who is greg stafford? under whose authority does.he.work?

by friendaroonie 28 Replies latest jw friends

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  slimboyfat

  Ehrman did provide a newish perspective on textual criticism in his earlier book "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture", where he argued that evolving Christology in the early church was a key driver of textual variation in the direction of a higher Christology, a position that conservative scholars have tended to react against. He also wrote far more technical studies of textual criticism in relation to the text used by Origen and Didymus the Blind intended purely for an academic audience long before he started producing more popular books.

  Ehrman is far more liberal than Metzger ever was, to the extent that one wonders how they managed to collaborate on the last edition of "The Text of the New Testament: Its Origin, Corruption, and Restoration" together.

  Designs, I see, so it was the blood issue that did for Heinz.
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  slimboyfat

  One thing that amused me about Stafford was how he always promised to write all sorts of books by such and such a deadline... and they would never arrive. He promised a book about John 8:58, one about the "Gentile Times", and one about Sharp's Rule. Even his updated editions of Jehovah's Witnesses Defended would always appear years and years after the promised publication date. But he would take the money up front.
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  AnnOMaly

  One thing that amused me about Stafford was how he always promised to write all sorts of books by such and such a deadline... and they would never arrive.

  Greg was not the only one LOL!

  He has got something on Sharpe's Rule now, though. Here we are - The 'Sharpest Rule' - scroll to the middle of the page.
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  designs

  I wonder if Greg ever got to the point where he realized the NT was like Fantasy Football and thought Oh Cr&p
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  AuntConnie

  Cyrus, Bart has fixated and embellished on how bad the textual variances really are. His totals vary from 200,000 and above even though he does acknowledge many of these variances do not change the message the ancient authors transmitted to us. I don't understand how Bart did not know when he entered into Moody's Bible College, no Autographs existed? Most JWs know we don't have the original books of the Bible, where was Bart during his years of Fundamental Christianity? I own all his books because I don't fear reading critical things, something making me put my fingers in my ears and screaming is the "overlapping generation", "new light on the Rapture", "annointed in charge of the Sheep now, but Jesus has not authorized them until his Second Coming" either we are under their care or we are not? That's the doctrines and strange things that keep me up from sleeping, not Bart Erhmans books he writes on history, I don't have his latest book of Jesus. Has anyone read the book?

  The textual variances Bart used his hammer and chisel on were not very earth shattering. Nothing in Bart's works ever caused me great discomfort because I was aware there consists large quanties of pieces of the Scriptures with obvious mistakes and scribal errors. Some errors we know were caused by religious bias and presuppositions, others were mistakes. What impressed me is we have access to the largest amount of fragments, parchments and whole books we can compare and see if he original thoughts were changed.

  Bart never proved the message Jesus wanted his followers to know was diluted and corrupted over time. I read there is over a million fragments or more, and the priests and scholars before the 20th Century ran across many of these same road blocks and challenges Bart raised in his book. In Wallance's book he has a radio interview with Bruce Metzger around 1998 or 2001 (Not sure right now) and the qustion is posed because of Bart Erhman's book "Dr. Metzger, do you think we can rely on what the original authors of the Bible wanted us to know even though we are not privy to their autograph scrolls?" Metzger replied "Yes, I am near the end of my life and with great conviction after decades of researching this subject and the vast volume of Bible fragments, I am more convinced we have the spirit of the message of Jesus Christ and all those writers of various Gospels and letters by Paul and others" This was in Daniel B. Wallace's book "Misqouting Jesus" if my memory serves me right. I received grief when the circuit overseer found Bart Erhman and Daniel Wallaces book in my house, his Apostate Radar shot up quickly until my husband poured him several shots of Tequila and got his ass drunk! We Jehovah's Witnesses are micromanged on everything we read, if we were not to read any books and barely cover the watered down literature the Slave gives us, that would demonstrate pure faith.
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  AuntConnie

  Greg's very busy trying to handle too many pokers in the fire-place, maybe stick with his website and message board instead of taking on the huge tasks consumming his time once he get's home from working his ass off. Greg's intentions are good, his eyes are too wide when he walks into those old archieves of ancient books, he's come around nicely and he's a very social man. Life has humbled us all in the Organization with the Slave throwing daggers at anyone desiring to eat more than their Gerber Baby food spiritual food. The Watchtower since their peer-pressure push to force us to make a twenty to thirty second "proof paragraph comment" has further reduced their people's ability to think and answer any question someone like Slim, Cyrus or Annomaly would throw their way. The Witnesses are the worst prepared people in our history now, the requirements for MS and Elder keep lowering faster than a Limbo Bar!
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  yadda yadda 2

  I enjoy your posts AuntConnie, glad to see you on the forum. Need more from you.
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  slimboyfat

  AuntConnie that's interesting you mention Wallace. I have read his book of collected responses to Ehrman but I was not terribly impressed. From all that I have read about textual criticism what I gather is that the text was at its most fluid in the first couple of centuries, which is precisely when any significant MS evidence is absent. It is also the period when pressure would have been great for theological changes to the text, and Ehrman makes a good case that this occurred.

  As for general reliability of the Bible, I think Ehrman's discussion of Matthew 21:5 is devastating. Not only did the author probably not accurately record what really happened, but he was fabricating a story to conform to an Old Testament prophecy that he did not even understand properly. The result is pure gobbledygook about Jesus riding two animals at once which makes no sense on any level. In short if a Bible writer tells you the grass is green then it's better to check for yourself.
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  CyrusThePersian

  Hi AuntConnie

  I don't even pretend to understand that "overlapping generation", "new light on the Rapture", "annointed in charge of the Sheep now, but Jesus has not authorized them until his Second Coming" garbage. I'll leave that to others to debate!

  I haven't read Ehrman's latest book, I believe it covers the topic of the historicity of Jesus as a person (something that Ehrman believes is true). I understand that it's only available in ebook form.

  As far as Metzger and Wallace are concerned you have to remember that both men are/were believers so their opinions about the veracity of the scripture is necessarily colored by their religious beliefs. (BTW Daniel Wallace didn't write "Misquoting Jesus", Ehrman did, although Wallace did write a scathing review of it.)

  My own opinion (notice I said opinion) is that there is pretty good evidence that what we have today in the way of manuscripts is fairly close to what was available at the end of the third century. However, as slimboyfat pointed out above, the likelyhood that these texts accurately reflect what actually took place in the first century ranges from 'doubtful' to 'No way in hell', nor do we have any way of knowing how many changes were wrought in the first three centuries. One only has to examine the Synoptics vs. John or Acts vs. Paul vs. Deutero-Pauline to see that the contradictions between them render the narrative as a whole to be dubious.

  As slimboyfat pointed out too, there are passages in the scripture that simply are highly unlikely to have happened like Matt 21:5. Another one that really gets me is John chapter 3 where Jesus uses the words 'born again' where in Greek the word 'again' (ανωθεν) has two meanings: 'again' or 'from above'. Nicodemus gets confused as to which meaning Jesus is implying. The problem being that only if Jesus and Nicodemus were speaking to each other in Greek would this have been a problem. It's highly unlikely that this would be the case, they would have spoken to each other in Aramaic, their native tongue.

  CyrusThePersian