It is a worthwhile book to read but hardly shocking unless you are a hardcore bible fundie
book summary:
there are lots of NT manuscripts with thousands of minors differences between them - most trivial
A few passages in the NT (less than 5% by my count) appear to be late additions and therefore less trustworthy
How can ANY difference be considered trivial when you are claiming something is THE WORD OF GOD?
I started doing a translation of John when I was an atheist. It ended at John 8:58.
Assuming you are not just trolling, most christians are quite comfortable with the fact that the bible has been hand-copied for many generations with subsequent minor errors that entails. Just as a mis-type in a late edition of “the Origin of the Species” doesnt invalidate Darwin’s message
The problem for hardcore fundies, though, is that there is sometimes no way to know which variant is correct and that not all the discrepancies are trivial. We don’t know for sure what any of the original manuscripts said, so there is no way to know for sure what God’s “message” actually was when it was first written.
Classical Scholar and noted Homer translator Richmond Lattimore came out with an NT translation awhile ago. Don’t know what his personal religious beliefs were, but he approached the project as a classisist, not a theologian.
I would think someone with an anthropology background would fit the bill nicely.
I dont know of any serious discrepencies. Can you enlighten me? I am talking about two different texts that say something very different about God, Jesus, his message etc. I can think of one passage which might just fit, but that’s about all. Most people would dismiss the vast majority of the textural differences as essentially trivial.
There are scholarly doubts over the authorship and date of parts of Mark and John. To me the two Christmas traditions dont add up and one/both is suspect. One of Paul’s letters probably wasn’t written by him. However, these are impossible to prove without doubt and a fundie would probably accept these passages as given.
Even taking the above suspect passages out (<10% of the NT?), one is left with a hardcore of theology that would define one as Christian and possibly fundamentalist.
Of course one could go further and throw doubt on any other part that did not fit your beliefs, but that then becomes more of a theological issue, rather than a scientific/textural analysis of the origin of the bible.
Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. It covers the first part of your request rather well. The last part, not so much.
Most people are not educated about the subject. Google on “Johannine comma” and “Pericope adulterae” for a couple of examples. Read Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus for a detailed treatment of the subject.
Even with regards top the trivial differences, the fact remains that there is still no way to tell which, if any, version is authentic. We don’t know what the autographs said and there is reason to suspect that many of the canonical books were tampered with and changed early on (if not outright forged).
The Bible doesn’t say anything about Christmas. I’m guessing you’re referring to the nativity narrative but those are in Luke and Matthew not Mark and John.
I’m not sure what you mean about “scholarly doubt” about the authorships of Mark and John. The authors (like the authors of the other two Gospels) are unknown, period. The authorship traditions of “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John” arose in the 2nd century and (for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here) are largely regarded as spurious by mainstream NT scholarship.
There is some argument over dating, but not that much.
Only 7 of Paul’s Epistles are authentic. The other 7 are fake. You also seem to have the wrong impression about where the burden lies to prove whether they are authentic or not.
By definition, a Fundamentalist cannot reject even one word of the Bible as erroneous or suspect.
Of course it’s only a theological issue. Personal beliefs play no role in scientific methodology. It’s still a logical problem for fundies, though, to claim that a book is the perfect word of God while they are unable to identify exactly what the authors originally wrote.
Diogenes
I have read a lot of texts on the subject including the one mentioned. The sentence on John and Mark should be read separate to the one on the (OK Nativity not Christmas) narrative - of course I know where the Nativity stories lie. And by authorship (poor word) I meant not that the author(s) were known, but that the texts apparently survive basically intact from the beginning (e.g. without major variants)
Johannine comma" and “Pericope adulterae” were covered when I said that parts of Mark and John may have been added later - but there are still many scholars who will defend the Pericope adulterae.
Re Paul epistles - while some are under scrutiny (to say 7 are fake is a remarkably impressive statement as many Biblical scholars wouldnt even come close to that number - and actually Hebrews is not a fake as it is anonymous and hence only ascribed to Paul by tradition) there are many defenders of say Colossians and Second Thessalonians. And even if you are personally convinced (from your indepth knowledge of ancient Greek and years of Biblical textural study) that six are suspect (leaving poor Hebrews out of it) of course a fundamentalist would say that he believes that they were written by Paul and all your textural analysis in the world is unlikely to mean a thing.
At its core fundamentalism only requires that in its original form, the Bible is totally without error, and free from all contradiction. It recognizes that any idiot can copy a manuscript badly or do a poor translation. Many churches also believe that the early copying was divinely inspired - how they handle the manuscript variants I am not sure - I suspect it never enters their conciousness.
Yeah, that statement of Diogenes’s made me :dubious: a bit, too. It’s not as clear-cut as he made it sound; from what I’ve read, there are several epistles over which there is considerable doubt among scholars whether they are authentic or not. The Staff Report claims
From what I’ve read, I get the impression that the Pauline authorship is a little more doubtful among scholars than that makes it sound, though not as much as Diogenes implies; and calling them “fakes” implies deliberate deception, which is not the only possibility.
Only seven of Paul’s Epistles are accepted as undisputable authentic by mainstream scholarship. Trust me on this. The Pastorals, in particular, are, widely regarded as pseudonomous.
That’s still pretty good considering that none of the other Apostolic Epistles are genuine.
This page fro Religioustolerance has a pretty good overview of where the scholarship is at.
I will interrupt here to point out that the word “scholar” is being loosely and diplomatically applied in the above paragraph, and that assuming a priori inerrancy is obviously not scholarship. It is better to say that many theologians have a religious belief in the authenticity of the entire Pauline corpus based on doctrinal assumptions. There is no scholarly methodology or evidence involved and, in fact, the evidence does not support them very well.
When you see the phrase “liberal scholars” below, please be advised that this really only means objective, non-religiously motivated scholarship based on actual scientific methodology. In truth, the word “liberal” has no application to Biblical scholarship. There is no such thing as “conservative” and “liberal” Biblical scholarship. There is good scholarship and bad schoarship. There is scholarship and there is religious dogma. “conservative and liberal” have nothing to do with anything. “Liberal” and “conservative” in this context are terms of art and do not denote any genuine scholarly divisions.
That was not my takeaway at all. My summary is:
YMMV, I suppose.
this seems a hijacked thread but hey…
Muttrox
The current bible translation are made by scholars viewing all the available manuscripts, some fragments dating from probably within 10-40 years of being written (depending on your biblical chronology). By looking at common passages is possible to reconstruct pretty closely to what the original parent text may have looked like. So even if “every word” has changed (which I don’t believe - any cites?), it is still possible by comparing texts to get the original back. Dubious passages such as late additions mentioned above stand out like a sore thumb. Other passages stand out because their languages or word usage are different (e.g in analysing Paul’s letters). However, this is much less certain as peoples styles may change with age, and we know that Paul used writers to put down his words - how much input these scribes had is unsure.
My feeling is that scholars are pretty close to what the original texts were. However that is still a million miles from believing that the original texts are
That depends on what you by wasn’t a part of any religious traditions that use the Bible. It really is not that hard to atheist Jews that work in Biblical Scholarship. Robert Alter has translated the Torah, Samuel (1 and 2), and Psalms. He was born and raised a Jew, but came to lose any belief in a personal God. I do not know if this would count to you.
This is not really true. With the exception of a ingle fragment from GJohn (which has a various, disputed datings ranging from about 125 CE to as late as 195 CE, there are no fragments earlier than the 3rd Century and most manuscripts are from the 4th Century or later.
What it “may have” looked like, but no way to know for sure.
Not a claim made by scholarship.
Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. We don’t actually know that.
A lot of the pseudoepigraphical Gospels can be dated by internal indications within the text, not just by vocabulary.