Click watch this movie
Hey, you even made me grin. I don’t blame you a bit.
About three quarters joke. I feel I know various truths about Christianity ( that it’s roughly 2000 years old, that it’s a major world religion, that it’s name starts with a C, that it has various internal logical problems ), but the Truth ? The One True Truth Revealed Unto Me By God, so much more important and basic than all other truth that it deserves a capital letter ?
I mean, when someone starts talkng about Truth like the OP, they generally don’t mean, say, correcting historical inaccuracies in the Bible or mentioning that Genesis isn’t to be taken literally according to modern science.
Not unless and until said church explicitly and passionately renounces Christianity, and any and all forms of allegiance to the Lord God of Israel.
Can’t argue with that.
Verily I say unto you - he that quoteth revised and translated Bible scripture, yet is unable to express himself clearly … LO! he shall be mocked. :eek:
I’m not entirely sure what egrow’s point is, but we have no indicatiion as to his knowledge, or level of “due diligence.” For all we know, he’s quite knowledgable.
Also, while he certainly isn’t verbose, the text certainly doesn’t look arbitrary, given the point he appears to be making.
It also seems irrelevenat that you simply don’t know how much reseach he’s done [or not done] because the veracity of his point/text would exist independently of his knowledge. He’s as likely to be [randomly] spouting “truth” out of ignorance as he is falsehood.
I would be particularly interested in seeing you back this up. Given that egrow used Mark 7:6:13, I’d like to see how the KJV perverts this text vis a vis other [presumably more credible] translations.
I’be be even more interested in seeing just how this text was used out of context. I’m also hard pressed to see how the “evolution through various manuscripts, its canonization, and its utter dependence on the vicissitudes of history” is relevant to his point.
Share with us.
Dead men know no truths. On account of they’re dead.
It is not the text which is out of context, particularly. I was referring to the context of the post–an isolated passage of KJV scripture followed by a couple of pithy but bizarre questions with a wrap-up rhetorical question all captioned under a heading of Truth vs NOT. This is walking and quacking like a duck, and the species of duck is fundamentalist Christianity where a particular version (the KJV) of the Bible has gained authority by its plenary verbal inspiration.
Not all fundamentalists adhere to the King James Only King James Only movement - Wikipedia view. (“The King-James-Only Movement is a position, usually of Fundamentalist Protestant Christians of English-speaking countries, which rejects all modern versions of the Bible, accepting only the King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV), as the one and only true and correct Bible.”) However when one sees a King James Biblical quotation presented as this sort of apparently self-explanatory exhortation, whatcha got there is a KJV-supporting fundamentalist. Here are a couple of other sites which should give you the general idea, but there are plenty more… Why I Read the Authorized King James Version and Fighting Back! A Handy Reference Guide For King James Bible Believers by James Melston www.av1611.org Here’s an interesting debate between a King James Only defender and a more liberal guy: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=4533848
Now I have admittedly inferred from this that other fundamentalist characteristics will hold true for this poster (or those who have taught him, depending on his level of sophistication). One of those positions is going to be that it is unnecessary and inappropriate to apply scholarly research to the history of the Bible, its multiple source manuscripts and its canonization process. The position is that Scriptural Authority is unquestionable, final Truth.
My point is that even a rudimentary understanding of how the KJV in particular, and scripture in general, came to be, contradicts this notion. It’s silly to throw out a passage of a text as Truth without understanding where and how that text came to be.
As an aside, I am not sure how anything is relevant to his point because I do not know what his point was.
Right. You’ve never heard non-fundamentalist Christians (the majority) support science-only curriculums in schools. You’ve never heard them say that they believe that Adam and Eve were myths. You’ve never heard them say that they believe in evolution. :rolleyes:
Don’t you have any honest arguments?
The meaning of that last sentence is unclear. What is the antecedent of This?
No personal offense intended, Chief Pedant, but you really haven’t begun to meet everyone who uses the King James translation and are in no position to know what they know about the history of the Bible, its "evolution, or its cannonization.
I grew up in a church that used the King James version of the Bible until the early 1960’s. We studied Bible history every Sunday in our Sunday School classes and in Vacation Bible School. We had comic books that taught us Bible history. So it started when we were just tots. When I went to college and took courses in Bible history, we sometimes used the King James version.
One of my early jobs was in the preparation of study materials for one of the largest denominations in the world – the United Methodist Church. I remember providing materials on the Council at Nicea. Again, for these lessons we sometimes used the King James translation. Another set of materials was on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the light that they shed on the “evolution” of the texts.
Your argument just doesn’t hold up.
I’ve seldom heard non-fundies talk about Truth with a capital T, either.
And last I heard most Christians in America were hostile to evolution.
:rolleyes: right back at you.
Zoe, calm down. I think the point , right or wrong, was that the tone of this particular OP smacks of fundamentalism. Since the OP seems to have bailed on the thread I guess we won’t find out.
This is interesting. From reading a few books I find the believer perspective of bible history and the scholarly approach to Bible history to be quite different.
What’s your take on that?
I think it’s great that the effort is made to help educate the members of a denomination. Once again, I wonder about the completeness of that education. Mt brother, who is Methodist , sent me a book titled Know The Truth. A presumptuous title IMHO. The book was an explanation of why the Bible is to be taken as the final authority. The author was sincere but obviously biased and his approach was obviously not scholarly.
When covering the Council at Nicea was it presented as a purely religious purpose or was the political purpose touched on as well?
How much did they discuss the other groups such as the Gnostics and how was their relationship to the teachings of Jesus presented?
How much did they discuss the other writings that were being circulated at that time and considered scripture by others? What about the criteria for canonization?
The Nicene Creed is often seen as the foundation of modern Christian doctrine. That concerns me a bit considering it’s historical source. Is the creed presented as God’s work or a group of mens? Is the persecution of the non sanctioned groups by the official government sanctioned church discussed much?
I realize none of those historic details change the good sincere hearts of the many Christians who truly seek to aide their fellow man and serve God. Their service is more significant than those details. It does seem to me that in the interest of seeking and teaching the truth in a way that helps each generation progress, those details ought to be covered.
The preceding sentence: “Chief Pedant: It has been my experience that everyone who uses the King James translation, particularly in this type of context, knows almost nothing about the history of the Bible, its evolution through various manuscripts, its canonization, and its utter dependence on the vicissitudes of history.”
The truth–the facts–about how the modern Bible, and the KJV in particular, came to be is not part of the religious teachings for fundamentalists and their ilk.
I seldom take offense, unless you do something like attribute to me a word in quotes (‘cannonization’) that I did not misspell in my original post. 
Big things like that.
You are absolutely correct that I have not begun to meet everyone who uses the KJV. Nor would I infer simply from the use of the KJV alone too much about a poster. But as I said upthread, it’s the context of the whole post that is the tipoff here about the poster’s Biblical paradigm.
Unless the OP writer drives back into the neighborhood, it’s gonna be tough to prove that, and you are welcome to make your own inferences, of course. I rather suspect that having accomplished his witnessing, he has gone on to rescue or lecture to other sheep, and may I suggest that such behaviour fits in with the personality and outlook which I have ascribed to him and to which inference you are objecting?
I have missionary parents from a conservative Protestant evangelical mission. I spent my entire education from pre-school through college in conservative Christian schools. I have been in hundreds of conservative churches as part of my parents’ work, many in the Bible belt. I have listened to thousands of conservative-oriented sermons from hundreds of pastors. I have followed Christian thought and fundamentalism in particular as an adult observer. I have not met everyone in the biz but neither have I been unexposed to this whole issue.
I might add that the period of the 60’s was 40 years ago. Christianity in general was more conservative (including the Methodists) and the KJV was much more prevalent as the typical translation for daily devotional use. There were also fewer choices.
My point is not so much to debate the KJV itself as an inferior translation as it is to say that the use of the KJV in this particular kind of setting and context, with this particular title, suggests to me that the OP has no idea how tenuous and contentious is the history of the document he is advancing as Absolute Truth.
That’s your difference with mainstream Christian doctrine? That even those dead and damned can repent and be saved? I’m not reading that in the verses quoted in the OP.