Another Big Big Thread of Religious Discussion

[Sithdarth]

I saw it about 3-4 months ago on the History channel. I haven't really checked up on it since then so anything could have happened.

Though that was only partially my point. Aside from the dead sea scrolls we know for a fact that a lot of gospels that were just as historically provable as the ones chosen were excluded from the Bible. Now you can go around believing the word of god lead them to do that but I find that awfully convenient that everything excluded would have weakened or completely destroyed the power of the clergy. I also find it convenient that the woman closest to Jesus, aside from his mother, suddenly became a whore with absolutely no proof of it.

I just find absolutely no reason to believe the Bible represents the true teachings of Jesus, assuming he even existed. In fact the whole book is meaningless anyway according to you since you can completely ignore it and believe what you want as long as in the end you acknowledge god as the true god and Jesus as your savior.

Actually now that I reread that last sentence that is probably damn near the only thing the Bible actually got right about early Christianity and that itself is covered under layers of nearly useless crud.

[I_Like_Swordchucks]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

I also find it convenient that the woman closest to Jesus, aside from his mother, suddenly became a whore with absolutely no proof of it.

Thats also just popular misconception. The Bible doesn't say Mary Magdalene was the same woman as the prostitute. I think that story was more or less done to show the depth of forgiveness Jesus gave her, though. As it is said, the more forgiveness translates into more love. But still, thats just buying into public notion rather than what is in the scripture so you're not doing a good job at contradicting the Bible.

So yeah, its convenient, but thats cuz people make up convenient things. Its not at all scripturally accurate (or at least nobody knows if it is or isn't).

[Sithdarth]

Thats also just popular misconception. The Bible doesn't say Mary Magdalene was the same woman as the prostitute. I think that story was more or less done to show the depth of forgiveness Jesus gave her, though. As it is said, the more forgiveness translates into more love. But still, thats just buying into public notion rather than what is in the scripture so you're not doing a good job at contradicting the Bible.

So yeah, its convenient, but thats cuz people make up convenient things. Its not at all scripturally accurate (or at least nobody knows if it is or isn't).

Ok so they don't outright say it but they so strongly suggest it that there is almost no doubt they meant it. Further they downplayed her role in is life or rather the role other gospels give her in his life.

But anyways you've basically made my point. The Bible is less about the true teachings of the man that lived a generation or more before it was compiled in its current form and more about what was politically convenient for the clergy of the time.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

Actually now that I reread that last sentence that is probably damn near the only thing the Bible actually got right about early Christianity and that itself is covered under layers of nearly useless crud.

I think the entire contents of the Bible is meant to reinforce that very teaching. Which parts of it are you considering crud? I'm sure if you ask the right person at the right time in their life, they could come up with a reason for every sentence. Every parable, every sermon is meant to teach something concerning how we act towards each other, or how we should feel during times of crisis. And without the law and the gospel parts, no one would know why a dead man on a cross is so important.

If you read it from the perspective that all of it is false and useless, that's like going to a debate ready to say "no" to every question.

[Ryanderman]

I saw it about 3-4 months ago on the History channel. I haven't really checked up on it since then so anything could have happened.

Oh, the whole Jesus family tomb event? That was shown to be contrived bunk back in the 80's. They just dredged it up again for ratings.

[Sithdarth]

I think the entire contents of the Bible is meant to reinforce that very teaching. Which parts of it are you considering crud? I'm sure if you ask the right person at the right time in their life, they could come up with a reason for every sentence. Every parable, every sermon is meant to teach something concerning how we act towards each other, or how we should feel during times of crisis. And without the law and the gospel parts, no one would know why a dead man on a cross is so important.

If you read it from the perspective that all of it is false and useless, that's like going to a debate ready to say "no" to every question.

Ok so I was a little over zealous it does have a use and that use it what was initially asserted. Christianity is about leading you to live a positive life and as such lead you to salvation. I mean sure you can get there without the virtuous life but at its core Christianity really wants to make you lead that positive life.

Reducing it to pray to Jesus and get a free pass to heaven oversimplifies it as a theology.

But I also realize that the New Testament was compiled from a very small fraction of what was actually written and while useful as parable could very well have precious little to do with the man himself.

Oh, the whole Jesus family tomb event? That was shown to be contrived bunk back in the 80's. They just dredged it up again for ratings.

No I'm talking about how she was supposed to have been one of his closer and more important disciples, an apostle even. Eventually a very important leader of Christians and a great teacher. None of which comes out in the new testament.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

If any other book was compiled in the same manner as the Bible no one would put any stock at all in its total veracity.

Wait wait wait wait wait.

Are you kidding me?

Now I for one cannot attest to having lived two thousand years ago and thus I can't say with any authority that what the New Testament says is an entirely accurate interpretation of events. (It's my faith that justifies my belief in its infallibility, but that's simply not anything I can prove intellectually.)

But what I can note in response to this point is that compared to other ancient and medieval texts...anything before the printing press, really...the Bible is th e most well-documented and preserved story of its type.

Let's put it this way. I'll use Homer as an example, because no one doubts that the Odyssey is Homer's creation and no literature major goes around saying "The Odyssey is an inaccurate depiction that doesn't correlate to Homer's original intent." Now we all know that Homer's fictional idealization of the Trojan War and its aftereffects isn't historical, but I'm arguing a different point here. I'm not debating the historical accuracy of the document as a piece of non-fiction. I'm debating the integrity of the original piece as passed through the generations.
(It's the difference between a civilization two thousand years from now arguing whether "The Lord of the Rings" actually happened VS deciphering whether their future copies of the "The Lord of the Rings" matched what Tolkien originally wrote.)

In other words, I can't say the Bible is definitively true from a rational historical perspective using evidence alone, but I can determine the liklihood that the modern adaptions and translations of the Bible (from King James to the NIV) are accurate representations of what the writers of the New Testament originally wrote. And the overwhelming evidence here is that the Bible is in fact far more "accurate" to the original intent of its authors than any other ancient or medieval text prior to the printing press.

Why? Well, historians look at several factors, including:
* The number of existing ancient documents/stone tablets/manuscripts/etc. that can be dated back to a time period not long after the very first copy of the story was written.
* The correlation between these documents/stone tablets/manuscripts/etc. In other words, will documentation found in, say, Syria, match documenation found in Egypt or Greece? Will documentation transcribed in 120 AD roughly match documentation from 200 AD or 250 AD? It's a matter of percentages; how many of the words stay the same, how many are changed.
* The rough accuracy in which the translations (in different languages) match the original intent. Whenever a document is translated (from Hebrew to Greek, for example) it's bound to lose a tad of its original meaning because many languages just don't have exact equivocals to the original meaning. That's why a copy of "Don Quixote" in Spanish reads much more fluently than a translated English variation. Hell, even if English is your native language, so long as you have a rudimentary capability of reading Spanish you're bound to get more enjoyment out of reading Cervante's original text in the original language. Still, some translations do a better job conveying original intent than others.

Now here's the thing.
There are currently 5,686 manuscripts in ancient Greek of the New Testament.
Now of course, some have "holes" in them. (A few have missing segments or paragraphs because before the printing press transcribing documents was a messy, flawed process.) Some aren't entirely "accurate." Some are mistranslated.

But when you have 5,686 manuscripts of New Testament material that can be dated back to ancient Greek alone that's a pretty freakin' impressive library of material to draw from.

Now here's the fascinating part.

The earliest original manuscript of Homer's Iliad that we have available can be dated to 400 BC.

Homer is projected to have originally composed his work in 900 BC.

That's a 500 year gap between the composition of the work and the first original manuscript we have available.

New Testament fragments of John (the Gospel) -- considered the most potentially inaccurate Gospel of the four because it was written after Matthew, Luke and Mark (and also the most controversial due to its claims regarding Jesus' divinity) have been dated on papyrus (currently located in John Rylands Library, England) to 125 AD.

That's approximately a thirty year gap between the time period that most secular historians believe John was written (the 96 AD date is often used in fact to disprove the historical accuracy of John because it was written 50+ years after Jesus' death.) Even assuming the Christian evangelical belief that John was actually composed twenty years prior it's still only a fifty year gap.

And that's just the earliest documentation we have of John. The fact that there's hundreds if not thousands of other ancient documents of John that correlate fairly well suggests a story that was kept largely intact throughout the years.

To Quote the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry: (Horray for biased sources, but I believe the point made here is legit, and it's not as if atheists are going to shy away from quoting atheistic authors here.)

"If the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors mentioned in the chart at the beginning of the paper. On the other hand, if the critics acknowledge the historicity and writings of those other individuals, then they must also retain the historicity and writings of the New Testament authors; after all, the evidence for the New Testament's reliability is far greater than the others. The Christian has substantially superior criteria for affirming the New Testament documents than he does for any other ancient writing. It is good evidence on which to base the trust in the reliability of the New Testament."

I mean the earliest manuscript we have of Aristotle has been dated to 1100 AD, and there are only 49 copies of Aristotle's work -- even just fragments included -- that can be dated pre-printing press. And yet historians always seem convinced that Aristotle's beliefs and concepts are somewhat accurately represented.

Now I'm not going to go as far as the Christian apologetics do and say that this point necessarily means the New Testament is "reliable" from a historical perspective. Hell they're comparing the New Testament here to Homer's fiction and several other documents that don't exactly claim to have a Son of God that is resurrected.

Again, all I'm saying is that we have plenty of evidence that precedes the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. So first, any claims that "the New Testament was manufactured in the 300s or later in some blatant evil conspiracy of folks who wanted to use the religion to control the masses" can be sharply disproven. Certainly Christianity as a practice became abused in the Middle Ages to support a whole lot of secular garbage, but the original documentation posits the main thematics of the Christian religion far before Christianity was even popular enough for the powerful to desire to manipulate.

[Fifthfiend]

If the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors mentioned in the chart at the beginning of the paper. On the other hand, if the critics acknowledge the historicity and writings of those other individuals, then they must also retain the historicity and writings of the New Testament authors; after all, the evidence for the New Testament's reliability is far greater than the others.

The problem with that is the writings of Plato, Aristotle etc. don't have any intrinsic value other than whatever's written down. Either the writings of theirs that survive are meaningful philosophical observations or they aren't, regardless of whether they were accurately transcribed. Hell Homer was outright fiction; if the versions of the Illiad and the Oddysey that survive today are worthwhile stories then they remain worthwhile stories regardless of whether they're exactly as Homer originally wrote them down.

By comparison the New Testament is put forward as, you know, the word of the Son of God, so whatever it says is basically held to be right due to the Son of God said so.

A student of philosophy is perfectly free to study the philosophy put forward in modern times under the name of Plato and say well okay, that's a bunch of horseshit, and move on to some other philosopher or group of philosophers he feels more accurately describes the world. A worshipper in the Christian faith really has no such option; arguments about his precise meaning aside, if Jesus said it then that's kind of what the fuck you got to do, which makes it a much bigger deal whether a particular thing is actually what Jesus happened to say.

[Sithdarth]

Thank you solid snake for completely missing my point in just about every conceivable way. I was not in fact attacking the concept that the gospels survived as written from their original text. They probably did. I was attacking the fact there were upwards of 20 or so of them all saying relatively different things and only 4 made it into the new testament. Ok so some because their authorship couldn't be traced but there were others that had just as much proof going for them as the Canonical ones. Those were not included because they clashed with the ideas of those you formed the bible and that's what makes it an unreliable representation of Jesus' true teachings.

To use your example it'd be like writing a book purporting to be the entire works of Homer and leaving out the Odyssey because you thought it was long winded and boring. That or because you didn't like the virtue portrayed in it. So again I wasn't saying the gospels they chose were completely inaccurate. Its just that their internal inconsistencies and the fact they represented less than 1/4 of what was actually written at the time make it very probable that they don't paint an accurate picture of early Christian beliefs. Any book complied in that manner would have just as little creditability as an accurate and full account of what it purports to be an account of.

[Solid Snake]

First of all, just a quick response to fifthfiend, in which I will quote myself:

Originally Posted by Me

Now I'm not going to go as far as the Christian apologetics do and say that this point necessarily means the New Testament is "reliable" from a historical perspective. Hell they're comparing the New Testament here to Homer's fiction and several other documents that don't exactly claim to have a Son of God that is resurrected.

I mean essentially I'm not disagreeing with you there, fifth. The New Testament's claims are entirely on another league than Aristotle's work or Homer's Odyssey so really, no argument there. As I noted at the very beginning of my spiel, the reason I accept the historical authenticity of the New Testament is because I have faith in its accuracy and that faith has been confirmed to me personally through revelation from God in that mirky spiritual sense that I simply cannot prove to you using intellectual knowledge. From that perspective, of course I can't make a case to you that the New Testament is 100% accurate because I didn't live two thousand years ago and those kinds of claims just can't be intellectually investigated with much success.

I mean basically if there was some sort of "proof" in the world that scientists could dig up that would verify the Bible in its entirety then damn, everyone'd believe already, because surely there are more than enough Christian scientists and apologetics out there who have spent the past couple thousand years digging for their proof. But God pretty accurately outlines in both Testaments anyway that faith and faith alone is the mechanism through which he is intimately known, which would seem to actually affirm that no overwhelming evidence regarding his existence will ever be provided.

I still felt my long-winded explanation regarding the authenticity of the New Testament in regards to the intent of the original authors was both valid and worthwhile, even if it's not a game-changing bombsell, it's always worthwhile to disprove the popular notion (supported by the Da Vinci Code among others) that the New Testament was essentially fictionalized in 325 AD by a group of power-hungry eeeevil Romans in the Council of Nicaea. Substantial elements of Christ's story and Paul's subsequent writings in the New Testament have been proven to have existed long before Christianity was popular enough for the powerful to want to corrupt. I mean back in 125 AD Christians were getting burned to death and fed to lions in Rome, I don't think even the smartest of manipulative individuals would have come to the conclusion that Christianity would someday be a dominant religion and that its message should thus be perverted.

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

Thank you solid snake for completely missing my point in just about every conceivable way. I was not in fact attacking the concept that the gospels survived as written from their original text. They probably did. I was attacking the fact there were upwards of 20 or so of them all saying relatively different things and only 4 made it into the new testament. Ok so some because their authorship couldn't be traced but there were others that had just as much proof going for them as the Canonical ones. Those were not included because they clashed with the ideas of those you formed the bible and that's what makes it an unreliable representation of Jesus' true teachings.

First, let's not get into anything ad hominem, okay? I wasn't just writing that to specifically respond to you, I wanted to add something of relevance to the overall discussion. And I'm not nearly as knowledgable regarding the gnostic gospels ("Thomas" and now "Judas" and the like) so I simply can't delve into too much detail as to why Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all acceptable and others were deemed flawed by the early church.

What I can say however is that what I did accurately do in my previous post was essentially disprove that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were "unreliable representations of Jesus' true teachings." You can say that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John may not convey the full story and of course you'd be right. You can say that critical elements may be missing because other gospels or accounts of Jesus' life were dismissed -- sins of "omission," if you will -- and since my specialty area in my religious studies hasn't centered around the gnostics I personally cannot disprove your point.

But there's enough evidence to suggest that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John post-Nicaea Council matched the accounts of the original authors prior to the Nicaea Council. Given that we can now dig up ancient papyrus readings of some of the gospels, let me put it this way -- if the pre-Nicaea accounts of those four gospels differed tremendously from the post-Nicaea Bible there'd be massive controversy that simply couldn't even be contained in the church. I mean if we uncover a papyrus dated back to 125 AD or so someday and it's an early copy of the gospel of Mark and it says "and then Jesus made out with Mary Magdalene" well the media would be all over that shit.

A vast majority of modern archeaological studies in the Middle East are not controlled by the church to the extent with which the church would be able to manipulate its findings.

To use your example it'd be like writing a book purporting to be the entire works of Homer and leaving out the Odyssey because you thought it was long winded and boring. That or because you didn't like the virtue portrayed in it. So again I wasn't saying the gospels they chose were completely inaccurate. Its just that their internal inconsistencies and the fact they represented less than 1/4 of what was actually written at the time make it very probable that they don't paint an accurate picture of early Christian beliefs. Any book complied in that manner would have just as little creditability as an accurate and full account of what it purports to be an account of.

Okay, that's a legitimate argument.
But just to counter it I'd like to make note of the fact that significant portions of the gnostic gospels (the gospel of "Doubting Thomas" for example) are in fact still intact and you can go to your local bookstore and read all about them.

I mean it's not as if the early church was like "we're going to erase these documents entirely out of existence," well they might have tried but they didn't succeed. To use your example it'd be like Homer's Iliad was endorsed by an ancient Greek mythological foundation and the Odyssey was not, but copies of the Odyssey would still exist, the dominant Greek foundation would just attempt to ignore it.

The gnostic writings have still been studied by a variety of Christian and non-Christian scholars to this day. So any attempt by the church to "cover it up" and "erase it from history" in its entirety has clearly failed. Hell, one of my Christian friends owns a rather massive book that details a great deal of the gnostic material (I haven't read it, hence I'm not capable of using it to respond to your questions regarding potential authenticity.)

And new non-canon material -- the gospel of Judas being a most recent example -- is being uncovered all the time. Again, the church can't cover it up. The evidence of the non-canon material is there for all eyes to see, which would seem to me to discredit any argument that Christianity is terribly threatened by it. The worst case scenairo that can be argued is that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John paint a picture for the majority of christian believers that may be incomplete. But Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are certainly more than enough to define my faith and I've never felt shortchanged by not having twenty other gospels to read.

(There's also the additional point that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John largely complement each other despite clearly being written by different authors with different literary style and technique and language employed, whereas most of the gnostic material inherently contradicts each other as well as the "official" accounts, but that's another argument entirely.)