There is no such thing as The Bible

Yeah, I was referring to the OT and the Jews in my comment about manuscript languages, not the NT.
Re. text accuracy, to clarify, my statement about the 99.5% referred to the NT alone actually, the figure for the OT would be about 95% of the OT text.
Yes, it's true there are theological differences between Christian sects but they are not based on different textual traditions of the 39 books of the Jewish OT, or the 27 NT books accepted by the Protestants, the Catholics, and almost all of the Orthodox churches. I don't know of any essential Christian doctrines that would be called into question by the textual differences in either the 5% of the OT or the 0.5% of the NT.Re. Genesis and the Flood, my point was, the term is broad enough for 'earth', that I think we'd have to look at other evidences re. a global flood, one way or the other. However, as they are discussed on other threads, I will leave it at that.

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

OK, let's focus on canon and the books outside of it then, seeing as we've said our piece about manuscript differences for books in the Canon.
The problem with your argument is, the Jews wrote the OT, the Christians didn't. So I think the Jews are in a better position to decide than the Christians as to what the OT canon should be. It always makes more sense for the folks who wrote the books to decide which ones are genuine as opposed to 'johnny come lately's', simply because they are in a better position to establish prophetic authorship, which is key to whether the books should be accepted or not.The NT Apochrypha (the 'other half' of the NT, as you put it), did not make it into the canon because prophetic authorship for the books could not be established (not surprisingly, since they all came from the second century A.D. or later, when contemporaries of Jesus would have been dead) unlike our current canon which were all written in the first century A.D..So, the rule is, if you can't establish prophetic authorship in these later writings, AND they disagree with the writings where authorship HAS been established, it shouldn't take a genius to figure out which ones would be more likely to be true.Re. Genesis and 'earth', like I said, there are plenty arguments for a global flood but as there are other threads that deal with those, I'm going to hold my tongue.

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

OK,
First of all, if Jews did not make the OT Apochrypha canonical, even though they wrote it, why should we?? What are the compelling arguments??Christians wrote the NT, of course, those who are not followers of Christ have no say over what should or should not be in the NT.Re. authorship, there are actually very few books we CAN'T identify an author for. And even those few have more evidence for inclusion than the Apochrypha.Let's focus on the Gospels first, seeing as you mentioned them.
Gospel of Matthew - An early church father, Papias, writing about AD 130 said that "Matthew [the apostle] wrote down the oracles in the aramaic language."Gospel of Mark - According to Papias (AD 140), [John] Mark was the disciple and interpreter of Peter [the apostle], and affirms that he wrote this Gospel.Gospel of Luke - The early church father, Iranaeus (AD 180) identifies the author as Luke "physician and companion of [the apostle] Paul".Gospel of John - Iranaeus also said of John [the apostle], "John the disciple of the Lord, the same who reclined upon His breast, himself also published his Gospel, when he was living in Ephesus in Asia". In his letter to Florinus, Iranaeus reminds him of their early days when they had sat at the feet of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (who was martyred in AD 156 when he had been a Christian for 86 years). Polycarp, in turn, had been a disciple of John, and Iranaeus and Florinus had often heard him speak of what John and the other eyewitnesses told him about Christ.Re. the Gospel of Thomas - I thought this link was interesting -Is the Gospel of Thomas Reliable? - Answers.orgBottom line is, we don't know who wrote it, and it's hard to date because manuscript evidence is so scanty.

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.

quote:

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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

You say I'm making a 'silly argument from authority' (what's so wrong with authority??) but you don't bring any other argument to the table! It is NOT a double standard, I said, the community who wrote the documents gets to decide which are genuine...no double standard at all, any historian would be happy with that standard.Well, I didn't say every book has a different author, Moses did write the Pentateuch, though he certainly used other sources for pre Jewish material (Gen. 1-11). And the last chapter of Deuteronomy obviously was written by someone else as an epilogue covering Moses' death. That doesn't mean he didn't write the rest of it, though obviously much in the rest of Genesis was probably from other historical books, covering as it does, at least 700 years of history before Moses, which Moses compiled. Evangelical scholars do not deny there may be small, editorial and explanatory changes that do not change the original author's meaning. That doesn't change who the primary author was.If the Jews, who lived millenia before these so-called scholars believe it was Moses, I think they would know better, I've heard too many dogmatic pronouncements of 'modern scholars' who turn out to be just plain wrong.Re. dates, there is alot of speculation re. the original sources of the Gospels (Q document etc.). Alas, after over 200 hundred plus years of speculation, I haven't found any proof of any of these theories so far. I've read a book called "Is There a Synoptic Problem - Rethinking the Literary Dependence of the First Three Gospels" by Eta Linnemann (Baker, 1992), which has made me question the assumptions behind the Q document etc. stuff.So -
1) I go by the earliest dates proposed,
2) the earliest dates of any quotes by other writers, or any manuscripts/fragments
to give us a time frame.
Then -
3) I look at the internal evidence to see if there are any further clues.
For Gospel of Matthew -
1) AD 50
2) AD 110
3) Internal evidence suggests it was a substantial time after the events described in the book and that it was some time prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70...so a date of AD 58-68.For the Gospel of Mark -
1) AD 55
2) AD 140
3) Also before the destruction of the temple (AD 70), not sure if it was written before or after Peter's martyrdom (AD 64)...so a date of AD 55-69.For the Gospel of Luke -
1) AD 58
2) AD 180
3) Luke was written earlier than Acts, it's companion volume, and the last chapter of Acts recounts events that occurred around AD 63...so a date of AD 58-63.For the Gospel of John -
1) AD 66
2) AD 125
3) Tradition, language study and the many references to 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' all indicate that John the apotle wrote this book, and that he wrote it in Ephesus where he lived from AD 66-98...so probably AD 85-98.Re. the Gospel of Thomas -
1) AD 70
2) about AD 200
3) According to a quote of an earlier version by Hippolytus (AD 155-235), it was Gnostic in origin, though most of that has been purged in your version although your version still has in the by-line 'secret sayings' which was a key element in Gnosticism. I think there are two versions in existence now...I would like to see on what basis this is dated to the first century (as you have it, and other NT Apochrypha apparently) and what attestations there are to apostolic authorship outside of the book itself. My source said 'some scholars' for the AD 70 date with no reason attached. The oldest manuscript is later than any for NT documents (AD 4th century).
However, the more I read of Gnosticism, it seems to me to be syncretistic (at least, superficially), and had been around for centuries before Christ.
I don't see how one can argue that Christianity came from Gnosticism, it seems obvious that Gnostics tried to appropriate Christianity into their religion as they had done with others before them.

What did Mose use to write the parts after he was dead?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Although I hardly think that Mark was an apostle, the earliest date for Mark is 65 C.E. with the latest date being 80 C.E.Gospel of Mark

Those are not the date ranges that I see from the source I use. A site that I respect for it's presentation and scholarship gives the following80-100 Gospel of Matthew
65-80 Gospel of Mark
80-130 Gospel of Luke
90-120 Gospel of John
50-140 Gospel of Thomas

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

I don't recall saying that. This is what I said -"And the last chapter of Deuteronomy obviously was written by someone else as an epilogue covering Moses' death."I'm sure if someone wrote a 300 page book, and someone else added a page at the end of it about the author posthumously, and suggested to your publisher that the author should not get credit for writing the book as a consequence, wouldn't you think that persom would be going too far???

Yes, good point, but [John] Mark was a disciple and interpreter of the apostle Peter, and is mentioned in Acts 12 & 15, Col. 4, 2 Tim. 4, 1 Pet. 5.

Minor nit-pick. Eusebius (c.300) wrote that Papias said that. We don`t have Papias` work apart from some rather dodgy fragments.
Fragment 10:'Mary, mother of James the Less and Joseph-----was the sister of Mary, the mother of the Lord.' Two Marys in the one family?Fragments of Papias

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.

quote:

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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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quote:

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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