There is no such thing as The Bible

clearly it's rigged. 2000 year old spin.i mean, jesus was crucified. executed by romans, as a state prisoner of rome, in an area occupied by rome. rome, rome, rome. jesus was jewish.so how does the story get pinned on jews, and the romans get off scott free? we get elements like pilate washing his hands -- don't blame rome! blame the crowd of raving murderous jews!doesn't add up, especially if jesus is walking around gathering crowds of thousands to make speeches. how did they suddenly turn on him, and why?

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אָרַח

really? i'm not so sure. for instance, there are many many variations of translations, and the order of the books (the matters). maybe those don't matter TOO much, but...the catholics include another dozen books the protestants don't have. the ethiopian church has another book. several other smaller churches have other extra books. yeah yeah we've heard this before, you say. but here's one maybe you haven't.there's two different versions of the book of jeremiah. they are only somewhat different, but different nonetheless. the seem to use the same source text, just arranged in different orders. one is substantially longer. it is also impossible to determine which is older -- BOTH were found among the dead sea scrolls. some churches used one, some used the other.

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אָרַח

not the goal. you said 99.5% of the text is undisputed. not the goal either. we're talking about textual dispute.an i mean beyond translation. i'm talking about whole books in and out, different wordings, different structures, different orders -- and which jeremiah. and it these are real disputes. in my experience, no translation is EVER word for word, literally true to what the hebrew ways. word for word, btw, does not given it a "wooden" read. the wooden-ness comes from the time it was translated. what comes off as boring structure and repititious wording in english is more like refrains in a song in hebrew. it's lyrical, not wooden.i've seen this a few places, but if you ever watched that passion movie (mel gibson) there's a flash back to the sermon on the mount. now, we know how it sounds in english. it's repititive. blessed are these, blessed are those. love your enemy, etc. but the neat thing about that movie was that it was in the original languages.and the sermon on the mount happens to rhyme in aramaic -- the words start to play off each other too, and it builds. there's no sense of this in english. it's totally lost in translation.there's a lot of literal stuff that just doesn't translate, too. words are not analogous -- it's not coded english. grammar works differently; passive verbs aren't really used in the language. for example, we were discussing the flood and the creation of heaven and earth in another thread. if a translation literally translated genesis 6's flood, it would say that the entire country was flooded, not the earth. the word ארץ literally means "country" as in a specific country or even an undefined region, but not "earth." a person who read it in hebrew would understand that it does not literally describe a global flood, just implies it. this sense of the word is lost in english, because we have no appropriate word that applies directly to the same concept.anyways personally, i've found idiomatic translations to the be the best. they tend to represent a good balance of the literal and the meaning.

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אָרַח

yes, but only because i know a little more about them. there is a nt apocrypha too. no, i'm refering to the actual accepted, canonical book of jeremiah. there are two versions of it, both accept as canon. one is longer, but they are obviously the same contents rearranged in a different order.

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The Septuagint version of this book is, in its arrangement and in other particulars, different from others. The septuagint omits 10:6-8; 27:19-22; 29:16-20; 33:14-26; 39:4-13; 52:2, 3, 15, 28-30, etc. About 2,700 words in all of the original are omitted.

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The Book of Jeremiah has also been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 in Qumran. One text is the hebrew variant of the Septuagint version. This may shed some light on why the Septaugint version differs from the masoretic version. It was previously thought that the difference was due to poor translation, but it is now thought by many that the masoretic version has been reworked, or that there were two versions of this book.

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Book of Jeremiah - Wikipedia

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i would call that a major textual dispute. any church with a biblical translation of the septuagint has a different jeremiah. it's not just some lost gospel found in a cave -- it's actually accepted both ways, in the two major and equally weighted biblical source documents. i have an interlineal new testament. i'm gonna try to get one of the ot soon, or at least a dual-page kind, with hebrew on one side, english on the other. i prefer jps. i've found it to be very easy to read and understand in english. no confusion over "wooden" shakespearean wording, and it presents the ideas very faithfully to the text except in one instance (no translation is perfect). of course, it's also only the ot, since it's put out by the jewish publication society. yes, i do think they read the story as a global flood -- but keep in mind that peter lived 600 years after genesis was finalized. that's a long time for a story to change. however, my point is simply that you can't say you're for the most literal reading possibly, but infer that "country" really means "planet" in genesis 6. it's a bit of a double standard.

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אָרַח

in part, maybe. daniel and ezra were partly written aramaic. but if greek should be excluded, then that would include the nt. certainly, the people who wrote it were late hellenized jews and christians, writing in non semitic languages -- the qualifications that exclude the apocrypha and pseudepigraphica. actually, until recently, it was assumed that the septuagint was the accurate version and the masoretic had been modified. the masoretic is much newer. however, i seem to remember that both versions were found in qum'ran, given the masoretic about the same authenticity. not a key point. you just said the text is not in dispute, not that there is not dispute over theology. i can find you LOTS of theological differences between large sects. according to them, sure. they're looking at a concordance, and the concordance will tell you the same thing. it does change a little depending on context, and the question is what context makes it mean earth as a planet?i would suggest that being paired with heaven might.other usages are all basically "land"

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אָרַח

right, and my reply was a "no duh" kind of thing. if we use the jewish standards, we obviously exclude the new testament, don't we? in other words, if we're using jewish standards to exclude the apocrypha, but not the nt, it's a double standard.granted, this *IS* what happened, since the early christian church borrowed the jewish canon. i'm just pointing out that it doesn't make any sense. up until 300ad or so, the nt was twice the length. did you know that? there was even a second apocalypse. yet there are a ton of doctrinal disagreements about the text that IS largely the same. oh, and that other half of the nt was removed because of doctrinal disagreements. but does not strictly mean "planet earth" in the modern sense. more like the "earth" you have in your garden. in english today, when we say "entire earth" we think the whole planet, but it doesn't exactly mean the same thing in hebrew. more like "the whole land" which could be the entire planet (especially if the earth is flat) or could be just a large region.

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אָרַח

the ot was written between, say, 1250 bc and 600 bc. it was compiled around 600 bc. the apocrypha was written between 600 bc and 200 bc (included in the sept.) i think the pseudepigraphica was written between 200 bc and 0 ad. the nt was written between 33 ad and 200 ad.the question is why pick and choose? why 1250-600 bc, and 33-200 ad, but NOT in between? if we're using standards that let you pick up books the jews wouldn't accept (ie: the new testament) why not take other books the jews wouldn't accept too? some of the newer lost gospels are actually OLDER than the canon of the nt. thomas appears to be a third or fourth generation text, written well before mark, the oldest canonical gospel. several other gospels (magdalene) are just as old. infancies gospels might have even circulated during christ's lifetime. so that argument is just bunk.the nt was written primarily in the second century ad. which, of course, we can't for the nt, and much of the ot. there are very few books we can positively identify an author for -- and i believe all of them are inter-testimental. ie: ecclesiasticus (jesus ben joseph).

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אָרַח

because this is just a silly argument from authority. obviously, they know better, right? well, they did not make the nt canonical either. if we're going by their standards, we're going by their standards. uh, no. there's a whole lot tradition regarding who wrote what. that's entirely different.for instance, tradition states that moses wrote the torah. but you show pretty conclusively that the torah has five different authors -- one of them wrote the book deuteronomy as a whole, written well after israel and judah split. three sources make up the book of genesis. we don't know who wrote these books, but we KNOW it wasn't moses.the only authors in the nt that we can positively identify, i think, is paul. but i could be wrong about that. evidently false. matthew was clearly written in greek as an original language. the "virgin" line doesn't work in hebrew or aramaic. just greek. we know it was written in greek for another reason, too. it copies the "q" gospel, as do mark and luke. this makes it later than an apostle could have written. mark seems to have been written about 90 ad or so. it's the earliest gospel, but still later than paul's epistles. certainly not written within the lifetime of the (original) apostles. this i might agree with this. luke also wrote the book of acts, and seems to have been present with paul. but luke/acts seem to have been written together, well after all of the events of acts. i'm not certain what to say about john, other than the obvious. there are THREE books attributed to john. at least two of them are by different authors. gospel-john and patmos-john (revelation) are NOT the same john. this has been established by scholars. the question is whether or not the epistle of john is a third john.but his is the key bit. you have to understand the difference between attributed authorship, and scholarly established authorship. papias is clearly attributing authorship, when the documents themselves do not actually SAY who wrote them. the names of the gospels are entirely by tradition, not text. as for the gospel of thomas, it DOES have a by-line. let's look at it.

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These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.

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whether or not this is the thomas of the gospels is some debate. although that is his name, it might just be someone who feels like thomas's "twin" (thomas is aramaic for "twin" and didymos is greek for "twin"). we know from textual evidence that it is losely related to the "q" document. it might bear no actual relation, but it is certainly a similar document. it is a book of sayings. these seem to have circulated before narrative gospels, some possibly during christ's life.

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אָרַח

well, i only wrote (original) apostles because it might have been within the lifetime of paul. i'm not sure when he died, exactly.

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אָרַח

except for some absolutely amazing turnabout here -- we can identify that deuteronomy was written by a SINGLE source. one author, no additions. to see that it could not have been written by moses, one only has to read it, starting at the beginning.

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Deuteronomy 1:1 (JPS)

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These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan...

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Deuteronomy 1:5 (JPS)

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On the other side of Jordan, in the land of Moab...

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the obvious conclusion here is that moses is not writing the book, but someone else is. moses is on one side of jordan, israel is on the other (moses was not allowed to enter the promised land). he stops them to shout this entire book as a speech.for moses to have written this book he would have had to have written prior to israel crossing jordan -- which is the first event in the book. ie: moses cannot be author.traditionally, when a book starts "these are the words of ____" it means that person spoke them, sometimes at various times in their lives, and someone else (ie: a scribe or disciple) took them down and compiled them. so if i had to GUESS at who deuteronomy is claiming authorship of, it'd be joshua.but as i've shown here before, deuteronomy's textual evidence dates it to divided kingdom period, and actually points to outright forgery. if someone submitted a collection of timelines, two different sets of short stories that had the same content written in different styles with different details, the constitution of the united states, followed by a copy of the constitution that had been condensed and signed by thomas jefferson 100 years after his death -- and claimed that they wrote ALL of it ---- wouldn't you think that person was going too far?

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אָרַח

wait, so it's someone recording something someone said 150 years prior about who tradition says wrote what?that sounds a little sketchy to me.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 10-03-2005 10:22 PM

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אָרַח

well, right now it's not even authority. it's hearsay. someone wrote that someone said that someone wrote something -- with 150 year gaps in between.but when we get to authority, it's good to remember that authority is often unrelated to accuracy, andtradition, attribution ≠ scholarship shall we go through this bit? you're not gonna like it.the torah has five distinct authors or GROUPS of authors. notice i didn't say each book was written by a different. three of those sources are in genesis alone. there is a J source (who calls god yhvh elohym), an E source (who only calls god elohym), and a P source (the genealogies). i suspect there are remnants of a fourth source, too, but they were incorporated by E.these sources are stylistically independent, suggesting that the people who wrote them were not even aware of the other authors, and that they were included by a later redactor. this explains the inconsisties and contradictions very plainly. E wrote genesis 1, J wrote genesis 2.these two major sources continue through exodus and numbers. leviticus seems to be the fourth source, and deuteronomy is it's own source.genesis's latest components date to about 600 bc (yes, that recently). we know for instance that israel had a king when it was written:

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Gen 36:31 And these [are] the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel.

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we also know that the chaldeans possessed ur when it was written, which puts it betwee 900 and 600 bc:

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Gen 11:28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

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adn we know that camels were domesticated at the time, after about 900 bc:

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Gen 24:64 And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel.

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there's also a significant babylonian influence: the flood story, both creation stories. it's strong enough that i'm willing to place my guess around the babylonian exile.evidently, parts of sources are much, much older. but it seems to have been rewritten, in parts, close to 600 bc, and compiled as late as 516 bc. a year ago, i posted a thread that documents some pretty strong textual evidence that moses could not have written ANY of deuteronomy, due to the fact that it seems to be a divided-kingdom forgery written for political reasons:read, and feel free to answer there: http://EvC Forum: the forgery of deuteronomy camels are a pretty big part of the isaac and rebekah story. in fact, i don't thinlk the story works without them. if they had camels before moses, why didn't they use them during the exodus? certainly 40 years wanering the desert on a camel beats 40 years wandering the desert on foot. i think if you look you'll find a lot of jewish dissent, too. the first bits of question the sources of the torah was but forth by jews, not modern christians.

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Several Talmud rabbis were the first to notice these problems. Basing themselves on the premise that Moses wrote the entire five books of Moses, they asked how he could possibly have written the text describing his own death and burial. While some contended that he wrote them prophetically, the dominant opinion seems to be that Joshua wrote them and added them to the text.

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Later Jewish biblical exegetes, such as Abraham ibn Ezra (c.1093 - 1167) also noted the different style and language of Deuteronomy and stated that a number of verses must have been written by a later author, probably (in their view) Joshua.

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In his introduction to Deuteronomy, Don Isaac Abravanel (1437 - 1508) was clear that the book had a different author than the first four books of the Pentateuch. Both men prefigured more contemporary exponents of documentary hypothesis, which claims that the book is indeed a distinct document, appended to the preceding books at a relatively late date.

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Book of Deuteronomy - Wikipedia

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those dates look modern to you? we're talking middle ages here. so what you're saying is that people wrote down the teachings of jesus, sometimes even 100 years after the fact, and got them right word for word? if you believe in divine inspiration, sure -- but if THAT is the case, why have 4 gospels, instead of 1? why the other differences, if god is transmitting the words 100% accurately to the prophets/disciples/whatevers? mine still reads fairly gnostically, but not as much as a true gnostic text. it's somewhere in between. while we're on it, the gospel of john also reads slightly gnostically to me. much of christianity is similar to other sun-god worshipping religions of the region and time. it's actually nearly identically to one in particular, but i forget the name. someone else here will know it, i'm sure.

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אָרַח

which of course i am anyways. and i have evidence, too, which you failed to address. but moreover, that's not the point. "the words of moses" do not indicate that moses physically penned the book -- quite the contrary in hebrew tradition. it means that moses spoke the words, and someone else wrote them -- not even neccessarily at the time. uh, no. not deuteronomy. the word it uses is הַתּוֹרָה -- ha-torah. the torah. literally, it's referring the law which moses gave. that's in the book of exodus and leviticus. this is the same for the following: but let's look at a few, shall we? i'll ignore the ones that are absent of a specific reference to a part of the torah.

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2Ki 14:6 But the children of the murderers he slew not: according unto that which is written in the book of the law of Moses, wherein the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor the children be put to death for the fathers; but every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

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Deu 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

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this one does refer to deuteronomy, and must. i don't see another place where this is written.

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Ezr 3:2 Then stood up Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, and builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings thereon, as [it is] written in the law of Moses the man of God.

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the instruction for building the altar are in exodus, but not deuteronomy. this passage does not refer to deuteronomy.

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Neh 1:7 We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses.

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could be exodus or deut. no indication that it has to be deut.

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Dan 9:11 Yea, all Israel have transgressed thy law, even by departing, that they might not obey thy voice; therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath that [is] written in the law of Moses the servant of God, because we have sinned against him.

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Deu 11:28 And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known.

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nearest i can tell, this one has to refer to deut. as well. so that's two. all the rest refer to the torah or law as a whole, or don't indicate a clear source.let's look at another ot reference to deuteronomy, shall we?

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2Ki 22:8 And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.

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read this chapter and the next. king josiah's priests find a book while renovating the temple. this is a book of the law -- a second book of the law that was not in judah's possession before this time. josiah is upset by this, and totally reorganizes the theological structure of judah because of it. he tears down every place of worship except the temple in jerusalem.the intructions that prompt this can be found in the book of deuteronomy. josiah's priest found the book deuteronomy. and there's the evidence, right there in kings. feel free to check the commandments just as i did above. here's a good one:

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Deu 12:13 Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest:

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this one's not in exodus, or numbers, or leviticus, is it? so, where was this book between moses writing it and josiah finding it? how did it get built into solomon's temple, without solomon knowing it?this book was evidently used for political reasons against israel by josiah. they were now idolators, becuase they had temples elsewhere with their own cherubim. of course, to do any different would mean that the citizens of israel would have to go to another country they were often at war with -- judah -- to worship, every week. the entire population.there's further evidence of forgery, too. it mentions a throne -- no mention in exodus/num/levi. evidently, it was written after there was a king.this book was integrated into the canon soon after discovery. it is the standard on which all kings in the book of kings are judged (the origin of the sin of jeroboam). it is no suprise to see kings and every book written afterward refering to it as part of the torah.see, when you're presented with evidence that something is a forgery, evidence of people BELIEVING it is not evidence that it is authentic. the scientific community believed the piltdown to be authentic for many years. i could probably find tons of quotes regarding it. but that doesn't make it legit.so references like these don't mean a heck of a lot: luke and paul were evidently fooled just like the rest of them. but for jesus, the son of god there would be no excuse.

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Mar 7:10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:

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Exd 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

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good thing that's not only in deuteronomy, isn't it. as for the other one:

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Luk 20:27 Then came to [him] certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him,
Luk 20:28 Saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.... etc

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this is a question posed to jesus, not jesus's answer. let's look at what jesus says when he actually QUOTES deuteronomy, shall we?

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Mat 4:7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

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Luk 4:12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

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Deu 6:16 Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted [him] in Massah.

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"it is written." not by moses. not in the torah. just it is written, or it is said. maybe jesus DOES know better? if i were forging a book, wouldn't i do it that way? actually, the political treatise part is the covenant: the ten commandments. those are borrowed from exodus. ad-hoc, and without any textual evidence. but i'll do better than this. if i HAD to split deuteronomy into two sources, i'd split off the last SIX chapters. why?

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Deut 1:1 These are the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel beyond the Jordan; in the wilderness, in the Arabah, over against Suph, between Paran and Tophel, and Laban, and Hazeroth, and Di-zahab.

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Deut 28:69 These are the words of the covenant which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which He made with them in Horeb.

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bookends. those 28 chapter are all one speech. from there, it returns to narrative, and the narrative remains in the same style throughout. if joshua wrote only a portion, it was chapters 29-34. except that it contains the hebrew word for "across." lots of translations seem to botch this, for whatever reason (gee, i wonder). it says moses is giving the speech across the jordan river. he's in moab, they are not.if the geography doesn't fit, it's not my fault. that's what it says. (of course, the geography DOES fit, but that's another point. look at the map again). notably the book fails to mention philistines. which is good, because they shouldn't be there yet. but i'm not sure i would categorize its descriptions as "first hand."

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אָרַח

this is the strangest b-c-v request i'll ever make, but it's for a valid reason: where does it say there are FIVE books of the torah, in the bible? book, chapter, verse?because every where it's referred to, it's called this:

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Jos 8:31 As Moses the servant of the LORD commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses,

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book. singular. so frankly, the idea that there HAS to be 5 books of the torah is ridiculous. some of the jews i quoted above did. the fun thing about judaism is that it's a pretty broad set of beliefs -- and they debate everything. it's called tradition. besides which, the torah seems to be claiming mosaic authorship at some points (some people read references to moses taking down the law as the book refering to itself). this of course is highly debatable. which source was that? the book of kings? or the talmud? either way, i think they did. nobody is debating that the book of deuteronomy became accepted canon. it's not suprising to see people who read it as such. but someone's opinion of something is not evidence that the opinion is true -- especially when the authenticity is called into question.as i said, i could probably find quotes about what a revolution piltdown man was. the majority of the scientific community did not doubt it at the time. but that isn't evidence that it's not a hoax. except the textual evidence is pretty clear that it's specifically the book of deuteronomy. this is not a shaky case, either. all of the actions josiah does to cleanse judah of idolatry are influenced by verse found in deuteronomy, but not any other book of moses. i don't think you know what you're talking. the specific treaty is a suzerainty -- a large occupying power to a weaker subservient power. the larger power announces who they are, and then lists a few reasons why the smaller one owes the allegiance (or whatever the terms of the treaty are, anyways). then, the terms are listed.after a certain amount of time, the explanations of the parts dropped, and it became "i am ___ of ____ who did this thing for you. do this, do this, do this, do that, don't do this." this is a LATER form treaty.now go read the ten commandments. there's your treaty. where did the authors of deuteronomy get it? it's called the book of exodus. because when someone writes "these are the words which moses spoke" they're probably not moses. books of the prophets use this convention, btw. think about it for a second: why do we have books called matthew, mark, luke, and john, but no gospel of jesus? the teachings of prophets seem to have been collected by followers, not penned by the prophets themselves.since this book treats moses like a prophet from the divided kingdom period, it also stands to reason that that is when the book was written. indeed, the style is consistent with books like isaiah and jeremiah, NOT genesis and exodus.

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אָרַח

the same reason that the book of kings checks every king of israel against deuteronomy -- kings was not written by the people it's about. it was written afterward, around the time of the exile (just before or just after, depending on who you talk to).it's what's called an anachronism. how did isaac, who lived before moses, meet rebekah over his camels when camels weren't domesticated until well after moses?also, i might point out that the person quoting deuteronomy is not the person in the story. it's the author. the person in the story is acting in accordance with it.kind of a moot point, though. because the book josiah finds is definitally deuteronomy -- no scholars doubt this. so even if the book is legit (NOT a forgery), it's still an anachronism to be mentioned earlier in second kings.

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אָרַח