if a variant reading says the precise opposite of what a doctrine teaches, theologians can incorporate it into their views by reading it in light of what other contrary texts say.

But does the fact that variants cannot, by their nature, threaten significant doctrines mean that variants are therefore always unimportant and insignificant? In my view there's a very simply answer to the question: NO WAY!!!"

TexasScientist said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Tarp duster and others have already discussed the language issue

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His arguments don't hold up. First of all the early " copies" are not complete copies, and are not believed to be originals. They are fragments, some of which fragments show up in later copies and some of which do not show up in later copies. It isn't until years later that so called complete copies begin to show up. They have differences, some of the hundreds of thousands of variants are inconsequential, others are significant. So there is no way to know for sure what was in the original. His argument that comparing incomplete copies assures you have the original, where if you had the original the possessor could change it, doesn't make sense. If a possessor changed the original, it would only be by changing it through another copy. You would still have the original copy to compare unless it was destroyed or lost. In the case of the NT, we only have early fragments, which likely are not original fragments, but are likely fragments of early variant copies. There is no way to know when and what any, especially the gospels, of the original texts said. All these variants indicate that the theology of Christianity was evolving and being hammered out over time by various theologians. The questioner in the video correctly points out one of these conundrums on salvation. I don't believe the lecturer is accurately characterizing Bart Ehrman as saying there are no doctrinal isssues arising from these textual variances. I would like to see him document that statement. I believe the lecturer it is out of context.

By way of example, 1 John 5:7-8 is the only place in the NT that outright says there is a Trinity, three in one. There is no other explicit statement of this doctrine in the NT. However, this verse was not original to the NT, but is a later addition.

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His argument that comparing incomplete copies assures you have the original, where if you had the original the possessor could change it, doesn't make sense.

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His point was that if someone had the original, that one person or group could doctor it/change it, perhaps out of their biased interpretation, and then no one except that person or group would know what was originally said. On the other hand, if NO ONE had the original, but rather 10 people had copies of the original, then if one person tried to make a change, the 9 others have textual proof that he did so, because none of the other copies would show the change. This way, the integrity of the original is protected, rather than being subject to the whims of the one person or group who controls the original. It wasn't that hard to understand.

Quote:

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I don't believe the lecturer is accurately characterizing Bart Ehrman as saying there are no doctrinal isssues arising from these textual variances. I would like to see him document that statement. I believe the lecturer it is out of context.

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Here is what Bart Ehrman said in his book, Misquoting Jesus, in the appendix:

"Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in 'Misquoting Jesus' does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger's position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament."

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Here is what Ehrman has to say on variants:

"There are many (many!) textual variants that are (virtually) impossible to replicate in English. That is to say, if a verse is worded in two different ways, they mean exactly the same thing, even though in Greek they appear different.

So variants like *that* don't matter much. And that's most variants.

But there are other variants that matter a *lot* variants that change what a verse means or even what an entire *book* means. That matters!

Before explaining that, let me deal head on with the objection that no variants threaten any "significant Christian doctrine." I'm not sure that's *entirely* true depending on what one means by the term "threaten." For example, there is only one verse in the entire New Testament that explicitly teaches the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, 1 John 5:7-8 "There are three in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one." That's the Trinity three persons who are all one. The doctrine is explicitly stated nowhere else. But this verse was not originally in the New Testament. It is a later addition.

But does the fact that the only verse explicitly to teach the Trinity was not in the NT "threaten" the doctrine of the Trinity? Of course not. Theologians will turn to other passages that do not explicitly teach the doctrine in order to provide support for their views that there is a Trinity (for example: verses that say that Jesus is God and that God is God; but the problem is that these verses do not lay out the doctrine that the three are one so they don't teach the doctrine of the Trinity [since there are *other* non-trinitarian ways of thinking that both Jesus and God could be God]. Or verses that mention Christ, the Father, and the Spirit: but again the problem is that *these* verses don't say that Christ and the Spirit are God and that there is only one God in other words, again, they do not lay out the doctrine of the Trinity. Only this one verse, which was not originally in the NT, spells out the doctrine of the Trinity). That's the thing about theology: it is not dependent on any one verse for any of its views, but on an entire panoply of verses on a range of topics that are interpreted in light of each other and in light of the Christian tradition to produce a view that is seen as theologically acceptable. Because of the way that theology *works*, a textual variant by its very nature cannot "threaten" any doctrine. Even if a variant reading says the precise opposite of what a doctrine teaches, theologians can incorporate it into their views by reading it in light of what other contrary texts say.

But does the fact that variants cannot, by their nature, threaten significant doctrines mean that variants are therefore always unimportant and insignificant? In my view there's a very simply answer to the question: NO WAY!!!"

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You are very knowledgeable and very right. But at some point "the church" declared "These are our sacred books." So it is in fear and trembling that we interpret. Orthodox/evangelical/conservatives/supernatural theists guys don't get that. It's a book of faith and the spiritual and existential experience of God.
That's its power not its supernatural theism. That silliness is what your fighting.
Secularists want faith but cannot believe "five impossible things before breakfast."

Waco1947 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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BusyTarpDuster2017 said:

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TexasScientist said:

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LIB,MR BEARS said:

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Tarp duster and others have already discussed the language issue

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His arguments don't hold up. First of all the early " copies" are not complete copies, and are not believed to be originals. They are fragments, some of which fragments show up in later copies and some of which do not show up in later copies. It isn't until years later that so called complete copies begin to show up. They have differences, some of the hundreds of thousands of variants are inconsequential, others are significant. So there is no way to know for sure what was in the original. His argument that comparing incomplete copies assures you have the original, where if you had the original the possessor could change it, doesn't make sense. If a possessor changed the original, it would only be by changing it through another copy. You would still have the original copy to compare unless it was destroyed or lost. In the case of the NT, we only have early fragments, which likely are not original fragments, but are likely fragments of early variant copies. There is no way to know when and what any, especially the gospels, of the original texts said. All these variants indicate that the theology of Christianity was evolving and being hammered out over time by various theologians. The questioner in the video correctly points out one of these conundrums on salvation. I don't believe the lecturer is accurately characterizing Bart Ehrman as saying there are no doctrinal isssues arising from these textual variances. I would like to see him document that statement. I believe the lecturer it is out of context.

By way of example, 1 John 5:7-8 is the only place in the NT that outright says there is a Trinity, three in one. There is no other explicit statement of this doctrine in the NT. However, this verse was not original to the NT, but is a later addition.

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His argument that comparing incomplete copies assures you have the original, where if you had the original the possessor could change it, doesn't make sense.

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His point was that if someone had the original, that one person or group could doctor it/change it, perhaps out of their biased interpretation, and then no one except that person or group would know what was originally said. On the other hand, if NO ONE had the original, but rather 10 people had copies of the original, then if one person tried to make a change, the 9 others have textual proof that he did so, because none of the other copies would show the change. This way, the integrity of the original is protected, rather than being subject to the whims of the one person or group who controls the original. It wasn't that hard to understand.

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I don't believe the lecturer is accurately characterizing Bart Ehrman as saying there are no doctrinal isssues arising from these textual variances. I would like to see him document that statement. I believe the lecturer it is out of context.

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Here is what Bart Ehrman said in his book, Misquoting Jesus, in the appendix:

"Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in 'Misquoting Jesus' does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger's position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament."

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Here is what Ehrman has to say on variants:

"There are many (many!) textual variants that are (virtually) impossible to replicate in English. That is to say, if a verse is worded in two different ways, they mean exactly the same thing, even though in Greek they appear different.

So variants like *that* don't matter much. And that's most variants.

But there are other variants that matter a *lot* variants that change what a verse means or even what an entire *book* means. That matters!

Before explaining that, let me deal head on with the objection that no variants threaten any "significant Christian doctrine." I'm not sure that's *entirely* true depending on what one means by the term "threaten." For example, there is only one verse in the entire New Testament that explicitly teaches the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, 1 John 5:7-8 "There are three in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one." That's the Trinity three persons who are all one. The doctrine is explicitly stated nowhere else. But this verse was not originally in the New Testament. It is a later addition.

But does the fact that the only verse explicitly to teach the Trinity was not in the NT "threaten" the doctrine of the Trinity? Of course not. Theologians will turn to other passages that do not explicitly teach the doctrine in order to provide support for their views that there is a Trinity (for example: verses that say that Jesus is God and that God is God; but the problem is that these verses do not lay out the doctrine that the three are one so they don't teach the doctrine of the Trinity [since there are *other* non-trinitarian ways of thinking that both Jesus and God could be God]. Or verses that mention Christ, the Father, and the Spirit: but again the problem is that *these* verses don't say that Christ and the Spirit are God and that there is only one God in other words, again, they do not lay out the doctrine of the Trinity. Only this one verse, which was not originally in the NT, spells out the doctrine of the Trinity). That's the thing about theology: it is not dependent on any one verse for any of its views, but on an entire panoply of verses on a range of topics that are interpreted in light of each other and in light of the Christian tradition to produce a view that is seen as theologically acceptable. Because of the way that theology *works*, a textual variant by its very nature cannot "threaten" any doctrine. Even if a variant reading says the precise opposite of what a doctrine teaches, theologians can incorporate it into their views by reading it in light of what other contrary texts say.

But does the fact that variants cannot, by their nature, threaten significant doctrines mean that variants are therefore always unimportant and insignificant? In my view there's a very simply answer to the question: NO WAY!!!"

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You are very knowledgeable and very right. But at some point "the church" declared "These are our sacred books." So it is in fear and trembling that we interpret. Orthodox/evangelical/conservatives/supernatural theists guys don't get that. It's a book of faith and the spiritual and existential experience of God.
That's its power not its supernatural theism. That silliness is what your fighting.
Secularists want faith but cannot believe "five impossible things before breakfast."

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Contempt for Scripture is very foolish, Waco.

Facts are not "contempt."

Waco1947 said:

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Facts are not "contempt."

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Spite against the Word of God is contempt, Waco.