Jesus on Marriage...

[Buford]

Based on the history of the translations, I'd say that is quite an accurate statement by her.

If we had any "originals" closer to the time it was written, that might be helpful.

Did you ever play the game "telephone" in grammar school? I think all small children should be exposed to that game - it's a great learning experience at an age where they remember that lesson the rest of their lives. Well, most will remember it.

They need to call it "my first lesson in critical thought", IMO.

Scribes didn't use the game of telephone to preserve the Scriptures. Sell that to some naive college kid.

Actually that's PRECISELY what they did. Do you think they had printing presses in the 1st century? Most Biblical stories in BCE were handed down according to oral tradition. The Levites were the priestly class. They were the Rabbis and they would send their sons to teach all the other tribes. The sons were raised according to the oral tradition and the very few written documents they grew up with and they passed it along in adulthood orally to the other tribes.

By the time Jesus came along it was still primarily word of mouth. There were written scriptures of course but if someone wanted them they had to copy them BY HAND. Now you are trying to argue that Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc which were written 500-1000 years prior or thereabouts were copied completely accurately every time? You are absolutely delusional.

Furthermore, this manipulation didn't stop (still hasn't). In the Revelation for example we knew for centuries that the number of the beast was 666, right? Sure because the oldest surviving copy said so. But alas...just in the last decade archaeologists have discovered an even older version of Revelation and guess what? The number is not 666, it's 616. Well why would that be? Well it's quite simple. The Jews were using a code known as gematria wherein names are turned to numbers. They did this to avoid being thrown to the lions for speaking against Rome. When you apply gematria to 666 it spells the name of Emperor Nero. When you apply gematria to 616 it spells the name of Emperor Caligula.

The answer is quite obvious. The earlier version refers to the antichrist as Caligula because he was in power when it was written. When Nero took the throne decades later Revelations was copied, but since Caligula was dead and therefore irrelevant, they simply changed it to Nero to reflect a more current state of political affairs.

The scripture have been changed constantly....constantly and it was very much a game of "telephone".

Beast's real mark devalued to '616'

Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616) - This Britain - UK - The Independent

Gematria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

666 wrong number of prophetic beast?

Oh wait, wait.....let me guess. I am a liar and a homo, right? What an unbelievable tool. We would get better debate if we were talking to a parsnip.

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

 

[catzmeow]

Interesting perspective but unfortuantely it won't hold up under scrutiny as there were no political status quo at the time the scriptures were written.

That's why I included the term religious hierarchy in my post (you seem to have missed it).

Right after the alleged crucifixion of Christ, the "doctrines" of the early church were still being formalized. That's why Paul's epistles repeatedly address the subject of "false teachers" that had crept into the faith and his own apostleship from God.

We weren't there, and we don't know exactly what pressures occurred within the early church as it formalized its doctrines, though we have some ideas just from the versions of Paul's epistles that are currently in existence. For at least a century after the death of Christ, Christianity was primarily an ORAL tradition. One thing we do know is that very little of these teachings were written down, and nothing was written down by Yeshua of Nazareth. *A lot of the manuscripts we have are currently in agreement with one another. *But, in light of the fact that we are missing original manuscripts, and that even the earliest authorship of the gospels and epistles is dated even by conservative evangelical scholars as 40+ years after the date of Christ's alleged crucifixion (and is of questionable authorship), we simply don't know what the original versions looked like, what was kept, what was purged, what was destroyed to remove any disharmony in doctrine, etc.

Paul taught only a few years after the death of Christ, but had already labeled some other "Christian" teachers as false. Paul, of course, never met Yeshua of Nazareth, and persecuted the founders of the faith. What was transmitted into the books we have came from oral traditions, told in underground splinter cells of followers practicing an outlawed faith, and not written down until decades after the date of Christ's alleged crucifixion.

Again, we don't have any original copies of even a single manuscript from a single new testament book or epistle. NOT EVEN ONE. In Paul's epistles, you see that Paul is already bucking for leadership in the early church and there is a winnowing process occurring among the remnants of the disciples over control/beliefs/doctrines of the early church.

A little light reading.

Heresy in the Early Church: Christian History Timeline - Christian History & Biography - ChristianityTodayLibrary.com
The 12 Heresies

In addition to the issues listed above, Further, there were many books circulating from around A.D. 100, and many different versions of these books. The essentials of the faith (Nicean Creed) weren't standardized until the First Ecumenical Council, convened by Constantine, at Nicea in 325 (over 300 years after the crucifixion). This council was necessary because the eastern, western, and southern churches based at Constantinople, Rome, and Alexandria were in nearly constant conflict with each other about the orthodox doctrine of the faith. A later council, the Synod of Laodicea, held in 363, compiled a list of the approved versions of books considered to be part of the scriptural canon, but we don't even have access to that list from a.d. 363. During that synod, leaders in the orthodox Catholic church voted on the books to keep or exclude from "scripture." Many books were purged, and "orthodox" versions were identified.

As far as establishing the accepted doctrines of the church, it was a bloody process. Church leaders from Constantinople, Rome and Alexandria were central to the formation of the standard canon and doctrine, and they all routinely fought over minor issues of faith, and involved their congregants in their disputes. Bloody riots in the streets, particularly in Alexandria, involving Christian sects in conflict over minor points of doctrine were routine.

Added to all of the above, Christianity was illegal in Rome from A.D. 64 (under Nero) and then the illegality and subsequent active persecution of Christians was expanded throughout the Roman empire under Domitian in AD 81 and thereafter. The first Christian emperor was Constantine, who finally removed penalties for practice of Christianity in A.D. 313 (Edict of Milan). So, all of the early church documents were constantly under threat and all of the original versions of the books and epistles that make up what we now call the New Testament were either lost or destroyed.

Beyond that, who maintained the copies of the books we do have? The Orthodox Catholic Church, already highly established, craving more social power, and with every motive to purge or remove books that might interfere with its goals.

Because of the uniformity of the manuscripts, we can be fairly certain that the scribes were meticulous in exact copies as much as possible. If there was any question re intent, however, they would sometimes make a notation in the margin of the manuscript, and after careful research and analysis, the experts have identified a number of places in which subsequent copies of the manuscripts probably included some of those 'scribal glosses' which then became part of the whole test rather than an annotation.

Even a cursory reading of the issues around the King James translation makes it clear how politicized this process of translation was. It was even worse under Constantine and during these councils.

None of us really knows what the original story was...an oral tradition that wasn't written down until 40-100 years after the death of the founder of the faith in hundreds of different books that all purported to tell the true story, all of the original versions lost, the authorship of what we have (which dates from 150 AD to the 4th Century) in dispute...

It's really hard to say just what the message was intended to be.

I know you have your faith, but these are compelling issues in terms of determining modern laws on the basis of an archaic and much adjusted set of documents.

 

[Ravi]

btw, didn't Paul say in Galatians that Christians weren't obligated to follow Mosaic law? In fact, they were pretty much forbidden from following it.

 

[Cenotaph]

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

Why?

 

[Ravi]

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

Why?

The funny thing about wikipedia is that it is easier to check their facts than it is to check the Bible's facts.

 

[Buford]

Interesting perspective but unfortuantely it won't hold up under scrutiny as there were no political status quo at the time the scriptures were written.

That's why I included the term religious hierarchy in my post (you seem to have missed it).

Right after the alleged crucifixion of Christ, the "doctrines" of the early church were still being formalized. That's why Paul's epistles repeatedly address the subject of "false teachers" that had crept into the faith and his own apostleship from God.

We weren't there, and we don't know exactly what pressures occurred within the early church as it formalized its doctrines, though we have some ideas just from the versions of Paul's epistles that are currently in existence.

Again, we don't have any original copies of even a single manuscript from a single new testament book or epistle. NOT EVEN ONE. In Paul's epistles, you see that Paul is already bucking for leadership in the early church and there is a winnowing process occurring among the remnants of the disciples over control/beliefs/doctrines of the early church.

A little light reading.

Heresy in the Early Church: Christian History Timeline - Christian History & Biography - ChristianityTodayLibrary.com
The 12 Heresies

For at least a century after the death of Christ, Christianity was primarily an ORAL tradition. Very little was written down, and nothing was written down by Yeshua of Nazareth. A lot of the manuscripts we have are currently in agreement with one another. But, in light of the fact that we are missing original manuscripts, and that even the earliest authorship of the gospels and epistles is dated even by conservative evangelical scholars as 20-40 years after the date of Christ's alleged crucifixion, we simply don't know what the original versions looked like, what was kept, what was purged, what was destroyed to remove any disharmony in doctrine, etc.

Further, there were many books circulating in that era and many different versions of these books. The essentials of the faith (Nicean Creed) weren't standardized until the First Ecumenical Council, convened by Constantine, at Nicea in 325. A later council, the Synod of Laodicea, held in 363, compiled a list of the approved versions of books considered to be part of the scriptural canon, but we don't even have access to that list from a.d. 363. During that synod, leaders in the orthodox Catholic church voted on the books to keep or exclude from "scripture." Many books were purged, and "orthodox" versions were identified.

As far as establishing the accepted doctrines of the church, it was a bloody process. Church leaders from Constantinople, Rome and Alexandria were central to the formation of the standard canon and doctrine, and routinely fought over minor issues of faith. Bloody riots in the streets were routine.

Added to all of the above, Christianity was illegal in Rome from A.D. 64 (under Nero) and then persecution of Christians was expanded throughout the Roman empire under Domitian in AD 81 and thereafter. The first Christian emperor was Constantine, who removed penalties for practice of the faith in A.D. 313 (Edict of Milan). So, all of the early church documents were constantly under threat and all of the original versions of the books and epistles that make up what we now call the New Testament were either lost or destroyed.

Because of the uniformity of the manuscripts, we can be fairly certain that the scribes were meticulous in exact copies as much as possible. If there was any question re intent, however, they would sometimes make a notation in the margin of the manuscript, and after careful research and analysis, the experts have identified a number of places in which subsequent copies of the manuscripts probably included some of those 'scribal glosses' which then became part of the whole test rather than an annotation.

Even a cursory reading of the issues around the King James translation makes it clear how politicized this process of translation was. It was even worse under Constantine and during these councils.

None of us really knows what the original story was...an oral tradition that wasn't written down until 40-100 years after the death of the founder of the faith in hundreds of different books that all purported to tell the true story, all of the original versions lost, the authorship of what we have (which dates from 150 AD to the 4th Century) in dispute...

It's really hard to say just what the message was intended to be.

I know you have your faith, but these are compelling issues in terms of determining modern laws on the basis of an archaic and much adjusted set of documents.

Were Paul's letters altered?

 

[mal]

btw, didn't Paul say in Galatians that Christians weren't obligated to follow Mosaic law? In fact, they were pretty much forbidden from following it.

We get it PhantomRavi... God LOVES Homosexuality.

Everywhere in the Bible that it says otherwise is Wrong...

So says a Liguist or 2 with an Obvious Agenda.

But the Bible was DEAD ON Correctly Translated in regard to Bestiality in Leviticus.

God HATES that Shit.

Loves the Gay though.



peace...

 

[Buford]

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

Why?

Because it's not a secure site and it can be edited by anyone. College professors will not accept Wiki as a primary source if used in college essays and even the founder stated that his site is not to be used as a primary source.

People who still use Wikipedia are amateurs.

 

[Buford]

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

Why?

The funny thing about wikipedia is that it is easier to check their facts than it is to check the Bible's facts.

I think it's hilarious that the bible naysayers use Wikipedia, a site that can be edited by anyone, as a source to prove the Scriptures have been altered.

 

[catzmeow]

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

Wikipedia is a useful conglomeration of information from other sources. I'd advise not dismissing it until you've reviewed the original sources from which it's drawn.

Your meme is so 2005.

 

[catzmeow]

Were Paul's letters altered?

Without access to the original versions, how would we know?

 

[Buford]

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

Wikipedia is a useful conglomeration of information from other sources. I'd advise not dismissing it until you've reviewed the original sources from which it's drawn.

Your meme is so 2005.

I'd advise you to heed the words of the founder and most college professors.

Your meme is so ignorant.

 

[Ravi]

As much as mal wishes otherwise, God would never approve of harming lesser beings....therefore, he'd be against bestiality.

 

[Buford]

Were Paul's letters altered?

Without access to the original versions, how would we know?

So then by your own admission, you don't know if Paul's letters were altered. Next.

 

[Buford]

As much as mal wishes otherwise, God would never approve of harming lesser beings....therefore, he'd be against bestiality.

Wasn't it God who called for the sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament? Next.

 

[Foxfyre]

Interesting perspective but unfortuantely it won't hold up under scrutiny as there were no political status quo at the time the scriptures were written.

That's why I included the term religious hierarchy in my post (you seem to have missed it).

Right after the alleged crucifixion of Christ, the "doctrines" of the early church were still being formalized. That's why Paul's epistles repeatedly address the subject of "false teachers" that had crept into the faith and his own apostleship from God.

We weren't there, and we don't know exactly what pressures occurred within the early church as it formalized its doctrines, though we have some ideas just from the versions of Paul's epistles that are currently in existence.

Again, we don't have any original copies of even a single manuscript from a single new testament book or epistle. NOT EVEN ONE. In Paul's epistles, you see that Paul is already bucking for leadership in the early church and there is a winnowing process occurring among the remnants of the disciples over control/beliefs/doctrines of the early church.

A little light reading.

Heresy in the Early Church: Christian History Timeline - Christian History & Biography - ChristianityTodayLibrary.com
The 12 Heresies

For at least a century after the death of Christ, Christianity was primarily an ORAL tradition. Very little was written down, and nothing was written down by Yeshua of Nazareth. A lot of the manuscripts we have are currently in agreement with one another. But, in light of the fact that we are missing original manuscripts, and that even the earliest authorship of the gospels and epistles is dated even by conservative evangelical scholars as 20-40 years after the date of Christ's alleged crucifixion, we simply don't know what the original versions looked like, what was kept, what was purged, what was destroyed to remove any disharmony in doctrine, etc.

Further, there were many books circulating in that era and many different versions of these books. The essentials of the faith (Nicean Creed) weren't standardized until the First Ecumenical Council, convened by Constantine, at Nicea in 325. A later council, the Synod of Laodicea, held in 363, compiled a list of the approved versions of books considered to be part of the scriptural canon, but we don't even have access to that list from a.d. 363. During that synod, leaders in the orthodox Catholic church voted on the books to keep or exclude from "scripture." Many books were purged, and "orthodox" versions were identified.

As far as establishing the accepted doctrines of the church, it was a bloody process. Church leaders from Constantinople, Rome and Alexandria were central to the formation of the standard canon and doctrine, and routinely fought over minor issues of faith. Bloody riots in the streets were routine.

Added to all of the above, Christianity was illegal in Rome from A.D. 64 (under Nero) and then persecution of Christians was expanded throughout the Roman empire under Domitian in AD 81 and thereafter. The first Christian emperor was Constantine, who removed penalties for practice of the faith in A.D. 313 (Edict of Milan). So, all of the early church documents were constantly under threat and all of the original versions of the books and epistles that make up what we now call the New Testament were either lost or destroyed.

Because of the uniformity of the manuscripts, we can be fairly certain that the scribes were meticulous in exact copies as much as possible. If there was any question re intent, however, they would sometimes make a notation in the margin of the manuscript, and after careful research and analysis, the experts have identified a number of places in which subsequent copies of the manuscripts probably included some of those 'scribal glosses' which then became part of the whole test rather than an annotation.

Even a cursory reading of the issues around the King James translation makes it clear how politicized this process of translation was. It was even worse under Constantine and during these councils.

None of us really knows what the original story was...an oral tradition that wasn't written down until 40-100 years after the death of the founder of the faith in hundreds of different books that all purported to tell the true story, all of the original versions lost, the authorship of what we have (which dates from 150 AD to the 4th Century) in dispute...

It's really hard to say just what the message was intended to be.

I know you have your faith, but these are compelling issues in terms of determining modern laws on the basis of an archaic and much adjusted set of documents.

The manuscripts were produced after the fact, yes, but they were produced by those who experienced the times or who were related to or well acquainted with those who had experienced the times. And we know an enormous amount about why the texts that made it into the Bible were chosen, how they were chosen, and the debates that went into their selection. Mysteries abound within them, yes, and I am reasonably certain they were intentional in the face of the persecutions Chrsitians were receiving from both the orthodox Jews and the Romans. The Apostle Paul himself started out obsessed with a personal goal of stamping out all Christians who, at that time, were considered to be all heretical Jews. Otherwise he wouldn't have cared.

There are components of my religious beliefs that are based on faith, yes. But the history of the growing Church, the debates that went into the theology that was ultimately declared 'orthodox', and why the particular manuscripts were chosen for the Old and New Testaments are all a matter of record, not faith. It does require an extensive amount of rather tedious study to get to the heart of it all.

 

[catzmeow]

When were the original Scriptures first altered and who did it?

We don't have original versions of any of the books/epistles from the new testament. The OLDEST copies currently in existence date from A.D. 150 to the mid-4th century.

Your question is somewhat out of context. First, Christianity was primarily an oral tradition for the first 40 years (earliest estimate of authorship of one of the new testament books) after Christ's death. An oral tradition doesn't have a starting point that can be checked against later versions for errors.

Secondly, we don't know who wrote many of the original versions (it's a point of contention amongst scholars) of the new testament books, when they were written, and what they looked like originally. So, it's hard to say how close what we currently have is to the original documents, which of course, weren't written until decades after the reported crucifixion.

You ask basic questions about a rather complex subject, expecting a black/white answer. The problem is...questions about complex subjects usually don't have black/white answers.

 

[catzmeow]

The manuscripts were produced after the fact, yes, but they were produced by those who experienced the times or who were related to or well acquainted with those who had experienced the times.

That's the story we have, and yet, we don't have any original versions and the authorship of many of the books is questionable. Further, there were clearly disparate perceptions of "the truth"...some were labeled as heresy and attacked, others were labeled as "orthodox" and enhanced. With an oral tradition, maintaining orthodoxy is considerable harder. We don't know for sure which of what are now accepted doctrines were really heresy or orthodoxy, because that distinction resided primarily in the subjective judgement of the original apostles, and moreso...in the subjective judgement of the people who were instructed by those apostles and then dispersed by persecution.

And we know an enormous amount about why the texts that made it into the Bible were chosen, how they were chosen, and the debates that went into their selection

.

Except we don't have the actual list of books dating from 363. Odd, eh? And these decisions weren't made until the mid 4th century, when the faith could already have diverged significantly from the original message.

Mysteries abound within them, yes, and I am reasonably certain they were intentional in the face of the persecutions Chrsitians were receiving from both the orthodox Jews and the Romans. The Apostle Paul himself started out obsessed with a personal goal of stamping out all Christians who, at that time, were considered to be all heretical Jews. Otherwise he wouldn't have cared.

The apostle Paul was also obsessed with putting his own doctrinal stamp on the early beliefs, and largely succeeded, even though Peter was appointed by Christ to lead the early Church.

There are components of my religious beliefs that are based on faith, yes. But the history of the growing Church, the debates that went into the theology that was ultimately declared 'orthodox', and why the particular manuscripts were chosen for the Old and New Testaments are all a matter of record, not faith. It does require an extensive amount of rather tedious study to get to the heart of it all.

After the mid 4th century, you're correct. But, from the first century, we have very little that is original and authenticated.

 

[catzmeow]

As long as you use Wikipedia as a source you're not going to be taken seriously.

Wikipedia is a useful conglomeration of information from other sources. I'd advise not dismissing it until you've reviewed the original sources from which it's drawn.

Your meme is so 2005.

I'd advise you to heed the words of the founder and most college professors.

Your meme is so ignorant.

Congratulations. You've succeeded in avoiding any sort of rational thought about the questions you've asked.

 

[Ravi]

As much as mal wishes otherwise, God would never approve of harming lesser beings....therefore, he'd be against bestiality.

Wasn't it God who called for the sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament? Next.

Yes, he did. That ended with Christ on the cross. A sacrifice to get rid of sin isn't quite the same thing as porking your sheep, dummy.