_Misquoting Jesus_

[j***@go.com]

I've recently read a book by Bart D. Ehrman which
might reasonably have been entitled _Introduction
to Textual Criticism for Laypeople_; but apparently
he or (I'm guessing) his publisher thought it would
sell more if given the arresting title _Misquoting
Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the
Bible and Why_. Ehrman points out that we
do not have the original manuscripts of the
New Testament, only copies of copies of ...,
and that the text was changed as it was
copied, so that the copies we do have do not
say the same things as the originals. Copying
was least accurate in the early centuries of
Christianity, when it was usually done by
Christians who were not professional copyists.

Of course many of the changes were due to
simple and (usually) obvious error, such as
misspellings, changing word order in ways
that did not alter the meaning, accidentally
skipping a line while reading the old copy
and thus omitting it from the new, etc. But
a good many of the changes were made
deliberately. These intentional changes
fall into two categories:

1) Changes made to coerce the text into
supporting the copyist's position in some
theological controversy of the day.

2) Changes made when the copyist
encountered a text that was puzzling or
even jarring, and changed it to harmonize
with what he expected.

Ehrman gives numerous examples of these,
some well-known, others much less so.

Actually, Ehrman goes much further. He
reasons that if God wanted His people for
all generations and in all places to have
His inspired Word, He would have made
sure that the exact words were preserved.
Since He didn't do that, Ehrman concludes
that He didn't inspire the original manuscripts
either. Supposing that God did inspire them
and then let them be lost makes His actions
strangely inconsistent.

Here's where I add my own comments, not
Ehrman's: Surely preachers who have been
to seminary must know about the problems
with the text in much greater detail than this
book of Ehrman's enters into? And yet a
good many of them talk as if the entire Bible
we have now is still the inspired Word of God!
This is even more bizarre if they're attributing
this to an English translation, especially the
King James, which is based largely on what
is now known to be one of the worst Greek
manuscripts. Are these preachers just
deceiving themselves so they don't have
to face this "inconvenient truth"? Or are
they knowingly lying to their hearers?

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

[Matthew Johnson]

Post by j***@go.com
I've recently read a book by Bart D. Ehrman which
might reasonably have been entitled _Introduction
to Textual Criticism for Laypeople_;

It might have been reasonable, if other Textual Criticism scholars all agreed
with Ehrman. They do not.

[snip]

Post by j***@go.com
Of course many of the changes were due to
simple and (usually) obvious error, such as
misspellings, changing word order in ways
that did not alter the meaning, accidentally
skipping a line while reading the old copy
and thus omitting it from the new, etc. But
a good many of the changes were made
deliberately.

Oh, were they? Ehrman buttresses this conclusion by frequent recourse to his own
religious bias, which si _exactly_ what the great Textual Critics of the
previous generation (Vaganay, Amphoux) warned us away from _so_ stridently. In
Ehrman's case, this warning fell on deaf ears.

The bias he resorts to is that Jesus was a false prophet, who fully expected
that the end of the world and the restoration of Israel would take place within
a generation of His death.

[snip]

[d***@adelphia.net]

Post by j***@go.com
I've recently read a book by Bart D. Ehrman

I've been down this road a few times with the muslims. I'm not going
to bother trying to do a major refutation on it. I'd just suggest
doing a little of your own research from another position as well.
Certainly the things Ehrman mentions did happen. Most christians
familiar with the subject at all understand this. Yet they are not
hiding anything either. The reason is that the fact of variations is
being manipulated to mean that there is no continuity at all.
Take a look for yourself at the oldest manuscripts we have found and
then take a look at what you see in the text now. You're not going to
find the tremendous variation you might expect.
The skeptic can claim that since we don't have the originals, then we
don't know how much has been changed. But if the radical changes being
claimed were really so prolific, then there ought to be HUGE
variations between what we have now and what we found that dates back
to the third century.
He can claim that hte changes were more radical before the mss we have
now, but without any evidence of it, how are we to believe this?

And that doesn't take into acccount the OT mss found at Qumran. There
are very little variations between text that preceded Jesus to the
text we have now. And quite frankly, the OT is a tougher case than the
New.
The best the skeptic can hope to do is rely on the fact that we don't
have the original, plead variations, and then extrapolate that the
current bible is completely untrustworthy.
But while it will take some work, learn the greek alphabet and some
words, spend some time looking at the variations for yourself and you
will see that the variations are not all they're trumped up to be.

Dont get sucked into thinking that the text is unrecognizable from the
earliest versions we have, it is not. But don't take my word for it,
look it up for yourself. There is a surprising bit of information
archived all over the web. There are plenty of examples and cataloging
of the variations. It shouldn't be too hard to find if you start
researching under NT textual criticism. The good news is that you
don't have to just read books that others have written telling you
what the answer is, you can find it for yourself if you want.

Good luck.

dave

[b***@dodo.com.au]

I lifted the following from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. It
has to do with the business of inerrancy.

There are two issues at stake - the first is whether the documents
which comprise what we know as the Bible have been accurately
transmitted. The thousands of manuscripts we have show numerous
errors apparently, but most of them are fairly minor - as though you
gave a class the job of copying an essay. One would expect the
original meaning to come through, but with more than a few
misspellings, missed words and the occasional missing or extraneous
punctuation mark.

The second is what is meant when we say the Bible is "inerrant", in
the sense of transmitting what God wants to tell us. As you read the
following article you will see there is a whole bunch of views as to
what is meant by "inerrancy". However, in the end, they all boil down
to the point that God is using the Bible to talk to us.

As a Catholic, I obviously sympathise with the Catholic Church's
teaching on the Bible, although I am more sympathetic to creationists
(I was originally Protestant) than I'd assume most Catholics would
be. However that's based on what I consider to be a lack of
transitional fossils, the rapidly declining earth's magnetic field
which if extrapolated backwards would limit the earth's age to far
less than 20,000 years, and the statistical impossibility of
abiogenesis. So in my case I believe in the Catholic intrepretation,
but with creationist sympathies.

Read on -

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Inerrancy in context

Many denominations believe that the Bible is inspired by God, who
through the human authors is the divine author of the Bible.

Many who believe in the Inspiration of scripture teach that it is
infallible. Those who subscribe to infallibility believe that what the
scriptures say regarding matters of faith and Christian practice are
wholly useful and true. Some denominations that teach infallibility
hold that the historical or scientific details, which may be
irrelevant to matters of faith and Christian practice, may contain
errors. Those who believe in inerrancy hold that the scientific,
geographic, and historic details and of the scriptural texts in their
original manuscripts is completely true and without error. [2]

Many religions include texts other than the Bible under various
categorizations of inspiration. For example, The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) consider the teachings of Joseph
Smith and The Book of Mormon along with the Bible as being the "word
of God," but recognize translation issues[3].

On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church considers some teachings
of the Church, such as solemn definitions issued by an Ecumenical
council or the Pope, to be infallible in the sense that they are
preserved from error. However, the Roman Catholic doctrine of Papal
Infallibility is limited in application and is subject to
contingencies. Since the doctrine was formally defined at the first
Vatican Council in 1870, it has been invoked once, in 1950. [4] [5]


[edit] Basis of belief
The theological basis of the belief, in its simplest form, is that as
God is perfect, the Bible, as the word of God, must also be perfect,
thus, free from error.

Proponents of biblical inerrancy also teach that God used the
"distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers" of
scripture but that God's inspiration guided them to flawlessly project
his message through their own language and personality. [6](See
biblical inspiration).

Infallibility and inerrancy refer to the original texts of the Bible.
And while conservative scholars acknowledge the potential for human
error in transmission and translation, modern translations are
considered to "faithfully represent the originals" [7].

In their text on the subject, Geisler & Nix (1986) claim that
scriptural inerrancy is established by a number of observations and
processes, which include:

the historical accuracy of the Bible,
the Bible's claims of its own inerrancy,
church history and tradition, and
one's individual experience with God, etc.
"Prima Facie" refers to evidence and claims from the Bible itself.
"The Witness of the Spirit" is cited as proof to the person to whom
God speaks. The "Transforming Ability" of scripture is cited as yet
another supernatural proof to an individual. The "Unity of the
Scripture" despite its myriad of authors, cultures, and topics, the
"Historicity of the Bible" and how the archaeological record is
interpreted to confirm the Bible, the "Testimony of Christ,"
"fulfilled prophecies," "apparent indestructibility" of the
scriptures, and the "integrity of its authors" are all commonly taught
as ways reliability is established. [2]


[edit] Textual tradition of the New Testament
See also: Bible canon and Bible translations
This article or section does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable
sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at
any time. This article has been tagged since January 2007.
There are over 5,600 Greek manuscripts containing all or part of the
New Testament. Most of these manuscripts date to the Middle Ages. The
first complete copy of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus, dates
to the 4th century. The earliest fragment of a New Testament book is
the Rylands Library Papyrus P52 which dates to the mid 2nd century and
is the size of a business card. Very early manuscripts are rare.

No two manuscripts are identical, except in the smallest fragments [8]
and the many manuscripts which preserve New Testament texts differ
among themselves in many respects, with some estimates of 200,000 to
300,000 differences among the various manuscripts[9]. According to
Ehrman,

Most changes are careless errors that are easily recognized and
corrected. Christian scribes often made mistakes simply because they
were tired or inattentive or, sometimes, inept. Indeed, the single
most common mistake in our manuscripts involves "orthography,"
significant for little more than showing that scribes in antiquity
could spell no better than most of us can today. In addition, we have
numerous manuscripts in which scribes have left out entire words,
verses, or even pages of a book, presumably by accident. Sometimes
scribes rearranged the words on the page, for example, by leaving out
a word and then reinserting it later in the sentence.

Some familiar examples of Gospel passages thought to have been added
by later interpolators include the Pericope Adulter=E6 (John 7:53 -
8:11), the Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8), and the longer ending in
Mark 16 (Mark 16:9-20).

For hundreds of years, biblical and textual scholars have examined the
manuscripts extensively. Since the eighteenth century, they have
employed the techniques of textual criticism to reconstruct how the
extant manuscripts of the New Testament texts might have descended,
and to recover earlier recensions of the texts. Many inerrantists
believe that the authorial recensions of New Testament texts are not
only accessible, but accurately represented by modern
translations[citation needed]. Though some inerrantists often prefer
the traditional texts used in their churches to modern attempts of
reconstruction, arguing that the Holy Spirit is just as active in the
preservation of the scriptures as he was in their creation. These
inerrantists are found particularly in non-Protestant churches, but
also a few Protestant groups hold such views.


[edit] Major religious views on the Bible

[edit] Roman Catholics

Roman Catholic Church teaching holds that the resurrection of Jesus
affirms his divinity, and Jesus in turn appointed the Pope, and the
body of Bishops led by the Pope, guided by the Holy Spirit, to offer
guidance on questions of faith and morals. Catholics believe this
guidance has allowed the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, in
Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture (the Bible), to be preserved and
passed down to the present day. Speaking from the claimed authority
granted to him by Christ, Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Divino
Afflante Spiritu[10], denounced those who held that the inerrancy was
restricted to matters of faith and morals:

The sacred Council of Trent ordained by solemn decree that "the entire
books with all their parts, as they have been wont to be read in the
Catholic Church and are contained in the old vulgate Latin edition,
are to be held sacred and canonical." [...] When, subsequently, some
Catholic writers, in spite of this solemn definition of Catholic
doctrine, by which such divine authority is claimed for the "entire
books with all their parts" as to secure freedom from any error
whatsoever, ventured to restrict the truth of Sacred Scripture solely
to matters of faith and morals, and to regard other matters, whether
in the domain of physical science or history, as "obiter dicta" and -
as they contended - in no wise connected with faith, Our Predecessor
of immortal memory, Leo XIII in the Encyclical Letter Providentissimus
Deus[11], [...] justly and rightly condemned these errors. [1][12]

The Roman Catholic position on the Bible is further clarified in Dei
Verbum, one of the principal documents of the Second Vatican Council
(Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, n. 11 & 12) This document states
the Catholic belief that all scripture is sacred and reliable because
the biblical authors were inspired by God. However, the human
dimension of the Bible is also acknowledged as well as the importance
of proper interpretation. Careful attention must be paid to the actual
meaning intended by the authors, in order to render a correct
interpretation. Genre, modes of expression, historical circumstances,
poetic liberty, and church tradition are all factors that must be
considered by Catholics when examining scripture. The Roman Catholic
Church holds that the authority to declare correct interpretation
rests ultimately with the church through its magisterium.

The Bishops' Conferences of England and Wales has recently published a
teaching document called "The Gift of Scripture" instructing the
faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. According
to this document, the Bible is true in passages relating to human
salvation, but it continues to say that: "We should not expect total
accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters." As examples of
passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early
chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from
other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it
is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide
religious teaching and that they could not be described as historical
writing. Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of
Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer
describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the
wedding feast of Christ the Lamb. [2]


[edit] Eastern Orthodox Christians

The Eastern Orthodox Church also believes in unwritten tradition and
the written scriptures, but it has rarely sought to clarify the
relationship between them. Contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians
debate whether these are separate deposits of knowledge or different
ways of understanding a single dogmatic reality. Father Georges
Florovsky, for example, asserted that tradition is no more than
"Scripture rightly understood." Because the Eastern Orthodox Church
emphasizes the authority of councils, which belong to all the bishops,
it stresses the canonical uses more than inspiration of scripture.
Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, most Eastern Orthodox theologians
also recognize that a final seal of authenticity or ecumenicity is
that the body of the church receives the councils. Since the
acceptance of the Septuagint and New Testament by leading regional
bishops of the second century was based on those texts' faithfulness
to the same apostolic teaching to which the church traditions are also
faithful. The Eastern Orthodox Church emphasizes that the scriptures
can only be understood according to a normative rule of faith (the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in short) and way of life that has
continued from Christ and the Apostles to this day, and beyond.


[edit] Protestant views

[edit] The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

In 1978 a large gathering of American Protestant churches, including
representatives of the Conservative, Reformed and Presbyterian,
Lutheran, and Baptist denominations, adopted the Chicago Statement on
Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement does not necessarily imply
that any particular traditional interpretation of the Bible is without
error. Instead, it gives primacy to seeking the intention of the
author of each text, and commits itself to receiving the statement as
fact depending on whether it can be determined or assumed that the
author meant to communicate a statement of fact. Of course, knowing
the intent of the original authors is impossible. Acknowledging that
there are many kinds of literature in the Bible besides statements of
fact, the Statement nevertheless reasserts the authenticity of the
Bible in toto as the word of God. Advocates of the Chicago Statement
are worried that accepting one error in the Bible leads one down a
slippery slope that ends in rejecting that the Bible has any value
greater than some other book. "The authority of Scripture is
inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way
limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary
to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the
individual and the church."


[edit] Evangelicals

Evangelical churches, unlike Eastern and Roman churches, reject that
there is an infallible authoritative tradition that is held over, or
on a par with, scripture. Some Evangelicals hold that the Bible
confirms its own authority, pointing out that Jesus frequently quotes
scripture as his final "court of appeal". (See for example Matthew
4:4,6 & 10; 21:13; Mark 9:12) The reasoning is that if the Bible is
assumed to be inerrant and the only form of God's word, then that
implies that the Bible is fully reliable. Tradition on the other hand
is seen to be subject to human memory, and may have many versions of
the same events/truths, some of which may be contradictory.


[edit] King James Only

Another belief (King James Only) holds that the translators of the
King James Version were guided by God, and that the KJV thus is to be
taken as authoritative. However, those who hold this opinion do not
extend it to the KJV translations of the Apocryphal books, which were
produced along with the rest of the Authorized Version. Modern
translations differ from the KJV on numerous points, sometimes
resulting from access to different early texts. Upholders of the KJV
would nevertheless hold that the Protestant canon of KJV is itself an
inspired text and therefore remains authoritative. The King James Only
movement asserts that the KJV is the sole English translation free
from error.

[edit] Textus Receptus (non-English speaking cultures)

Similar to the King James Only view is the view that translations must
be derived from the Textus Receptus in order to be considered
inerrant. As the King James Version is an English translation, this
leaves speakers of other languages in a difficult position, hence the
belief in the Textus Receptus as the inerrant source text for
translations to modern languages. For example, in Spanish-speaking
cultures the commonly accepted "KJV-equivalent" is the Reina-Valera
1909 revision (with different groups accepting in addition to the 1909
or in its place the revisions of 1862 or 1960).


[edit] Wesleyan and Methodist view of scripture

The Wesleyan and Methodist Christian tradition affirms that the Bible
is authoritative on matters concerning faith and practice. The United
Methodist Church does not use the word "inerrant" to describe the
Bible, but it does believe that the Bible is God's Word, and as such,
is the primary authority for faith and practice.

What is of central importance for the Wesleyan Christian tradition is
the Bible as a tool which God uses to promote salvation. The Bible
does not itself effect salvation; God initiates salvation and proper
creaturely responses consummate salvation. One may be in danger of
bibliolatry if one claims that the Bible secures salvation.

With this focus on salvation, Wesleyans need not make claims about
inerrancy in the original autographs, subsequent translations, or
particular interpretations. And yet Wesleyans affirm the Bible to be
principally authoritative for faith and practice, and the Bible is
often a principle means for God to promote salvation in the world.


[edit] Lutheran views

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran
Synod, the Lutheran Church - Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod
and many other smaller Lutheran bodies hold to Scriptural inerrancy,
though for the most part Lutherans do not consider themselves to be
"fundamentalists". The larger Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada do not officially hold to
biblical inerrancy, though there are those within the ELCA and ELCIC
who are Inerrantists.


[edit] Basis for and criticism of biblical inerrancy

The Bible makes no direct claim to be inerrant. Some believe that 2nd
Timothy 3:16, which states that all scripture is inspired of God,
means the whole bible is inerrant. Several of its books are usually
interpreted as identifying their authorship in their titles,
especially the Gospels. However, the Bible can still be construed as
the "Word of God" in the sense that these authors' statements may have
been representative of, and perhaps even directly influenced by, God's
own knowledge. Thus, whether the Bible is - in whole or in part - the
Word of God is less clear than in the case of the Koran, which
explicitly claims both full authorship by Allah alone and total
inerrancy. (Note: Exodus claims of the Ethical Decalogue and Ritual
Decalogue that these, were however, God's word.) This is why it has
been suggested by any Islamic scholars that, whereas the notion of
Christian Fundamentalism is well-defined as belief in biblical
inerrancy, Islamic Fundamentalism could only be defined analogously if
it is taken to be a label applicable to all observance of Islam.
Nonetheless, the Bible need not be inerrant even if it is entirely the
Word of God, because God is capable of lying, and may even have
purpose for this. (For instance, the atheist Ricky Gervais has argued,
in a DVD commentary to Animals (comedy), that God lied about the
consequences of consuming forbidden fruit in Exodus 3.)

Biblical inerrancy has also been criticised on the grounds that the
Bible gives no indication of authorship by anyone less fallible than
ordinary humans, it frequently contradicts itself, and some claims it
makes about history or science can nowadays be demonstrated within
these disciplines to be untenable. One counterargument is that any
Christian approach to the Bible that does not assume inerrancy must be
selective, and could not defend the basis on which such selection was
achieved. Typical examples of justifications that are in fact advanced
pertain to whether a passage is literal or symbolic, and whether
specific sections were more susceptible during the history of the
Bible's assemblage to effects that create doubt over inerrancy than
others. Opinions are divided over which parts of the Bible, if any,
are trustworthy in the light of such considerations. There is the
additional problem with any holy text being claimed as inerrant that
this tends to encourage not only resistance to modern discoveries, but
also circular justification for religious faith.

Finally, one very subtle point to bear in mind with regard to a text's
inerrancy is that, even if it were guaranteed of that text in its
original language, this is no longer true after translation, because
direct translation is a bit of a myth. To limit the consequences of
this, the Koran is only ever translated in to a new language from the
original Arabic text. In the case of the Bible, the original texts
were in several ancient languages. interestingly, most defenders of
Biblical inerrancy are familiar with none of these, but only with the
translations in their own language, usually English. Translation
errors of the Bible and Koran are occasionally proposed or, in less
controversial circumstances, discovered. For instance, it is clear
that the original messianic prophecy did not require that the
Messiah's mother be a virgin, only young. It has been proposed that
the Gospels' description of the Virgin Mary were manufactured to fit
with a prophecy they themselves read in a mistranslated version.


[edit] See also
Calvin's view of Scripture
Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
Biblical hermeneutics
Biblical literalism
Bibliolatry
Internal consistency and the Bible

[edit] Notes
^ http://www.dts.edu/about/doctrinalstatement/
^ a b c Geisler & Nix (1986). A General Introduction to the Bible.
Moody Press, Chicago. ISBN ISBN 0-8024-2916-5.
^ See the Eighth and Ninth Article of Faith
^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5355758.stm
^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909531,00.html?iid=3Dchi=
x-sphere
^ http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/chicago.htm
^ http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/creeds/chicago.htm
^ See Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the
Faiths We Never Knew, p. 219
^ See Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the
Faiths We Never Knew, p. 219
^ "Divino Afflante Spiritu".
^ "Providentissimus Deus".
^ Free From All Error: Authorship, Inerrancy, Historicity of
Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars. ISBN
"0913382515".

[edit] References
Gleason Archer, 2001. New Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. ISBN
0-310-24146-4
Kathleen C. Boone: The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of
Protestant Fundamentalism, State Univ of New York Press 1989, ISBN
0-88706-895-2
Ethelbert W.Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1970.
Bart D. Ehrman, 2003. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture
and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press, Inc. ISBN
0-19-518249-9
Norman Geisler, ed. (1980). Inerrancy. ISBN 0-310-39281-0.
Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, (1999) When Critics Ask: A Popular
Handbook on Bible Difficulties.
Norman Geisler and William E. Nix., A General Introduction to the
Bible, Moody Publishers; Rev&Expndd edition (August 1986), ISBN
0-8024-2916-5
Walter C. Kaiser, Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce, Manfred T. Brauch.
(1996). Hard Sayings of the Bible
Charles Caldwell Ryrie (1981). What you should know about inerrancy.
ISBN 0-8024-8785-8
Sproul, R. C.. Hath God Said? (video series).
John Walvoord (1990). What We Believe: Understanding and Applying the
Basics of Christian Life. ISBN 0-929239-31-8
Warfield, B. B. (1977 reprint). Inspiration and Authority of Bible,
with a lengthy introductory essay by Cornelius Van Til. ISBN
0-8010-9586-7.
Dei Verbum Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (1965)

[edit] External links

[edit] Supportive links
Wesleyan Church beliefs of the Holy Bible
Monergism.com links to articles on scripture from a conservative
Calvinist perspective
The Authority and Inspiration of the Scriptures by B. B. Warfield
Why I believe the NT is historically reliable by Gary Habermas
Recent Perspectives on the Reliability of the Gospels by Gary R.
Habermas
Why I Believe in the Inerrancy of the Scriptures by Dave Miller (see
Farrell Till below)
Scholarly articles on Inerrancy from the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary
Library
FAQ about the Bible by Anastasios Kioulachoglou (The Journal of
Biblical Accuracy)

[edit] Critical links
How Can The Bible Be Authoritative? by N.T. Wright
Dissolving the Inerrancy Debate (a postmodern view)
Bible Inerrancy: A Belief Without Evidence Farrell Till's rebuttal to
Dave Miller's defense (see above)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy"
Categories: Articles lacking sources from January 2007 | All articles
lacking sources | Articles with unsourced statements since January
2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Christian
fundamentalism

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[Matthew Johnson]

Post by b***@dodo.com.au
I lifted the following from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. It
has to do with the business of inerrancy.

[snip]

Post by b***@dodo.com.au
The Eastern Orthodox Church also believes in unwritten tradition and
the written scriptures, but it has rarely sought to clarify the
relationship between them. Contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians
debate whether these are separate deposits of knowledge or different
ways of understanding a single dogmatic reality. Father Georges
Florovsky, for example, asserted that tradition is no more than
"Scripture rightly understood."

Let's not forget, though, that he said this as a somewhat polemic statement,
responding to the pressure of finding how isolated the Orthodox in the West are
while living surrounded by Protestants. So I think he was trying to make the
dogma more appealing to people raised in the "sola scriptura" tradition.

Post by b***@dodo.com.au
Because the Eastern Orthodox Church
emphasizes the authority of councils, which belong to all the bishops,
it stresses the canonical uses more than inspiration of scripture.

This is somewhat misleading, since the only councils with _that_ level of
authority are the Ecumenical Councils, and we are not having any more of them.
Nor do we feel the need.

Post by b***@dodo.com.au
Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, most Eastern Orthodox theologians
also recognize that a final seal of authenticity or ecumenicity is
that the body of the church receives the councils.

And this is best described by Kartashev in his classic history of the Seven
Ecumenical Councils, in the book "The Ecumenical Councils".

[b***@juno.com]

Post by j***@go.com
Bible and Why_. Ehrman points out that we
do not have the original manuscripts of the
New Testament, only copies of copies of ...,

And God could have watched over the copying process, exactly like He
watched over the originals.

Post by j***@go.com
and that the text was changed as it was
copied, so that the copies we do have do not
say the same things as the originals.

That means the originals were slightly incorrect, due to human
freewill. And God inspired the slight changes that occurred later,to
make the Bible say precisely what he wanted.

Post by j***@go.com
a good many of the changes were made
deliberately. These intentional changes

If they were made deliberately, this means that God inspired these
later deliberate changes. It means the original writer was slightly
incorrect, and needed to be slightly corrected later on.

Post by j***@go.com
1) Changes made to coerce the text into
supporting the copyist's position in some
theological controversy of the day.

And God wanted that particular side of the theological controversy to
win, so He allowed the change to be made to clarify the correct
theological position.

Post by j***@go.com
2) Changes made when the copyist
encountered a text that was puzzling or
even jarring, and changed it to harmonize
with what he expected.

This type of change was also authorized and inspired by God.

Post by j***@go.com
Actually, Ehrman goes much further. He
reasons that if God wanted His people for
all generations and in all places to have
His inspired Word, He would have made
sure that the exact words were preserved.

False. This would have involved overthrowing the freewill of the
original writers, which God does not like to do.

Post by j***@go.com
Since He didn't do that, Ehrman concludes
that He didn't inspire the original manuscripts
either. Supposing that God did inspire them
and then let them be lost makes His actions
strangely inconsistent.

Not at all. God inspired the originals, and these were not quite
right, due to human freewill. So later on, God used OTHER freewills to
make the Bible absolutely perfect, exactly like He wanted it to be.

What I find ridiculous is that people like Ehrmann seem to think that
God can ONLY inspire the originals, but for some reason God is
incapable of inspiring later tiny corrections.

Post by j***@go.com
Here's where I add my own comments, not
Ehrman's: Surely preachers who have been
to seminary must know about the problems
with the text in much greater detail than this
book of Ehrman's enters into?

Of course they do. That is why my pastor once showed our Sunday School
class one particular error, to let us see that the Bible has small
errors that don't affect doctrine.

Post by j***@go.com
good many of them talk as if the entire Bible
we have now is still the inspired Word of God!

It is. God inspired both the slightly incorrect originals, and God
also inspired the tiny corrections that occured later to give us our
currently perfect Bible. (With respect to doctrine I mean. There are a
few tiny copying errors that prove that human freewill needs to enter
the equation. But God has not allowed any heretical doctrine to
survive.)

Post by j***@go.com
This is even more bizarre if they're attributing
this to an English translation, especially the
King James, which is based largely on what
is now known to be one of the worst Greek
manuscripts. Are these preachers just
deceiving themselves so they don't have
to face this "inconvenient truth"? Or are
they knowingly lying to their hearers?

You start from a false premise, you get a nice false dichotomy.

[j***@go.com]

On May 30, 9:17 pm, ***@juno.com wrote of the
rather bizarre idea that "God inspired...slightly
incorrect originals", which appears to be quite
a heterodox position (don't most inerrantists
claim that the original manuscripts were inspired
and inerrant?). It also suggests that God took
a rather inefficient approach to getting His word
out, and also was perfectly happy to put out
incorrect writings to some people -- not a
flattering picture of God at all. Moreover,
one would think that anyone who believed
that God inspired numerous iterations of
corrections to His inspired Word (!) would
also believe that He was still inspiring stuff
in recent years, and would be either a
Mormon (believing God inspired the Book
of Mormon) or a Roman Catholic (believing
in papal infallibility).

It makes more sense to use Occam's
Razor, and go for the simplest explanation,
which is that humans, by their natural
perversity and error-proneness, put in
more or less random changes. Ehrman
even points out that Luke, though he used
Mark as a source, greatly changed what
he got from Mark and put out a very
different picture of Jesus from the one
Mark showed; apparently Luke, the
rational Greek, couldn't stomach Mark's
picture of a Jesus who could get angry.

The most sensible idea, as regarding
Scripture and doctrine, is that given
by Oscar Wilde: "In religion, truth
is only the opinion that has survived."
Ehrman (who, you should know,
started his higher education at the
most fundamentalist school of them
all, Moody Bible Institute, but grew
into his rather less strict position
over time) has written two other books
which I haven't read yet that I suspect
will accord with Wilde's view, entitled
_Lost Christianities_ and _Lost
Scriptures_.

This belief in the inerrancy of the BIble
we now have comes across to me in
many cases as idolatrous, making the
Bible out to be a god, perfect and reliable
in all ways. Thus it puts one's trust in
a visible thing rather than the invisible
God and is no better than Baalism.
Another way to look at it is that it
turns the Bible into a manual of
magic, guaranteed to work. Neither
of these is in accord with the belief
system the Bible itself points toward:
trust in God and nothing else -- no
*thing* else, no matter how holy
a thing, even the Bible.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

[b***@juno.com]

Post by j***@go.com
rather bizarre idea that "God inspired...slightly
incorrect originals", which appears to be quite
a heterodox position (don't most inerrantists
claim that the original manuscripts were inspired
and inerrant?).

Inerrancy is not really heterodox or orthodox. That is a category
error.

Since the higher criticism of the enlightenment, it has been known
that the Bible is not inerrant. However, even secular sources agree
that no doctrines are in doubt, which is just what God intended. The
small errors are there to prove that God allows freewill to run its
course, up to but not including heresy in the Bible.

Post by j***@go.com
a rather inefficient approach to getting His word
out, and also was perfectly happy to put out
incorrect writings to some people -- not a
flattering picture of God at all.

What you call "inefficient" is what I call "allowing for human
freewill."

You are demanding that God forcibly overthrow the freewill of the
original writers.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to veto that one.

Post by j***@go.com
one would think that anyone who believed
that God inspired numerous iterations of
corrections to His inspired Word (!) would
also believe that He was still inspiring stuff
in recent years, and would be either a
Mormon (believing God inspired the Book
of Mormon) or a Roman Catholic (believing
in papal infallibility).

False logical leap. The original writings were, let's say, 99 percent
correct. God knew that future freewills would be able to correct the
last 1 percent. No further revision was (or is) needed, certainly not
beyond the point of canonization.

The mormons are total fools, and the Catholics, although much wiser,
still refuse to submit to God's Holy Word.

Post by j***@go.com
It makes more sense to use Occam's
Razor, and go for the simplest explanation,

The simplest explanation is that God watches over his word, without
forcibly overthrowing human freewill. He is not limited to doing this
only once, despite the absurd restrictions that people like Ehrmann
try to place on Him.

This fact, explains why God allowed extremely small errors to be
originally made through freewill, because he knew that soon afterward,
other freewills would solve the problem.

Your absurd demand that God forcibly overthrow freewill to get a
perfect Bible on the first try, is just laughable, and is typical
atheist argument logic chopping. They try to rig the debate so that
their clever little arguments suddenly overthrow the entire bedrock of
Western Civ. (The Bible)

Nice try, but no.

Post by j***@go.com
which is that humans, by their natural
perversity and error-proneness, put in
more or less random changes. Ehrman
even points out that Luke, though he used
Mark as a source, greatly changed what
he got from Mark and put out a very
different picture of Jesus from the one
Mark showed; apparently Luke, the
rational Greek, couldn't stomach Mark's
picture of a Jesus who could get angry.

Actually, each of the synoptic gospels paints a slighly different
picture. Kind of like different biographers will take their story from
slightly different angles. None of the angles is necessarily "wrong."
They can all be "right" from their own slant.

Post by j***@go.com
The most sensible idea, as regarding
Scripture and doctrine, is that given
by Oscar Wilde: "In religion, truth
is only the opinion that has survived."

Nice try, but this is better:

"In religion, truth is only the opinion that GOD HAS ALLOWED to
survive."

Post by j***@go.com
Ehrman (who, you should know,
started his higher education at the
most fundamentalist school of them
all, Moody Bible Institute, but grew
into his rather less strict position
over time)

Moody is good. My sister went there, she seemed to like it.

has written two other books

Post by j***@go.com
which I haven't read yet that I suspect
will accord with Wilde's view, entitled
_Lost Christianities_ and _Lost
Scriptures_.

Yeah. The "lost Christianities" were allowed by God to be lost. I
Wonder why?

And the "lost Scriptures" were also allowed by God to be lost. Why do
you suppose He did that?

Do you suppose God had some sort of reason why He allowed them to be
lost?

Like maybe they were WRONG?

Post by j***@go.com
This belief in the inerrancy of the BIble
we now have comes across to me in
many cases as idolatrous, making the
Bible out to be a god, perfect and reliable
in all ways.

False. An idol is something you worship. Nobody I know worships the
Bible.

But a lot of Catholics try this line of argument, you are sounding
quite Catholic now.

Post by j***@go.com
trust in God and nothing else -- no
*thing* else, no matter how holy
a thing, even the Bible.

This sounds kind of good at first glance. But the end result is you
refuse to submit to the authority of the Bible. And then you start
making stuff up as you go along, inventing all kinds of brand spanking
new, patented, cleverly fabricated, and recently manufactured
doctrines.

Not a good epistemology at all.

[j***@go.com]

On Jun 5, 6:15 pm, ***@juno.com wrote:

[I'll just be quoting excerpts]

Post by b***@juno.com
Since the higher criticism of the enlightenment, it has been known
that the Bible is not inerrant. However, even secular sources agree
that no doctrines are in doubt, which is just what God intended.

Isn't that assuming what you want to be true? If there are errors
(like stating the wrong name of the high priest in Mark 2:26 and
parallel passages about David's eating the showbread) that don't
affect doctrine, how can you sensibly believe that there are no
errors that do affect it? The one is just as probable as the other.
Indeed, I Corinthians 14:22, where it is obvious from surrounding
verses that some phrases got transposed in the copying, and
actually tongues should be a sign for believers and prophecy
for non-believers, straddles the boundary between the two.
(J.B. Phillips, in his translation _The New Testament in Modern
English_ [and he did mean "English", not "American"],
actually fixed that error.)

Post by b***@juno.com
The simplest explanation is that God watches over his word, without
forcibly overthrowing human freewill.

No, the simplest explanation is Ehrman's: that humans wrote the
Bible, and other humans changed it to suit themselves. That is
infinitely more probable than yours.

Post by b***@juno.com
Your absurd demand that God forcibly overthrow freewill to get a
perfect Bible on the first try, is just laughable, and is typical
atheist argument logic chopping.

1) Much of what you say is even more laughable, because
so exceedingly improbable to any realist.
2) Don't go speaking in that patronizing manner of "atheists"
until you understand where they're coming from. Until you
experience a visceral sense of betrayal by God (as I have),
you have no room at all to criticize "atheists".

Post by b***@juno.com
"In religion, truth is only the opinion that GOD HAS ALLOWED to
survive."

Again, you're assuming your conclusion.

Post by b***@juno.com
Yeah. The "lost Christianities" were allowed by God to be lost. I
Wonder why?
And the "lost Scriptures" were also allowed by God to be lost. Why do
you suppose He did that?
Do you suppose God had some sort of reason why He allowed them to be
lost?
Like maybe they were WRONG?

In some cases, yes. I find Docetism -- the idea that Jesus did
not actually incarnate, suffer, and die, but only appeared to do
so -- ludicrously unconvincing, even more so than standard
Christianity. But in other cases, I suspect that other writings
and beliefs were lost because they were too radical, too
frightening, more than people were ready to receive at the time
(even Jesus's more radical pronouncements that have come
down to us in the canonical New Testament are hardly ever
practiced, because nobody dares); so men (and it was pretty
much all "men") suppressed the truth to make Christianity
more to their own sinful liking, or more comfortable, or easier
to believe (and thus to "sell", i.e., make converts), or whatever.

Post by b***@juno.com
An idol is something you worship. Nobody I know worships the
Bible.

One doesn't have to actually bow down to something in a
ceremony to worship it. America worships Mammon without
bowing down to it. And I think many Christians take the
Bible as being as authoritative as God -- or rather, they
come up with their interpretation of some passage and
claim that God commands thus and so in His Word,
when the Spirit may be trying to move them in another
direction; thus they put the Bible above the living God
in practice, and that is idolatry. "The letter kills, but
the Spirit gives life"; take care that you do not place
the dead letter above the Spirit.

Post by b***@juno.com
But the end result is you
refuse to submit to the authority of the Bible.

And why should I? You have nothing but your
own assumption to indicate that it is true.
If I see that something in it makes sense,
then I'll believe the part that makes sense;
if its counsel appears wise, then I will give
it serious consideration. (For example,
Jesus said in Matthew 7:14 that there's a
tight gate and a narrow path that lead to life,
and only a few find it; I'm still trying to find
that way to life, which is not conventional
Christianity such as yours -- obviously, since
so many go that way.) And C.S. Lewis
wrote, I imagine correctly, that the Biblical
accounts of King David's reign are probably
about as accurate as accounts of the reign
of Louis XIV. But to take the Bible as an
"authority" -- I doubt that you or anyone can
convince me that that is the right way for
any free, thinking human being to live.

Post by b***@juno.com
And then you start
making stuff up as you go along, inventing all kinds of brand spanking
new, patented, cleverly fabricated, and recently manufactured
doctrines.

I wouldn't say that I "invent doctrines", or even that
Bart Ehrman did. I just say what I've seen in actual
real-life experience, and he wrote what accords with
real-life experience; apparently you put the words
of an ancient book above what you can actually
see for yourself, and to me that's irrational.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

[B.G. Kent]

What is odd is that the very Protestants who hold up the King James Bible
as the one definition descended from people who had to flee King
James...go to Holland and then to America because he wanted all Christians
to believe as he did and would jail or kill those who did not. I've always
found that odd.

Bren

[Burkladies]

On May 29, 6:40 pm, ***@go.com wrote:
...

Post by j***@go.com
Here's where I add my own comments, not
Ehrman's: Surely preachers who have been
to seminary must know about the problems
with the text in much greater detail than this
book of Ehrman's enters into? And yet a
good many of them talk as if the entire Bible
we have now is still the inspired Word of God!
This is even more bizarre if they're attributing
this to an English translation, especially the
King James, which is based largely on what
is now known to be one of the worst Greek
manuscripts. Are these preachers just
deceiving themselves so they don't have
to face this "inconvenient truth"? Or are
they knowingly lying to their hearers?

Oh yeah, Ehrman is crazy. You speak truth here, preachers do not have
an education for this. They preach any crap from off the top of their
heads. I stopped attending church for a while due to this. The
preachers are decieving themselves. And some do not want to face
their inconvienent truth.