There are statements in this thread by Diogenes the Cynic and Meatros that seem to indicate there is lot of manufactured and after the fact “interpolations” (forged insertions of text by Christian redactors) in the Bible.
How pervasive is this creative “interpolation” in the King James Bible?
I can think of one of the top of my head. Lookie here (bolding mine):
Clear up an apparent misconception first: The King James Bible, like every other version from Wyclif to the New Revised Standard Version, is a translation into English of the manuscripts of the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It differs from some more modern translations in the philosophy that accepted the majority reading of manuscripts, the “Textus Receptus,” where more modern translations look at the oldest manuscripts and try to identify where scribal errors crept into the manuscripts, in an effort to try to locate the original source.
But you are asking how reliable the extant original-language manuscripts themselves may be, right?
The answer for a literate, scholarly Christian is, generally, pretty much so, but with some caveats.
For example (and one I’ve expounded on at length in other threads), the reconstruction of speeches was a common practice in ancient times, in the absence of mechanical or shorthand means of recording actual spoken words, and no more regarded as fraudulent than an indirect quotation is today. My saying, “Tomndebb said that Catholics do not believe in Sola Scriptura” is an accurate statement if Tom has ever addressed the issue at all, even if he did not state those exact words. So Jesus may not have preached the exact text of Matthew 5-7 on that occasion; He preached something similar, including pieces of it, then, and He preached the messages that it conveys at various times and places, and the writer reconstructed it from His known words and thoughts.
Some books are believed to be not what they purport to be. For example, the two letters to Timothy and the letter to Titus attributed to Paul are thought to be Second Century forgeries attributed to Paul, probably expressing a fair amount of his thought and perhaps including pieces of actual letters he sent those two men, but addressing later issues as the writer thought that Paul would have. Ephesians may be the copy of the letter Paul sent the churches in Asia that was delivered to Ephesus (and may be the “letter to the Laodiceans” referenced in Colossians, Paul recommending that the Colossians “trade letters” with the nearby church in Laodicea who got another copy of “Ephesians”).
The assembly of the Torah, Isaiah, Matthew, and Luke is believe to have been the product of editors bringing together different strands of traditional material to make up the documents we possess today.
And there are a few cases of specific known interpolations. John 7:53-8:11 in the received text, the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery, does not appear there in several manuscripts, some of which put it at the end of John’s Gospel, some after John 7:38, and some in Luke(!) after Luke 21:38. Likewise in John’s First Letter, the passage spelling out the Trinity as the Three Witnesses in Heaven at I John 5:7-8 seems to be a later addition.
They were actually referring to the works the Historian Flavius Josephus, which are used as extra-Biblical proof of Jesus’s existence. The “Bible” as we know it today hadn’t been assembled when he was writing.
As far as the Bible itself, there were a number of versions floating around (the Sinaiticus comes to mind), and the “official” version wasn’t settled on until 4th century. IANABS, but from what I’ve read there was relatively little revision (if any)once the books were put together. Whether they are based on fact at all is a different issue.
As an aside, does anyone know how much of the “original” bible is still intact? I mean, I realize that “The Bible” is really several dozne books written over a thousand or so years, but how much original writing is still available for clearing up confusion?
Also, what language would you have to learn to read it? Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, I presume?
Therein lies the problem. Given that paper doesn’t last well under the ravages of time, the oldest manuscripts we have are copies of copies of copies, etc. On top of that, the stories of the Bible (the OT, anyway) were passed down orally for centuries before finally being written down. This link (http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/biblical_manuscripts/LeningradCodex.shtml) says that the oldest complete Hebrew Bible dates only to 1010 C.E., and the Russians have it. There are older fragments like the Dead Sea Scrolls (c. 200 B.C.E.), but they are, like I said, fragments.
The oldest New Testament fragment I’m aware of is a piece of the Gospel of John that’s been dated to 125 C.E., but most are from 200 C.E. or later.
Better brush up on all three, since the originals straddle those languages.
All of the books of the Hebrew Bible are represented in the Dead Sea Scroll collection (dating from the third century B.C.E. to 68 C.E.) except Esther. But as brane damaj said, the Leningrad Codex (circa 1010 C.E.) is the oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Bible.
Like brane damaj said, in the thread linked by the OP, I was talking about Josephus, not the Bible.
As to the general question of the OP, I think you have to take it on a book by book basis. You would alsl have to know what each book appeared like in its original form to know if it has been redacted or interpolated. Some of the books (like Genesis) are based on multiple traditions which have been woven together into a unified narrative. Some books are probably relatively intact. Some books actually use other books as a template (the synoptic gospels) but rearrange or add facts to suit a particular agenda. Matthew, for instance, incorporates almost all of Mark but also adds a substantial amount from the Q source as well as Matthew’s own original material. Does that count as “interpolation?” I don’t think so. The practice I referred to in the other thread represented an attempt to insert material into another author’s work with the express intent of passing off the insertions as being original to the author. While many of the books of the Bible went through editing and redacting processes, I wouldn’t say that they were necessarily fraudulent or represented an intent to deceive as was the case with Jewish Antiquities (and other works from early Christian history).
There may be some arguable exceptions in the case of the Epistolary works of the New Testament if you count some letters which are falsely attributed to Paul or the apostles. There are also arguments that Paul’s description of the eucharist in Corinthians is a late interpolation.
jk1245, The OT is primarily written in Hebrew with some Aramaic. The NT is written entirely in Koine Greek with an occasional stray word or two in Hebrew or Aramaic.
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I am no bible scholar and have nothing to contribute here; I merely wanted to point out the sentence
Schoener Morgenstern. S. Morgenstern, the “original author” of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. (I know, it’s supposed to be Simon, but he’s so often referred to as “S. Morgenstern” this was too amusing not to mention.)
</hijack>
The Aramaic is a tiny, tiny portion, so you could probably get away with Hebrew and Greek. Though I suppose by the time you’ve learned Hebrew, adding the Aramaic wouldn’t be much of a stretch.
For fun, add Coptic. That’ll give you access to some of the other early Christian writings not in the Bible.
While I agree that the Pauline “pastoral” letters were almost certainly not written by Paul, I am notsure that forgery is an accuarate description of their authorship. At the risk of wandering into GD territory, (and I believe this point can be discussed without it being a debate), I think the genre of pseudonymous writing is different in intent and in execution than the creation of forgeries (in which the intent is to defraud). The “final” letters of Paul (as well as the letters of Peter and possibly some of the others) are written in a way that the actual author subsumes his own identity for the purpose of conveying an important message, rather than proclaiming his own importance by declaring that he, himself, is the messenger of God. Similar pseudonymous efforts are found in the Old Testament (most notably in Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah).
On the other hand, it is true that I have noted that Sola Scriptura is not a Catholic position when appraoching the Word of God.
Excellent point, and phrased much better than I did. Please read Tom’s discourse on pseudonymous writing here in place of the sentence of mine which he quotes.
The events in the Bible are refered to and backed up by plenty of other sources from contemporary Jewish and Roman records eg Josephus,Tacitus,Suetonius.In terms of authenticity,much of the Gospels were written approximately 50 years after the events they describe.That sounds a lot but in ancient records,its nothing.Thucydides writes about events 400 or so years before.There would still have been witnesses to the events who could confirm or deny them and records in the Jewish authorities and Roman world.
It should be noted that the Gospels are not even representated as the direct words of the apostles. Note the titles say “The Gospel according to…”. IOW, they claim just to be edited works based on the message of the original apostles. The Christian Bible isn’t like the Koran, which is represented as being the direct word of God revealed to Mohammed. The writers of the Christian texts were at best reporters who hopefully faithfully and accurately told the tale as best they could. And, you find things in the letters where the writer states personal preferences only. Such as Paul saying how women should wear their hair, etc.
Not true. Very little of the Bible- almost nothing, in fact- can be corroborated by extra-Biblical sources.
two of the sources you named, Josephus and Tacitus, mention Jesus (baically they both say that he was the founder of the Christian movement and that he was executed by Pilate) and are typically cited as extra-Biblical evidence that Jesus existed but that’s all they corroborate and there is some dispute as to whether they really even corrobrate that much. In the thread linked by the OP you can see a discussion of the forged interpolations in Josephus, for instance, and in *both cases (Josephus and Tacitus) we still have historians who are relying on the testimony of Christians themselves as to the origin of their cult.
These sources certainly don’t corroborate much of anything else in the Bible. There is no extra-Biblical evidence anywhere for a huge number of things in both Testaments, including stuff like any miracle, the resurrection of Jesus, the existence of a number of Biblical characters and events, etc.
Some major portions of the Bible which are not only uncorroborated but actually contradicted by extra-Biblical, historical, archaeological or scientific evidence include:
-the whole Creation/Adam and Eve story
-The flood
-The stories- indeed, the very existence- of the patriarchs
-the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt
-The Exodus
-The conquest of Canaan
The gospels were variously written between 70 and 100 CE by people who never met Jesus and did not have access to any real records of his life. Leaving aside the issues of literary dependency in the synoptics, the gospels also contain obvious fictions such as Matthew’s slaughter of the innocents by Herod, numerous self contradictions, a passion narrative which is fabricated from OT “prophesies,” etc.
Essentially, the gospels can easily be shown to be literary works, based on a probable core of a sayings tradition (and the written Q source) and some elements from oral tradition but most of it was simply made up by the authors. Even if you don’t want to accept that, the gospels are still definitely not independently corroborated by any other source.
As to whether witnesses would have denied anything, you have to bear several things in mind. First of all, by the time the gospels were in circulation, most of the witnesses were dead. After all, we’re talking 40 years before the first Gospel is written and 70 for the last one. This was an era where life expectancy was less than 40 years. It also took years for these books to attain any decent circulation. They had to be copied by hand, after all, there weren’t very many and they were circulated within insulated Christian communities. It wasn’t like these things were available at the local Barnes & Noble or that there was any common knowledge or particular interest in them from non-Christian populations.
Moreover, the population that these books were circulated in was not the population that Jesus lived among (Palestinian Jews) but gentiles after the destruction of Jerusalem. Any surviving witness who could rebut anything would have had to have survived the Jewish-Roman war (40 years after the crucifixion) migrated to somewhere in the Hellenistic world in which a fledgleing Christian community had been established, wait another ten, twenty or thirty years for a written gospel to come around, for some reason attend a meeting where the gospel was being read (in Greek), then jump up and point a bony finger at the congregation and call bullstuff on the gospel.
Now, even if all this were to happen. Even if the occasional creaky old Jew were to tell Christian congregations that their gospel was not accurate, what makes you think that anyone would take any notice of him? Is that something you would exoect to see some written record of? Would you expect a bunch of Christians to give such a person any credence? How do you know that a rare surviving witness or two didn’t dispute the gospel accounts? Why would you expect to see a record of it?
Out of curiousity, do the above items I’ve preserved from your oustanding post fall into the “uncorroborated” or “contradicted” pile(s)?
I don’t recall learning that any of these particular “historical” events were contradicted by available evidence, but my memory may be slipping. I’m guessing we simply have no proof that they did indeed happen?
The enslavement and Exodus aren’t corroborated. Now what do you mean by “contradicted”? If you refer to these events as described in the gospels, then they’re contradicted. Now, there might have been a little group of people led by a Moses who fled Egypt for one reason or another, and the story might have been passed down orally and eventually might have been written in the OP in its current form.
As for the three last ones, I’m going to try to dig up a relatively recent thread on these topics and link to it…
I meant “as described in the OT”, of course…
These are events which are not just uncorroborated but contradicted by archaeological evidence. It has more or less been accepted by Israeli archaeologists for years that the archaeology does not support such events as a mass immigration of Israelites in from Sinai, or any sort of miltary conquest of Canaanite cities by Israelites. In fact, the archaeology shows that the Israelites were always indigeonous to the region. There is also some pretty compelling evidence arguing against the unified kingdom of David. The archaeology shows that Jerusalem was, at most, a small local chiefdom at the time, while the northern kingdom was much more rich, populous and powerful than the southern region which allegedly controlled it.
I’m giving very short, simplified explanations, but all of these issues have been recently and thoroughly written about in a book called The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
By two Isreali archaeologists named Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. They are not crackpots. Finkelstein is the head of the archaeology department at Tel Aviv University and the book represents what has become the consensus in Israeli archaeology.
Here is a review of the book which gives a summary and some details about its conclusions.
For instance, this one