mrhnau
Senior Master
shesulsa said:
The Apocrypha has a few additional books. Alot of Catholic published bibles have those in there. Those are the only popular ones I'm aware of. Here is a link to a few books
hope this helps...
Is the Bible 100% truth?
- Thread starter shesulsa
- Start date
The Apocrypha has a few additional books. Alot of Catholic published bibles have those in there. Those are the only popular ones I'm aware of. Here is a link to a few books
hope this helps...
fightingfat
Green Belt
The Deuterocanonicals are not Apocraphal, they are seven books—1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, and Judith.
The books that comprise Scripture were not canonised until centuries after Christ. Even when that list was established in A.D. 382, the writings were not collected into a single book until after the printing press came into existence. Even Guttenburg’s Bible was published in more than one volume.
Besides, the Greek word here for "book" is more accurately translated as "scroll." The book of Revelation likely was written on a scroll, but it would have been impossible for the entire Bible to be.
The books that comprise Scripture were not canonised until centuries after Christ. Even when that list was established in A.D. 382, the writings were not collected into a single book until after the printing press came into existence. Even Guttenburg’s Bible was published in more than one volume.
Besides, the Greek word here for "book" is more accurately translated as "scroll." The book of Revelation likely was written on a scroll, but it would have been impossible for the entire Bible to be.
heretic888
Senior Master
shesulsa said:
The Protestant and Catholic versions of the Christian Bible contain different books, most notably the inclusion (or absence) of the Apocrypha.
The Jewish Bible also has a few different books than either the Protestant or Catholic versions of the so-called "Old Testament".
Upnorthkyosa is right, of course, in that the various manuscripts concerning some of the early Christian texts differ substantially in some areas. It is not, as fightingfat erroneously holds, to be a "translation issue".
For example, all early manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark (the earliest of the canonical gospels) end the story with the women witnessing the empty tomb. The so-called "Long Ending" --- involving the resurrected Jesus appearing before the disciples and giving them a final "mission statement" --- is an addition to the text after the original author had long been dead. Some Bibles actually point out (in an endnote, usually) that these chapters are later additions to Mark.
I have made it quite clear in the Jewish Contributions thread as to why I do not believe the Bible to be factually accurate in a literal sense. I do believe that many books of the Bible have spiritual or theological value (I deny the existence of the historical Jesus but not the existence of the Christ), but that they are also interspersed with Bronze Age mythology and political propaganda.
Laterz.
fightingfat
Green Belt
Did they? Got a link?
mantis
Master Black Belt
fightingfat
Green Belt
mantis said:
Once again the Times publishes a sensationalist piece hoping to provoke people into thinking the Catholic Church has changed its mind, which of course, she has not. Particularly striking is the comment that Galileo was condemned for defending Copernicus' system which is not true. Galileo was condmened partly because of it but mostly because he claimed the book of Joshua was wrong. Copernicus was a monk of the Catholic Church after all, and the Church didn't say Galileo couldn't hold to his view as a hypothesis. What she said was that if he wanted to assert it Galileo had to prove it. Unfortunately Galileo couldn't. Indeed, it would be left to Sir Issac Newton to provide the mathematical formulae based upon elipitical orbits to do that.
Equally amusing is the idea that belief in 'intelligent design' means one is a fundamentalist. How exactly does Darwinism disprove belief in God? Even Darwin himself was uncertain of what the implications of his theory and Alfred Russell Wallace who published 'On the origin of species' with Darwin and in whose work it was that the term 'natural selection' was initially found believed in God and that he had interceded thrice in temporal affairs: 1) in the creation of matter 2)in the introduction of consciousness in higher beings and 3) in the generation of man's higher facultires. The two men who founded Darwinism disagreed on its conclusions this should make people e.g. journalists who write for the Times, realise that Darwinism is science not philosophy. In science you dont prove negative statements you simply try to establish what the evidence suggests is the most logical explanation of how something has occured. The why is left to others.
This is precisely what Proffessor Keith Ward at Oxford states in his book "God, Chance and Neccessity". Darwinism doesn't state anything about belief or disbelief in God, rather Darwinism is a scientific theory fought over by metaphysical philosophers e.g. Materialists on one side and Theists on the other. Thus, just as with Darwin and Wallace, it is possible to find two biologists in the same faculty at Oxford, Proffessors' Richard Dawkins and Alisdair McGrath, the former who writes books on how science makes theism implausible the latter on how science makes theism more plausible e.g. 'The Blind Watchmaker' by Dawkins and 'Dawkins' God' by McGrath.
Lastly, of course, there is nothing to this at all for Catholics since this is nothing new. The Bible has never been promoted as being literally true in every single sense. If you dont believe me pick up some 3rd century works by an exegete known as Origen of Alexandria (albeit some of Origen's propositions were condemned but his influence is present in a variety of Church Fathers like Sts Athanasius, Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary of Poiters and particularly St Jerome whose Latin vulgate translation of the Bible acted as the official text of the Roman Catholic Church for almost 2,000 years with revisions every so often of course).
Fundamentalism is a 19th century phenomena it is not the tradition of the Catholic Church, which has always held that scripture must be taken literally but defines literal as what the text is supposed to have originally intended to mean. Often their views were coloured by the science of the day but St Augustine factors this into consideration in his primer on Biblical interpretation 'On Christian Doctrine' stating:
"For if he takes up rashly a meaning which the author whom he is reading did not intend, he often falls in with other statements which he cannot harmonize with this meaning. And if he admits that these statements are true and certain, then it follows that the meaning he had put upon the former passage cannot be the true one: and so it comes to pass, one can hardly tell how, that, out of love for his own opinion, he begins to feel more angry with Scripture than he is with himself."--St Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book 1 Chapter 37.
The Catholic Church does not base its authority on the Bible because the Bible a testament to the tradition of the Church. 'Biblos' is Greek for Books, books that weren't always together in one collection but were canonised by the Church by verification of their content against the teaching of the Apostles as all doctrine is (St Irenaeus of Lyon 'Against Heresies' Book 3 c.180 AD). Because the Bible is an authentic witness of truth's held by the Church it is referenced by her but the canon of Scripture stands and rests upon her authority. Anyone in any doubt about these things should just pick up the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is a condensed version of the central tenents of the Catholic faith. All the issues supposedly provoked by this move by the English Bishops to simply restate Catholic teaching have been comprehensively dealt with long ago.
mantis
Master Black Belt
fightingfat said:
well at that time i found the news on multiple sources. I just happened to find this one easily on google.
I mean, im not going to argue against or with your argument especially my rep's get all red every time i enter a thread like this. But just google the vatican or the bible and see how many headings there are about changes in the bible. Is the bible still 100% true after all these changes? is it 100% true before the change AND after the change?
A true representation of the basis of Christiainity? Yes.
A true representation of Historical facts? No, not even close.
Can a metaphor be "true"? Not really, but it can express something which is true.
As a non-Christian I don't believe the bible to be any more significant to my life then the Myths and stories of any other culture, but when asking for the truth of a story I think the question is a tricky one as the story can be completely made up, but the message of the story still true.
A true representation of Historical facts? No, not even close.
Can a metaphor be "true"? Not really, but it can express something which is true.
As a non-Christian I don't believe the bible to be any more significant to my life then the Myths and stories of any other culture, but when asking for the truth of a story I think the question is a tricky one as the story can be completely made up, but the message of the story still true.
fightingfat
Green Belt
mantis said:
LOL!!
mantis said:
Truth is relative. :supcool:
One of the main criticisms leveled at Christianity from Islam is that the Qur'an is faithfull to it's original text, in it's original language, where as the Bible has been altered over the centuries.
I would say that if anything, the modern translations are more true than anything we have had before. A good check on this was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which, when cross references showed that modern translations were pretty much spot on with these texts- the oldest we have ever come across. That's pretty impressive!
Now, the global nature of Christianity has changed a great deal since the first days after the assumption, but consider if you will the Christian Church. It remains one of the facts of our time, and a fact which no intelligent observer of the contemporary scene will wish to ignore. The Church is made up of a living fabric of events from a contemporary society whose dependednce on it's founder is a permanent feature of it's continuing existence.
In this respect, it is not like studying an extinct organism, or an archaeologist digging up the remains of a forgotten civilisation. The flow is held in living memories, the remembrance gors back in a living chain. At every service there are present elderly people who, 50 or 60 years ago heard certain words spoken by, or in the presence of, men old enough to be their grandparents; there are young people who, it may be, will repeat them in the hearing of their grandchildren. And so the endless chain goes on. For 20 centuries there has not been one single week in which this act of remembrance was not made, one generation reminding another:
The Lord Jesus, on the night of his arrest, took bread, and after giving thanks to God, broke it and said: 'This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.' In the same way he took the cup after supper and said, 'This cup is the new covenant sealed with my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me.'
Or words such as these.
One of the best illustrations of this continuity of memory within the Church for me is that around and about 200 AD there died at Lyon in France the Bishop of that city, Irenaeus by name, one of the outstanding Christian leaders of his time. It happens that a letter of his has come down to us, addressed to an old fellow student named Florinus from whom he had been seperated for many years. The letter brings up reminiscences of their student days together at the city of Smyrna in Asia Minor. In particular he recalls how they used to attend lectures by Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who died about 155 AD at the age of at least 86. He must have been getting on in years when Irenaeus and Florinus heard him. Irenaeus reminds his old companion- and there would have been no point in it if Florinus could not confirm his recollections- how Polycarp used to tell them stories about 'John, the disciple of the Lord', whom he had known personally many years before. Iraneaus, then, in France shortly before 200 AD was able to recall at only one remove, a man who had known Jesus intimately. When the Bishop of Lyons brooke bread with his little congregation as a memorial of the death of Jesus, he was not thinking of something he had found (where Kipling's Tomlinson found his God) 'in a printed book', but of something that he had been told by his old teacher, whose friend had been there and knew. That is what the memory of the Church is like. A corporate memory handed down from generation to generation become what we call a tradition. Our knowledge of about the origins of the church and about its Founder, rests primarily on a living tradition, which had its beginnings in the actual memories of those who had witnessed the events and had personal dealings with the principle Actor in them.
mantis
Master Black Belt
i guess we have to agree on what you mean by 'true'. it could be correct in context, but that does not make it the words of God or Jesus. so it's like a math book.
If the changes make it 'true' then it started off not being true which by itself should be a big deal!
being global should not affect the religion. You are looking at the issue kind of backwards. Theoritically and simply religion comes from God to humans to tell them the do's and donts. In your argument you are saying humans tell God the do's and donts over time!
IMHO the problem is humans are in charge of 'improving', 'changing', 'keeping', and 'preserving' the holy book. If this bible was never changed since it was revealed/written maybe it would have been true.
My personal opinion is the Bible is not completely true, and not completely false. It may have accurate passages, or 'true' ideas and it may have false ones too.
If the changes make it 'true' then it started off not being true which by itself should be a big deal!
being global should not affect the religion. You are looking at the issue kind of backwards. Theoritically and simply religion comes from God to humans to tell them the do's and donts. In your argument you are saying humans tell God the do's and donts over time!
IMHO the problem is humans are in charge of 'improving', 'changing', 'keeping', and 'preserving' the holy book. If this bible was never changed since it was revealed/written maybe it would have been true.
My personal opinion is the Bible is not completely true, and not completely false. It may have accurate passages, or 'true' ideas and it may have false ones too.
mantis said:
Depends, if the stories are not literally true, but instead express truth perhaps they have to change as the rest of the culture does in order to remain "true."
fightingfat
Green Belt
What I am trying to illustrate is that the first Christians did not have a Bible, but they still followed Christ. Do you understand?
fightingfat said:
Sure they did, The old testiment was around before Christianity
The New was being taught orally by the followers of Jesus until someone realised it was good stuff and should be written down
mantis said:
No, I disagree (And I'm not even Christian
)I think Oral history, legends, myths, etc are very important to culture, and have always been. Ancient Greek religion survives, even if not followed, through it's stories and legends.
Stories are there too teach us, to explain things in a abstract way in order to teach us something. Kid's love them, and this is how they think.
Yet something in our culture has gone funny as of late. Stories are no longer important, facts are. "Stories" try to imitate reality now and the disconnect is not longer there.
The old "Once upon a time in a land far away" model is lost to trying to create modern stories in modern settings.
But just about any "traditional" culture is full of stories, legends, myths, and other such things. They shape the culture, teach the young morals and important lessons. And this goes for anywhere in the world. Europe had them, Asia does, North American Natives do.
Perhaps there is an importance to this type of story, not as a literal truth, but as a lesson in truth that has been largely forgotten?
Actualy there was a lot more word of mouth than what made it in the bible. There were at least four or five people beside Mathew Mark Luke and John that witnessed Christ's teachings. We were allowed a truth not the truth.Andrew Green said:Sure they did, The old testiment was around before Christianity
The New was being taught orally by the followers of Jesus until someone realised it was good stuff and should be written down
Sean
Xue Sheng
All weight is underside
Sorry, late again. I will interject this and go away.
I once had a professor in a College Philosophy of Religion class (many moons ago) that when asked if he thought any of the world religions were true and if so why he responded with If he had to make this choice he would have to say Christianity.
Seriously, this is the reason he gave: No one would make something up with so many contradictions and holes in it. If you were going to design a religion you would do all you could to make it perfect.
I once had a professor in a College Philosophy of Religion class (many moons ago) that when asked if he thought any of the world religions were true and if so why he responded with If he had to make this choice he would have to say Christianity.
Seriously, this is the reason he gave: No one would make something up with so many contradictions and holes in it. If you were going to design a religion you would do all you could to make it perfect.
maybe the designers thought of that too.Xue Sheng said:
Sean
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