The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Heretic! Next you'll tell us Jesus didn't have blue eyes, fair hair and speak with a slight southern drawl.

Jesus probably looked like one of these guys.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Also, most contrary documents (and people) were burned. Many of the most important source documents discovered in the last century only survived because they had been deliberately hidden from the church's PC police. Christianity used to take the same line on apostasy and heresy as ISIS.

c.f. "Everybody in 70's China was a Maoist because the only surviving documents from that period are Maoist."

There's a really interesting discussion of the evolution of Christian doctrine in (I think) Karen Armstrong's The History of God. She documents how what we are taught as Christine doctrine now was only one of many wildly divergent strains of early Christianity, and in some doctrinal cases not even the majority position. Basics like the Trinity or the cross as the symbol of faith or transubstantiation would have struck early Christians as bizarre lunacy.

This was a very messy, very worldly history of power struggles between the various power centers (Rome vs Alexandria vs Antioch etc). When one strain finally got enough secular power to extinguish the others, culminating with the First Council of Nicaea in 325, there was a ruthless effort to obliterate all record of all the others. But in reality Christianity in the early period was extremely volatile and the creed didn't settle down until somebody finally had the firepower behind him to kill off all the competition.

tl; dr: Not only was Jesus not a Christian, the vast majority of early Christians weren't what we call "Christian."

You do realize that until Constantine, Christianity was a persecuted minority in the Roman system and there wasn't some church PC police as you imagine. Hard to run around policing everyone in that day and age under the best of circumstances, on to of you're busy being tiki torches for Roman emperors and being fed to the lions in the Coliseum. That's one of the sillier things I've heard in a long time. You then talk about how things weren't that organized and were messy. You can't have it both ways.

Transubstantiation is another thing the Catholics are into, so I'll again leave that to them.

The trinity is in the Bible itself, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are sprinkled throughout, and are even listed together. For example, Matthew 28:19 - "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" It was emphasized in response to heretical teaching such as Arianism, which believed that the Son was a created being.

There of course have been many strains of Christianity, with some obviously diverging on major points within the Bible. That doesn't really tell us anything other than that people through history believe many things, some in obvious juxtaposition with core aspects of the Bible. Or maybe you're saying we give equal weight to Jim Jones/David Koresh/etc.

So much misinformation. Don't have time to respond to it all.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Of course atheism is another belief system, like a religious belief system. We all believe in something. Some folks just like to think they're above that, but they're just fooling themselves.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

You do realize that until Constantine, Christianity was a persecuted minority in the Roman system and there wasn't some church PC police as you imagine. Hard to run around policing everyone in that day and age when you're busy being tiki torches for Roman emperors and being fed to the lions in the Coliseum. That's one of the sillier things I've heard in a long time. You then talk about how things weren't that organized and were messy. You can't have it both ways.

So much misinformation. Don't have time to respond to it all.

You must not have had time to read clearly, either. I'm in a good mood, so I'll clear up your confusion.

Point 1: although Christianity was persecuted from time to time, the persecution of Christians was greatly exaggerated by Christian apologists both then and since. Christians were regarded for the most part as fairly strange cultists. They primarily got in trouble with the civil authorities for not paying lip service to the state. The 1950's Hollywood image of Christians being thrown to the lions is pretty much a crock. There were periods in which particular emperors used the Christians as scapegoats. "The Egyptian corn crop failed? Plague is running rampant? Dang Christians! Round up the usual suspects." But for the most part there was no single "Christianity" to provoke Roman wrath beyond "dissent is unpatriotic."

Point 2: Constantine makes Christianity the state religion of Rome because he figured he had backed the right horse at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. (This was nothing new, by the way, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus pulled the same stunt after the Battle of Antioch in 218 only his divine guardian general was a sun god Elagabal, from whom he took the name immortalized by Gilbert & Sullivan, Elagabalus). By that time Christianity has a hold as one of the strongest mystery eastern cults in the empire.

Point 3: Although there is probably just as much infighting among Christians prior to Nicea, we (or at any rate, I) don't have much information. But again, you seem to have missed the point that the councils of the 4th century when the doctrinal winners and losers were getting picked specifically ordered the destruction of heretical doctrines. If your presumptive theory of a clean, single-threaded development of Christianity were correct, that would not have been necessary.

If you're going to argue the history of Christianity you may want to step outside orthodox Christian histories. I love the Catholic Encyclopedia, but if I go there to research say the Arian Heresy, I'm going to keep in mind I'm reading one side's Pravda.

 

[Priceless]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Of course atheism is another belief system, like a religious belief system. We all believe in something. Some folks just like to think they're above that, but they're just fooling themselves.

No, we don't all believe in something. That's the point.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Going by your link, up to 300 years between the original and earliest surviving manuscript, there are only 4 existing manuscripts. The 24,000 comes post 300 years from the original. Much can change (and has been shown to by historians applying the historical-critical method) in the 300 years leading up to the mass reproduction of the works (which has a lot to do with conversion of Constantine and the Roman Empire shifting toward Christianity).

I'll preface this by saying that fundamentally Christian belief is faith, so apart from that I wouldn't expect anyone to believe the Bible. Though of course for certain folks, probably more technically minded, having significant manuscript evidence can be helpful to developing such faith. People come to faith by many different avenues. But I think it's a mistake for a Christian to think they can convince a non-believer via argument over all this stuff.

That said, the article I referenced didn't go into a lot of detail about the original manuscripts. Here are a couple articles I came across that go into more detail and have some updates that show more original manuscripts from closer to Jesus' time on this earth.

http://www.dts.edu/read/wallace-new-testament-manscript-first-century/

http://www.bible.ca/ef/topical-the-earliest-new-testament-manuscripts.htm

More manuscripts are being discovered all the time and the existing ones are receiving more analysis, so the numbers/dates vary here and there. Given the times, the difficulty of copying documents, the heavy persecution of Christians and ensuing destruction of many Christian document by the Romans, etc., it is quite impressive that as much has survived twenty centuries or so. At the least, I don't see how people can't recognize that there is a large body of manuscripts with a high level of consistency.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Of course atheism is another belief system, like a religious belief system. We all believe in something. Some folks just like to think they're above that, but they're just fooling themselves.

No, another fallacy. Atheism doesn't mean you think you are "above" religion. It's true that one can be above particularly ham-fisted presentations of religion, but religious people can be above that too, and for that matter there are also ham-fisted versions of atheism. The smart/dumb axis and the religious/non-religious axis are orthogonal.

You seem to always think that people you disagree with are talking down to you, and so you convert that resentment into a sort of back of the hand dismissal of everything they're saying ('they think they're so smart..."). So for the record, we're not talking down to religion as religion. We're talking down to dumb as dumb. If you're confusing the two, that's not on us.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

No, we don't all believe in something. That's the point.

You are fooling yourself. Not the first time.

 

[Priceless]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

You are fooling yourself. Not the first time.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

No, another fallacy. Atheism doesn't mean you are "above" religion. It's true that one can be above particularly ham-fisted presentations of religion, but religious people can be above that too, and or that matter there are also ham-fisted versions of atheism. The smart/dumb axis and the religious/non-religious axes are orthogonal.

You seem to always think that people you disagree with are talking down to you, and so you convert that resentment into a sort of back of the hand dismissal of everything they're saying ('they think they're so smart..."). So for the record, we're not talking down to religion as religion. We're talking down to dumb as dumb. If you're confusing the two, that's not on us.

Fine, instead of the word above (though that applies in some cases), the word apart is maybe better. You're reading way more into what I said than was intended and arguing against things I hadn't even been thinking about.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Says one of the most argumentative people around here. It is ridiculous for a person to think they don't believe in anything. You can't exist in an entire vacuum.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Fine, instead of the word above (though that applies in some cases), the word apart is maybe better. You're reading way more into what I said than was intended and arguing against things I hadn't even been thinking about.

Yes, "apart" I would agree with. There's gotta be a good analogy that 10 years ago I would have called to mind lightning quick, but one of the perils of age is although the archives are much bigger the rolling cart is much slower, and it hasn't gotten to the front desk yet.

The closest I can come (and I'll say up front this is very clunky) is the distinction between a rationalist and an empiricist. An empiricist might misrepresent a rationalist by saying, "see? You also accept that sensory input is the sole mediator of reality, but you are just substituting the perception of thought for say sight or hearing. Aha, gotcha!" But that's wrong, because the whole POV of the rationalist is that interior reason is a categorically different animal than sense perception.

Well, yeah, I said it wasn't a very good analogy. There's probably a much better one involving peppermint and lilacs or something. Getting old blows.

 

[Priceless]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Says one of the most argumentative people around here. It is ridiculous for a person to think they don't believe in anything. You can't exist in an entire vacuum.

I believe in the chair in which I am sitting. I believe in the computer which is transmitting this message. I do not believe in an invisible man in the clouds.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Says one of the most argumentative people around here. It is ridiculous for a person to think they don't believe in anything. You can't exist in an entire vacuum.

This is actually related to where I got in trouble with LynahFan.

I am very interested in the degree to which the "belief" I have in science is similar to the belief a theist has in whatever religious sources he finds authoritative. Because at the end of the day, when I ride an elevator or fly in an airplane I am taking a leap of faith that something very nasty is not about to happen. And though I have hazy notions of physics and aerodynamics and mechanical design, I don't have anywhere near the amount of knowledge to say that I have reasoned why these things will indeed work. At best I'm using my slightly more advanced statistical knowledge and doing some quick predictive probability based on the number of airplanes that fly every day and the astonishingly tiny percentage that wind up on the evening news.

I am doing something there that is at least like belief. I think it has math as part of it, but then again there are also things where I don't have any of the variables. When I take medication, for example, I very likely am taking the medical community's decision on a sort of faith. To what extent is this similar to or different from religious faith? I think that's a fascinating subject.

The cleft between theism and atheism is, I think, the idea of the "supernatural." In the Abrahamic religions, God exists outside of nature. I consider this the source of the "apartness" of atheism -- we do not accept that this apartness is real. For us, nature is reality and reality is nature. You could for example still have some sort of supreme being within nature, but, being within nature, It would then be subject to testing a hypothesis under the scientific method, and at the moment the null hypothesis that there is no such thing would be winning based on parsimony. Once you posit God outside of nature, all that testing apparatus is instantly irrelevant. Theists do this; we don't. To us, that's magical thinking.

 

[WisconsinWildcard]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Of course atheism is another belief system, like a religious belief system. We all believe in something. Some folks just like to think they're above that, but they're just fooling themselves.

People may quibble but atheism, to me, is just the rejection of other belief systems. I have not been presented enough evidence to allay my doubts. Atheism is religion like not stamp collecting is a hobby. I also consider myself a secular humanist (which is where I derive most of my "beliefs") so feel free to attack that any time you feel the need to attack atheism.

I'll preface this by saying that fundamentally Christian belief is faith, so apart from that I wouldn't expect anyone to believe the Bible. Though of course for certain folks, probably more technically minded, having significant manuscript evidence can be helpful to developing such faith. People come to faith by many different avenues. But I think it's a mistake for a Christian to think they can convince a non-believer via argument over all this stuff.

That said, the article I referenced didn't go into a lot of detail about the original manuscripts. Here are a couple articles I came across that go into more detail and have some updates that show more original manuscripts from closer to Jesus' time on this earth.

http://www.dts.edu/read/wallace-new-testament-manscript-first-century/

http://www.bible.ca/ef/topical-the-earliest-new-testament-manuscripts.htm

More manuscripts are being discovered all the time and the existing ones are receiving more analysis, so the numbers/dates vary here and there. Given the times, the difficulty of copying documents, the heavy persecution of Christians and ensuing destruction of many Christian document by the Romans, etc., it is quite impressive that as much has survived twenty centuries or so. At the least, I don't see how people can't recognize that there is a large body of manuscripts with a high level of consistency.

Those links are interesting but I have to be honest, the evangelical method of analysis leaves much to be wanted (for me). It is surely fine for others but it just doesn't float my boat. Dr. Wallace and the Dallas Theological Seminary just approach the issue without the skepticism I desire. Not saying they are wrong, I just would rather read about sacred documents from agnostics (on the topic) than heels in the dirt true believers.

The debates between him and Ehrman are interesting, if you have the time to watch them. I am also a big fan of Elaine Pagels if you have heard of her. They both do an excellent job with the historo-critical method which is my favorite lens to examine documents with.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

I am also a big fan of Elaine Pagels if you have heard of her. They both do an excellent job with the historo-critical method which is my favorite lens to examine documents with.

Pagels is very interesting.

 

[burd]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Several years ago, I attended a night "class" at my Freie Gemeinde congregation on the philosophy of religion, taught by a young guy not long out of divinity school at the University of Chicago. A nice guy who was not there to perform intellectual gymnastics, but the class completely kicked my azz. I once thought I could hang with people on this stuff, but not any more. It was so confounding I just threw up my hands and decided to go with the story of two naked people in the garden who ate an apple against orders and changed everything for the rest of us.

And it works. I still enjoy that first cup of coffee in the morning, exchanging insults and thoughts with other hockey fans on this website, and having two fingers of rum when I get home at night--all without the troublesome cloud of confusion or doubt. Most important, I am now entirely accepted as one of the team in my bowling league. I'm thinking captain by the end of summer.

Kant Schmant

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Several years ago, I attended a night "class" at my Freie Gemeinde congregation on the philosophy of religion, taught by a young guy not long out of divinity school at the University of Chicago. A nice guy who was not there to perform intellectual gymnastics, but the class completely kicked my azz. I once thought I could hang with people on this stuff, but not any more. It was so confounding I just threw up my hands and decided to go with the story of two naked people in the garden who ate an apple against orders and changed everything for the rest of us.

And it works. I still enjoy that first cup of coffee in the morning, exchanging insults and thoughts with other hockey fans on this website, and having two fingers of rum when I get home at night--all without the troublesome cloud of confusion or doubt. Most important, I am now entirely accepted as one of the team in my bowling league. I'm thinking captain by the end of summer.

Kant Schmant

Kant is tough even for philosophers.

Freie Gemeinde congregation

Is this a real thing? Had to look it up; that's a congregation I would join!

 

[burd]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Kant is tough even for philosophers.



Is this a real thing? Had to look it up; that's a congregation I would join!

Yes, it is a real thing.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The Bible: Real, Fiction, or somewhere in between?

Yes, it is a real thing.

Is it just another name for UU?