Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

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Sorry, should have said parables instead of proverbs but it's really the same thing. Neither is to be read like history which is the usual straw man caricature of "literalism."

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Of course it isn't my idea - it was yours. And I stated that it was not the usual position of literalists. And no, parables are not the same thing as proverbs. A parable is a story, completely comprehensible at a naive literal level, and yet to read it that way misses the point. Indeed a parable is a fiction, so, obviously pretty much everyone concedes that the Bible does contain fictions.

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The Bible is no obscure text, although of course there are parts that aren't easy to understand.

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Which is not what you said a little while ago. And parts of the Bible are very obscure today.

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Genesis presents itself as historical narrative, with some genealogies here and there that relate to the historical narrative, and the silly thing is to read it any other way

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The people who have actually studied it have found it's not that simple. There's doubling up of stories, for instance. It's very apparent that the idea that Genesis is like modern history is wrong.

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What? Anybody who reads Daniel ought to be able to tell that if you move it out of the time of the kings and empires in which the narrative of his life, events, visions and prophecies is unfolded, you destroy it.

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Only as literal truth. But was Daniel intended to be seen as literally true? And if the evidence indicates that it is not literally true, why should that fact be suppressed? Honesty and good scholarship would seem to demand that it be brought out into the open, no matter how much you hate it.

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But of course I didn't say that. I said it was written so as not to exclude anybody, including illiterates, who will need it read to them, and the uneducated and most especially credulous children, as we are all to be trusting as children are and read it the way it is written.

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But there are parts that you struggle with, so it's hardly as easy as you say. And why add "illiterates" to "uneducated" if lack of education is the only barrier to their understanding that you will allow? Worse, you forget that the cultural context of today is very different from the times when the Bible books were written. Things that were well-known then may be the province of the educated now.And if course if we read the bible as you say we will see that it is the work of men, not God.

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Amazing how willing you are to twist things.

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On the contrary. I see you opposing scholarship and even the Bible itself so that you can put words in God's mouth. That isn't a good or Christian thing to do, even by the standards you'd claim to follow.

Well Faith, thank you for elucidating your position more completely than you would normally. When I said that I don't doubt that you doubt it, it means I am convinced you are convinced.Being convinced of a belief is not knowledge. You can believe who omitted or interpolated or harmonised what, and you can be completely convinced. But to declare to another person 'I know' is a much larger claim than 'I am convinced'. It invites you to justify your claim to knowledge. This isn't a coherent reason for anything.
1) Your source for God's promise isn't quite clear. Only God's words will be preserved, as far as I know. It doesn't say that people won't omit or interpolate into scripture.
2) Your second clause undermines your theory entirely. Since if God is allowing you to be deceived because of your apostasy, you wouldn't know but would instead believe falsely.
3) We don't know that God said it, we have to take the word of the author and the countless copyists between the source and the earliest manuscripts (whichever ones you think are reliable). Being morally upstanding people, assuming they were, doesn't make them perfect. I'm not sure how many Alexandrian texts you think Wycliffe, Tyndale and the KJV guys had access to so that we can determine which ones they would have preferred. Which leads to contradictory results. Different people who believe and trust the Holy Spirit have had different theological ideas for millennia.And is this the reason you regularly choose cranks as sources? Because they are not 'wise'?I'm not sure where you are referencing. Romans 1?The people in question are those that claim to be wise who are filled with unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful.Which I don't think correctly describes 19th Century Biblical Scholars. James VI seems to fit better, don't you think?On the other hand The wise shall inherit glory: but shame shall be the promotion of fools. He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. The crown of the wise is their riches: but the foolishness of fools is folly. The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. There is no evidence his character was 'questionable'. Only the lies of transparent liars. I have. Pinto is a liar. See Message 769 for example of Pinto's mendacity. Subjective. If you can demonstrate the Alexandrian text is corrupted, that would be 50% of your work, in establishing this single claim, completed. Subjective assessment, and the translations they created have been revised in view of further scholarship and archaeological finds in any event. Just like textus receptus. I fail to see how this allegation constitutes 'fraud', nor is it anything for which you have provided evidence for, and I'm sick of doing your fact checking for you. Metzger was not an unbeliever, he just believed differently from you. And he had at least taken the time to study his subject rather than scour journals and newspapers for quote mines to use.And besides, the fact that so many of the people entrusted with the texts previously had been 'believers' is also a big red flag. They are hardly unbiased and without agendas. Again an assertion without any support or explanation given. Useless. THE Church? Which one, the one true, Catholic Church?Churches are a market. Evidence: Try selling a Bible version that omits the Gospel of John in southern USA - how many Churches will buy it? Even if the Church said it was the authorized version? You can still quote your favourite translation - almost everybody will recognize most of them if they would recognize it in their preferred translation. Furthermore, you are guilty of promoting the very thing the Catholic Church was trying to do, that the Tyndale et al tried to subvert, but that James I betrayed (ie., mandating one version of the Bible as the true version and hampering people the freedom to explore other translations. Remember the trouble Tyndale got into for doing exactly what you are saying shouldn't be done?Finally, the KJV is not written in the most accessible fashion to modern readers. As you say 'The Bible is meant to be BELIEVED, and it was written for everybody including the illiterate and uneducated, even particularly for credulous children. ', so you have to agree that and after over a hundred years: I think that everyone should be free to read the source material for themselves and translate it for themselves should they be capable. And if they want to publish their translation, I don't see why on earth we'd want to stop them.Pope Sixtus, Wycliffe, Tyndale, LaVey, Jefferson, Tischendorf and Hort all alike. In fact it is not about how you know the Alexandrians are false at all. You say that you read something by someone once that persuaded you of this, and you say that you watched some propaganda which reinforced your beliefs. You engaged in unpleasant and unsupported attacks on the character of scholars, you hero worshipped another, blindly regurgitated what a liar said, provided theological reasons that don't favour either the Alexandrian nor the Byzantine. Did you think that was sufficient to prove your case? To be able to assert actual knowledge?And Tischendorf is questionable, and certainly not a man of his time, because he had the audacity to be involved in the creation of a variety of NT Testaments, at least one of which Faith doesn't like. But King James VI tortured innocent men and women because one of his boats sank, who persecuted Catholics, was a dictator who believed in the divine right of kings who dissolved Parliament at will, whose theological view on kings would result in an English civil war when his privileged son went too far -- all of this is perfectly acceptable because he was involved in the creation of a Bible translation that Faith likes.Despite the fact that it might contain harmonisations (poss end of Mark), interpolations (such as the Comma), omissions (eg Jesus Christ, see below) and errors (eg Rev 22:19).But a scholar that as far as history knows never tortured or murdered anyone, thinking that older manuscripts might contain less corrupted texts, had the downright cheek to collate a new base text and translate that into English...and have the results actually be popular? Unforgiveable sin. Right?Some food for thought regarding omissions: Why does the KJV diminish Jesus this way? Clearly a gnostic plot. Why does the KJV deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit? A Jesuit plot? How do you feel about where the KJV and the Majority text differ?Do you have a preferred reading for Prov 11:16? Who retains riches? Strong men or ruthless ones? That is, who translates 'ariyts' better? For other uses compare Job 15:20, Isa 25:3 (interesting as it also uses "'az"), Eze 32:12Or, keeping with Proverbs, what about: They actually mean the same thing, but the KJV is using peculiar idiomatic language which is definitely confusing to most modern readers/listeners, and I'd wager, most English speaking people since the KJV was published. The Hebrew word is 'muwth'.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Is telling the truth now a stereotype of atheists? Well that's positive stereotyping, which is an improvement.

How magnanimous of you. However, I don't reject the first chapters of Genesis, I reject your interpretation of it. Absolutely, Yes. Exactly, I agree. That is why it is so important to know what was actually written. But I suspect you mean what is written in the KJV, not necessarily what the original authors wrote. But I would submit that you also don't keep the text unchanged when what was actually written is something different (The Comma for example). It would be hard to believe that Jesus died on the cross if you didn't believe it actually happened. It would be hard to believe that he rose again the third day if you didn't believe it actually happened. Your accusation that Metzger, or me, or the modern translations have gutted them of their historical and prophetic content is baseless. You really don't believe in "faith only" do you? Wrong. Let's say I am going to teach a lesson on Joseph. So I teach it as a history lesson, emphasizing that it is all historically accurate. Is that Biblical faith? Not really.But what is the life lesson that we can learn from the story of Joseph? Well, bad things happened to Joseph, things that he did not really deserve. Although Joseph did not understand why these things happened to him, he continued to trust God and do what was right despite his circumstances. In the end, God used what was intended for evil for good and Jacob and his entire family was saved. That is Biblical faith.So at this point, does it really matter whether this is a historically accurate narrative? Not really. This is a story of faith and perseverance and God's purpose. It's the life lesson, the truth within the story that is important. It is that truth that will change our lives, not whether this is a historical event or not.I am not saying the story is a lie or false or anything like that, I am saying the purpose of the story is to teach a lesson about life, about spiritual things, not historical events. That what I mean by the Bible is written FOR religion, not history. How do you support that history is paramount to spiritual instruction? Josephus is first and foremost history. The Bible is first and foremost about how we should live and relate to our Creator and each other.I will have to address your other post later.HBD

In fact they are no longer recognized by ANY modern translators as authoritative (except NWT of the J.W.).

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Though the Westcott-Hort text was the "standard" critical text for a generation or two, it is no longer considered such by anyone, and has not been for many years. The "standard" text or texts today are the Nestle or Nestle-Aland text (1st edition, 1898; 27th edition, 1993) and/or the various editions of The Greek New Testament published by the United Bible Societies (1st edition, 1966; 4th edition, 1993).

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Another interesting thing regarding Westcott and Hort is that they were not the first to develop a Greek New Testament that deviated from the Textus Receptus.

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Westcott and Hort were preceded in the late 1700s by Griesbach, and in the 1800s by Lachmann, Alford, Tregelles, and Tischendorf (and others), all of whose texts made numerous revisions in the textus receptus on the basis of manuscript evidence; these texts, especially the last three named, are very frequently in agreement with Westcott and Hort, against the textus receptus.

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SourceHBD

The Alexandrians are part of the Critical Text and therefore infect all the modern Bibles although the W&H revision is not in favor, and so in fact are many of the translational choices by W&H, those klutzy "change for change's sake" as one of their contemporaries put it, changes that violated their agreement to do a minimal revision, just as their substitution of corrupted Greek texts violated their agreement., The changes in the English amounted to some 36,000 ugly and unnecessary substitutions just for the sake of mutilating the text of the KJV which they hated.

This is another silly straw man representation. And that's part of what any preacher would present, but only part. Joseph is also a type of Christ and this is where the historical specifics can be important in a sermon on Joseph. Kind of sad to reduce the Bible to a series of homilies. What you miss is the interconnected plan of Redemption that spans from the Creation to Revelation, that shows God moving in history to accomplish His will, that reveals His character in a way you're never going to get out of a mere homily. If it's just a myth then we have no reason to deduce from it that God is continuing to act in history either, do we? But if it's true history then that's one thing it's important to learn about God. Also, Joseph was a type of Christ and therefore the Messiah Himself is revealed in Joseph's story, which was of particular importance to those who were looking forward to the Savior before He came. And we can learn about what it means to be a Christian living in the midst of a pagan world by the fact that a real Joseph did so. A fictional Joseph wouldn't be a trustworthy model. And of course if it's nothing but a myth we are not required to believe that God gave dreams that revealed the future and gave Joseph the knowledge of their meaning. Or that the Israelites ever were really slaves in Egypt, or that there ever was a Passover night that is a type of the Lord's death as our Passover Lamb that protects us from the angel of (in our case eternal) death. And really, a good preacher who meditates on any part of scripture is always coming up with new insights into the mind of God. Also it's kind of unlikely to have your life changed on the basis of a fictional hero living a fictional life, but a real hero is somebody worth living up to. Seems to me you miss a lot by treating it as you do.ABE: Decided to look up some sermons on Joseph to see if they show how history plays a necessary part in them and there are quite a few to choose from at Sermon Audio.This one, titled The Prison Dreams, Part 2 , is in the middle of a long series on the Life of Joseph and it's almost a textbook case of what I was getting at, although it's also an example of the kind of preaching you are describing, applying it to our own lives. But I don't see how any preacher who didn't consider the historicity of Joseph to be important would be able to preach on God's working in Joseph's life as this one does.By the way, Sermon Audio is generally a good source of reliable sermons mostly by Reformed preachers, not a "loony" site at all. I don't know anything about this particular pastor but I listened to the first part of the sermon and found it illustrates the point I'm making here, for anyone who might be interested. /ABEEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : corrections of grammar, spelling, phrasing mostlyEdited by Faith, : remove plural sEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, "infected" is a strong word. The Alexandrians are evidence; the fact that Westcott and Hort overestimated them doesn't mean that modern scholarship should redress the balance by completely ignoring them. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Infected, contaminated, corrupted, compromised, vandalized.The Alexandrians are totally corrupt and should be completely rejected by the Church and eliminated from all Bibles. But of course we shouldn't have so many Bibles anyway because they only contribute to confusion in the churches, a veritable Babel of different wordings.

There is no 'should' about it. There are so many Bibles. That has been a fact on the ground for some considerable time. What you seem to be complaining about is that common English speaking people get to choose their collections using their preferred translation whereas previously only elite scholars schooled in ancient languages could hope to have access to this information. I understand that you would rather King Barack I would just create a 21st Century Bible, and force all American churches to use it exclusively on pain of death. I think most other people, however, might prefer to make up their own mind as to which scholars and translators have done the Word justice.You're kind of like a Pope really. Worried that multiple unrighteous versions may lead to the destruction of the unity of the Catholic Church.King James et al brought together an English translation so that English people could consult the texts themselves and discover its meaning without the need for scholars, priests or popes to explain the subtleties of things. Different texts and translations allow people to see slightly different points of view on certain passages where this was once the occult knowledge of a few elite scholars (I am not excluding theologians from this label).

it is the Church that should determine the text of the Bible. if the Revision of 1881 had been what it was supposed to be there wouldn't be a problem, but the revising committee violated their instructions and produced an outrageously inferior Bible both in its English and the Greek texts they based it on. They had no right to introduce new Greek texts and no right to make the 36,000 changes in the English either. If they had done a minimal respectful updating and minor correcting of the KJV, that would have been the Bible we'd all still be using, allowing for some further minimal updates.But since they mutilated the Bible, both the Greek and the English, they laid the ground for the proliferation of Bibles that seem to vie with one another to be more inferior and objectionable than the previous, all done not by the Church but by publishers. They've introduced more and more new changes in the English, most of them due to a law that requires any new edition of the Bible to be sufficiently different from previous editions to qualify for copyright. This utterly artificial criterion has only contributed to the Babel, not to any sort of improvement in scholarship or any other quality of the Bible. Except in this case the Popes have very likely had a hand in contributing to the cacophony of Bibles in their neverending effort to destroy the Protestant churches. The problem with the RCC was that it refused the Bible to the laity or discouraged them from reading it altogether until recently and there were even periods when many of the priests didn't even read it but taught only their pagan rituals. That is why Wycliffe and Tyndale and the Geneva Bible and Luther's Bible were needed for the sake of the people's understanding the truth.There is no argument with the fact that we need preachers and teachers to elucidate the Biblical text. Those are offices ordained by God because the average Christian doesn't have that gift. We are all to read our Bible, but we are also all to hear a lot of preaching that illuminates it and keeps us from misunderstanding parts of it. There are always concordances and reference books for that purpose. Having different translations of Bibles contributes absolutely nothing of value to the Church. And who needs the points of view of a pack of publishers and marketing strategists anyway?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, scholarship involves weighing all the evidence rather than ignoring some of it because Faith says so. For example?

Which Church? Any given Church? Or one True Church?If the former, then that is exactly what is happening.
If the latter, which is the one True Church? Who gave those instructions? What were they? How were they violated? In what sense did they have no right? Did they not have freedom of speech? Wasn't their objective to use the 'oldest and purest text'? Why did the Church not have the right? I thought that you said the Church should determine the text? Are you now saying they cannot?And since the scribes that kept the word of God managed to make hundreds of thousands of changes to the Greek over the millennia, I'm not sure what you are complaining about here. Why is 36,000 differences between very large texts translated from different sources anything to be concerned about?How many of those changes are things like 'Suffer little children' into something that makes more sense to more English speaking people? How many were changing the likes of 'be not afraid' to 'do not be afraid'? So are you a KJV 2000 type of person? I'm pretty sure Erasmus started that, then the likes of Tyndale and King James continued the trend as well as the numerous people that updated textus receptus and so on through the centuries.Their vileness and objectionability and their inferiority are all subjective assessments. We can rant about the evils of Capitalism and copyright law another time. It's a shame that the Dean Burgon society is so keen on selling his books that they won't release the copyright isn't it? Otherwise everybody would have access to his stuff to know the light.I think its probably best we stick with actual translations made for scholarly and/or theological reasons rather than confound the issue with other variables. Except that in reality they tried to prohibit alternate Bible translations and it was instead the Protestants that told them to get bent and proceeded to actually make a cacophony of Bibles. I think they called it the Protestant Schism or something. You might have heard of it.But of course, a lying liar told you otherwise so why would I stand a chance of persuading you otherwise? a) Concordances don't teach you how to interpret a language, they just allow you to see some of the ways the word has been translated and in what contexts.b) Concordances typically use one base text (eg textus receptus) and one translation (eg KJV). This is not sufficient to give the common people full access to the varieties of text that are out there so that they may, along with their clergymen, decide which is best.

But I'm not the only one saying so, I represent a point of view that in my opinion should be held by more in the churches, based on the evidence we have. It would mean holding the opinions of the scholar Burgon for instance, and others in his camp, rather than those of the opposite camp. The evidence favors this point of view. It's a matter of persuasion in the end and I vote for persuading the majority to my point of view. It makes unison reading in a church almost impossible when everybody has a different translation. It makes memorization of passages within a church context almost impossible for the same reason. And since most people try out various translations over time it interferes with our individual ability to memorize verses too. And it makes it very difficult to look up verses in online Bibles or in the concordance when you have a mixture of half a dozen different versions of the verse in your head. I personally find it very jarring when I hear a sermon on the radio based on some translation I'm not familiar with when I would like to be able to read along.I think this is very disruptive to Christian life.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, this goes to the history of the R.V.You will have heard of Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilberforce, the chap who debated with Huxley. He is also the author of the enduring comic poem "If I Were A Cassowary". Not many people know this.Anyway, on back in 1870 dear old Soapy Sam proposed to the Convocation of Canterbury: This motion was extended to include the Old Testament, and passed by Convocation. The proposed committee was formed, met, and resolved the following: This report was accepted by the Convocation of Canterbury, by an overwhelming vote. Convocation then appointed a committee to make rules for the revision. This committee resolved: Now Faith's point is that there is absolutely nothing in all this suggesting that the revising committees should have behaved like so many bulls in so many china shops.