Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote:Have either of you read it? This document, which you are so confident is merely mythology, and this Man whom you call ordinary -- have you read the Gospels' account of Him?

As I say, personally I would not speak of The Dhammapada if I had not read it. Reasonableness would prevent me from having *any* opinion until I had looked at the facts and considered the Buddha's teaching on its own terms.

Interesting read, but there is nothing there that I haven't read before in other texts. FTR I never called Jesus 'ordinary' and I have never questioned that he was both man and God. But the Bible is primarily mythology.

I'm sorry...I'm not understanding your answer to my question.

Immanuel Can wrote:Have either of you read it? This document, which you are so confident is merely mythology, and this Man whom you call ordinary -- have you read the Gospels' account of Him?

As I say, personally I would not speak of The Dhammapada if I had not read it. Reasonableness would prevent me from having *any* opinion until I had looked at the facts and considered the Buddha's teaching on its own terms.

I have read the Bible and I still contend that the OT is mostly mythology, the NT is more history but much of it has been corrupted by later writers who were promoting some policy that neither Jesus nor any of his followers, advanced in his teachings. Also I have never referred to Jesus as ordinary, and I do not regard mythology as merely, it much more than that but the meaning is not on the surface.

As far as the Dhammapada, I have read those teachings in other texts many years ago and feel that I have a valid opinion on them. Some of the other texts have elaborated on the teachings so I have the benefit of other opinions as well, most of these were written by people familiar with Zen Buddhism.

much of it has been corrupted by later writers who were promoting some policy that neither Jesus nor any of his followers, advanced in his teachings.

Well, I assume then that you have proof this is what happened? I hope you have something better than the usual fare that goes along with this allegation, such as the now -discredited historicism of a century ago or the DaVinci-Code conspiracy theories of the Neo-Gnostics?

You would have some actual manuscript evidence of corruption, wouldn't you?

Immanuel Can wrote:You would have some actual manuscript evidence of corruption, wouldn't you?

Tell us which version you think is uncorrupted, and I'll dig out the manuscripts. Off the top of my head, the earliest document of, at least cherry picking, is a copy of the Nicene Creed dating to around 500AD. Don't know how hot your Hebrew, Greek or Latin is, but I imagine you are familiar with the King James version, authorised by the Church of England. That bible in itself is documentary proof of what thedoc is arguing.

Umm...

I don't know how to tell you this without making you angry, but you're making a mistake about the number and origins of Biblical manuscripts.

It's not 1 translation = 1 manuscript, but rather, every translation = an entire mass of manuscripts, classified as things like "Masoretic Text" and "Codex Sinaiticus." There probably is not a single historical document that is better attested than the Biblical manuscripts that are behind our major modern translations...but I'll be as helpful as I can.

Here -- this is a very neutral site that will help you get a start -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript.

Then, for checking manuscripts, you'll want to know what a "concordance" is, and also a "Bible Dictionary," which will help you with Greek and Hebrew. There are some good ones online, though, so you're in good shape there.

I'll suggest how to locate something you can use in respect to manuscript corruption too. Here's what you're looking for: you're looking for a set of manuscripts that suddenly depart in some important way from the patterns established by earlier or better-attested manuscripts. For example, if you can find that up to AD 800 the manuscripts all say, "Salvation is by faith alone," and after AD 800 they start saying "Salvation is by paying money," then you've got yourself a nice bit of proof. Get some of those together, and you've got conclusive evidence of manuscript corruption.

Good luck. To be fair, you should be warned that the world's greatest scholars and translators, Jewish, Christian and secular alike, have been poring over those manuscripts for thousands of years, discussing every word and parsing every little bit of syntax, so major discrepancies (if they exist) should have been found and triumphantly trotted out by the skeptics long ago. But since you're confident such important discrepancies exist, I suppose that won't be a stopper.

Blaggard wrote:Hold your horses you and the OP are claiming Jesus exists it's up to you to prove the historicity of this claim and don't use the Bible, that old tome has never been honest about anything even The Gospel truth.

Actually, it's the reverse. It's up to you to prove the negative here. General consensus is that Jesus did, in fact, exist. We have the documentary evidence of the Gospels for that, along with references in Josephus (and a few others, iirc). Insofar as we not arguing for a philosophical burden or proof, but a "legal" one, if you will, the burden is squarely on the shoulders of the party arguing against the default position (and make no mistake, the default position is that a man named Jesus lived in 1st-century Palestine, was an itinerant preacher, and was crucified on the Cross). Now, the contention that jesus was God Incarnate, blah, blah, blah. Sure, that's a different burden of proof. But that's not being debated here. You're saying the Gospels are unreliable as historical evidence. This is not the default position and therefore the onus is on you to support your claim. That is to say, the position that Jesus did exist is the position of the defense, and the contention that he did not is the prosecution's burden. (And just so we're clear on this, you have a huge burden to prove the negative. Perhaps an impossible one.)

Blaggard wrote:Everything in history is subject to both elision, confabulation and bias. It's niave that people think The Bible is exempt from this, and springs from a logical cognitive dissonance on actual history.

Of course, this includes records that attest to the existence of Augustus Caesar, Aquinas, and Abraham Lincoln, right? But wait, we affirm the historical accuracy of those records because there are no sufficiently reliable counter-narratives to give us cause to doubt their veracity on the basic points of birth, life, and death. As is the case with the Gospels. Funny how that works.

Look, I get it. You're upset that there's good reason to take the Gospels are reasonably accurate historical accounts in spite of their claims to the fantastic. Well guess what? If your standard is that historical evidence of life 2,000 years must be of comparable quality to that of, say, the past 300 years, you're going to have to start questioning the existence of a whole host of figures from that time. Good luck with that. In the meantime, those of us who can distinguish between support for basic facts of Earthly existence and support for "fantastical" claims will be over here choosing not to reinvent the wheel.

PS Do you believe Paul the Apostle existed? Just want to be sure you doubt the existence of the entire cast of the Gospels, and not just Jesus.

Immanuel Can wrote:Umm...

I don't know how to tell you this without making you angry,

Well, thank you for your solicitude. I don't particularly care what you think, but if it troubles you, you could be less obsequious.

Immanuel Can wrote:but you're making a mistake about the number and origins of Biblical manuscripts. It's not 1 translation = 1 manuscript, but rather, every translation = an entire mass of manuscripts, classified as things like "Masoretic Text" and "Codex Sinaiticus." There probably is not a single historical document that is better attested than the Biblical manuscripts that are behind our major modern translations...but I'll be as helpful as I can.

This is incoherent: a "single historical document" cannot at the same time be "every translation" or even "our major modern translations".

Immanuel Can wrote:Here -- this is a very neutral site that will help you get a start -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript.

Believe it or not, I have heard of Wikipedia; as it happens I send them money to help fund them from time to time.
Anyway; this is from the link you saw fit to provide me:

wikipedia wrote:The study of biblical manuscripts is important because handwritten copies of books can contain errors.

Therefore, translators work with material, at least some of which they believe to be corrupted. Since it is the translators who make the decisions on which version is uncorrupted, all versions are subject to human fallibilities, which was precisely thedoc's point in the first place. I dunno, I might have to run that by you slowly. Who am I kidding? That's over your head.
If you can explain why the rest of your post isn't self serving drivel, I'll respond to that too.

uwot wrote:Since it is the translators who make the decisions on which version is uncorrupted

Not exactly. The science of assembling manuscripts is quite rigorous and is the same for the Bible as it is for, say, ancient Egyptian manuscript fragments attributed to of Amenhotep's chief builder. Translators' expertise lies in different areas (linguistics rather than archaeology, for example) so they usually follow on the work of previous experts. Many corruptions are discovered long before they make it to the desk of the translator. And you can be sure that for any corruption a translator discovered, there are hundreds chomping at the bit to make their name by proving him/her wrong. It is a very rigorous field based an well-established principles.

uwot wrote:all versions are subject to human fallibilities

This is true of any translated document, so what is the objection? The possibility of an error is not the same as an error. Any scholar knows this. In the absence of a clear example of such an error, protestations of this sort of generic nature are usually (and rightly) dismissed.

<double post>

Bart Ehrman, a respected scholar wrote many books on this subject:

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible
Forged: Writing in the Name of God
How Jesus Became God
etc.

Anyway; this is from the link you saw fit to provide me:
wikipedia wrote:
The study of biblical manuscripts is important because handwritten copies of books can contain errors.
Therefore, translators work with material, at least some of which they believe to be corrupted. Since it is the translators who make the decisions on which version is uncorrupted, all versions are subject to human fallibilities, which was precisely thedoc's point in the first place.

Yeah, but again, you're thinking with bad information here, because you are choosing to extrapolate incorrectly from that fact.

It is true that single copies can contain errors -- though the Jews have proved to be notoriously meticulous about eliminating copy errors, and the Medieval scholars were only slightly less fastidious. But you see, they didn't have photocopiers, so errors were one-offs at first, every time; so they're easier to locate. Single copy errors show up very easily where there are multiple copies of the same document -- which is exactly the case with the Bible manuscripts.

So how's that fact finding of yours going?

Bart Ehrman, a respected scholar

You know a Bart Erhman who's a respected scholar?

Must be different from the one I know.

sjeff70 wrote:Bart Ehrman, a respected scholar wrote many books on this subject:

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible
Forged: Writing in the Name of God
How Jesus Became God
etc.

Ehrman's definitely got some interesting cases, but it's worth noting that not a single one of those books is from an academic press. There's a reason for this (i.e. they are not scholarly works). But even if they were scholarly, note the argument Ehrman's making in his books vs. the one's we're making here. Unless I've missed it, no one here is arguing that the Gospels are historical evidence for the divinity of Jesus (in this day and age, that's something of an absurd argument). Instead, the case being made is that they're historically reliable when it comes to establishing a few basic points about Jesus the man. You'll notice that Ehrman actually agrees on this point.

Immanuel Can wrote: It is true that single copies can contain errors

QED

Immanuel Can wrote:-- though the Jews have proved to be notoriously meticulous about eliminating copy errors, and the Medieval scholars were only slightly less fastidious.

No doubt, but the material they work with is all from long after the events. Even if you take the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as historically accurate versions of what those four said, you cannot take them as perfect historical records of the life of Jesus, who I am quite willing to accept as an historical figure, because they contradict each other on numerous occasions. They are corrupted.

Immanuel Can wrote:So how's that fact finding of yours going?

Done and dusted.