Hughes Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 You conflate claim with fact. In other words, I am claiming that the method as fact is important. You seem to state the method of discovery as fact is unimportant. God's actions are important regarding this and regardless of belief or claims, being led by God enhances the veracity.Being led by God can enhance the veracity, if it can be demonstrated that one is led by God. I search scriptures and I pray and I study.. You call that blind faith, but then if you wish, you can claim any faith is blind. Maybe the God you believe in doesn't require faith? But then did God require the people to follow Moses? It appears to me you are left contradicting yourself and your religous tenets or in the least holding the typical double standard against those you disagree with.It is blind because of the complete lack of credible evidence or physical proof if you like. I search the scriptures and I pray and I study too. However, I don't see any evidence that the BoM is connected to the Gold Plates. Notice though. Moses parted the Red Sea and God brought down 10 plagues on the Egyptians. All of these were a sign to skeptical Jewish believers. So you are telling me you don't believe in God?I am a believer in God.
Vance Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Vance,John 12:38 and Romans 10:16 are quotations of one small part of the Suffering Servant passage. Mosiah 14 quotes all but the first three verses of the passage. You are ignoring Brant's argument, which sets the context of my comment.Perhaps the Apostles John and Paul didn't get the memo either.Mosiah 14:1 Yea, even doth not Isaiah say: Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? John 12:38 That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?Rom. 10:16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? Well, it is obvious that you missed the point I was attempting to make.I will just point you to this thread.
rodheadlee Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Hi Rob, I was curious if you planned on addressing Brant's opening post? Thank You.
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,You quote the following statement that I had made:"There are nearly 6000 extant Greek New Testament manuscripts dating from the time of the apostles to Gutenberg."You keep insisting, despite my explicit denial, that what this statement means is that we have extant manuscripts from around AD 70. That is not what I said, and it is not what I meant.When I said "from the time of the apostles to Gutenberg" I simply meant from that general time period. I didn't mean that we have manuscripts dating from AD 70, just as I didn't mean that we have manuscripts dating from the 1460s (I don't know off the top of my head if we do or not for the latter). My explicit denial that I meant we had extant manuscripts from ca. AD 70 should have been enough to end this part of the discussion. Yet, you write:I think you are being more than a little disengenuous. Didn't you state that the writings were from the time of the appostles. Isn't that around 70 AD, and didn't I ask for a manuscript from that time.No, I am not being even a little disingenuous. No, I didn't state that the extant manuscripts were from the time of the apostles.Your original assertion was that there were not thousands of copies of the NT between the time of Christ and Gutenberg. I have provided documentation proving that there were over 5,800 such manuscripts. Do you stand by your original statement? Yes or No?
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 rodheadlee,Do you mean Brant?Hi Rob, I was curious if you planned on addressing Brian's opening post? Thank You.
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,You didn't answer my question. Have you read Ehrman's book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture? Yes or No? Which of his books, specifically, have you personally read?Really, you have read the book? I cannot gainsay your declaration, but your method of reading apparently requires a glancing depth and perhaps now use it to prop up a kitchen table or some other structure. I have attended some of Ehrman's lectures and read a few of his books. I don't always agree with him, but he does raise good points. Among the lectures I have recorded are 12 hours (an entire course) that deals with the Lost Christianities and battles over authentication. Its one reason I find your position so implausible and entailing a strong double standard.
ERayR Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Being led by God can enhance the veracity, if it can be demonstrated that one is led by God. It is blind because of the complete lack of credible evidence or physical proof if you like. I search the scriptures and I pray and I study too. However, I don't see any evidence that the BoM is connected to the Gold Plates. Notice though. Moses parted the Red Sea and God brought down 10 plagues on the Egyptians. All of these were a sign to skeptical Jewish believers. I am a believer in God.I to am a believer in God. You say that Moses parted the Red Sea and brought down 10 plagues on the Egyptians but you show me no credible evidence.
ebeddoulos Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,In this case Rob is right. There are thousands of copies of New Testament manuscripts (ms.) in roughly the quantities he is stating. These date from times shortly after the apostles until shortly after Guttenberb. None of them are the original autographs and most are not complete. The earliest ms. is just a tiny piece called the Ryland Fragment. One of the later Greek ms. is one especially prepared to deliberately spoof Erasmus. Between these thousands of ms. they contain many hundreds of thousands of copyist errors, additions, deletions, deliberate changes, accidental ommissions, etc. Nobody knows for sure if the Bible as we currently have it is correct. The best educated guess is considered to be either the United Bible Society Greek New Testament or the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. I am under the impression that the text of the two are essentially the same, primarily differing only in their apparatus. These works, good as they are, are disputed; mildly by a few scholars involved in translation projects; hotly by the King James Only bunch.So, using your logic, you don't believe that 2 Peter is connected to our extent documents, therefore you must also doubt the connection of the Plates to the BoM? What a pathetic attempt to claim white is black or in this case that you wish to palm off your logic as if it were mine. I have no more difficulty accepting with certainty that Peter wrote 2 Peter than I have accepting that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon from the plates. That neither may have tangible evidence to that claim does not negate the knowledge, or evidence if you will, which I have gained direct from the Holy Ghost. That you deny the validity of divine evidence does not rebut the evidence nor negate the validity of the claims that Peter wrote 2 Peter and that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon from the plates.With that in mind I do find it interesting and even entertaining that you blindly accept the 2 Peter claim but demand proof of the Book of Mormon claim and yet somehow fail to see the intellectual disharmony of the two positions. Yes, "interesting and even entertaining" is a most apt description.Isn't that called begging the question? Yes and deliberately so.We are talking about how we can verify if it is actually a translation or not. If you know of evidence I've overlooked, I'm all ears. If you honestly think that you have the original Book of Mormon as represented by the Gold Plates, I'd love to see evidence for that. Read and apply Moroni 10:4-5 with real intent. Until you do so, to vainly "kick against the pricks" is your lot in life.Until such evidence is seen I don't think anyone can say that the "Book of Mormon has closer connections to its originals than does the New Testament to the Aramaic originals from which it is translated."I think this was best answered by Thomas Cranmer:"There is no man so deaf as he who will not hear, nor so blind as he that will not see, nor so dull as he that will not understand."(Thomas Cranmer, "Writings and Disputations of Thomas Cranmer" Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1844], pg. 54)
rodheadlee Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 rodheadlee,Do you mean Brant?Yes I did, sorry for the mistake.
Hughes Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 I to am a believer in God. You say that Moses parted the Red Sea and brought down 10 plagues on the Egyptians but you show me no credible evidence.As a believer, I do accept and am convinced that the whole bible is trustworthy. What a pathetic attempt to claim white is black or in this case that you wish to palm off your logic as if it were mine. I have no more difficulty accepting with certainty that Peter wrote 2 Peter than I have accepting that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon from the plates. That neither may have tangible evidence to that claim does not negate the knowledge, or evidence if you will, which I have gained direct from the Holy Ghost. That you deny the validity of divine evidence does not rebut the evidence nor negate the validity of the claims that Peter wrote 2 Peter and that Joseph translated the Book of Mormon from the plates.With that in mind I do find it interesting and even entertaining that you blindly accept the 2 Peter claim but demand proof of the Book of Mormon claim and yet somehow fail to see the intellectual disharmony of the two positions. Yes, "interesting and even entertaining" is a most apt description.None of which helps the problem of credible evidence for the book of Mormon. I'm not demanding anything. Simply searching. Thanks. Yes and deliberately so.Read and apply Moroni 10:4-5 with real intent. Until you do so, to vainly "kick against the pricks" is your lot in life.I think this was best answered by Thomas Cranmer:"There is no man so deaf as he who will not hear, nor so blind as he that will not see, nor so dull as he that will not understand."(Thomas Cranmer, "Writings and Disputations of Thomas Cranmer" Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1844], pg. 54)If a personal testimony is the only credible evidence offered, then you too are agreeing there is none.
ebeddoulos Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 As a believer, I do accept and am convinced that the whole bible is trustworthy.If that truly is the case then using my previous example of 2 Peter, just what "credible evidence" (without resorting to internal evidence and personal testimony since you deny their validity when used as evidence for the Book of Mormon) do you have that it is not pseudepigrapha? Yes, this is a CFR.None of which helps the problem of credible evidence for the book of Mormon. I'm not demanding anything. Simply searching. Thanks. If a personal testimony is the only credible evidence offered, then you too are agreeing there is none.No I am not agreeing. But again I do find it amusing and entertaining that you so lightly dismiss such divine evidence. To do that, you must be terribly internally conflicted. I am also amused and entertained that your definition of "credible evidence" somehow is so narrowly defined so as to exclude NHM, chiasmus and other Hebraisms, cement, weights and measures, appropriate time frames for Hebrew/Egyptian names, Hebrew roots in Uto-Aztecan linguistic studies, mesoamerican/Book of Mormon fortress structure, mesoamerican/Book of Mormon seasonal warfare, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.I shall await with bated breath your explanation as to why you "accept and am convinced" of the authenticity of 2 Peter and the evidence you shall use to buttress the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter without resorting to internal evidence and testimony. I suspect that once again I shall be entertained and amused.I suspect that you will be unable to support the Bible when dealing with the same constraints you insist on those supporting the Book of Mormon.
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 rodheadlee,No problem.Brant's opening post is a lengthy outline of conclusions that he and others have reached regarding various types of evidences for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. To reply in kind would mean to produce some "bullet points" without argumentation that assert contrary conclusions. What I think everyone would like to see is careful discussion of specific issues, such as we are doing in the thread David started in reply to my comment about Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Perhaps at some point I will be prepared to present a similar summary of conclusions regarding the evidence pertaining to the Book of Mormon, but at present I am engaged in researching these issues.Yes I did, sorry for the mistake.
Jeff K. Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,You didn't answer my question. Have you read Ehrman's book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture? Yes or No? Which of his books, specifically, have you personally read?Sorry, I wasn't clear. Yes I have read Orthodox, as well as Misquoting Jesus (he repeats himself on a number of subjects). Misquoting Jesus was a more popular quick read. I trust this answers your questions clearly.
ERayR Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 As a believer, I do accept and am convinced that the whole bible is trustworthy. Yes but what is your credible evidence?
Jeff K. Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,In this case Rob is right. There are thousands of copies of New Testament manuscripts (ms.) in roughly the quantities he is stating. These date from times shortly after the apostles until shortly after Guttenberb. None of them are the original autographs and most are not complete. The earliest ms. is just a tiny piece called the Ryland Fragment. One of the later Greek ms. is one especially prepared to deliberately spoof Erasmus. Between these thousands of ms. they contain many hundreds of thousands of copyist errors, additions, deletions, deliberate changes, accidental ommissions, etc. Nobody knows for sure if the Bible as we currently have it is correct. The best educated guess is considered to be either the United Bible Society Greek New Testament or the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. I am under the impression that the text of the two are essentially the same, primarily differing only in their apparatus. These works, good as they are, are disputed; mildly by a few scholars involved in translation projects; hotly by the King James Only bunch.My point was his loose use of facts. For instance stating we have manuscripts from Apostolic times. The earliest known fragment of a manuscript was 127 AD which means that it was post apostolic, but he was willing to sacrifice accuracy for a quick turn of a phrase (great for rhetoric bad for facts). So unless you believe the apostles were especially long lived (outside of John), we are left with a fragment that is roughly 3.5 by 2.5 inches, roughly a large postage stamp. And this verifies all the books in the Bible?The double standard is clear.I also brought up the less literate continent with a more isolated system of governments in their history. Which upon ignoring, increases the double standard in perception here. I won't even go into the level of proof demanded for the Book of Mormon versus books in the Old Testament (especially given the mention of Moses).In all of these things I see a disengenuous attack versus a reflection of what one knows and an extrapolation of such upon other ideas.
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,You wrote:My point was his loose use of facts. For instance stating we have manuscripts from Apostolic times.Jeff, I have repeatedly denied saying this and in fact have quite patiently explained to you that this was not what I said. You have yet to address that explanation. At this point you are simply lying about what I said.
Jeff K. Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,You wrote:Jeff, I have repeatedly denied saying this and in fact have quite patiently explained to you that this was not what I said. You have yet to address that explanation. At this point you are simply lying about what I said.Mmm.. I thought I had. But I will repeat it....And didn't you say:I didn't say, and don't claim, that any of the extant manuscripts date from the time of the apostles.And didn't you state:This is factually false. There are nearly 6000 extant Greek New Testament manuscripts dating from the time of the apostles to Gutenberg. That's just the number of manuscripts that have survived and that have been cataloged. In addition, there are over 10,000 extant Latin manuscripts, about a thousand extant Coptic manuscripts, and thousands of extant manuscripts in several other languages.Not sure which statement you care to retract. You seem to have trouble keeping your story straight. An excellent illustration how early Christians like yourself will say one thing originally and then perhaps change it later on. Thank for you for the excellent example.
ERayR Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,You wrote:Jeff, I have repeatedly denied saying this and in fact have quite patiently explained to you that this was not what I said. You have yet to address that explanation. At this point you are simply lying about what I said.I think you should go back over your posts in this thread. That is exactly what you said. Now if you want to clarify...?
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 ERayR:Perhaps you also missed this:I think you should go back over your posts in this thread. That is exactly what you said. Now if you want to clarify...?
Kevin Christensen Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Interesting how far from Brant's initial post that the responses have wandered, how little willingness by the skeptics to do more than nibble and quip here and there (Isaiah and calls for an original text before taking another step, seemingly like a relatively safe place from which to launch blanket dismissals), generally trying to move the discussion elsewhere to look in other directions entirely. Going back and looking over Brant's list, and knowing something of the work that supports it, I'm impressed that the substance has come under very little direct criticism. More a general desire to say, "Nothing to see here folks, move along."Brant has a good discussion his methods, his notion of convergence with respect to multiple, interrelated evidences, here, if you scroll down to the video for Defenders of the Book: Surveying the New World Evidence for Book of Mormon Historicity, Brant Gardner, 2006 FAIR Conference http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/HistoricityAnd of course, the Second Witness commentaries begin here:http://www.amazon.com/Second-Witness-Analytical-Contextual-Commentary/dp/1589580419/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295280229&sr=1-1Kevin ChristensenPittsburgh, PS
Vance Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Jeff,You quote the following statement that I had made:"There are nearly 6000 extant Greek New Testament manuscripts dating from the time of the apostles to Gutenberg."That part is rather clear.When I said "from the time of the apostles to Gutenberg" I simply meant from that general time period. I didn't mean that we have manuscripts dating from AD 70, just as I didn't mean that we have manuscripts dating from the 1460s (I don't know off the top of my head if we do or not for the latter).So, you were wrong. Rather than defending it, just admit it. My explicit denial that I meant we had extant manuscripts from ca. AD 70 should have been enough to end this part of the discussion. Yet, you write:Your "explicit denial" was not an admittance that you were wrong. So you left standing two conflicting statements.One is wrong. Rather than defending the error, just admit it. No, I am not being even a little disingenuous. No, I didn't state that the extant manuscripts were from the time of the apostles.Except, THAT IS exactly what you stated.Rather than denying the error, just admit it.
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Vance,May I remind you that Jeff had originally written this (emphasis added):Then your basic reasoning is faulty, unless you can show that there were thousands of New Testament writings during the entire period from Christ until Gutenberg, which there weren't.Should we interpret Jeff to mean that it was incumbent on us to show that there were New Testament writings during the time of Christ (on earth), that is, before Jesus had ascended and any of the NT writings had actually been written? Of course not, and I reasonably and fairly did not press the point. I took him to mean that there were not thousands of NT writings generally anywhere between those two points in time. And that is what I meant when I said "dating from the time of the apostles to Gutenberg." Unfortunately, Jeff was not so reasonable, misconstruing my words to say something I didn't say and refusing to back down even after I explained clearly what I meant. At least my wording didn't assume that there might be NT writings before Christ had ascended!Now, I wish Jeff would move on and either defend his original claim that there were not thousands of NT manuscripts during that "entire period from Christ until Gutenberg" (which one Mormon has already pointed out was incorrect) or admit that claim was incorrect.
Jeff K. Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Your original assertion was that there were not thousands of copies of the NT between the time of Christ and Gutenberg. I have provided documentation proving that there were over 5,800 such manuscripts. Do you stand by your original statement? Yes or No? You have not shown one document from the time of Christ, much less the apostles. I await your reply.
Rob Bowman Posted January 17, 2011 Posted January 17, 2011 Kevin,You wrote:Interesting how far from Brant's initial post that the responses have wandered, how little willingness by the skeptics to do more than nibble and quip here and there (Isaiah and calls for an original text before taking another step, seemingly like a relatively safe place from which to launch blanket dismissals), generally trying to move the discussion elsewhere to look in other directions entirely. Going back and looking over Brant's list, and knowing something of the work that supports it, I'm impressed that the substance has come under very little direct criticism. More a general desire to say, "Nothing to see here folks, move along."I don't think this is a fair assessment of my response. And his opening post really doesn't have any substance to it, as it is merely an outline of assertions, none of which is defended with argumentation in that opening post. That's not a criticism of his opening post; a quick outline of his apologetic conclusions is a nice resource. However, it isn't possible to offer a substantive response to that post that wouldn't go on for many pages. Would you like me to submit a similar post offering a series of assertions without argumentation?You wrote:Brant has a good discussion his methods, his notion of converge with respect to multiple, interrelated evidences, here, if you scroll down to the video for Defenders of the Book: Surveying the New World Evidence for Book of Mormon Historicity, Brant Gardner, 2006 FAIR Conference http://en.fairmormon...mon/HistoricityAnd of course, the Second Witness commentaries begin here:http://www.amazon.co...95280229&sr=1-1I have acquired his commentary series already with the intention of working through it as time permits.
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