Bible authenticity and transmission,fully detailed argument.

[Ibn-Ahmed Herz]

Bismillah ar rahman ar raheem--

In this article I will be going through reasons why I feel the bible is not reliable. I encourage Christians to read through and respond to my post with why they feel the evidence is in their favor.

I will be going through the following subjects that pertain to textual criticism.

-Transmission Accuracy
-Source Reliability and Homogeneity
-Textual integrity (Contradictions,errors,etc.)

You will see that many times Christians will claim they have an abundant amount of manuscript evidence for the bible. However when we examine the dates which these manuscripts were written,the agreement among them,and the contradictions found today in our present day version of the bible it forces one to reconsider.

The Greek manuscripts are the main sources for the bible,we shall now see if these sources are reliable. We will first deal with the Transmission chain for the new testament and see why it does not hold.

-Transmission Accuracy
The Gnostic gospels were gospels rejected by the early church before and during the advent of the council of nicea. The council of nicea was held during 325 AD. They were hundreds of books rejected and banned by the early church that are still in existence today but not apart of the present day bible. So the question we must ask is this; How did they know which book was authentic and which one was not? There existed not a single criteria for deciding which book should be included, so how did they go about doing it? It was so bad that the identity of Jesus SAW was now dividing the church,hence one of the reasons the council of nicea was held. The standard belief in the trinity was established in the council of Nicea,along with deciding which books would be included in the standard bible.Which in fact today there is no "standard bible",there are hundreds of different versions and the church uses more books then the protestants.

http://www.gotquestions.org/council-of-Nicea.html

-Source Reliability
Note: A manuscript is a fragment of the bible,most of the time less then 1 percent.
Now we go on to see if the sources are reliable,and to see if the bible can be accurate using it. Scholars hold that there are 5745 Greek manuscripts that give us our bible today. Exactly how useful are these manuscripts,here are the numbers and facts from one of the top biblical scholars in the world, Bruce Metzger. These numbers are not disagreed upon by any living scholar of Christianity today.

How old are the manuscripts? 132 Manuscripts are from 500 years after Jesus Christ even lived. That's 2.5 percent of the entire Greek manuscript collection. 97.5 percent of all the sources for the bible today were written 5 centuries after Jesus Christ even walked on earth. Most of the sources for the bible were written during the middle ages up to the 15/16th century. When you compare the 132 manuscripts(Which doesn't even equal ONE bible) with all the other books banned in the early church it is a wonder Christianity even has a bible today.

Dr. Klaus Junack (German biblical scholar) "Today more than 5,000 manuscripts are known: the overwhelming majority of these are from the medieval and late medieval periods, but on occasion they also preserve readings from the early period."

So how about agreement among the manuscripts? Today christians will tell us that Bruce Metzger calculated the agreement to be 99.5 percent with just minor differences in spelling. This however is false, there is not a single calculation today that gives 99.5 percent,it is a completely made up number, Bruce Metzger never claimed this number. On the contrary he gives a completely different set of numbers. So what is the agreement among the entire source for the bible today?

The total comes out to 62.5 percent agreement. You can see the chart from Bruce Metzger here on the Islamic awareness site. http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

So that means close to half of the entire bible source disagrees with itself.

The two oldest complete NT bibles on earth today, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus has 3,000 disagreements. Most bibles today are only a few hundred pages long,that's about one contradiction per page,not including scribe errors.

-Contradictions

Lol? I don't think I have to go into this just open a bible.





Special thanks to Islamic Awareness Team http://www.islamic-awareness.org/


Asalamu alaikum

 

[Uthman]

:threadapp

 

[Ibn-Ahmed Herz]

2 minor mistakes I made in the article.

1. The early bibles come out to more then just one,but about 2 or 3 barely including vaticanus and sinaiticus.
2. It's actually about 10 contradictions per page and not one.

 

[Trumble]

Since when has 'disgreement', certainly in the sense that is applicable here, been synonymous with 'contradiction'?

The important thing is the message, and ten words or so a page could easily vary without that being changed in the slightest. That's the trouble with this sort of (increasing old and tired) argument, nobody can ever show where the meaning has been significantly changed. As Christians (or at least most of them) do not claim the Bible is the direct word of God, it simply doesn't matter. The example I like to give is that of the works of Plato and Aristotle; fundamentally important philosophers even to this day. Their works, too, were subject to exactly the same sort of errors and yet how many people today claim the meaning and 'message'; of the Republic or Nicomachean Ethics have changed and our understanding of them is 'unreliable'? Nobody!!

 

[AntiKarateKid]

Since when has 'disgreement', certainly in the sense that is applicable here, been synonymous with 'contradiction'?

The important thing is the message, and ten words or so a page could easily vary without that being changed in the slightest. That's the trouble with this sort of (increasing old and tired) argument, nobody can ever show where the meaning has been significantly changed. As Christians (or at least most of them) do not claim the Bible is the direct word of God, it simply doesn't matter. The example I like to give is that of the works of Plato and Aristotle; fundamentally important philosophers even to this day. Their works, too, were subject to exactly the same sort of errors and yet how many people today claim the meaning and 'message'; of the Republic or Nicomachean Ethics have changed and our understanding of them is 'unreliable'? Nobody!!

The message is indeed important but when you have conflicting ideas of what the message is, then it becomes difficult. I am surprised that you think nobody can show that the meaning has changed given the abundance of different early christian sects some of which didn't even believe Jesus pbuh was the son of God, a main part of the current day "meaning".

Moreover, Plato and Aristotle's words do not play as active a role in people's lives as say the Torah, Bible, or Quran. People believe that understanding these books is the purpose fo their entire existence and the gateway into a better future one, to give a quick example. Moreover, religion is a powerful force and people have recognized this and tried to manipulate it. Manipulation of Plato doesn't have the same gravitas as manipulating the Bible.

Also, knowing what EXACTLY God said is much more important than knowing what EXACTLY Plato said.

 

[Trumble]

The message is indeed important but when you have conflicting ideas of what the message is, then it becomes difficult. I am surprised that you think nobody can show that the meaning has changed given the abundance of different early christian sects some of which didn't even believe Jesus pbuh was the son of God, a main part of the current day "meaning".

The 'meaning' being discussed here is that of Biblical passages that exhibit variations between different manuscripts of what are supposedly the same books, particularly the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. As I said, nobody seems able to point out a single instance, despite the number of so-called 'contradictions', where the actual meaning differs beyond the trivial.

Manipulation of Plato doesn't have the same gravitas as manipulating the Bible.

Probably not. We have now moved, though, from a claim of inconsistencies (which are generally acknowledhged as being principally the result of copying errors, etc) to one of deliberate manipulation. Can you produce instances of where such manipulation - materially affecting the meaning of the passage - can actually be proven to have occured?

Also, knowing what EXACTLY God said is much more important than knowing what EXACTLY Plato said.

As I said, most Christians - in contrast to muslims regarding the Qur'an - do not claim the Bible IS "exactly what God said" - so the point seems mute.

 

[AntiKarateKid]

The 'meaning' being discussed here is that of Biblical passages that exhibit variations between different manuscripts of what are supposedly the same books, particularly the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. As I said, nobody seems able to point out a single instance, despite the number of so-called 'contradictions', where the actual meaning differs beyond the trivial.

The existence and conflicts between early Christian sects speaks volumes.

Probably not. We have now moved, though, from a claim of inconsistencies (which are generally acknowledhged as being principally the result of copying errors, etc) to one of deliberate manipulation. Can you produce instances of where such manipulation - materially affecting the meaning of the passage - can actually be proven to have occured?

John 5:7 was taken as the only Bible verse which specifically talked about the trinity. It was later revealed to be a forged verse. You can imagine the great implications of this for people who assert that the trinity is unsupported by the Bible.

As I said, most Christians - in contrast to muslims regarding the Qur'an - do not claim the Bible IS "exactly what God said" - so the point seems mute.

The point is certainly not moot. People are looking for what God said and not what they THINK he said. Both Christians and Muslims want to know. How many different Bibles were burned and destroyed, how many sects were deemed as heretics, and how many people were killed in early Christian history over differences between their biblical manuscripts and theology?

Protestants accuse Catholics of perverting the Bible and adding/deleting verses and vice versa. If the differences were trivial, then such conflict wouldn't arise.

I don't understand your disdain for finding what exactly happened. If crime scene evidence cannot have any doubts as to their history and handling or else it is thrown away, why should we treat the teachings of God, which makes a larger impact, any different?

 

[Trumble]

The existence and conflicts between early Christian sects speaks volumes.

It might on another topic. It has no relevance to this one.

John 5:7 was taken as the only Bible verse which specifically talked about the trinity. It was later revealed to be a forged verse.

You state as fact something that is disputed, but I tend to agree with you. If it was a forgery, though, it was a sixteenth century one and has nothing to do with the differences and contradictions in early manuscripts that the OP was actually about.

How many different Bibles were burned and destroyed, how many sects were deemed as heretics, and how many people were killed in early Christian history over differences between their biblical manuscripts and theology?

I'm sorry, but I don't see the relevance of this. I have no idea.. and neither do you. We are talking about differences between copies of what are supposed to be the same books.

Protestants accuse Catholics of perverting the Bible and adding/deleting verses and vice versa. If the differences were trivial, then such conflict wouldn't arise.

Again quite true but, again, of no relevance to the topic. The Protestant and Catholic division happened 1,000 years or so later.

I don't understand your disdain for finding what exactly happened. If crime scene evidence cannot have any doubts as to their history and handling or else it is thrown away, why should we treat the teachings of God, which makes a larger impact, any different?

I have no such 'disdain', but I see no evidence in the OP's "fully detailed argument" that 'exactly what happened' is being discovered. If the point of your analogy is to suggest that, as the Bible cannot be considered 'reliable', the whole thing should be thrown out (in favour of the Qur'an, obviously) I can see that would make perfect sense to a muslim. But not to a Christian!

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Ibn-Ahmed Herz; and welcome to the forum.

I am not sure how we serve God when we argue against other people’s beliefs. If I were to follow your line of reasoning and think the Bible is wrong, you have left me nothing to believe in other than atheism.

In the spirit of praying to the One God who hears all our prayers despite our differences.

Eric

 

[alcurad]

^hmm, are you suggesting we stop when we have questions:?

IMO, yes there are passages that were significantly altered or even forged outright, but the main problem doesn't actually lie there as much as it lies with the change in 'interpretation'. the verses of the trinity for example could be and are interpreted in so many ways, yet it seems to many that the trinity is all they indicate, and so on.

 

[YusufNoor]

Bismillah ar rahman ar raheem--

In this article I will be going through reasons why I feel the bible is not reliable. I encourage Christians to read through and respond to my post with why they feel the evidence is in their favor.

I will be going through the following subjects that pertain to textual criticism.

-Transmission Accuracy
-Source Reliability and Homogeneity
-Textual integrity (Contradictions,errors,etc.)

You will see that many times Christians will claim they have an abundant amount of manuscript evidence for the bible. However when we examine the dates which these manuscripts were written,the agreement among them,and the contradictions found today in our present day version of the bible it forces one to reconsider.

The Greek manuscripts are the main sources for the bible,we shall now see if these sources are reliable. We will first deal with the Transmission chain for the new testament and see why it does not hold.

-Transmission Accuracy
The Gnostic gospels were gospels rejected by the early church before and during the advent of the council of nicea. The council of nicea was held during 325 AD. They were hundreds of books rejected and banned by the early church that are still in existence today but not apart of the present day bible. So the question we must ask is this; How did they know which book was authentic and which one was not? There existed not a single criteria for deciding which book should be included, so how did they go about doing it? It was so bad that the identity of Jesus SAW was now dividing the church,hence one of the reasons the council of nicea was held. The standard belief in the trinity was established in the council of Nicea,along with deciding which books would be included in the standard bible.Which in fact today there is no "standard bible",there are hundreds of different versions and the church uses more books then the protestants.

http://www.gotquestions.org/council-of-Nicea.html

-Source Reliability
Note: A manuscript is a fragment of the bible,most of the time less then 1 percent.
Now we go on to see if the sources are reliable,and to see if the bible can be accurate using it. Scholars hold that there are 5745 Greek manuscripts that give us our bible today. Exactly how useful are these manuscripts,here are the numbers and facts from one of the top biblical scholars in the world, Bruce Metzger. These numbers are not disagreed upon by any living scholar of Christianity today.

How old are the manuscripts? 132 Manuscripts are from 500 years after Jesus Christ even lived. That's 2.5 percent of the entire Greek manuscript collection. 97.5 percent of all the sources for the bible today were written 5 centuries after Jesus Christ even walked on earth. Most of the sources for the bible were written during the middle ages up to the 15/16th century. When you compare the 132 manuscripts(Which doesn't even equal ONE bible) with all the other books banned in the early church it is a wonder Christianity even has a bible today.

Dr. Klaus Junack (German biblical scholar) "Today more than 5,000 manuscripts are known: the overwhelming majority of these are from the medieval and late medieval periods, but on occasion they also preserve readings from the early period."

So how about agreement among the manuscripts? Today christians will tell us that Bruce Metzger calculated the agreement to be 99.5 percent with just minor differences in spelling. This however is false, there is not a single calculation today that gives 99.5 percent,it is a completely made up number, Bruce Metzger never claimed this number. On the contrary he gives a completely different set of numbers. So what is the agreement among the entire source for the bible today?

The total comes out to 62.5 percent agreement. You can see the chart from Bruce Metzger here on the Islamic awareness site. http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

So that means close to half of the entire bible source disagrees with itself.

The two oldest complete NT bibles on earth today, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus has 3,000 disagreements. Most bibles today are only a few hundred pages long,that's about one contradiction per page,not including scribe errors.

-Contradictions

Lol? I don't think I have to go into this just open a bible.

Special thanks to Islamic Awareness Team http://www.islamic-awareness.org/


Asalamu alaikum

i actually dabble "in the study of" the study of historical criticism and textual criticism. i doubt a post or two could explain it to anyone.

let me paraphrase Bart Ehrman, of the 5,700 Greek manuscripts that we now have, NO TWO are alike! HOWEVER [according to Ehrman] the VAST MAJORITY of the differences [and there are more differences than there are words in the NT!] are spelling errors and word placement in the Greek, which according to Ehrman CANNOT be replicated in English. there ARE differences that affect what a text might mean, but it would be better to stick to what is generally believed by those that do study the field.

now, Professor Luke Timothy Johnson is also highly aware of textual and historical criticism. UNLIKE Ehrman, Professor Johnson's faith is not diminished by this, at least he says as much. the belief is that [and i'm paraphrasing] we still understand the [original] Message in spite of all of the complications. Ehrman would retort that it is impossible to to know what the original message was if you don't know what the original words were!

surprisingly, [and i haven't read Jesus Interrupted yet, but i am reading Misquoting Jesus and iv'e either watched or listened to all but one of Ehrmans lecture sets from the Teaching Company (found here http://www.teach12.com/storex/professor.aspx?ID=150 )] i prefer the approach of Professor Johnson WHEN EXPLAINING just what textual criticism is. (his set is here http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/CourseDescLong2.aspx?cid=6252 ) so let me ask:

just what is textual criticism and how did it come about and why should a Christian OR ANYONE care?

:wa:

 

[Grace Seeker]

-Transmission Accuracy
The Gnostic gospels were gospels rejected by the early church before and during the advent of the council of nicea. The council of nicea was held during 325 AD. They were hundreds of books rejected and banned by the early church that are still in existence today but not apart of the present day bible.

Hundreds? Since you claim that they are still in existence today, you must be able to name them. I'll accept a link so that you don't have to post them. But if you can't produce a scholarly link (not a Dan Brown type of expose that merely makes its own assertions but with no actual facts), then please produce the list with dates.

So the question we must ask is this; How did they know which book was authentic and which one was not?

You assume that authenticity was and should have been that which was key. Please define what you mean by authentic. A book produced by Joe Smoe from Kokomo might be authentic, but that would hardly be sufficient reason to include it in the canon.

There existed not a single criteria for deciding which book should be included, so how did they go about doing it?

Correct, there were mutliple criteria. I think that is a good thing. Not only only would being a verifiably authentic book by Joe Smoo not be enough, it also needed to have something constructive to say. There were letters written by St. Paul that were NOT included in the canon. We would love to have them today, but apparently the early church didn't find them meaningful enough to save as they did some of his others.

It was so bad that the identity of Jesus SAW was now dividing the church,hence one of the reasons the council of nicea was held. The standard belief in the trinity was established in the council of Nicea,along with deciding which books would be included in the standard bible.

The terms "establish" and "deciding" as used here carry a connotation not in keeping with what the Council actually did, which was neither to establish or decide but to confirm that which was already accepted as the norm of the universal church at that time.

Which in fact today there is no "standard bible",there are hundreds of different versions and the church uses more books then the protestants.

There is both truth and falsehood in this statement. It is true that there are hundreds of different versions of the Bible in use today. That is because each translation is a version. So, by this definition, even if you had only one single standard text, but different people each made their own translation of it (say a person named Pickthal, another named Shakir, a third named Yusuf Ali, and yet another name Mohsin Khan), then by definition one would have multiple versions of that particular work that was being translated. So, there is an implied falsehood when despite multiple translations of the Qur'an that there is seen as being only one Qur'an to say that because there are hundreds of different translations of that there are hunderds of different versions of the Bible but only one Qur'an. This is comparing apples and oranges. If using the same standard that says because there is an NIV, a KJV, a RSV, a NRSV, a NASB, etc. means that there are hundreds of different versions of the Bible, then the same things could be said with regard to any book (including the Qur'an) which has hundreds of different translations.

What is true is that Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox and Coptic Christians do not agree on a standard set of books for the canon of scripture. Further it is also true that even when there is agreement on which books compose the canon, that remains disagreement on which of the variant readings found among the multiple manuscripts should be used to determine the text from which a translation is ultimately made. These combined differences are well short of the exageration of being in the hundreds. Indeed, all those hundreds of translations combined are probably based on less than a dozen different texts, but it is true that that still does mean that there is no single standard.

-Source Reliability
Note: A manuscript is a fragment of the bible,most of the time less then 1 percent.
Now we go on to see if the sources are reliable,and to see if the bible can be accurate using it. Scholars hold that there are 5745 Greek manuscripts that give us our bible today. Exactly how useful are these manuscripts,here are the numbers and facts from one of the top biblical scholars in the world, Bruce Metzger. These numbers are not disagreed upon by any living scholar of Christianity today.

How old are the manuscripts? 132 Manuscripts are from 500 years after Jesus Christ even lived. That's 2.5 percent of the entire Greek manuscript collection. 97.5 percent of all the sources for the bible today were written 5 centuries after Jesus Christ even walked on earth. Most of the sources for the bible were written during the middle ages up to the 15/16th century.

All true. But it is also true that there are 25 different papyri written within less than 150 years of the writing of the books of the NT which between them contain the entirety of the NT. And further, I have read, but unfortunately cannot today cite the source, that the early (meaning pre-Nicene) Church fathers quoted all but two verses of the NT.

Note: A manuscript is a fragment of the bible,most of the time less then 1 percent.

This really doesn't bear the significance that many might think. For instance, I just grabbed one of my Bibles. In this particular case it is 1923 pages from Genesis to Revelation. But that isn't just one book, that is a collection of 66 different books (at least in my Protestant Bible). Many of those books are actually fairly short. As the original manuscripts weren't copies of whole Bibles, but collections of different books that would later aggregately come to be known as the Bible, one could have an entire book of Ruth or James and even in its complete form it would be less than 1% of the Bible. Indeed, with a Bible of 1923 pages, 1% = 19.23 pages and nearly half of the books of this particular Bible are that size or less. So, it is not surprising that when dealing with the manuscripts that many of the manuscripts are less than 1% of the totality of the Bible. It would be more unusual if they were larger than that. This is what makes the codexes so important.

So how about agreement among the manuscripts? Today christians will tell us that Bruce Metzger calculated the agreement to be 99.5 percent with just minor differences in spelling. This however is false, there is not a single calculation today that gives 99.5 percent,it is a completely made up number, Bruce Metzger never claimed this number. On the contrary he gives a completely different set of numbers. So what is the agreement among the entire source for the bible today?

The total comes out to 62.5 percent agreement. You can see the chart from Bruce Metzger here on the Islamic awareness site. http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html

So that means close to half of the entire bible source disagrees with itself.

I haven't read either Metzger give a specific number of this before, nor have I any idea howthis Islamic awareness site came up with their numbers. So, I won't speak for any particular precise claim. But having a copy of the Greek New Testament in my possession as I write this, and that edition being a scholarly edition that makes note of all of the variant readings, I can tell you that it isn't every third verse that has a variant reading. That throws considerable doubt on the figures presented here from the Islamic awareness site. In addition, I catch a mis-statement of fact on the Islamic awareness site:

What is seen is that the maximum number of manuscripts that were used were in the preparation of the UBS' Greek New Testament (3rd Edition), i.e., about 18%. The Nestle Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece (26th Edition) uses just about 10% of the available manuscripts.

I have both of these editions of the Greek NT text. The preface to them indicates that they reviewed thousands of texts, but that for the reasons correctly given on the website, they didn't make use of all of them as "it is not the numerical superiority of the manuscripts that matters for numbers mean nothing. What matters is the quality of the manuscripts, their age, text-type, etc. Most contemporary New Testament textual scholars contend that a minority of manuscripts - primarily the earliest ones - preserve the earliest, most authentic wording of the text." And so they only used those in producing their own editions of the NT text.

The two oldest complete NT bibles on earth today, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus has 3,000 disagreements. Most bibles today are only a few hundred pages long,that's about one contradiction per page,not including scribe errors.

I need a citation on this. I just read through the Gospel of Matthew using the UBS text and was only able to identify 25 disgreements between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. An example of the nature of these disagreements is Matthew 11:15. (This difference is repeated again in 13:9 and 13:45, so there are nearly 12% of all of the variance between these two codexs for the book of Matthew in just this one example.) Vacticanus it reads ο εχων ωτα ακουετω meaning "He who has ears, let him hear," using the imperitive form of the verb; and in Sinaticus it reads ο εχων ωτα ακουειν ακουετω meaning "He who has ears to hear, let him hear," using both the infinitive and the imperitive form of the verbs. I'll let you decide the degree to which the meaning is corrupted by either the addition or the deletion of the infinitive. Personally, I think the meaning remains the same.

I don't know what additional errors you might be referencing when you say, "not including scribe errors", my count most certainly does include these errors. No doubt some variants are significant in meaning, but the vast majority are in keeping with the above example. And when those variants are significant, the work of textual criticism helps us to arrive at what was the most likely original text and that is the one used for the work of translation. It is primarily because the variants rarely make any significant difference in the meaning of the passage in which it occurs that we have one committee producing a text arrive at conclusion A and another committee arrive at conclusion B. Again, the example of Matthew 13:9 above. The weight (not the count) for which was the original is about equal. Stephanus produced the "Textus Receptus", from which the KJV was translated, and selected the Sinaiticus rendering as original; while 2 centuries later Wescott and Hort, from which the RSV and the NASB were translated, selected the Vaticanus variant as original. United Bible Societes agrees with Wescott and Hort, and is the basis for most translations since 1975.

In the end, I pretty much see them all as conveying the same message and think, with limited exceptions, this whole argument is much ado about nothing.

 

[Grace Seeker]

just what is textual criticism and how did it come about and why should a Christian OR ANYONE care?

:wa:

It is the study of the existing manuscripts for the purpose of trying to determine most closely what the original reading of that text was before copying introduced errors (be the unintentional or not) to it.

I perceive it to be somewhat akin to the process by which Muslims determine the authenticity of certain hadith based on the credibility, the number and antiquity of the witnesses.

It is important because we do want as accurate of a text to work with as possible. Since the largest number of variants appear to make no overall change in the understanding of the passage no matter which of the variants one adopts as original, it probably isn't as big a deal as some would make it out to be. But when one considers that one is dealing with what we Christians consider to be the word of God, then we want it to be as accurate as possible, and recognize that sometimes even a little change can make a big difference.

 

[Ibn-Ahmed Herz]

Since when has 'disgreement', certainly in the sense that is applicable here, been synonymous with 'contradiction'?

The important thing is the message, and ten words or so a page could easily vary without that being changed in the slightest. That's the trouble with this sort of (increasing old and tired) argument, nobody can ever show where the meaning has been significantly changed. As Christians (or at least most of them) do not claim the Bible is the direct word of God, it simply doesn't matter. The example I like to give is that of the works of Plato and Aristotle; fundamentally important philosophers even to this day. Their works, too, were subject to exactly the same sort of errors and yet how many people today claim the meaning and 'message'; of the Republic or Nicomachean Ethics have changed and our understanding of them is 'unreliable'? Nobody!!

I didn't say 10 words per page,I said 10 contradictions per page in the SOURCES for the bible. So its basically 10 concepts that conflict with each other on each page.

 

[Ibn-Ahmed Herz]

Hundreds? Since you claim that they are still in existence today, you must be able to name them. I'll accept a link so that you don't have to post them. But if you can't produce a scholarly link (not a Dan Brown type of expose that merely makes its own assertions but with no actual facts), then please produce the list with dates.

You assume that authenticity was and should have been that which was key. Please define what you mean by authentic. A book produced by Joe Smoe from Kokomo might be authentic, but that would hardly be sufficient reason to include it in the canon.

There was no criteria used in the council of nicea. If there was please state it.

Correct, there were mutliple criteria. I think that is a good thing. Not only only would being a verifiably authentic book by Joe Smoo not be enough, it also needed to have something constructive to say. There were letters written by St. Paul that were NOT included in the canon. We would love to have them today, but apparently the early church didn't find them meaningful enough to save as they did some of his others.

Letters from Paul is also pulled into question,and second you claim there are multiple criteria for deciding which book should of been banned and which book should have been kept. Very well,how did they decide as to which book should of been kept and which book should of been banned?


The terms "establish" and "deciding" as used here carry a connotation not in keeping with what the Council actually did, which was neither to establish or decide but to confirm that which was already accepted as the norm of the universal church at that time.

The council of nicea was held for a number of different reasons,all the reasons I gave are agreed by the Christians themselves (which books to include,the identity of christ,etc.)



There is both truth and falsehood in this statement. It is true that there are hundreds of different versions of the Bible in use today. That is because each translation is a version. So, by this definition, even if you had only one single standard text, but different people each made their own translation of it (say a person named Pickthal, another named Shakir, a third named Yusuf Ali, and yet another name Mohsin Khan), then by definition one would have multiple versions of that particular work that was being translated. So, there is an implied falsehood when despite multiple translations of the Qur'an that there is seen as being only one Qur'an to say that because there are hundreds of different translations of that there are hunderds of different versions of the Bible but only one Qur'an. This is comparing apples and oranges. If using the same standard that says because there is an NIV, a KJV, a RSV, a NRSV, a NASB, etc. means that there are hundreds of different versions of the Bible, then the same things could be said with regard to any book (including the Qur'an) which has hundreds of different translations.

Completely false,there are so called "corrections" in the newer versions of the new testament today. If you'd like I can post you the verses and as to how they differ. And they also differ in meaning many times,and not just in translations. Also different versions may use different sources,the king james version is used by receptus,however another version may use another source.

What is true is that Protestants and Catholics and Orthodox and Coptic Christians do not agree on a standard set of books for the canon of scripture. Further it is also true that even when there is agreement on which books compose the canon, that remains disagreement on which of the variant readings found among the multiple manuscripts should be used to determine the text from which a translation is ultimately made. These combined differences are well short of the exageration of being in the hundreds. Indeed, all those hundreds of translations combined are probably based on less than a dozen different texts, but it is true that that still does mean that there is no single standard.

You say that Christians do not agree on the books for the bible likes its no big deal. Isn't this the word of god? Yet Christians can't even decide how many books to include in their most important scripture? This quarrel and constant changing in the bible has been going on the entire time the bible has been around,even currently.





All true. But it is also true that there are 25 different papyri written within less than 150 years of the writing of the books of the NT which between them contain the entirety of the NT. And further, I have read, but unfortunately cannot today cite the source, that the early (meaning pre-Nicene) Church fathers quoted all but two verses of the NT.

What do you mean written less than 150 years? I know you aren't talking about the little sliver of papyri with a paragraph on it from john are you? Because that is literally the only text you have anything close to 125-150 years from the original. It is a fact NOT opinion that the christian world only has around 130 manuscripts (2-3 complete bibles) that are before 500 A.D. which is laughable and that's not even considering the variants that existed at that time period as well. Also these 130 manuscripts contradict each other on EVERY page.

This really doesn't bear the significance that many might think. For instance, I just grabbed one of my Bibles. In this particular case it is 1923 pages from Genesis to Revelation. But that isn't just one book, that is a collection of 66 different books (at least in my Protestant Bible). Many of those books are actually fairly short. As the original manuscripts weren't copies of whole Bibles, but collections of different books that would later aggregately come to be known as the Bible, one could have an entire book of Ruth or James and even in its complete form it would be less than 1% of the Bible. Indeed, with a Bible of 1923 pages, 1% = 19.23 pages and nearly half of the books of this particular Bible are that size or less. So, it is not surprising that when dealing with the manuscripts that many of the manuscripts are less than 1% of the totality of the Bible. It would be more unusual if they were larger than that. This is what makes the codexes so important.

This is insignificant to my argument I was merely making a note as to how many pages on average a manuscript holds.

I haven't read either Metzger give a specific number of this before, nor have I any idea howthis Islamic awareness site came up with their numbers. So, I won't speak for any particular precise claim. But having a copy of the Greek New Testament in my possession as I write this, and that edition being a scholarly edition that makes note of all of the variant readings, I can tell you that it isn't every third verse that has a variant reading. That throws considerable doubt on the figures presented here from the Islamic awareness site. In addition, I catch a mis-statement of fact on the Islamic awareness site: I have both of these editions of the Greek NT text. The preface to them indicates that they reviewed thousands of texts, but that for the reasons correctly given on the website, they didn't make use of all of them as "it is not the numerical superiority of the manuscripts that matters for numbers mean nothing. What matters is the quality of the manuscripts, their age, text-type, etc. Most contemporary New Testament textual scholars contend that a minority of manuscripts - primarily the earliest ones - preserve the earliest, most authentic wording of the text." And so they only used those in producing their own editions of the NT text.

The Islamic awareness team did not make the charts,christian scholars did,actually one of the best as I mentioned Bruce Metzger. If you click on the site you can see all the sources for their charts (which are from international christian scholars.

I need a citation on this. I just read through the Gospel of Matthew using the UBS text and was only able to identify 25 disgreements between Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. An example of the nature of these disagreements is Matthew 11:15. (This difference is repeated again in 13:9 and 13:45, so there are nearly 12% of all of the variance between these two codexs for the book of Matthew in just this one example.) Vacticanus it reads ο εχων ωτα ακουετω meaning "He who has ears, let him hear," using the imperitive form of the verb; and in Sinaticus it reads ο εχων ωτα ακουειν ακουετω meaning "He who has ears to hear, let him hear," using both the infinitive and the imperitive form of the verbs. I'll let you decide the degree to which the meaning is corrupted by either the addition or the deletion of the infinitive. Personally, I think the meaning remains the same.

(2) - W. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, p.54 There is the source of one of the scholars and his books along with his page number that says the following. "The variation between two 'Byzantine' MSS will be found to differ both in number and severity from that between two 'Western' MSS or two 'Alexandrian' MSS -- the number and nature of the disagreements between two 'Byzantine' MSS throughout the Gospels will seem trivial compared to the number (over 3,000) and nature (many serious) of the disagreements between Aleph and B, the chief 'Alexandrian' MSS, in the same space." 2

Bert Ehrman Also numbers the disagreements between the two oldest NT manuscripts to around 3,000.

And I highly doubt you went through Both books and looked on every page for errors and contradictions just to respond to my thread.

I don't know what additional errors you might be referencing when you say, "not including scribe errors", my count most certainly does include these errors. No doubt some variants are significant in meaning, but the vast majority are in keeping with the above example. And when those variants are significant, the work of textual criticism helps us to arrive at what was the most likely original text and that is the one used for the work of translation. It is primarily because the variants rarely make any significant difference in the meaning of the passage in which it occurs that we have one committee producing a text arrive at conclusion A and another committee arrive at conclusion B. Again, the example of Matthew 13:9 above. The weight (not the count) for which was the original is about equal. Stephanus produced the "Textus Receptus", from which the KJV was translated, and selected the Sinaiticus rendering as original; while 2 centuries later Wescott and Hort, from which the RSV and the NASB were translated, selected the Vaticanus variant as original. United Bible Societes agrees with Wescott and Hort, and is the basis for most translations since 1975.

In the end, I pretty much see them all as conveying the same message and think, with limited exceptions, this whole argument is much ado about nothing.

When I'm talking about variants I am excluding orthographical errors,I merely stated "besides scribe errors" to push that point.

You are making the old Textual cross reference argument which I'm sorry to tell you but the sources are too corrupted and too young to use that method. If you want an example on how or why please ask and I'll demonstrate it for you.

Here are some facts for you to attempt to refute.

62.5 percent agreement
2-3 bibles before 500 AD
Variants (different gnostic bibles)THAT EXIST TODAY which I am sending you them to your email on your request.
Scribal errors (Orthographical errors).

 

[Ibn-Ahmed Herz]

Oops can an admin fix my response for me please?

 

[Grace Seeker]

I didn't say 10 words per page,I said 10 contradictions per page in the SOURCES for the bible. So its basically 10 concepts that conflict with each other on each page.

Yes, but as I said above, in actually counting them in my Bible, I couldn't find anything close to the number you suggest. Would you cite your source, please. Thanks.

 

[YusufNoor]

It is the study of the existing manuscripts for the purpose of trying to determine most closely what the original reading of that text was before copying introduced errors (be the unintentional or not) to it.

that's the what [pretty much], bot NOT the why. although i would leave out "closely"

I perceive it to be somewhat akin to the process by which Muslims determine the authenticity of certain hadith based on the credibility, the number and antiquity of the witnesses.

i would disagree with that statement, as the authority of Ahadeeth appear to be with the chain of narrators and not so much that the narrators all say different things.IF hadeeths differ, they get listed as well. i am not an authority on either however.

It is important because we do want as accurate of a text to work with as possible. Since the largest number of variants appear to make no overall change in the understanding of the passage no matter which of the variants one adopts as original, it probably isn't as big a deal as some would make it out to be. But when one considers that one is dealing with what we Christians consider to be the word of God, then we want it to be as accurate as possible, and recognize that sometimes even a little change can make a big difference.

i was actually hoping that that OP might take some time to ponder those questions.

to me, the fact that there are numerous changes and differences isn't as important as figuring out why. as most translations are based on Jerome's Vulgate for the most, and those based upon the Septuagint, it would SEEM that the culprits are obvious. too bad it doesn't pan out that way.

so historical criticism is needed as well as textual criticism. as i said, i actually preferred Professor Johnson's explanation of what textual criticism is and why the it began. what Ehrman had done is dispel some myths associated with church history, especially those dealing with Constantine. eg: The Gnostic gospels were gospels rejected by the early church before and during the advent of the council of nicea. The council of nicea was held during 325 AD. They were hundreds of books rejected and banned by the early church that are still in existence today but not apart of the present day bible.

the 2 biggest elements, as i see it, are the realization of the corruption of Religion by Rome and the advent of the printing press. this led to Protestant Churches [maybe not English ones] and their effort to reduce [or maybe RETURN] religion to "sola scriptora," that is to base religion solely on the word of God and not the word of men, howevermuch the NT IS the word of men.

i still think that IF Rome perverted the religion THAT MUCH, and i DO belive they did, then they were NEVER "God's Representative!

i was listening to a lecture by Professor Kenneth Harl on Rome and the Barbarians [ http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/CourseDescLong2.aspx?cid=3460 ], one of the last ones and he was discussing the impotence of the senate after Constantine moved his capitol to Byzantium, and after Constantine's heirs bumbled the Empire. here i believe one of the major clues tumbled out. the senate was STILL pagan. that is UNTIL they decided to become the Papal Fathers.

and Allah knows best!

:wa:

 

[Ibn-Ahmed Herz]

Yes, but as I said above, in actually counting them in my Bible, I couldn't find anything close to the number you suggest. Would you cite your source, please. Thanks.

What does YOUR bible have to do with the SOURCES that contradict each other? As I have stated not all versions use same sources,and different versions use a variety of sources. So the version you have in your hand may just be from a single source. And I doubt you are "counting" all the mistakes in your entire bible,I listed my sources in my rebuttal to you.

 

[Grace Seeker]

What does YOUR bible have to do with the SOURCES that contradict each other? As I have stated not all versions use same sources,and different versions use a variety of sources. So the version you have in your hand may just be from a single source. And I doubt you are "counting" all the mistakes in your entire bible,I listed my sources in my rebuttal to you.

If you had read my first post a little more carefully you would already have the answer to your question.

The Bible I referenced is my UBS edition of the Greek NT, with critical apparatus listing the variant readings. Thus by reading the apparatus I can compare whether a variant is supported by Sinaiticus or Vaticanus, both or neither. And yes, I did go all the way through Matthew and was only able to identify 25 instances in the entire Gospel in which one variant was supported by Sinaiticus and a different one was supported by Vaticanus. This actual count that I made this evening is so significantly different from the numbers you gave as to cause me to question the integrity of your source, that or your understanding of their meaning, especially since you have yet to cite your source.

You said:

The two oldest complete NT bibles on earth today, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus has 3,000 disagreements. Most bibles today are only a few hundred pages long,that's about one contradiction per page,not including scribe errors.

You corrected yourself to say you had meant not one but 10 contradictions per page.

So, I'm checking your math. If referring to the whole Bible (both OT and NT) then the bible on my shelf average 1500 pages. With 3000 supposed disagreements total that is only 2 per page, not 10. If you are referring to just the NT, then your math is a little better. But I still don't find any substantiation of your figures of 3000 disagreements between the Codexes Sinaiticus and Vacticanus in the pages of the NT.

Again, just using the Gospel of Matthew as a way of testing the accuracy of those numbers, I find only 184 variants listed in the UBS edition of the Greek Text of Matthew total. On 159 of those occassions Sinaiticus and Vaticanus actually AGREE with each other, leaving only 25 in which they disagree -- roughly 1 every 3.5 pages. It seems highly implausible to me that with only 25 disagreements between Sinaiticus and Vaticanus in Matthew that there would be 2975 more in the rest of the NT which is what would be necessary to achieve the counts you were providing. That is why I asked for the source for your numbers.

You haven't provided that source. And I haven't time to quibble more than I already have. I'm off to bed and will see if you've added anything significant when I return next week.