> Bible's History & Corruption

[Assad]

This thread is dedicated for Bible's history and corruption. All discussions relating to Bible's authenticity, infallibility and corruption should be discussed here.

[Assad]

The question of Bible accuracy is important in many debates, particularly those regarding creationism and certain defenses of Christianity. Creationism is, in fact, an attempt to make science compatible with the fundamentalist requirement of Biblical literalism and infallibility. Christian theism typically defends its claim to truth by appealing to supposedly fulfilled Bible prophesies. Before tackling these issues, we need to understand the context.
A Brief History of the Bible:

The Bible descends from what was an ever-changing and expanding body of written and oral traditions dating from as early as the 12th Century B.C. The reformulations and additions continued from then all the way up until the 4th Century A.D. when, out of a large collection of candidate books, some were selected to be part of what we now call the Bible. It is important to remember that literally none of the original manuscripts of either the Old or New Testaments has survived. The Bible was passed down by individual manual copying and translation right up to the discovery of printing in the 15th Century A.D. The oldest manuscript copies date from sometime during the first 3 Centuries A.D.

The original language of the Old Testament was Hebrew followed by Aramaic translations appearing in the period following the Exile and then Greek translations following Alexander the Great. It was not until around the 2nd Century, A.D. that the contents of the Old Testament had become fixed.


The original language of the New Testament was Greek. As with the OT, no originals now exist, and the oldest of the manuscript copies dates from the 2nd Century, A.D. Before the NT was "canonized" into its current form, each of the early Christian communities apparently had a gospel of its own, in some ways redundant, in some ways in direct conflict, with the gospels of other communities. Some of these included the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Hebrews, the Gospel of the Ebionites, a Gospel of the Egyptians, an Apocalypse of Peter, an Apocalypse of Paul, and the Epistle of Barnabas, to name just a few.


What the Christians used as an "infallible" Bible was different depending on which Christian community you talked to, at least until the year A.D. 325. In that year, Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicea, which not only did the picking and choosing of the books, but also ended a power struggle in Christian circles as to the nature of Jesus. As Roman Emperor, Constantine decreed that the Trinitarian view would become Christian dogma (which is remarkable considering how weak his Christian credentials were), and this decree silenced the large Christian segment that said Jesus was only a man.


Of course, the history doesn't end there. As the Bible was translated into Latin, Augustine ultimately complained of the "infinite variety" of Bible translations. Under the direction of Pope Damascus, Jerome attempted to standardize the Latin Bible. Drawing on Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, he completed the "Vulgate" by sometime around A.D. 405, which was ultimately recognized as the Standard Bible of the Roman Church (1546).
The first English Bible was completed in the late 1300's by John Wyclif, an Oxford instructor in religion and philosophy. Condemned by the church, it lasted in the underground for some 150 years. Then, around 1524, William Tyndale, an Oxford and Cambridge educated linguist, who was influenced by Erasmus and Martin Luther, published a New Testament translation based on medieval Greek copies. Then Mike Coverdale's Bible appeared (~1535) based on his translation of German and Greek translations, as well as drawing from Tyndale's work. John Rogers and Richard Taverner also published their particular translations (~1539) drawing from and adding to each other and to Tyndale's work. All of this was eventually edited by Coverdale into the Great Bible, which the King approved. Separately, the Roman Catholic church created its first English Bible, the Douay version, which was based directly on the Latin Vulgate (~1609).


In 1604, King James I wanted a fresh start, and pulled together Oxford and Cambridge scholars, as well as Puritan and Episcopal priests. This large group used the Catholic Douay, Luther's German translation, the available Hebrew and Greek copies, and to a very large extent Tyndale's work, and created the King James Version (~1611). Language, of course, is a fluid thing. Just how fluid can be seen in just a few examples: In 1611 "allege" meant "prove," "prevent" meant "precede," and "reprove" meant "decide." To cope with this, the English Revised Version came out by 1885, followed shortly by the American Standard Version.

Clarifying Infallibility:

One thing this long history over the last few thousand years tells us is that the infallibility of the oldest manuscript copy (let alone a remotely descended English Bible) would require divine inspiration all along the very, very long line of manual copying and translating (remember, this is all occurring before the advent of the printing press). However, once one puts the stake the ground and says "The King James Version is infallible," then one eliminates any appeal to "mistranslation" from the Hebrew or Greek. On the other hand, if only the original, autograph manuscripts are infallible (none of which exist), while all subsequent copies and translations are vulnerable to transcription or translation errors, then the whole line of copies from the oldest manuscript copies (like the Dead Sea Scrolls) to all of today's descendent versions of the Bible are not infallible.

It is important to understand in which sense your opponent believes the Bible to be infallible. In the first sense, contradictions and factual / scientific errors are all one needs to falsify the claim of Biblical infallibility. In the second sense, the notion of infallibility is simply irrelevant to both the Bible and the oldest sources we have available today, and so amounts to little more than an empty claim.




Source: Freethought debators

[SilverLJ]

Originally Posted by Acid

The question of Bible accuracy is important in many debates, particularly those regarding creationism and certain defenses of Christianity. Creationism is, in fact, an attempt to make science compatible with the fundamentalist requirement of Biblical literalism and infallibility. Christian theism typically defends its claim to truth by appealing to supposedly fulfilled Bible prophesies. Before tackling these issues, we need to understand the context.

I have not copied the whole of Acid's post but would point out it is 100% plagiarised from Freethought Debater

This is an atheistic web site and the article is written by P. Wesley Edwards but I have no knowledge whether he is an expert in this area or not but the article does not contain a single clear reference to support any of the claims and is often factually wrong. For example there is a copper scroll of the book of Isaiah dated approximately 400BC.

Clearly the author of this posting is committing plagiarism which means using another authors work as if it is his own with intent to deceive, he has added no comments of his own and sadly one must assume he knows nothing about this subject. This is not the way to use a serious discussion board.

A assume ACID has created this thread but this action of his shows he is in no way competent to deal with this subject and one wonders if he is only interested in making a biased point not in what is true. I would remind him of what Bacon said:

The human understanding is not composed of dry light, but it is subject to influence from the will and the emotions, a fact that creates fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true.

[Assad]

Originally Posted by SilverLJ

I have not copied the whole of Acid's post but would point out it is 100% plagiarised from Freethought Debater

Either you are born blind or you are acting as one ! You did not just reached the peak of the mountain! Read my post clearly till the end and see what it says:

Originally Posted by Acid

Source: Freethought debators

Again as I said that this is a very kiddish and immature act. In anyway the author has provided all credible references and you on the other hand had no answer to this so you came up to this kiddish trick. But anyway, Its clearly exposed.

Your answer to the post was divided into 2 parts.

1. Blindly insulting me and falsely accusing me
2. For example there is a copper scroll of the book of Isaiah dated approximately 400BC. (LOL , what a comprehensive answer!)

[SilverLJ]

Originally Posted by Acid

Either you are born blind or you are acting as one ! You did not just reached the peak of the mountain! Read my post clearly till the end and see what it says:

Again as I said that this is a very kiddish and immature act. In anyway the author has provided all credible references and you on the other hand had no answer to this so you came up to this kiddish trick. But anyway, Its clearly exposed.

Your answer to the post was divided into 2 parts.

1. Blindly insulting me and falsely accusing me
2. For example there is a copper scroll of the book of Isaiah dated approximately 400BC.(LOL , what a comprehensive answer!)

You have a very narrow view of plagiarism if you think it that as long as you quote a source you can copy the work without any comment at all to show that at least you have some idea what it is saying and give some credibility to whether it is reliable source or not.

If you were a student do you think your University/College would accept a piece of work from you if was 100% copied just because you added the source. No they would not because it implies YOU have done no work.

You copy a source that can hardly be regarded as scholarly and authentic, say nothing about it and then demand of the rest of us that we give you a comprehensive answer - does not really look like you are a seeker after truth does it? Be honest who is really being immature here?

[Assad]

Originally Posted by SilverLJ

Be honest who is really being immature here?

Ofcourse you are being immature here. If my college/uni. asks me to do my own research/project/assignment than I have to do it on my own. But here If you open your eyes and read the thread, so its about disussions of Bible corruption here. If I am told by uni. to discuss "Shakespeare's Works" than I may be required to quote some of his work and discuss it.

So you have no idea about what you are talking about and you like to point your finger at others while at this time you are forced to redirect your finger at your own self because of your narrow "interpretations" and utter ignornace. I expect this to know from you and despite of being a Professor you have no idea what palgarism is about. Would you little yourself soo much just for your faith which was hijacked by some men?

[SilverLJ]

Originally Posted by Acid

Ofcourse you are being immature here. If my college/uni. asks me to do my own research/project/assignment than I have to do it on my own. But here If you open your eyes and read the thread, so its about disussions of Bible corruption here. If I am told by uni. to discuss "Shakespeare's Works" than I may be required to quote some of his work and discuss it.

So you have no idea about what you are talking about and you like to point your finger at others while at this time you are forced to redirect your finger at your own self because of your narrow "interpretations" and utter ignornace. I expect this to know from you and despite of being a Professor you have no idea what palgarism is about. Would you little yourself soo much just for your faith which was hijacked by some men?

You are right, the thread is about discussion so where is YOUR discussion as all you do in most cases is to copy 100% what someone else has said - and when this is pointed out to you you resort to allegations that someone else (me) is utterly ignorant but never you. So your method of discussion is copy something and when people disagree with it tell them they are ignorant.

I hope I know what plagiarism is but I am certain you do not. Incidentally, I used what is known as a similarity scanner on your posts to see where everything you say comes from.

No matter, I am happy to be like Socrates who claimed that if he had any authority it was because he knew nothing. That to me is a better place to be than like you who knows sadly believes he knows everything.

[SilverLJ]

Acid. Clarifying Infallibility:

One thing this long history over the last few thousand years tells us is that the infallibility of the oldest manuscript copy (let alone a remotely descended English Bible) would require divine inspiration all along the very, very long line of manual copying and translating (remember, this is all occurring before the advent of the printing press).

I guess the import of this thread is to try to show the Bible as corrupted and hence cannot be of divine origin (at least as we have it now) and that is a fair scientific way to approach it as we should do all we can to test this conjecture. I shall attempt some thoughts on this and compare its transmission to that of the Qu'ran

Firstly, I cannot quite see the logic here that copying a manuscripts requires divine intervention and what is this English Bible you mention? Manuscripts had to be copied as there was no other way of sharing the scriptures as at that time and one supposes you mean divine intervention to stop corruptions creeping in. What can we conclude from this that Muslims believe all the Bible but only in some inaccessible original.

Well as far as is known we don't have any originals but we do have a huge manuscript collection and can reconstruct the original but of course one cannot prove this proof positive. One can only use indicators such at its simplicity of expression, it manuscript support, its consistency, its teaching but ultimately it is a matter of personal faith whether you believe it to be the veritable word of God or not. So I guess a Muslim will not accept this because it may not be 100% original?

The position of the Qu'ran is much weaker as one has to suppose that down to the full stop and diacritical marks it is now exactly as it was recited 1400 years ago and it is not rationally credible that no corruptions ever occurred or could occur or that God intervened at every transmission step. I have offered my evidence for the Bible as based on a huge manuscript collection and its teaching. One might consider Ibn Warraq's new book "which Koran?" which is like all his work scholarly and infornative (though expensive) I might quote:

There is no such thing as the Koran. There is no, and there never has been a, textus receptus ne varietur of the Holy Book of the Muslims. We have two kinds of evidence for this claim. One which comes from Muslims themselves. Many Classical Muslim scholars-Koranic commentators, collectors of hadith, lexica and Qirä’ät books, for example - have acknowledged not only that many verses revealed to Muhammad have been lost, and hence the Koran that we possess is incomplete, but also that the Koran assembled, whether by Abü Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Alï or ‘Uthmän, is capable of being read in different ways, in other words that variants exist. There are a number of hadiths that recount “the loss, withdrawal, or forgetting of this or that ‘verse’ said to have been revealed to the Prophet but not figuring” in the Koran as it now exists. The other comes from extant Koranic manuscripts, inscriptions and coins.

In conclusion one might say the Bible is more reliable that the Qu'ran and has much more evidence for it authenticity and authority. If you have evidence that the Qu'ran is untouched with any corruption then let here what it is?

[Assad]

Originally Posted by SilverLj

You are right, the thread is about discussion so where is YOUR discussion as all you do in most cases is to copy 100% what someone else has said - and when this is pointed out to you you resort to allegations that someone else (me) is utterly ignorant but never you. So your method of discussion is copy something and when people disagree with it tell them they are ignorant.

I wont go on wasting my time to teach you what plagiarism is and what is not. I believe you should seek help from some of your students in this area. I am more interested to hear from you a reply than to let you keep roaming around this topic.

[Ibrahim Rasheed]

SilverLJ. There is no such thing as the Koran. There is no, and there never has been a, textus receptus ne varietur of the Holy Book of the Muslims. We have two kinds of evidence for this claim. One which comes from Muslims themselves. Many Classical Muslim scholars-Koranic commentators, collectors of hadith, lexica and Qirä’ät books, for example - have acknowledged not only that many verses revealed to Muhammad have been lost, and hence the Koran that we possess is incomplete, but also that the Koran assembled, whether by Abü Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Alï or ‘Uthmän, is capable of being read in different ways, in other words that variants exist. There are a number of hadiths that recount “the loss, withdrawal, or forgetting of this or that ‘verse’ said to have been revealed to the Prophet but not figuring” in the Koran as it now exists. The other comes from extant Koranic manuscripts, inscriptions and coins.

In conclusion one might say the Bible is more reliable that the Qu'ran and has much more evidence for it authenticity and authority. If you have evidence that the Qu'ran is untouched with any corruption then let here what it is?
=======================

Utter nonsense. Quräan is proven history. No one can refute that. In excess to being preserved in its pure original text word to word. Dot to dot, Quräan does not have a single ayah that goes against established science. Bible on the other hand has "god revealed proven pure nonsense" like using bird's blood to disinfect a house of leprosey germs. This is just one such type of complete nonsense that is accepted by Christians as the word of God.

These type of sayings in Bible is proof enough that Bible is corrupted.