Who Do You Say I Am?

[JM]

Here is some food for thought.

For those who have been on this forum for a while you have probably read all the various views concerning the validity of the bible etc etc and how vast the views are.. Some believe its accurate, some dont, some think its literal, some dont, some think its the original writings, some dont

But regardless of whether or not a person believes that the bible today is accurate according to the first initial writings.

The question remains that many have which is..

Who Do You Say Jesus is, or Was?

The average Joe will refer to todays bible to answer that, but that in itself does not answer it, if a person doesn't trust todays writings, translations and interpretations.

So it brings the average joe back to asking

Who is Jesus?
Does it matter?

Discuss away

[Commodore Angryy]

Jesus was freaking awesome. Seriously, he was a great revolutionary, and if he was alive today, he'd cast the first stone right into the Pope's face.

The original anarchist, fighting the power, but PEACEFULLY, which was even better.

Too bad 99% that 'takes his message' are nothing close to the original.

[Someday]

Too bad 99% that 'takes his message' are nothing close to the original.
Reply With Quote

This was my main argument against Christianity. It wasn't Jesus message that I railed against. It was Christians lack of actually FOLLOWING that message.

But we are human after all, aren't we? Now that I have become a Christian, I know how hard it is to follow that message. Some days people might not recognize that I am a Christian at all. Sad? Yes. True? Yes.
Think about it, we are called to love our enemies. That is a very hard thing to do. We can act like we love our enemies, and that is hard in itself. But we are not called to act like we love our enemies, we are called to actually love them. On top of that, we are taught to forgive. Not just the little things, but all things. Not just say we forgive them, but to genuinely, unconditionally forgive them no matter what, and no matter how many times they trespass against us.
Very very few Christians throughout history have found their way to a point where they can do these things. I do not count myself among them by a long shot. I have very very far to go in that regard.

Blessings

[Someday]

The average Joe will refer to todays bible to answer that, but that in itself does not answer it, if a person doesn't trust todays writings, translations and interpretations.

Number me with the average Joe here. Unlike some people, I do trust the more modern translations of the New Testament. There is no other historical document on Earth today that has as many surviving ancient copies and fragments as this volume of work. And not only that, we can almost reconstruct the New Testament from reading what the early Church fathers quoted from it. Textual criticism has proven that all but perhaps 400 words from the earliest Greek have been around a very very long time. This means that our New Testament is 99.5% textually pure.

I am not excluding the likelihood that Christ is giving us revelation even today. I believe that is the case. However, in order to understand Jesus, one should to start with the historical.


I am curious Jon, can you explain to me what makes you so sure that we do not know what the original New Testament said compared to todays modern translations?

Blessings

[Commodore Angryy]

Was the original New Testament written in Greek? I would have thought Arabic ...

[Someday]

Originally Posted by Commodore Angryy

Was the original New Testament written in Greek? I would have thought Arabic ...

No, it was in Greek. Even the scriptures that prevailed in Israel at the time were not in Hebrew, but Greek. The Septuagint was an example of this. It was the legal language in that part of the world in those times. There were Hebrew Torahs, but they were for more formal situations, not for reading by the Hebrews who mostly spoke mainly Aramaic and Greek, not Hebrew.

Blessings

[JM]

Originally Posted by Someday

And not only that, we can almost reconstruct the New Testament from reading what the early Church fathers quoted from it. Textual criticism has proven that all but perhaps 400 words from the earliest Greek have been around a very very long time. This means that our New Testament is 99.5% textually pure.

I am not excluding the likelihood that Christ is giving us revelation even today. I believe that is the case. However, in order to understand Jesus, one should to start with the historical.


I am curious Jon, can you explain to me what makes you so sure that we do not know what the original New Testament said compared to todays modern translations?

Blessings

Someday I would have to disagree, I think possibly you might be making those assumptions based on what has been told to you vs what you have discovered for yourself... 99.5% pure... come on

IF that was the case you wouldn't have New Testament Scholars losing their faith over their findings

As for why am I sure that we do not know the originals.

Surety is tough one to prove, yet as like all of us, with other questions we have about, medicine, the brain, the body, the earth... we look to people who have recognized credentials, people who have given their lives work to study...

From this we are able to guage patterns emerging not from One but several people in the same field as to whether something is credible

Based on the various new testament scholars ( not just Bart Erhman ) who have written books that bring into question the Bible translations that we have today..

It doesn't take long to realize that, these arent men and women who are wanting to Piss on Christianity, but they are well educated people who started out with a firm Trust in the bible and its message but through their findings have no other choice than to explain the where, why, when and how we have ended up with a book that cannot be viewed close to being Accurate or Trust Worthy.. unless of course a person wants to remain ignorant.

Usually people who dont question the bible will say later that they have not read books that challenge what they have been taught is true and their trust they currently hold about it.

Remember we are not on about challenging God here.. we are talking about a Book that has been written years and years ago, in a different language, passed through many peoples hands, translated

The Defense that most Christians jump to is.. that God would not Screw up by giving us something that is no true or can lead to confusion

But man can, and man has through mans interpretation of scripture..

Now if God allows that.. to happen

You can bet your ass he never stood in the way of people.. when they thought they heard God right, when they thought they had translated it right, when they thought they had made the right Corrections to other peoples copies ( yes there used to be inline notes where scribes changed text back and forth because they didnt think it was right, this is what led apparently to the part at the end of Revelation about adding or taking away.. as Scribes were doing that when making copies )

People have to be willing to look at the bigger picture without fearing God is going to send a lightning Bolt down on their ass for bringing into question what people assume is directly from God, untainted and pure.

Questioning it for some may lead to no Faith

But not for all. For others it will allow them to seek God, instead of relying on a Bible as their source for answers about Who God is and What God Wants for them..

[Someday]

IF that was the case you wouldn't have New Testament Scholars losing their faith over their findings

Who are these New Testament Scholars you speak of?

Surety is tough one to prove, yet as like all of us, with other questions we have about, medicine, the brain, the body, the earth... we look to people who have recognized credentials, people who have given their lives work to study...

For most documents of antiquity only a handful of manuscripts exist, some facing a time gap of 800-2000 years or more.
after the facts that they describe. Yet scholars are confident of reconstructing the originals with some significant degree of accuracy. In fact, virtually all of our knowledge of ancient history depends on documents like these. By comparison with secular texts, the manuscript evidence for the New Testament is stunning. The most recent count shows 5,366 separate Greek manuscripts. Not all of these are full texts, many are fragments. But they are all part of the textual criticism process. The most fascinating evidence comes from the fragments (as opposed to the codices). The Chester Beatty Papyri contains most of the New Testament and is dated mid-3rd Century. The Bodmer Papyri II collection, whose discovery was announced in 1956, includes the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John and much of the last seven chapters. It dates from A.D. 200 or earlier. The most amazing find of all, however, is a small portion of John 18:31-33, discovered in Egypt known as the John Rylands Papyri. Barely three inches square, it represents the earliest known copy of any part of the New Testament. The papyri is dated at around A.D. 117-138.

Keep in mind that most of the papyri are fragmentary. Only about 50 manuscripts contain the entire New Testament, though most of the other manuscripts contain the four Gospels. Even so, the manuscript textual evidence is exceedingly rich, especially when compared to other works of antiquity. In comparison, The Jewish War, by Josephus, survives in only nine complete manuscripts dating from the 5th Century, four centuries after they were written. Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome is one of the chief historical sources for the Roman world of New Testament times, yet, it survives in partial form in only two manuscripts dating from the Middle Ages. Thucydides' History survives in eight copies. There are 10 copies of Caesar's Gallic Wars, eight copies of Herodotus' History, and seven copies of Plato, all dated over a millennium from the original.

Another thing to consider is that copies of the New Testament writings were no linear, They were copied geometrically. In other words, it was spread out throughout the Roman world, and copies of copies were made in different places and translated into different languages. One letter birthed five copies which became 25 which became 200 and so on.

And what have they found? They found enough to create our latest more improved translations. They haven't found mass changing, rewriting and recreating the New Testament.

Blessings

[JM]

Originally Posted by Someday

Who are these New Testament Scholars you speak of?



For most documents of antiquity only a handful of manuscripts exist, some facing a time gap of 800-2000 years or more.
after the facts that they describe. Yet scholars are confident of reconstructing the originals with some significant degree of accuracy. In fact, virtually all of our knowledge of ancient history depends on documents like these. By comparison with secular texts, the manuscript evidence for the New Testament is stunning. The most recent count shows 5,366 separate Greek manuscripts. Not all of these are full texts, many are fragments. But they are all part of the textual criticism process. The most fascinating evidence comes from the fragments (as opposed to the codices). The Chester Beatty Papyri contains most of the New Testament and is dated mid-3rd Century. The Bodmer Papyri II collection, whose discovery was announced in 1956, includes the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John and much of the last seven chapters. It dates from A.D. 200 or earlier. The most amazing find of all, however, is a small portion of John 18:31-33, discovered in Egypt known as the John Rylands Papyri. Barely three inches square, it represents the earliest known copy of any part of the New Testament. The papyri is dated at around A.D. 117-138.

Keep in mind that most of the papyri are fragmentary. Only about 50 manuscripts contain the entire New Testament, though most of the other manuscripts contain the four Gospels. Even so, the manuscript textual evidence is exceedingly rich, especially when compared to other works of antiquity. In comparison, The Jewish War, by Josephus, survives in only nine complete manuscripts dating from the 5th Century, four centuries after they were written. Tacitus' Annals of Imperial Rome is one of the chief historical sources for the Roman world of New Testament times, yet, it survives in partial form in only two manuscripts dating from the Middle Ages. Thucydides' History survives in eight copies. There are 10 copies of Caesar's Gallic Wars, eight copies of Herodotus' History, and seven copies of Plato, all dated over a millennium from the original.

Another thing to consider is that copies of the New Testament writings were no linear, They were copied geometrically. In other words, it was spread out throughout the Roman world, and copies of copies were made in different places and translated into different languages. One letter birthed five copies which became 25 which became 200 and so on.

And what have they found? They found enough to create our latest more improved translations. They haven't found mass changing, rewriting and recreating the New Testament.

Blessings

I have a list of New Testament Scholars somewhere in a text file on my hard drive that I

will dig out for you when I get a moment

One thing to bear in mind in all of the disagrements about What COPIES of documents exist

today, is the Trust factor, People today trust that they are not reading innacurate

documents, most dont dive in to research and so then continue to make claims that others

should abide by that which they havent even checked themselves even partially.

Also, understanding about the state of peoples literasey, as many if not most were

illiterate this includes the Jews, the task of copying, the task of distributing, the task

of determining if a copy made was accurate according to the original alot of the time came

down to PRESUMPTION, and Hoping that whoever copied the last one, never made mistakes.

There are many manuscripts that show scribes notes, showing heavy editing was going on,

changes back and forth.

The First known formation of the Canon of Scripture from Surviving evidence was written in

the mid second centruy by a christian in Rome who was a Philosopher teacher named Marcion..

who they declared a heretic later

His Canon consisted of eleven books, there was no Old testament, one gospel ( luke ) and

ten epistles ( 10 letters of paul ) Marcion came to believe that false believers who didnt

have the same understanding as him decided to add in things to accomodate their beliefs,

and one was that the God of the Old Testament was the God of Jesus.. and So Marcion went

ahead and Corrected the eleven books of his canon by editing out references to the Old

testament God aswell as the law as something that should be followed..

Doing this editing to make the texts comform closer to his own teachings was not something

that was strange, people before him and after him classed as Copyists of Christian

literature changed their texts to make them say what they thought they meant.

Scholars believe that it was Marcion and what he did that made other Christians become more

concerned about establishing what would become the New Testament Orthodox Canon

Thirty years later Irenaeus "Bishop Lyons in Gaul ( france )" wrote 5 works against

heretics.. he bundled Marcion and the Gnostics in and he stated what he believed to be the

True books.. its interesting to read in a passage from " Against Heresies " he said that

not only Marcion but many other heretics had mistakenly assumed that only one or another of

the Gospels was to be accepted as scripture..

Jewish CHristians accepted for quite some time only Matthew.. there were also many groups

who argued that JEsus was no the Christ and accepted only the Gospel of Mark. Marcion

accepted only Luke.. and the Gnostics only accepted John..

Irenaeus said in his Against Heresies that he concluded that despite many of the Other

Gospels that had been written beyond 4.. and being as some people were only accepting 1 or

2 at most.. he said

" It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are.

For, since there are four zones of the world in which wwe live, and four winds it seems

fitting we should have Four pillars "

Basically saying that if there is four corners of the earth, four winds and four pillars

there should be 4 gospels..

SO close to the end of the second century there were groups of Christians who said that 4

Gospels were only to be accepted among the various ones written.. there were no less and no

more.

For several centuries debates and arguments over what should be the Canon continued...

Christians seems concerned about which books/letters should be considered Authorative, so

they could know which ones to read in services and know which ones could be used as guides

for what to believe and how to behave.

Many christians even today think that the New Testament Canon just showed up soon after

Jesus Death but this is not accurate. Apparently they can pinpoint when their was a

recorded listing of the 27 books of the NT... to around the second half of the fourth

century.. 3 hundred Years after the books of the New testament had been written

The Author was Alexandria named Anthansius. IN 367CE he wrote to the Egyptian churches and

he adviced them concerning which books should be read as scripture in churches.. he listed

27, exclusing all others.. This is the first surviving instance of anyone affirming todays

set of books of the New Testament.... And even this Announcement was not accepted

immediately.. more debates continued for centuries.. it was many hundreds of years later

that it was established.

They waded through many writings that were written, as their were other Gospels, Acts,

Epistles and Apocalypses, records of persecution, accounts of people dying, apologies for

faith, church orders, attacks on heretics and many more..

Question that is raised by One scholar is Who was reading these? As most could not read..

back in 5th centruy BCE 85-90% of the population could not read or write before then it may

have been even more.

Other scholars have said a discussion on defining what was classed as literate was needed,

and so that has taken many down the path of searching for information on what was classed

as people who were considered literate, enough to read, write and copy manuscripts.

One example that is used is back in 184 C.E an Egptian Scribe called Petaus from the

village of Karanis, was given the task to oversight financial affairs. ANother Village

scribe Ischyrion was under heavy fire fom his village saying that he could not fufull his

obligations because they said he was Illiterate. Petaus was called in to determine if

Ischyrion was illiterate. He argued for him and said that he was not illiterate because he

had signed his name on official documents.. Basically Petaus classed Literacy has simply

being able to sign ones name.

Petaus apparently had his own troubles. There is papyrus that is availble that shows some

of his writing where he wrote 12 times in greek words he signed on official documents. " I

petaus, the village scribe have submitted this " Now what is noted his he copied the words

correctly the first 4 times but on the 5th he left of the first letter of the final word

and for the next 7 times he continued leaving off the letter indicating that he was not

writing words that he knew how to write but merely copying the preceding line. He couldnt

even read the words he was putting on the page.. and he was classed as the Local Scibe "

Literate "

Christianity was classed as bookish religion with lots of writings, yet most could not read

those writings. They were written and used in services for the sake of the Illiterate

The various difficulties that were faced in copying were huge compared to today, where we can pretty much bank on books on a shelf being accurate to the original, as the means of copying, publishing and distributing have been perfected to an artform.

Copying back then was an entirely different story.

So as for Scholars being confident, this is a misconception, as there are many that admit

that we do not have the originals, today they have gathered together what they can from

copies of copies.

As for your man Josephus, many have called into question the accuracy and authenticity of

those writings Josephus on Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ( so i would not be hasty to

bank your trust on those writings )

At the end of the day. Most christians believe they are holding an accurate copy of the original,an accurate hearing of all words spoken.. because they place their trust in that God had the goal and missing of having these writings in place for the sake of guidance and would not allow for mistakes and misunderstandings.

This is a nice romantic thought to have but in todays world we have enough evidence clearly to show God allows a lot of things to be done in his name which are misleading.

And so we have many groups declaring " I am Christian " and each group conflicts with the next, to the point where some will write off the other group.

[Someday]

Jon,

I am not by any stretch trying to tell you there have not been errors made in copying of old manuscripts. I could list 3000+ discrepancies in this huge amount of material. That's what textual criticism does. It compares the texts, seeking out all of the discrepancies. Then they find where the majority agree and go with that. The more documents you have to compare, the better your chances of getting it right. My reference to Josephus was not to say we know what Josephus actually wrote, it was referring to the fact that we have precious few copies to compare, thus no way of being sure of it. Yet....Josephus is quoted often as a historical reference.

My reference to these books being copied geometrically was given in order to make the point clear that they can often pinpoint when a change was made more easily. Copies could exist side by side that differed because they came from a different lineage. This frustrated men like Origen, who set out to perform their own textual research in order to clear up the discrepancies.
There are copies of many of the New Testament books found in the twentieth century that pre-date Marcion. Two of them contain portions of Luke. One is the Chester Beatty Papyri, and another is the Bodmer Papyri. On top of that, we have quotations by early writers from all of the cannoned books that can be put into this textual criticism mix. This is a huge resource.

I'd like to repeat, I never said there were never errors. I'm telling you that most of those have been identified. The process is difficult, but the more data you have to compare, the better your chance of finding errors. Textual criticism is why we have the theory of the Gospel of Q. Through this process, scholars can take these books back to a possible common origin, a different original writing altogether. And you don't think they can they discover the original contents of each book of the New testament? Maybe not if they were copied linearly. But we have evidence that they were not linear, but geometrically distributed from the earliest beginning.

So what? Do we need these books to be Christian? No. They are helpful, but not needed. As you said, they were compiled in order to be used for Church gatherings, to be read to the faithful. The original Christians had no new Testament. I've commented on this before. If they all disappear, we have the same obligations to love God and one another, and to forgive unconditionally. Don't misunderstand me. I am not claiming this book is the Word of God, Christ is.

If you would like to try your hand at some simple textual criticism just to see how it works, click here.

Blessings