The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Yes, I was educated by the Jesuits and they'll lie for a good cause. Their version of "good" is elastic and opionated. It makes their word pretty worthless. The Jesuits don't use words like right and wrong, but prefer "Points of view." Depending on your point of view, Hitler was a good man

You are wrong about the actual date of Jesus' birth, not that it matters. Jesus was brought to be circumscised in the Temple on the 8th day after his birth, as required by law. Births were registered. They needed good records to prove each one's tribe. The priests had to be descendants of Aaron, and the Christ in the Royal line of David. Those records were public and could be searched. (John 7:52). The Gospels have Jesus' ancestry right back, but those records were burned in 70 C.E.

The age of majority in Israel was 30. It can be proved Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist in 29 C.E, fulfilling Daniel 9:25 [Take it up on PM if you want to go there]. It's unlikely any Caesar would order a census at any important time in the farming calendar, or in midwinter. So we reckon early October, because the sheep were still out at night.

Odd. It is my understanding that all we have are copies of what purports to be true to original and those originals date to no earlier than 50CE. While Paul is supposedly around 50CE John is 40 years later, sometime past 90CE. Documents lost in 70CE are hearsay at best and we have none of the original texts of ANY of the so-called Gospels. It is my understanding that the earliest originals that actually survive date from around 170CE and those are tiny fragments. Full "transcripts" apparently didn't exist until after 300CE.

It's likely a fairly safe bet that Jesus did exist and fostered a group of followers that would become the foundation of Christianity. AFAIK anything deeper or more specific than that is a roll of the dice. I think it is quite important to recognize the level of illiteracy well into the 18th Century and absolutely common well into the 16th Century.

You're right about the Jewish records - they were gone (as in gone) after 70 CE. You can't do genealogy by hearsay. The Hebrew (old)Testament survived in every synagogue (Israel, Syria, Egypt, Babylon, etc) and was diligently copied. Every place there was a Christian Congregation, the Greek Scriptures survived as the guidance of the apostles, and the life of Jesus. It's interesting that when Arius & Athanasius debated the Trinity, they made reference only to the Hebrew Scriptures. But the Bible Canon was fixed shortly enough after, including the Greek and excluding the Apocrypha.

When you look at the preservation of records, there's literally thousands of manuscripts, and some on vellum, a long-lasting leather. A small percentage of folks were literate, but they had a good living as scribes or secretaries, so it was a trade or profession like any other. Some manuscripts or fragments go back as far as the 5th century B.C., and there are notable ones: Codex Sinaiaticus, a vellum parchment of the entire Bible, iirc; Vatican 1209 MS, again Vellum of the NT; The Dead Sea Scrolls, & Greek Septuagint.There's what is believed to be Matthew's Gospel in it's Original Hebrew form. Jewish communities preserved it in Hebrew for the purpose of attacking Christianity . Neither of the 2 versions is pristine. Some Greek New Testament copies date to the Late 1st/early 2nd century. It's a fascinating area of study.

What's also interesting is that when the Bible is studied, changes in the text can be dated, and stick out like sore thumbs. For instance, the passage in John 7:53 - 8:11, which includes the oft-quoted bit: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone" is Apocryphal. It should not be there, because early manuscripts don't have it. Jesus did no judging while on earth. Also, it takes two to commit adultery. Where was the guy? The Law stated exactly what was to happen to adulterers caught in a city.

EDIT: That's before we start on Early translations.

Some folks – making no real nor implied references to anyone here – like to think that ancient religious texts came with SHA1 signatures. They didn't. Many of the earliest stories were handed down orally from father to son by people who could not (so far as we are aware ...) read or write. Then, when they began to be written down, lots of factors came into play: conquerors, weather, natural and human disasters, and religious politics. All of the materials that we have today were subjected to those influences and we can only guess as to what the consequences were. Sometimes we have very-different version of texts which claim to be the same thing. Sometimes, entire chapters or sections have been added or removed. We don't know which one is "authentic." Those facts are lost ... forever.

(Which, by the way, is pretty much "par for the course" when you're talking about "ancient anything.")

"So, here we are. Believe accordingly."

And, I think, "listen to your heart and to the instincts that your mind can't explain, as well as your mind and sense of reason." Because, sometimes you do(!) "hear a still, small voice." And I believe(!) that this is just as legitimate and just as real as anything that your intellectual powers tell you. If you suddenly have the "feeling" that Someone who loves you is standing invisible very close beside you ... don't dismiss that feeling out-of-hand. What Charlie Daniels once put into a famous ghost-story song is still strangely true: "There are some things in this world you just can't explain."

Even though these documents have been handed down for thousands of years "warts and all," they were handed down, and prized by many people – even people who might have surreptitiously altered them. And, they still speak to the hearts of men and women. In spite of everything. We shouldn't try to throw that away.

I am probably being referred to without being mentioned, but it doesn't matter. We are talking about Inspired writings. And this is where faith comes in.

If you have faith in God (as many do) it would stand to reason that if God did stuff long ago, he is probably big enough to look after himself. We would expect him to do so. History tells us that was the case.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (dating before 270CE) were discovered from 1948 on, and a nearly complete Hebrew scroll of Isaiah was found,which was basically identical to the modern version. That gives the lie to the 'continually changing' line of thought. Likewise, probably the two worst English translations still carry the essential meaning of all major doctrines despite the concerted efforts of Kings and clerics to mask the truth. And always many more folks could read than could write.

You guys haven't thought about this very clearly. Manuscripts travelled with missionaries or worshippers to different geographical locations, and were modified slightly in copying. These errors were regional. By comparing texts from several regions, such differences can be ironed out. That has been done since the 19th century, and it's now an advanced science. In the case of the Hebrew Matthew, for example, it was only copied as it became illegible, so bits (e.g corners of pages) had to be translated from Greek into Hebrew. Textual critics can spot these bits, and often tell from which regional greek text they were translated back into Hebrew. It's typical to wave a hand and say 'Oh they could say anything, and mean anything,' but don't put your keyboards in motion before you put your brain in gear!

It's worth pointing out that the names "Matthew", "Mark", "Luke" and "John" are not in the text of the gospels. They represent the Church's best guesses as to who might have written these works. The second gospel was attributed to Mark at a very early date. Papias, a 2nd-generation christian, says that Mark served as an interpreter for Peter when he visited Rome and subsequently wrote down all the stories that Peter had told the Romans about Jesus.

The man who wrote the Gospel of Luke also wrote Acts, and incorporated into it some extracts from his own diaries. He was clearly a travelling companion of Paul, so he may very well have been Luke, the "good physician". He tells us that he knew many written accounts of Jesus but himself used only the ones that seemed most reliable to him. Significantly one of those "reliable sources" was the Gospel of Mark. Another was a collection of sayings by Jesus which scholars know as Q. This may well have been the "Book of Sayings" which Papias says Matthew wrote "in the Hebrew tongue", that is in Aramaic. Matthew would have been the obvious person to write these down verbatim because he was an ex-civil servant and would have known the shorthand of the day, a form of speed-writing.

Our "Gospel of Matthew" however was written in Greek, not Aramaic. We know this because it incorporates word-for-word large chunks of the Greek text of Mark. In fact it reads like an expanded edition of Mark. And it deals as much with the deeds as with the sayings of Jesus, so it could hardly have become known as the Book of Sayings. Which means that the Aramaic version of the gospel known as The Gospel for the Hebrews must have been an early translation, not the original. If the passages from Mark had been translated into Aramaic and then back again into Greek, they would have come out very differently. The gospel probably got attributed to Matthew because it was known to exist in both Greek and Aramaic versions and people naturally assumed that the Aramaic version was the older of the two and that this was the work that Papias was referring to.

As for John, we know that the "Beloved Disciple", who may well have been John bar Zebedee, wrote a memoir of Jesus and that his unexpected death caused consternation in the Church (John 21 vv.23-24). The man who inherited his work and wrote it up into our present gospel was a highly educated native Greek speaker and not a semi-literate fisherman. He was also a Christian Platonist, probably a disciple of the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria, from whom he got his logos theology.

And yes, the story of the woman taken in adultery doesn't really belong in John. From its style, it is clearly much older than the rest of the book, probably part of the same tradition of self-contained stories about Jesus that underlies the synoptic Gospels.

business_kid, we know that scribes were fanatical about "accuracy," because they had to be. Even today, Jewish religious documents such as the Torah are lovingly prepared by calligraphers as handmade scrolls. And they continue to preserve the ancient practices of carefully examining every glyph of every inch of every scroll against the master copy.

The various translators over the many centuries exercised their work just as myopically. Before printing existed, every copy was handmade. Those copies were then used, sometimes very heavily, and had to be maintained and restored ... again, entirely by hand.

But there were other events, such as the many "ecumenical councils" such as the Council of Nicene, where decisions regarding official doctrine were made. There were other interesting events that happened even earlier, as the church (lower-case 'c') was inventing itself. These things helped to shape exactly what it is that those scribes were copying and translating. Historical schisms, too: the split of the Empire and thus the Church between east and west; protestantism; Gutenberg; Martin Luther ...

All of these events flow together to produce the incredible provenance of these texts. It is an incredibly detailed tapestry, and altogether human. And, we do not now know that provenance completely. Some have been lost in time ... at least until the next discovery is made (and verified).

--- Hazel, much of what you're talking about here is what I refer to (not originally) as: "The Quest for the Historical Jesus." Fascinating. Looking at the many different documents and versions of the same ... some "canonical," and many not. And, wondering about the subject of them all.

Our programming says, we're programmed... hang up your silly needs for a creator; to utopia it *'t make.

While we are on a tangent from the base thread, we are in an area that I find substantially more interesting - History. If you'd like to check out a non-sectarian doctorate in religious history, Dr. Andrew Henry, about the overlap of Canon and Consensus for the New Testament you might actually enjoy this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCy7NuujCLc

@sundialsvcs: Are you thinking of the Masoretes? They were 7th century onwards, but about as fanatical as you could get, but you're right. Respect for God's word persisted, and interest in the original languages (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic)receded as the clergy had the latin Vulgate and banned other stuff, particularly anything that could be understood. Because the Bible called them out and they knew it.

@enorbet: Yes, history is interesting. My interest is limited to how it affected the preservation of the Scriptures, and the fulfillment of Bible Prophecy. That at one stage took me further than you might think. Daniel 11/12 gives a prophecy which stretches from the Persian Empire through to modern times. It details the political events until the end of this system. Studying that requires a bit of history.

Thanks for the youtube link, but I'll pass. Once you realize that all of false religion is grouped together by God for adverse judgement as "Babylon the Great" you don't really want much to do with them at all. If you wanted to check if a $10 note was real or counterfiet, would you compare it with other counterfiets? No, you'd compare it with a real $10 note. If it didn't match, it's a dud. The same way with religion, as Jesus made clear: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage...23&version=NCV

EDIT: Meant to say, I don't have to study much history (although I do) because sufficient is covered at our meetings and in our publications to understand the Biblical framework to enlighten the prophecies. For instance, this year's Convention has a Drama on Daniel covering the events of Daniel chapters 2,4-6, and showing him receive the vision at Daniel 11/12.

@business_kid: "Yes, the Masoretes among others."

And, I won't engage you on "because the Bible called them out on it." That's (categorically ...) "a difference of opinion" and therefore personal.

However, we really need to all remember that: "illiteracy was the order of the day." All of these people, for many centuries, would have looked at the screen that is right now in front of you and understood nothing."

They might even have called you a "sorcerer," and killed you for it ... out of fear.

Their cultures relied upon the spoken word ... the remembered(!) word.

Their only "books" had legs.

People who could actually understand and interpret symbols, whether they were penned on a piece of papyrus or pressed into a blob of clay, were both rare and vital. They possessed knowledge that no one anywhere around them had. (And, as we all very well know: "knowledge is power.")

As we "discuss" these things – using symbols on computer screens, which we are fully capable of understanding "[almost ...] as though the person was actually speaking," we need to keep in mind how unprecedented this actually is. And then use it to guide our conversations.

Even in the "modern eras" of which we often speak, the majority of the population was illiterate, and printing did not yet exist.

This is the context in which these things, that we are now talking about, for a very long time existed, and from which they were originally born.

I think you underestimate some folks for two reasons. Every male Jew could read. In the synagogues, there was a practise that you could elect to read, as Jesus did in the passage recorded at Luke 4:16 -->

My point was not that the world was literate, but that many more folks could read than could write. And brains weren't smaller, so skills could be mastered.

And as for "The Bible calling them (false religion) out on it," it's true. At least every 100 years (from around 500 AD to the Reformation) there would be a Council of bishops meeting from many countries. They would always go on about two subjects

• Clerical Paedophilia
• The danger of translating God's word into common languages.

They would also explain why the Scriptures in common language were so dangerous - the people would find out the truth, go elsewhere and stop keeping them in the manner to which they had become accustomed. So Many early translators risked their lives to translate the Bible, and in many cases paid with their lives for their translating of God's Word. The Cardinals had the job of expediting their end. Only Germany, it seemed was safe.

Now for someone like me, it would be fairly simple to pass on some examples of false doctrines being called out by the Bible as the clergy feared. But God's Word should not, I feel, be used as a club. Sincere people may be offended. Send me a PM if you want to see some examples, or try this, about festivals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhkbp35rgJ0

business_kid, you do realize don't you that only reading what supports what you already believe and automatically and offhand dismissing anything that doesn't as "False" is the definition of "rabbit hole" and a sure path to stagnation and ignorance, right?

In fact I consider the Christian Bible an important work exactly because it has contradictions necessitated by being a compilation that took place over time. Even if we assume the basics, that it was actually revealed en toto to the various original authors, that comes to us through a multitude of filters, not the least of which is History which is hardly written objectively even recent History. One only has to look at the difference between historical accounts of any conflict written by both sides, winners and losers, to see the slant.

You mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls as an example of linearity which totally ignores that they are still being studied AND argued over to this day for numerous reasons not the least of which is something you already noted that all language has local dialect diversity. That is especially so in the case of early written Hebrew which not only had very diverse dialects due to geographic and cultural diversity but required the context of locality because it took hundreds of years for vowels to appear in the early Hebrew alphabet. Naturally this does facilitate the sort of "cherry picking" that leads to rabbit hole confirmation bias, hardly a scholarly approach.

Originally Posted by enorbet business_kid, you do realize don't you that only reading what supports what you already believe and automatically and offhand dismissing anything that doesn't as "False" is the definition of "rabbit hole" and a sure path to stagnation and ignorance, right?

I suppose I am, and I apologise if I sound bad. I can't speak plainly on a public forum without offending some folks more than I already have, so I'll reply by PM.

Today's history is conspiracy; yesterday's, spot-on?!.