Who to believe , Ham or Ross?

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...I've read up on the issues involving the Bible we have. Other writings are not relevant. The Isaiah scroll among the Dead Sea scrolls confirms the fact that there haven't been all the changes in the text so often claimed, as it is just about identical to the Isaiah text we have today.

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Can you explain that ? Which changes in Isaiah are you talking about ? When are they thought to have been made ? And when was the Isaiah scroll written ?

Your claim that the scroll represents "total proof" is unfounded unless you are familiar with the dates in question. The scroll cannot prove that Isaiah was not changed before the scroll was written.Isaiah is thought to have had one or two major additions since the original writing, the first in the 6th Century BC and the possible second in the 5th Century BC. The Isaiah scroll from the Dead Sea is dated to the 2nd Century BC and so cannot disprove either.I stress this point to indicate that you badly need to learn how to make a rational assessment of the evidence instead of jumping to conclusions without considering key facts. In this case the key facts are the dates I asked for - they rule out any possibility that the scroll can be taken as the proof you say it is. Yet you were happy to make that claim without even knowing what the dates were - even after being asked for them.

Yes, actually you did claim that the scroll was proof that the Bible had not changed. So I point ouu that it has nothing to do with the major changes that Biblical Scholars beleive have occurred in the book of Isaiah.As for your claim that I ma using sources you consider bogus I cannot think what you are referring to. Sources which allege that addiitons to Isaiah are only relevent to my point in so far as they describe those allegations. Even if you reject the allegatiosn you cannot deny the validity of using thsoe sources. Or is it the dating of the scroll you object to ? If so then what source do you consider valid and what date do they propose and on what basis ?As to your assertion of "misrepresentation" are you really claiming that when you said:

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I'm talking about the common accusation that the Bible has supposedly been altered over the centuries so that it is no longer the original, not any particular changes, just a general accusation. The existence of any scroll from that time that has the same text as our text is proof that such accusations are unfounded.

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You actually did NOT mean to include the major changes that are actually alleged to have ocurred to the very book in question ? I suppose next you'll say that you did not actually mean the WHOLE Bible, just Isaiah. Because that is every bit as obvious. Especially when we consider that some NT texts were probably not even written until later and no NT texts have been definitely found at Qumran.But even then the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that there have been changes in the Bible - variants of several books have been found there. Including Isaiah.Finally there is nothing wrong with accepting modern scholarship over ideas with nothing to recommend them but antiquity. Indeed it would be foolish for anyone who really wished to understand the Bible to neglect mainstream Bible scholarship.

So you say that I should be banned because you don't know what you are talking about. What an interesting idea.Instead of ranting and raving you could simply have admitted that the scroll of Isaiah has very little to tell us and that you were wrong to tout it so highly. After all you don't know of a single proposed change to the Bible that the scroll DOES rule out.At the least you were unaware of the fact that the alleged major changes to Isaiah are dated to long before the scroll was written - to the point where you didn't even feel the need to restrict your calim of "proof" to changes later than that date - even after it has been mentioned.And if that wasn't enough your insistance that Bibe scholars are "BLITHERING IDIOTS" for NOT accepting that the scroll disproves the claim that the Bible has changed at all badly undermines your claim that you meant the date restriction at all.BTW there is no need to insult me over the point that NT documents are not found at Qumran - firstly because you are wrong to say there is no overlap in the dates, but more importantly because the point is that the Isaiah scroll is NOT proof that there have been no changes to NT documents, nor is there any other document at Qumran that supports such idea.Oh by the way if you hate being shown to be wrong so much that you respond with such anger and venom it would be much better for you to open your mind and learn what you are talking about. If you are going to throw tantrums whenever your ignorance and irrationality are exposed it would be far better for you to respect the limits of your knowledge and learn to argue rationally.

Ross isn't that much better than the YECs whenever the subject gets outside astronomy and an Old Earth and not always that good when astronomy is relevant.Ross for instance argued that the declining lifespans in Genesis were the result of cosmic rays from a relatively nearby supernova, based solely on the idea that they would have reaced the Earth during the range of dates where he thinks his version of the Flood happened (a period of 10,000 years so there's a big margin there). No actual biological evidence of this claimed effect was produced at all.