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303 thoughts on “About”

1. BTW, I’m sure you meant 400th Anniversary. 🙂 We don’t want these Christians accusing us of exaggerating . LOL

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2. KC, you bring up a good point. Even though the bible is mythology and even though it has its moral problems, it does still have many good things in it. I even think they’re what give many Christians such a hard time from seeing the truth, because “so much in it is so right…” I personally like Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as given in Mathew. I like it. I think it has a truly good message.

   Many of the Proverbs and verses like the one you mentioned…

   Not saying they should take away from the bad, but we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Recognize the bible for what it is and take from it what you can – like any other book.

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3. William,

   You’ve worded that well. I agree with you and KC. In fact it’s funny you mentioned the sermon on the mount because that was my first impression of the bible and I remember thinking positively about the messages in there (and it’s been a while since I’ve read it so not saying the whole passage is good). Obviously in any book there will good and bad stuff in them.

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4. Thanks William and Howie for your kind remarks. We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Additionally, we can also gain truths from other “Holy Books” . No one religion has the market cornered on good stuff or bad. 🙂 I thought is was rather sad when the Christians were bashing Atheists ( I think it was in Washington, DC ) for placing billboards on the city buses which read, “Be Good for Goodness Sake” during Christmas a few years back. Who in the world has the market cornered on goodness ???

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5. Howie,

   Thinking on it now, I guess I’d like to add this little bit to my comment on the sermon on the mount: Since I don’t view it as divine gospel, I am not saying that people are bad or wrong if they don’t adhere to each little, specific part.

   I view it almost as if it were the Jedi Force – they are precepts and abilities/mindsets that everyone is capable of achieving through enough discipline and meditation, but not everyone will – and that’s okay. It’s not expected nor is it required.
   And I mean the, “go the extra mile,” and “don’t let your treasures be material things,” etc (quotations are merely paraphrases).

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6. I have to admit that I personally find the KJV far easier to read than other translations,

   As I mentioned before, one of the points I wonder about is that the NIV doesn’t use the term Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12.

   As the commentary points out, The NIV changes Lucifer’s name to “morning star.” But this is one of the blessed titles given to Jesus Christ.

   KJV:

   Isaiah 14:12, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”

   NIV:

   Isaiah 14:12, “How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!”

   There are a lot more differences than just this, but this one particularly stood out to me

   This is one of the best comparison charts I’ve found:

   http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/m-m.html

   Apart from the colour schemes (red on blue) and basic website, the chart provides a concise comparison between the KJV and other translations. Comments on these verses are provided in the right hand box.

   Would love to read what you guys think of it.

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7. You need to read the “Who We Are” section of ecclesia.org . They seem to proclaim themselves “Judge and Jury” of which manuscripts are the “True Word of God” and they seem to poo poo formal education on the subject. This was the feeling I got from it anyway.

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8. Thanks, kcchief1! I had no idea about the vast number of added scriptures, and I didn’t even know about the ORIGINAL KJV having contained the Apocrypha!

   I’ve saved some of your comment text and one day will probably do a blog post on it…unless, maybe, you already did? I’d love to read it if you have. For the most part I’ve been content in looking at various prophecies (like Tyre, or the Census of Quirinius in Luke) and seeing that they are wrong, and saying “well, that is that”. But the additional scriptures, which original texts are used, the addition (or not) of works such as the Apocrypha…takes it all to the ROOT.

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9. You’re very welcome eSell ! I have not done a blog on this so feel free to do so. Let me know if you do as I would love to read it. When I was a Christian, I taught an adult Sunday school class on this. There were a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering why they were never taught this before. 🙂

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10. The ecclesia.org website that portal001 shared with us supports the Majority Text view. Their premise is that the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture requires that the early manuscripts cannot point to the original text better than the later manuscripts can, because these early manuscripts are in the minority.

    To me this would be like saying a 4th Edition of a book with 1 million copies in print would have to be more accurate than a 1st Edition book which had only 100 copies in print.

    I would like to hear what Nate and others think about this.

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11. This has been a really great discussion so far. Thanks for kicking it off, portal!

    To me, it comes down to this: when people give preference to the KJV, it’s not based on anything other than the end result they’re shooting for. They believe the Bible is God’s word, and the KJV fits their preconceived ideas about what God’s word should be better than any other translation. Plus, since the KJV was all that anyone had for centuries, what does it say about God if he didn’t make sure people had an accurate translation of his message for all that time?

    But that approach is like the person that shuns all the evidence saying cigarettes are bad for you because they like to smoke. Their position is based entirely on what they want, not where the evidence points. But sometimes the truth is uncomfortable.

    The fact is, our earliest manuscripts show a clear evolution of the “sacred” text. The story of the woman caught in adultery that kc referenced earlier is a great (and glaring) example. That’s one of the best stories in the Bible, but all evidence points to it being a much later addition. Wikipedia has an excellent write up about it here.

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12. Hi everyone,

    Thanks for your feedback and thoughts 🙂

    I do have another question though, what is the evidence to indicate that these more recently discovered manuscripts are actually older?

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13. and thanks kcchief1 for your suggestion,

    I’ll have another look at the website

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14. kcchief1 the about section of the website doesn’t seem to me as being necessarily postioning themselves as “Judge and Jury”. If anything they seem to be stating the opposite.

    In regards to formal education they state that a “degree” is a Masonic concept, not a scriptural one. This is a pretty bold thing to state, but I don’t think its dismissing formal education out of hand, or poo pooing it 🙂 They even state that “this is not an argument against education”.

    It seems to me that they outline their intensions – “What are we advocating? We are advocating, first, a humility concerning our knowledge of God’s Truth, and second, a serious and continuous search for God’s Truth..”

    Given, they do express this in quite a confronting way. Thats what I got from it anyway.

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15. Positioning*

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16. And for the record I’m not now suggesting that a “degree” is necessarily a Masonic concept. That was their words; I don’t want to risk a tangent by starting on any conspiracy theories 😉

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17. @Portal, not trying to “Pick” on ecclesia.org In looking on the Internet , there seems to be a lot of people taking sides on this issue. I checked out about a dozen sites and though not a scientific survey, it appears the “hard line Christians” feel the “majority texts” are the true word of God and the “minority texts” are for “progressive christians and atheists” to hang their hat on.

    As a Deist, it doesn’t impact me but I still find it fascinating and will continue to research the subject .

    Thanks Portal for bringing up the matter. Gives me something new to research. 🙂

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18. Portal,

    There are several techniques used for dating manuscripts. For one thing, Greek manuscripts are older than Latin ones. We know that because of the cultural changes during the Roman Empire. Sometimes, fragments of manuscripts are used in radio-carbon dating to get the approximate age. But even more importantly, the changes in writing styles show some clear differences in when various manuscripts were written.

    Here are some handy resources that can provide a bit more information:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscripts#Dating_the_New_Testament_manuscripts
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncial_script
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_minuscule

    Also, consider this passage from a paper I ran across at this link.

    …we can date papyrus manuscripts, any manuscript for that matter, simply by looking at the way it is written. Handwriting is a product of human culture and as such it is always developing. Differences in handwriting are bound to appear within one generation. Just compare the handwriting of your parents with your own. Or look at your own scribblings of a few years ago. It is the same handwriting as today but an expert, a paleographer, can distinguish not unimportant differences. He cannot establish the exact date but he can confidently place one handwriting in the 30’s and another in the 80’s. Even printed texts can easily be dated according to the outward appearance of the type or font used by the printer.

    For such an ancient period as that between A.D. 100 and 300 it is of course much more difficult to be confident about the date of a manuscript. There is infinitely less comparative material. Nevertheless we are now in a fairly comfortable position to date papyrus manuscripts according to their handwriting. We do not have to rely on manuscripts of the New Testament only. We have hundreds of papyrus manuscripts of Greek pagan literary texts from this period and again hundreds of carefully written papyrus documents that show the same types of handwriting. These documents are very important for paleographers because they are often exactly dated. As a rule New Testament manuscripts on papyrus are not. A careful comparison of the papyrus documents and manuscripts of the second and third centuries has established beyond doubt that about forty Greek papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament date from this very period. Unfortunately only six of them are extensively preserved.

    Even within the period that runs from c. A.D. 100-300 it is possible for paleographers to be more specific on the relative date of the papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament. For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest “manuscript” of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars.

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19. Thanks, I’ll check these out

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20. I think this is a fairly important issue,

    I mean if the more recently discovered manuscripts are actually older then they potentially could also be more accurate. Although but (and this might be very sceptical to say) just because a manuscript is older doesn’t necessarily make it more genuine or accurate, a earlier manuscript could have come from another source, say from a mystery religion

    i.e a group that existed during an earlier time that has also included its own spin on things. However, I admit with this sort of attitude you could really question any source and never have enough evidence.

    However say if the KJV is more accurate/or older then this would have direct implications for newer translations.

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21. Daniel Wallace, a New Testament scholar who has served as a consultant and editor on at least five Bible translations, told The Christian Post earlier this year that Bible readers can benefit greatly from reading various translations.

    “I think that English speakers should have more than one translation. If we have in our background a history of Christian thought in the Western world, especially in the English-speaking world, it’s part of our tradition and it’s important to own a lot more than one translation,” said Wallace.

    He suggested the King James Bible for English-speaking readers, citing its “elegance and its cadence and the beauty of its language.”

    “But it’s not the most accurate anymore,” Wallace added of the KJV. “So it’s elegant, it’s easy to memorize out of even though the language is archaic, but it’s not always real clear and it’s not always real accurate.”

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22. I have enjoyed reading , “The Oxford Study Bible” and “The Jewish Annotated New Testament”

    As Daniel Wallace said above, “we can benefit greatly from reading various translations”.

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23. Hey Portal,

    I think you’ve hit upon a very difficult problem that I always had while I was a Christian. What version or manuscript copy should we trust is the one that God chose to communicate to us with.

    We have empirical evidence that there were tons of mistakes and changes as many copies were made, and the amount of those changes increases as you get closer to the time they were originally written. But there is a period of more than 100 years where we have so few manuscript copies, and so we have don’t have any empirical evidence of changes and mistakes in that period. But a reasonable estimate could be made if we were to continue the curve backwards of amount of changes versus time, and then it would be fair to conclude that there were even more changes during that “hidden” period of time.

    If that’s confusing the following may make it clearer:

    Click to access NTReliabilitySlideshow.pdf

    It’s used by Richard Carrier in a debate with JP Holding that you can find here

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24. @Nate

    This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars.

    Statements like this have always fascinated and bothered me. There seems to be no evidence to clearly demonstrate why a first century date for the original should be considered and not , say, a year or two before. I admit to not being clued up on palaeography, but why not AD 115?

    Based on what I’ve read there seems a fair amount of misguided bias for early dating. In fact, the AD125 date seems tenuous at best.

    I found this article on Vridar after scratching around a bit. Interesting take.

    http://vridar.org/2013/03/08/new-date-for-that-st-johns-fragment-rylands-library-papyrus-p52/

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25. Hi Howie,

    Thanks for the links, I’ll check them out

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