Teancum Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 Mr. Eichenwald's reporting leaves a lot to be desired. Against Eichenwald's confident declaration that the story of the woman taken in adultery was fabricated "sometime in the Middle Ages" and "simply never happened," BYU professor and NT text critic Lincoln Blummel notes the following: While the story seems to have been unknown to patristic writers until the end of the fourth century, it is possible that a version was known much earlier. . . . [P]atristic evidence demonstrates that at least by the second century certain Christians were aware of a story about a condemned woman who appeared before Jesus and whose punishment was subsequently nullified or mitigated as a result of the encounter. . . . Different earlier versions of this story suggest that its current form in John is not the original version. Perhaps, then, the story evolved into its present form and was added to John in the fourth or fifth century because its core had an ancient pedigree and its appeal to mercy over punishment was attractive (Lincoln H. Blumell, "A Text-Critical Comparison of the King James New Testament with Certain Modern Translations," Studies in the Bible and Antiquity 3 [2011]: 110, 113). Commentator Andrew Lincoln (not the Walking Dead actor) describes the story in John 7:35–8:11 as "an isolated piece of valuable early non-canonical tradition whose immediate textual context is unknown." He notes that "stories about Jesus still in circulation were often read in the liturgy alongside canonical Gospels, were sometimes written down for lectionary purposes, and then on occasion found their way via copyists into the canonical texts." (Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel according to Saint John [bNTC 4; New York: Continuum, 2005], 527–28). So this wasn't a late forgery, as Eichenwald asserts, but rather an early (and widespread) non-canonical tradition—which may well have an authentic historical core—that later found its way into the main text of the Gospel of John.Then why is the story totally absent from alll earlier manuscripts?
Teancum Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 Obviously written by ateists. You cannot debate with atheists.You cannot debate with superstitious religionists who have no evedince so have to rely on faith only.
Mars Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 Bart Ehrman and many other scholars have proven the bible is not reliable nor what inneranist protestants claim it to be. Proven?
Nevo Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 (edited) The question is whether or not we should judge it as historical mainly because we want to believe it? In other words, if there was a story about Jesus that didn't support our specific view of him or his teachings that had somehow found its way into the scriptures, would you still be making the same argument, or would we suddenly have a good reason to not believe an inconvenient story? I consider almost all extra-canonical stories about Jesus to be spurious (see, e.g., the stories in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). Am I being inconsistent by privileging the story of the woman taken in adultery over against these other early traditions? Maybe. But it's in the canon and the others aren't—and I'm superstitious enough to think that maybe it didn't end up there by accident. Also, the story coheres with the canonical picture of Jesus. The same cannot be said for most of the traditions preserved in the apocryphal gospels. Edited January 6, 2015 by Nevo 1
stemelbow Posted January 6, 2015 Posted January 6, 2015 Bart Ehrman and many other scholars have proven the bible is not reliable nor what inneranist protestants claim it to be. What does proving the bible as not reliable look like? I've read some of Ehrman but I don't think I found him saying the bible is not reliable, unless of course you are saying it is not inerrant or something.
The Nehor Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 The Bible doesn't interpret itself. We all bring to it who and what we are when we read it. We also read it through the lens of whatever tradition we belong to and feel comfortable living within. There's no need to throw out the Bible if a literal interpretation portrays God in ways that we find unsavory. Some have no problem with this kind of portrayal. Others, such as myself, do have a problem. The solution for me was to find a reasonable way to interpret hard passages figuratively. Fortunately, the ancient Christian church that compiled and gave us the Bible provides the means for that kind of figurative interpretation. The Greek fathers of the church (those whose writings are preserved) mostly all tended to interpret the hard Old Testament passages figuratively. This was because the central fact of their faith was Jesus, who was the incarnation of the God who is Love. A saying attributed to Anthony the Great (of Egypt) in the 3rd Century - Anthony is the father of monasticism - succinctly captures what the ancient fathers of the Christian East believed about God: "God is good, dispassionate, and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, is it possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honour Him, and as turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honour Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions. He is good, and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him, but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him to change, but that through our actions and our turning to the Divinity, we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind." It probably goes without saying that most American Christians don't believe in that kind of God, but that's what the ancients in the Christian East believed. For anyone (like me) who finds the idea of God commanding genocide to be reprehensible, it's possible to "save" the Old Testament by interpreting the OT through the lens St. Anthony provides. Thus, anything in the Old Testament that would contradict the central dogma that God is merciful, loving, never gets angry, and punishes no one, is interpreted figuratively as referring to the self-imposed spiritual effects of sin and separation from the divine. The entire OT is interpreted as preserving the story of God's gradual revelation to humankind, which became the story of God manifesting His saving presence to his people in the ancient temple and its liturgy. This includes calling prophets to foretell the future incarnation of the loving God of the Christian revelation. The entire OT "story" culminates in the final revelation of God in His fullness in the person of Jesus. This approach allows for accepting the presence of human interpolations into the OT texts for political and other secular purposes, including attributing violent actions perpetrated by ancient, tribal Hebrews for nation-building purposes to God, while still allowing for a reading of the texts that shows a growing realization over time that God is merciful and demands mercy. From this ground , the ancient Eastern churches selected certain Old Testament texts for inclusion in the Divine Liturgy based on how well they fit within this narrative. While the liturgy was developing, those became the texts that were read to the faithful during church for centuries (the only way the faithful could read the scriptures, as there were no Bibles available for ordinary Christians to own and read at home until well after the invention of the printing press in the 15th Century). It's still like this to this day in the Eastern churches. Except for the Psalms, the OT texts are used in church rarely and only on certain feast days, such as Nativity. The selected texts are those which commemorate God's creation and His loving and saving presence among His people, pointing the way to Christ (outside the liturgy, e.g., in patristic or other spiritual writings, anything in the OT that doesn't fit in with that narrative when interpreted literally, is interpreted figuratively). Apart from those comparatively rare instances of quoting the OT on feast days, and use of the Psalms - which is the church's daily prayer book, it's all New Testament all of the time in the Eastern churches. Atheists who (reasonably, IMO) point to and disdain the violent events attributed to God in the Old Testament, and modern Christians who believe in that God through their literal interpretation of the text, fail to understand any of this. Most of them don't know that such a literal interpretation is a relatively recent development and is dominant primarily within Evangelical Protestant Christianity, which, unfortunately, is the majority position among US Christians but is the minority position both globally and historically. Western Christians, especially Protestants, adopted Anselmian and Calvinist notions of a wrathful God who is offended by sin and must be appeased. Fortunately, these kinds of ideas about an angry God who demanded sacrifice and punishment was never central to Eastern Christian theology and was, in fact, actively opposed by the Greek church fathers who wrote contemporaneously with the formation of the Biblical canon in the early centuries of the ancient church. As many Christians outside of Protestantism know, there is another way - the ancient way. It's possible to be a Christian and still value the Old Testament. There's no need to throw out the Old Testament and the Bible along with it. Just adopt the approach of those who gave you the Bible and interpret it through the lens of a merciful God who only seeks our good, blesses us, never punishes us, and is the lover of mankind. The same approach also allows for the presence of possible interpolations in the New Testament. The oral tradition of the ancient Church, along with the Bible, tells the whole story. The ancients didn't approach historical writing like we do. The ancients didn't seek solely to write pristine histories containing only "what really happened". They had no problem inventing and inserting stories to illustrate spiritual truths if they were consistent with the overarching historical theme being presented - in the case of the gospel writers, this would be anything that may have been added later (such as the story of the woman taken in adultery) that illustrates and expands on the core story of the role of Jesus in saving mankind. Either way, the ancients had no problems like we do with trying to determine which stories are literally, historically factual. They had a different agenda when they wrote. For the ancient Christians, what mattered most was Christ and communicating the means to salvation through a relationship with Him. Modern atheists and skeptics, like the author of the Newsweek article, don't understand any of this - saturated as they are by a bias that accepts only scientific materialism and modern historical-critical methods. They commit anachronisms by projecting their worldview onto the ancient OT and gospel writers and judging the ancient texts accordingly.I disagree with the quotation and this interpretation. The LDS do not believe in a god devoid of parts and passions. The Book of Mormon is clear that God grows angry. In the D&C God tells us even more directly of his anger. I have experienced a bit of the wrath of God myself. It is unique because it is anger without malice but it is very real and terrifying.I agree that many Old Testament writers went way too far in assuming for themselves the right to declare who and what God does and does not like and declaring which punishments are for which sins. Explaining that it was all metaphor is going too far. 1
Rob Osborn Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 You cannot debate with superstitious religionists who have no evedince so have to rely on faith only.You must be atheist. debates already over...
Spammer Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 (edited) I disagree with the quotation and this interpretation. The LDS do not believe in a god devoid of parts and passions. The Book of Mormon is clear that God grows angry. In the D&C God tells us even more directly of his anger. I have experienced a bit of the wrath of God myself. It is unique because it is anger without malice but it is very real and terrifying.I agree that many Old Testament writers went way too far in assuming for themselves the right to declare who and what God does and does not like and declaring which punishments are for which sins. Explaining that it was all metaphor is going too far. Yes, I'm familiar with the LDS understanding of the nature of God. I was speaking only to those who, like me, see an incompatibility between the God of the Christian revelation, the God whose nature is Love, and the God found in certain literal interpretations of the Old Testament text, a God whose actions and dispositions are described using such terms as wrath, anger, and hate. Eastern and Western modes of interpretation of Biblical texts really are quite different, as I've described. Whether the controversial texts should be interpreted literally or figuratively depends on the paradigm we employ when we read the Bible. My point was only that rejecting the literalist paradigm does not have to mean rejecting the Bible. For those who do have a problem with this paradigm and its passionate God who gets angry and uses violence to punish his children (even the perfectly innocent Jesus, who is believed by many to have been punished in our place), there's another way to approach the texts. Many writers among the church fathers who compiled and gave us the Bible in the first place had no problem interpreting metaphorically those texts that attribute violent passions and actions to deity. Edited January 7, 2015 by Spammer 1
Teancum Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 What does proving the bible as not reliable look like? I've read some of Ehrman but I don't think I found him saying the bible is not reliable, unless of course you are saying it is not inerrant or something.Ehrman demonstrates the text has been corrupted by both mistake as well as intentionally. He, as well as others have demonstrated that books that claim to be written by someone or another were not. They also show that some books that some early Christians believed to be scripture were excluded from the canon.How can such a text be considered reliable? Perhaps it is for Mormons who don't believe in innerancy of any scripture and seem quite fine when living prophets over turn, ignore or contradict prior prophets. But it certainly is a problem for conservative Protestants .
Teancum Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 You must be atheist. debates already over...Nope. I am a skeptic and truth seeker. But I am not as narrow minded as you as to simply out of hand dismiss someone's view because they may or may not be live in God or agree with me.
Rob Osborn Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Nope. I am a skeptic and truth seeker. But I am not as narrow minded as you as to simply out of hand dismiss someone's view because they may or may not be live in God or agree with me.What is a skeptic and truth seeker as you imply? Do you believe or disbelieve in God?
stemelbow Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Ehrman demonstrates the text has been corrupted by both mistake as well as intentionally. He, as well as others have demonstrated that books that claim to be written by someone or another were not. They also show that some books that some early Christians believed to be scripture were excluded from the canon. How can such a text be considered reliable? Perhaps it is for Mormons who don't believe in innerancy of any scripture and seem quite fine when living prophets over turn, ignore or contradict prior prophets. But it certainly is a problem for conservative Protestants . Well I'm not making the claims. All things we read have some amount of error to it, but that hardly means they aren't reliable. I guess I'm not sure what you mean when you say the Bible is not reliable. Reliable to do what?
thesometimesaint Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 (edited) What is a skeptic and truth seeker as you imply? Do you believe or disbelieve in God? Agnostics don't know God.Atheists know there is no God.Theists know there is a God. Edited January 7, 2015 by thesometimesaint
bcuzbcuz Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 What does proving the bible as not reliable look like? I've read some of Ehrman but I don't think I found him saying the bible is not reliable, unless of course you are saying it is not inerrant or something.Read Ehtman from cover to cover. Flipping through the pages doesn't provide a good basis for forming an opinion.
bcuzbcuz Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 You must be atheist. debates already over...Strange stance. Do you have the same opinion about discussing topics with believers who don't agree with your own particular brand of belief? If someone states an opinion you don't agree with during a sacrament meeting, do you get up and leave the meeting?
The Nehor Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Strange stance. Do you have the same opinion about discussing topics with believers who don't agree with your own particular brand of belief? If someone states an opinion you don't agree with during a sacrament meeting, do you get up and leave the meeting?In my experience if a believer disagrees with him he calls them an atheist. He has done it to me a few times now. 1
Rob Osborn Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Strange stance. Do you have the same opinion about discussing topics with believers who don't agree with your own particular brand of belief? If someone states an opinion you don't agree with during a sacrament meeting, do you get up and leave the meeting?Someone who mocks the bible or constantly makes pokes towards God or his scriptures is almost always an atheist or sides with ateists. I have debated with a lot of them and have come to find it is fruitless to do such- they have no ability to think rationally.
The Nehor Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Someone who mocks the bible or constantly makes pokes towards God or his scriptures is almost always an atheist or sides with ateists. I have debated with a lot of them and have come to find it is fruitless to do such- they have no ability to think rationally.But mostly I mock you. Does that also make me an atheist?
Teancum Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 What is a skeptic and truth seeker as you imply? Do you believe or disbelieve in God?Does my belief or non beleif in God impacts he validity of what I argue if evidence backs it up?A skeptic and truth seeker is just that. I don't know if there is or is not a god. I hope there is and that this God is like the Christian God and maybe even the God of Mormonism. I am a seeker and open to truth....if the the evidence leads me to God there I will go, if not there I will go.
Teancum Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Agnostics don't know God.Atheists know there is no God.Theists know there is a God.Theists think they know there is a god.
Rob Osborn Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 But mostly I mock you. Does that also make me an atheist?Here is the criteria I see as one being "atheist"1. Deny God2. Makes a mockery of the scriptures3. Makes a mockery of prophets and doctrines4. Continuously cites material and propaganda from known atheists or atheist positionsSo, if you fit one or more of the above then yes I consider one to be atheist.
Teancum Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Someone who mocks the bible or constantly makes pokes towards God or his scriptures is almost always an atheist or sides with ateists. I have debated with a lot of them and have come to find it is fruitless to do such- they have no ability to think rationally.Actually I have spent 40 years studying scripture and writings of the religious and about five studying skeptics and the skeptics are more rational. Religion has to rely on lack of evidence and faith and the unprovable supernatural...thus is irrational oft times. Skeptics look to evidence and critical thinking and science. They are willing to change views based on evidence. This is rational.
The Nehor Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Here is the criteria I see as one being "atheist"1. Deny God2. Makes a mockery of the scriptures3. Makes a mockery of prophets and doctrines4. Continuously cites material and propaganda from known atheists or atheist positionsSo, if you fit one or more of the above then yes I consider one to be atheist.Woohoo!!!! I am an atheist. No more tithing for me. I am going to spend my new surplus on hookers and blow. I get to sleep on Sundays. I can ignore texts from the missionaries asking for a ride. I can participate in the slave trade and become a professional assassin. Thank you Rob.
Rob Osborn Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Actually I have spent 40 years studying scripture and writings of the religious and about five studying skeptics and the skeptics are more rational. Religion has to rely on lack of evidence and faith and the unprovable supernatural...thus is irrational oft times. Skeptics look to evidence and critical thinking and science. They are willing to change views based on evidence. This is rational.Thats the path leading towards atheism in my opinion.
Rob Osborn Posted January 7, 2015 Posted January 7, 2015 Woohoo!!!! I am an atheist. No more tithing for me. I am going to spend my new surplus on hookers and blow. I get to sleep on Sundays. I can ignore texts from the missionaries asking for a ride. I can participate in the slave trade and become a professional assassin. Thank you Rob.Hey, what are friends for?
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