[quote]Boscobarbell wrote:
I teach my son what I believe to be right and wrong (he’s only 20 months old, though, so how much of this he gathers I’m not yet sure). Have I lied? Sure. I claimed to be aware of right and wrong, but never claimed to be perfect. But again, I see no point in your fascination with my personal conduct. You assume your bible teaches right and wrong, and yet Christians sin all the time? Does that invalidate your bible, or merely point to man’s fallibility??
[/quote]
look you obviously didn’t get my point, and you think I was trying to attack you. So lets just drop this part of it. I do believe though I have said over, and over again that even Christians don’t live up to the standard they claim. It would point to man’s fallabilty. I have never been fascinated with your conduct. I told you earlier I didn’t care. I still don’t. I said earlier I am sure you are a great person. So why take it so personal? I never meant it to be, I was only trying to show you how I see things(including myself).
Interesting article by a none expert (which means he is no better that the apologist I used)
Now we are talking! I know who Metzger is. I also know you are quoting him out of context.
Everyone knows Metzger thinks the NT is reliable. He even gives an a 99.5% rate that ir is accurate. All Metzger is saying is that someone made a mistake and it is obvious. Those mistakes would be so minute it would not change the doctrine of the gospel. We also can correct those copyist errors with the earlier manuscripts. See Metzger’s “The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration” You have to look at all of the existing mss that exist to determine what is right and wrong. I will let Metzger tell you (along with other experts) what He thinks about the reliability of the NT.
Bruce Metzger pointed out, ?Besides textual evidence
derived from NT Greek manuscripts and from early
versions, the textual critic has available the numerous
scriptural quotations included in the commentaries,
sermons, and other treatises written by early church
Fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all
other sources for knowledge of the text of the NT were
destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the
reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.?
(by the way Steve Carr’s article contradicts this statement. Who’s word should we take?)
According to Metzger, “the more often you have copies that agree with each other, especially if they emerge from different geographical areas, the more you can cross-check them to figure out what the original document was like” (p. 76). Moreover, as Metzger points out, we have far more ancient copies of the New Testament than we have of, say, Homer’s Iliad or Tacitus’s Annals of Imperial Rome"
(Lee Storbal’s Case for Christ)
“The works of several ancient authors are preserved for us by the thinnest possible thread of transmission” (The Text of the New Testament, p. 34).
Dr. Metzger gives three pertinent examples: The History of Rome, by Vellius Paterculus, survived to modern times through only one incomplete manuscript ? a manuscript that was subsequently lost in the seventeenth century after being copied by Beatus Rhenanus at Amerbach.
A second example is the Annals of the famous historian Tacitus, the first six books of which are in a single manuscript dating from the ninth century. And the only known manuscript of the Epistle to Diognetus, an early Christian composition which editors usually include in the corpus of the Apostolic Fathers, perished in a fire at the municipal library in Strasbourg in 1870.
Metzger writes: “In contrast with these figures, the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material”
“The New Testament witnesses to virile, expanding Christian communities, it is true, but also to confused and immature ones. It is more likely that the thrust, the creativity, the originality which lies behind the Gospel tradition of the works and words of Jesus should be credited to him rather than to the body of Christians. The kind of penetrating insight preserved in the Gospels points not to communities - mired and often muddled in their thinking - but to a supreme source in a single person, Jesus…”
Davi.INP Davies, W. D. Invitation to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1966
“One would think get the impression (from such theories) that throughout the first Christian generation there were no eyewitnesses to act as a check on fertile imaginations, no original-disciples-now-become-leaders who might exercise some control over the developing tradition, and no striking deeds and sayings of Jesus that stuck willy-nilly in people’s memories.”
Meie.MarJ Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. New York: Doubleday, 1991
“Form critics call into question the integrity of the disciples. The disciples had seen and heard Jesus. They had even been a part of his ministry. Yet, if the form critics are correct, they did not control the accuracy of the tradition…Is it conceivable that in its own discussions and disputes the early church would not have examined doubtful statements concerning Jesus’ ministry? If the church, in fact, did not scrutinize such statements, why is there such close agreement as to the nature and details of that minsitry? A community that was purely imaginative and lacking in discrimination would have found it impossible to form a consistent tradition.”
Thom.HG Thomas, Robert L. and Stanley Gundry. A Harmony of the Gospels. Chicago: Moody Press, 1978
“…its basic trustworthiness is beyond doubt; for it rests, not upon one man’s recollections - say Peter’s - or those of two or three persons, but upon the whole group of earliest disciples whose numbers are reflected in the hundreds referred to by Paul and the thousands described in Acts. The early church did not grow up in isolation, in some corner, but in the full glare of publicity in the great cities of the Roman Empire.”
Gran.GOG Grant, F. C. The Gospels: Their Origin and Their Growth. London: Faber and Faber, 1957
“It should also be pointed out that even the earliest church had ‘controls’ in place, that would naturally ‘keep the tradition in line’. There are several indications that the early church had a surprising amount of information exchange and ‘feedback loops’. Consider:
1.The early church had a center (Jerusalem) and leaders (apostles)
2.When the church expanded into Samaria, there was interaction with the leaders of the founding church (Acts 8.14): “When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them”. [By all accounts, Peter and John would have been closest to ANY information about Jesus’ acts/words.]
3.When the church expanded into Antioch, we see the same pattern occur (Act 11:22): “News of this reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.”
4.When the issue of circumcision came up, the church in Antioch appointed Paul and Barnabas “to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question” (Acts 15.2)
5.The first church council was held at Jerusalem (Act 15:23-29)
6.Paul accepted the importance of the Jerusalem center (Gal 2.1-2): “Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. But I did this privately to those who seemed to be leaders, for fear that I was running or had run my race in vain.”
7.At Jrs. Paul was welcomed and sent to the Gentiles (Gal 2.9f): “James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”
8.Paul (a native of Tarsus!) returned to Jerusalem after EACH missionary journey.
9.The leading apostles and evangelists had traveling ministries, bringing them into contact with churches and believers everywhere.
10.The early churches did NOT live in a vacuum. They corresponded with each other (cf. I Clement, a letter from Rome to Corinth, a.d. 95, see ATNT:48-49) and exchanged NT documents (cf. Col. 4.16).
The point should be clear–the early church had a significant amount of information exchange among the leadership”
(Glenn Miller none expert)
Now here is some information on the form Critic theory.
“If the Form Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection. As Bultmann sees it, the primitive community existed in vacuo, cut off from its founders by the walls of an inexplicable ignorance…Unable to turn to anyone for information, it must invent situations for the words of Jesus, and, put onto his lips sayings which personal memory cannot check. All this is absurd; but there is a reason for this unwillingness to take into account the existence of leaders and eyewitnesses…
By the very nature of his studies the Form Critic is not predisposed in favor of eyewitnesses; he deals with oral forms shaped by nameless individuals, and the recognition of persons who could enrich the tradition by their actual recollections comes as a disturbing element to the smooth working of the theory. He is faced by an unknown quantity just where he has to operate with precise 'laws of the tradition.”
Tayl.FGT Taylor, Vincent. The Formation of the Gospel Tradition. London: Macmillan, 1957
“One especially wonders how the surviving eyewitnesses to Jesus who were undoubtedly still around, eyewitnesses who must have exercised some influence within these communities, responded to Mark’s supposed rewriting of history. One must ask how Mark could have thought that he could get his piece of historical fiction past these eyewitnesses. And, finally, how could this fabrication not only be accepted, but serve to motivate the followers of Jesus to the point where they quickly took this “new” Gospel and risked their lives evangelizing the entire Mediterranean world”
Boyd.CSSG Boyd, Gregory A. Cynic Sage or Son of God? Chicago: Bridgepoint, 1995
Expert rebuttal’s to Mack’s theory of Q
“…the assumption that someone, about a generation removed from the events in question, radically transformed the authentic information about Jesus that was circulating at that time, superimposed a body of material four times as large, fabricated almost entirely out of whole cloth, while the church suffered sufficient collective amnesia to accept the transformation as legitimate.”
Blomberg, Craig L
Blomberg also notes
“A good deal of New Testament scholarship, in fact, and within that a good deal of study of Jesus, has proceeded on the assumption that the gospels cannot possibly make sense as they stand, so that some alternative hypothesis must be proposed to take the place of the view of Jesus they seem to offer. It has been assumed that we know, more or less, what Jesus’ life, ministry and self-understanding were like, and that they are unlike the picture we find in the gospels. But hypotheses of this sort are always short on simplicity, since they demand an explanation not only of what happened in the ministry of Jesus, but also of why the early church said something different, and actually wrote up stories as founding ‘myths’ which bore little relation to the historical events.”
The following answers "Why there are certain things in the gospel’s but not every detail of Jesus life? "
“The sayings that were retained and transmitted were those that met the missionary, preaching, apologetic and pastoral needs of the early church.”
Patz.MNT Patzia, Arthur G. The Making of the New Testament. Downers Gove: IVP, 1995
“The interpretive purposes for which the early church used stories about Jesus affected the selective process. Those stories which spoke most directly to questions that were being asked, those narratives which seemed to call forth the clearest understanding, were the stories used most frequently.”
Nick.SGI Nickle, Keith F. The Synoptic Gospels: An Introduction. Atlanta: John Knox, 1980
“It is much more probable that the interests of the early Christians led them to select, interpret, and apply stories of Jesus, than that the same interests led them to create stories…if a large part of that (Gospel) tradition was created by communities lacking historical perspective and only giving expression to their own interests, how does one account for the presence in the Gospels of stories derogatory to revered leaders of the early church? Or what of sayings in the same Gospels which seemingly compromise the conceptions of Christ’s person which prevailed when the Gospels were written?”
Pric.INP Price, James L. Interpreting the New Testament. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971
That is fine with me. I was just trying to answer your questions on who wrote the Gospels(which Metzer would say was the apostles). If you ever want to pick it back up let me know.
I am not aware of many critics that complain about the translations we have not accuratly portraying the main doctrinal issues. I also know that many of the Versions we have try to use the earliest mss to avoid these issues. Once again though none would effect doctrine. You would make it seem as though one of the earlier mss didn’t contain the resurrection.
You said that they were multi-source before. Which is Mack’s Q hypothesis. I asked do we have any Q documents? you never answered. So we know this doucment existed, we know it had sayings of Jesus, but we can’t prove it exists?
For instance here is a quote from you infidels.org website
“I have carefully mapped out the evolution of Mark, the earliest of the Synoptic gospels. This evolution was born with a real, historical Jesus, the man who gave them life to begin with. After Jesus’ death, the stories and tales about him spread rapidly from community to community. Eventually some of these stories were written down or “codified” on scrolls of papyrus in a long lost work we now call Q. A few decades later our first gospel appears with a little more material added in order to fill in the gaps about Jesus that the oral tradition did not contain. Throughout all of this process one pattern is clear: with each new strata a little bit more material was added in an “upside down pyramid” fashion. The earliest version of the Q lacked the “Son of man” and “kingdom of God” material that became a part of the later Q. In turn, the later Q, lacked the resurrection accounts of Jesus that became a part of Augmented Mark. Augmented Mark lacks still more material that shows up in Matthew and Luke and so on. There is a tendency among conservative scholars today to gloss over this very real evolution of the texts and to pretend that the developed canon differs little, if at all, from the early stages of the Jesus movement. This tendency is extremely short-sighted and leads only to confusion. The question we should ask ourselves is “How authoritative are those extra passages in later gospels?” Do we want to strive to get closer to the core of Q where the historical Jesus resides? Or do we instead prefer the post-Easter interpretations of later writers who developed a Christology on top of the historical Jesus and Q source?”
That is amazing! He knows Q did not contain many of the things that Mark says. Does He have a Q document that the rest of the world doesn’t know about? As I said I am not impressed with them.
99.5% accuracy that the texts are correct. Sure there were some edits, and some spelling errors. Too bad we have the earlier ones that correct those. Look up Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration" Restoration is a key word here.
[quote]
I believe that the gospels–rife with contradictions, outright inaccuracies, timeline problems, etc.–fail to prove themselves “reliable” as anything but motivational writings for established believers. [/quote]
Well that is your opinion. It would not line up with the expert you quoted though. I think I quoted someone on the timeline problem, so I will not address it. According to many experts including the one you quoted it has a 99.5% accuracy rating. It is also more reliable than any ancient doucment that any expert accepts! Next closes is Homer’s illiad. Which as Metzer says “In contrast with these figures, the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material”
