"Misquoting Jesus" - New Book by Ehrman

by sir82 26 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  sir82

  I realize you are quoting from another reviewer, but it seems to reflect your viewpoint, so I will ask:

  Ehrman continues his one-side attacks on Christianity

  How is a work which attempts to point out the problems with statements like "the text of the New Testamount is 99.5% pure" an "attack on Christianity"?

  Obviously the vast majority of the thousands of errors are extremely minor - spelling differences, omiited words which can be inferred from context or other mss., etc.

  But the problem I have is the several century gap between the original writings and the oldest known manuscripts. Assuming the original penmen were inspired by God, were the copyists also inspired? All of them? If not, which ones? Were the copies of the inspired or un-inspired copyists used in the copies we base our current translations on? If some copyists were inspired, why are ther some errors in their mss. too? Does that mean there were errors in the original writings? If the copyists were not inspired, and the writings we have are based on their works, why should we believe them?

  The easy answer is "God made sure it was done correctly". I'm beyond the point where the easy answers are satisfying.
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  yaddayadda

  Sir, all I'm saying is don't take Mr Ehrman's word for it, Narkisos's, or anyone elses. Everyone is motivated at least to some extent by certain subtle presuppositions, assumptions, biases, desire to find justification to either believe in God or find an excuse to abnegate moral responsibility to God.

  You are unlikely to get fair, independent answers on this website, where many show a predominantly strong anti-religion, anti-bible bias. Do your own research before you make a call on such an important thing, read some books by other scholars, eg, the ones listed in my previous thread, because there are good reasons to believe that the gospels and othe NT books are both historical and accurately transmitted.
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  drew sagan

  I posted about this book a little while ago, here's the link
  
  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/103655/1793263/post.ashx#1793263
  
  There is also a link over there where you can hear the author on the fresh air radio program.
  
  I like the book, haven't finished it yet. The book has pros and cons. I totally would not simply take his word on everything. He has written a good book, but I wouldn't call it amazing. It is worthing reading, but don't build your enitre lifes beliefs upon it. He has come to his conclusions, but they are not going to be mine. Each of us has the chioce what to believe and what not to believe. I do think it is a good read, just remember that it's not the only opinion out there.
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  peacefulpete

  reducing it all to a matter of "opinions" is an insult to disciplined research.
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  GentlyFeral

  I've copied out the last page of this book - it's on my 'puter at home - and I plan to post it in my "Apostate Daily Text" thread.

  'k, folks - it's up.

  gently feral
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  sir82

  Yadda,

  Sir, all I'm saying is don't take Mr Ehrman's word for it, Narkisos's, or anyone elses

  Absolutely, I agree. I am just beginning to search out a variety of viewpoints. After decades of considering only WT-written explanations, I am enjoying fresh perspectives.

  However, you also write

  justification to either believe in God or find an excuse to abnegate moral responsibility to God.

  So, my 2 choices are "believe in God" or "find an excuse to abnegate moral responsibility to God"? I took only one course in logic, but that sounds suspiciously like a "false dichotomy".

  Everyone is motivated at least to some extent by certain subtle presuppositions, assumptions, biases

  Are yours showing here?
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  Narkissos

  reducing it all to a matter of "opinions" is an insult to disciplined research.

  Yet the spectrum of opinions only slightly varies with the level of education, which is a somewhat puzzling fact. It seems that getting rid of presuppositions, or changing one's mind, is harder than, and basically independent from, "learning" or "researching". I guess this is part of what makes this forum great: most of us have significantly changed our minds at least once.

  sir82, very well put!
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  skyman

  I ahve said this over and over here on this forum. There is a local historian that lives near me. He has written several books. He has a very large library with copy's of some of the oldest text know. Basicly he has spent his life doing reseach. He has shown me facts just like the ones you mention in this book. He started out believing and needed to know everything but what has happened to him is, he is no longer a Christian. It is mind blowing the problems in the bible, for one Jesus is never mentioned by the Romans. Josephus when he talks about Jesus the grammatical writing change is proving someone else add this story about Jesus to Josephus writting. The Romans how ever talk in depth about a different Christ that live during the time the bible talks about Jesus, which make a person wonder what is going on.

  I have a thread that ran two day's ago dealing with the differences in Gospels with the date of Jesus birth. Huge problem between the gospels which can not be over looked. You go to one google link trying to exspain the problem and the links will talk about a couple of the problems but I have not seen a link that takes all the problem together and talk about them because if take all the problem together it is faith damning and there is only one conclusion that the orignals have been add to because the original writer would not have made those glaring mistakes. Which make you wonder if any of it is correct.
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  skyman

  After I posted I thought I would come back and make it clearer. On mY thread about Jesus date of birth I recieved many PM's and links to look at. If you do a google sereach you find people that take a couple of the problem and try's to exspain them. Which if you don't look at the problems you can trick your mind. But the fact is the bible mentions Jesus birth was during many different rulers times some were died before the others were in power and that proves one thing, that is Ghost lived and ruled in the first century inorder for the bible to be true and that historical records are not acruate just the bible which does not agree with who was king and distric rulers. It totaly amazed me the zeal in some of the people on this board. Zeal with blinders on tryign to grasp at straws.
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  skyman

  Gospel of Peter, Gospels of Matthias, Gospel of the Egyptians, Gospel Twelve Apostles, Gospel Basilides, Gospel Thomas, Gospel Ebionites, Gospel Nazarenes, Gospel Mary of Magdala, Gospel Hebrews, Gospel Philip, Gospel Of Truth.

  What happened to these books why are they not here today? What happened to them? The theology that won out is the religion of today; any thinking that did not coincide with their religious ideas was erased. It was a great power; people do not realize that many theologies existed and only because Constantine the religion of today developed. The Crusades happened to destroy all the theologies and any writings that disagreed with their thinking were erased. We are lead to believe that the reason is they are agnostic writings not in agreement with GOD thinking how do we know that because what we have to read has been handed down only because it was in harmony with what they think. How do we know their think was right?