This is for all you literal readers of the Bible.

[TheGreenMan]

I'm not sure where this should go so I'll put it here.

This is for all you literal readers of the Bible.

I always liked thinking and asking questions about where the Bible came from, who wrote it, when, etc. I just heard a guy talking about all the mistakes that are in the Bible. (I think the book he wrote was "Miss-quoting the Bible" or something like that.) He mentiond how there are many parts of the Bible that were added in later by scribes, intentionally and unintentionally. Such as the story about casting the first stone. It is never mentioned in the papers talking about the Bible until after something like 1200 (and maybe in Bibles from be for that time don't know if any of thoes are around still. The actual dates are a little fuzzy.) Plus the whole translation thing from greek to english.
Also the whole Trinity concept. In the greek Bibles there was (and maybe is?) no explicit mention of the Trinity. There was, in the Bibles that were in latin, but not the older greek ones. A printer used a greek Bible to print latin? translations and got into trouble with the church because it did not have that one piece in it(can't remember the where in the Bible it is). So he said if you can show me a Bible in greek that has that explicet mention of the Trinity in it I will put it in my printing of the Bible. Otherwise he wouldn't because the greek Bibles are older and more "uncorrupted". So the "other guys" got together and had a greek Bible written with the Trinity part in it and gave it to the printer, who then said "OK" and added the Trinity part to his printing of the Bible. This was also the version that the King James Bible is based on so that is partly why the Trinity is mentioned in english Bibles.

I just can not see taking a literal view of the Bible with so many obvious mistakes in it. Even the originals were probably just the disciples (and others) points of view. They would all observe what happened slightly differently. Which is a good point that the guy I heard brought up. Many try and take the Bible (New Testament at least) as a whole and mash everything together when they were originally written as stand alone books in their own right. The Christmas story is a good example. The pagents we put on every year are a mashing together of the story from Luke(?) and the story from Mathew(?).
Each book of teh Bible should be taken on its own terms and not all together.

This is why many people get confused and some claim contradictins within the Bible.

So in the end some stuff you might agree with and some stuff you probably won't agree with.

-----------------------------------------------
"This is fun!"
"If I had known I would have been a locksmith" - Einstein

[MuggleOrSquib]

Quick response, and small correction:
In regards to the Trinity, the one verse which has no support from the Greek manuscripts prior to the Renaissance is in 1 John, and refers to the 3 witnesses in heaven. This may have originated in a marginal note in some Latin manuscript which was later incorporated into the text.

Other verses supporting a trinitarian understanding have much better support, both among the ancient Greek manuscripts, and among the ancient versions/translations.

Be Well,
Bob Griffin

[James Peter]

I'm 99% sure that the story of the adulteress is in both Sinaticus and Alexandrius - the two earliest complete manuscripts we have both from around the fifth century or so. Don't get me wrong, I agree that most books as we have them are not in their original forms but all of the NT does date from (at the latest) the first three centuries, almost all of it from the first two (and most from the first - even stuff like the final version of John could be from the 90s, 120s at the latest). Attack the Pentateuch for sections being added 500 years after the originals, but to do so with the NT holds little credibility...

Oh and the Trinity-verse you're alluding to is from 1 John, the 'printer' you speak of was Erasmus (the greatest greek scholar of his day) and he didn't think that the alteration of the single verse disproved the trinity - simply that it showed the corruption in the latin text between Jerome's day and his. Nestle-Aland is a very good reconstruction of the original text, more reliable than any single manuscript we have. Demonstrating the Trinity merely involves demonstrating that Father, Son and Spirit are distinct persons (relatively easy from their interactions with each other), that they are all God (pretty easy, although the Divinity of the Spirit is the harder) and that God is one (very easy).

[Bernie]

I don't know the writing you're referring to, but there are any number of books out there which profess to teach us, in one way or another, about all the mistakes in the Bible. Some seems to be reasonable scholarship, while many obviously are written from an agenda. In either case, because the original ms. aren't available, evidence pro or con is primarily inferential. If you're going to make a case for the legitimacy of inferential information, then you should be able to see that the trinity, also inferentially extracted, is at least as valid. Funny how new names always seem to pop up in an allegedly Christian-only section testing the waters with the same age-old topics.

Emanuel Swedenborg noted that the literal sense of the Bible can be turned this way or that, can be abused by man without harming the spiritual sense within. This is easily seen in the number of ways one can phrase a sentence that means the same thing using different words. the 'mistakes' that are usually raised lose virtually all their significance in this light, as the same conclusions are gleaned from all the various versions. I believe that God did just fine bringing His message down through the corridors of history intact, despite the minor inconsistencies which have little or no effect on the final meaning.

[TheGreenMan]

Thanks for the corrections/additions. I just heard this on the radio in the car so I didn't exactaly write it down.

As for the Trinity verse the guy I heard didn't say that it wasn't supported, only that 1 John was the only part that outright said it.

As for "testing the waters with the same age-old topics." I'm new here and didn't see another thread with this in it to read and add to so....

I agree that "can be abused by man without harming the spiritual sense within" but to take every word as literal, i.e. Jesus had that encounter with the adulteress and said the whole "cast the first stone" line, can lead to some trouble. But taking what that says spiritually is fine.

[Bernie]

Hello greenman,

"As for "testing the waters with the same age-old topics." I'm new here and didn't see another thread with this in it to read and add to so...."
Moot point....I'm losing my mind....I thought I was responding to a post in the Christian theology section where I was reading moments before posting here, but we're obviously in U.T. My bad, sorry.

Yes, obviously a harsly literal reading isn't possible, but even harsh literalists don't go so far as to suggest that when Jesus said gouge out the eye that causes you to sin and throw it away, it's proper to do so. Damning the literal, as I myself am so oft wont to do, is fine until the mystic/Gnostic goes spinning off into orbit around jupiter. I think there's also a literal sense of Scripture which is preserved intact which makes Christ's historicity and [most of] the fundamentals of the faith worth defending.

Again, I apologize for my earlier misunderstanding.

[Krusader]

I don't know the writing you're referring to, but there are any number of books out there which profess to teach us, in one way or another, about all the mistakes in the Bible. Some seems to be reasonable scholarship, while many obviously are written from an agenda. In either case, because the original ms. aren't available, evidence pro or con is primarily inferential. If you're going to make a case for the legitimacy of inferential information, then you should be able to see that the trinity, also inferentially extracted, is at least as valid. Funny how new names always seem to pop up in an allegedly Christian-only section testing the waters with the same age-old topics.

Emanuel Swedenborg noted that the literal sense of the Bible can be turned this way or that, can be abused by man without harming the spiritual sense within. This is easily seen in the number of ways one can phrase a sentence that means the same thing using different words. the 'mistakes' that are usually raised lose virtually all their significance in this light, as the same conclusions are gleaned from all the various versions. I believe that God did just fine bringing His message down through the corridors of history intact, despite the minor inconsistencies which have little or no effect on the final meaning.

And Swedenborg should have taken his own advice and stayed away from his "internal sense" of the Word which he claimed came from God alone. His occult revelations led him to teach that the doctrine of justification by faith was a firey flying serpent in the church! He replaced the Trinity with his own form of Noetism, and claimed to chat with Calvin who now resided in one of the "hells." He denied the Epistles of Paul were the Word of God, which was pretty convenient for his own message of works salvation.

Yes, Swedenborg should have followed his own advice.

[James Peter]

Moot point....I'm losing my mind....I thought I was responding to a post in the Christian theology section where I was reading moments before posting here, but we're obviously in U.T. My bad, sorry.

I'm pretty sure it was in Christian Theology earlier, must have been moved...

[Bernie]

Hello Crusader,

"And Swedenborg should have taken his own advice and stayed away from his "internal sense" of the Word which he claimed came from God alone. His occult revelations led him to teach that the doctrine of justification by faith was a firey flying serpent in the church! He replaced the Trinity with his own form of Noetism, and claimed to chat with Calvin who now resided in one of the "hells." He denied the Epistles of Paul were the Word of God, which was pretty convenient for his own message of works salvation."
I don't know about these things, but assuming they're true and not misunderstandings of Swedenborg's views, it makes me wonder how such profound truths can be mixed simultaneously with deep errors. One tends to dismiss those in whom one finds such errors, though I think this is a mistake.

Many mystics of old agreed with Swedenborg on a number of issues, not the least of which is that virtually all held the Bible in high esteem, where today's Gnostics/mystics tend to quickly dismiss the Scriptures where it disagrees with their views.

I'm surprised that E.S. thought Paul's work were not the word of God...can you direct me to documentation of this view? I've found, in the reading I've done of Swedenborg, what appears to be to me a reasonable adherence to Scripture and its principles, with his own obvious slant on them, of course.