The spirit of the Age

[kandrathe]

A very nice write up MEAT.

I believe we both agree that the words of the Bible were written by men, and by clear analysis of internal structure (like you have done) and study of early Christianity (which is fascinating if you're unfamiliar with it) ,the effects of man's fallible hand is easily visible.

Assuming that much is true, I would love to hear what impact loungers believe something like this has on Christianity as a religion. Does it invalidate the Bible as the word of God? Does it weaken Christianity in any way?

Cheers,

Munk

I think to point at discontinuity in English texts is counterproductive.

The first problem is that many parts of the current text are translations of translations. So for example, κάμηλον is used instead of κάμιλον. To be truly scholarly one must learn Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. Then, you also have the embellishments of about a thousand years of transcripts where most of the literate people were religiously motivated to tell larger and larger tales. Now, due to the transcription discipline of the Hebrews (Canters also means Counters where the Hebrew scribes would count to insure that the number of letters, and sentences was equivalent), meaning that very little change happened in the copying process during the first and second centuries. So, this is why finding the Dead Sea Scrolls was very fortuitous in showing accuracy of some of the original sources. Then, one must trust that the Nicene council included and excluded the proper documents. Many of the texts of the Apocrypha and Epigraphia change radically the nature of Christianity. Even the Catholic and Protestant bibles have different selections of texts.

Once you agree upon which words to read, then you can start to discuss what the words actually do mean.