Eclectic Topics in no Particular Order
Various Topics Discussed
/>
The Christian bible has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism. It is as pertinent to a Jew as the Koran or Book of Mormon is to the average Christian. Unfortunately tens of millions of dollars are spent annually by Christians to try to convert Jews to their faith. Sadly, many Jews are raised without knowledge of Judaism (secular), or in homes which may observe some mitzvot, but fail to teach their children diligently. So just how reliable is the Christian bible? Christian "scholars" themselves attest to the fact that it is totally unreliable. There are no "full papyri of the GT" dating earlier than about the 16th century of the common era (CE). "What do survive are copies of the copies some 5,366 of them in the Greek language alone, that date from the second century down to the sixteenth. Strikingly, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two of these copies are exactly alike in all their particulars. No one knows how many differences, or variant readings, occur among the surviving witnesses, but they must number in the hundreds of thousands." (The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, page 27). So how reliable do you think it would be if 5,366 fragments are all different except for the smallest fragments that don't even make up entire words? The Greek text used today (what you like to call the "new" testament) today bears no resemblance to those early, contradictory fragments. The Acts of the Apostles: An Introduction and Commentary (The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries) by I. Howard Marshall: Modern Greek texts of Acts are essentially based on the Egyptian manuscripts, Codices, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. There are many differences (additions and omissions of words, changes of words, and so on) in the version of the text found in Codex Bezae and other manuscripts which mainly come from the western area of early Christendom; this form of text can be traced back to the second century. Arguments that it represents the original text of Acts, or a second edition of the text by the original author, have failed to produce conviction. It is generally thought that it represents an early scribal revision of Acts although on occasion it may preserve the original wording of Acts when the Egyptian text goes astray. But the whole matter is far more complicated than the present brief summary indicates. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, a book written to prove the validity of the Christian bible says: "A study of 150 Greek [manuscripts) of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings... It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the [manuscript] is wholly uniform." The earliest papyri has been dated to around 125 CE (although some apologists have dated them earlier -- there is no consensus). • P52 -- a fragment of John 18 (written ca. 125 CE) • P90 -- a fragment of John (ca 175 CE) • P66 -- portions of John 1, 6, 15-16, 20-21 (ca. 200 CE) • P64; P67 -- fragments of Matthew 3, 5, 26 (ca. 200 CE) There are no papyri of the Christian bible containing more than one gospel date only after 200 CE. The oldest one appears to be P52 which contains a snippet from what appears to be part of John 18:31-33. It cannot be proven to pre-date Josephus. The Harvard Theological Review writes: "Paleography (dating things by handwriting) is not the most effective method for dating tests. . .the real problem is thus in the way scholars of the New Testament have used and abused papyrological evidence. . .I have (shown) that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. thus, P52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want P52 to do. As it stands now, the papyrological evidence should take a second place to other forms of evidence in addressing debates about the dating of the Fourth Gospel." Take a look at an early papyrus which is said to be of the Christian bible. Let's talk about P75. Most scholars date P75 to the 3rd century. It is sometimes called "the most significant" papyrus of the Christian bible yet discovered (in the 1950s). Yet P75 has Luke 3:18-24:53 -- yet Luke 22:43–44 is missing. Incomplete. Besides missing Luke 22:43-44 there are differences in P75 from than the text in the Codex Sinaiticus. It is NOT THE SAME. Luke 8:21 it reads αυτον instead of αυτους. αλλα ρυσαι ημας απο του πονηρου (but deliver us from evil) (Luke 11:4) is not even in P75. Also missing is: "And Jesus said: Father forgive them, they know not what they do." (found in Luke 23:34 in modern Christian bibles) Luke 16:19 is different from modern Christian bibles. Even a cursory reading of the Christian bible used by Christians today shows one contradiction after another.
Even the current Christian bible is full of contradictions which most ignore, but when one realizes how none of the early sources match up it is a scary thought indeed that 2.4 billion people believe in this religion without actually researching the "facts."
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
|