British Library Puts Oldest Surviving Bible Online 568
Peace Corps Library writes "BBC reports that about 800 pages of the earliest surviving Christian Bible, the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript, have been recovered and put on the Internet. 'The Codex Sinaiticus is one of the world's greatest written treasures,' says Dr. Scot McKendrick, head of Western manuscripts at the British Library. 'This 1,600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the Bible was transmitted from generation to generation.' The New Testament of the Codex Sinaiticus appears in Koine Greek, the original vernacular language, and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery until it was found in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany, and Britain. It is thought to have survived because the desert air was ideal for preservation and because the monastery, on a Christian island in a Muslim sea, remained untouched, its walls unconquered. The British Library is marking the online launch of the manuscript with an exhibition which includes a range of historic items and artifacts linked to the document. 'The availability of the virtual manuscript for study by scholars around the world creates opportunities for collaborative research that would not have been possible just a few years ago.'"
Crowdsource it (Score:5, Funny)
But is it wiki'd so that people can make corrections to it?
Re:Crowdsource it (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but you need to be in God-mode for the editing feature to be enabled.
Re:Crowdsource it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Crowdsource it (Score:5, Insightful)
Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:4, Interesting)
1600 years old, from earlier manuscripts that pre-date Constantine's adoption of Christianity as a state religion.
It has no mention of a resurrection.
For example, St Mark's Gospel ends 12 verses before later, revised, versions - omitting the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.
The incorporation of Osiris/Attys/Adonis/Mithras cultism, which dominated the eastern empire with it's symbolic resurrection theology was key to the success of Constantine's venture. It was so deeply held a belief, the bishops under Constantine may not even have realized they were fabricating and innovating.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:4, Insightful)
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if you helped lead a lie about a resurrection would you die because of it? Or would you simply shut up when people threatened you?
Let's see....
Crusades, kill the infedels.
Spanish Inquizition, kill those that dont agree, infedels.
Catholic church rips you a new anus when you question them, damned infidels!
The holy catholic church is incredibly powerful. Anyone challenging their stance is put as a nutjob to the world. (I wish we could go back to killing infidels!)
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I don't know, why don't you ask the "Heaven's Gate" cult members.
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All of the people that died here [wikipedia.org] believed in a much later resurrection and died for that belief. It doesn't make Koresh Jesus.
(And he's far from the first resurrected Jesus that has inspired his disciples to follow him unto death.)
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Actually it seems in the middle east, most Suicide bombers are doing it because the Talaban threatens to kill their children if they dont blow themselves up.
It's an effective terrorism in a society that makes you nothing and your life is meaningless if you dont have heirs.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Insightful)
Judging Truth based on how many people believe it -- particularly when those people died 2000 years ago -- is beyond asinine.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Informative)
Why would Paul write so strongly about the resurrection even in prison?
What makes you think that Paul wrote that gospel? The Bible was assembled by committee and included the the works submitted and voted in. Is it based on faith alone that you assume that the gospels were not embellished before publication?
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Paul wrote NO Gospel.
His are the epistles. Long after the four gospels.
He was already polluted with Hellenised Judeo/Roman Levantine religion: he was an enforcer of the Orthodoxy before his conversion. Christianity had no orthodoxy at his arrival on the scene - so he constructed it for his unresolved needs and the social/psychological needs of intended mission.
His epistles explicitly define and defend this new orthodoxy. Ultimately, Saul changed his name and religion - but the fundamental nature of his be
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Funny)
Paul wrote NO Gospel.
OK. I absolutely have to correct this. There were four gospels, one of them Paul's. First came John, then Paul, then George, and finally Ringo.
Oh, crap... I may be mixing theology here... OK fine. His story is an epistle - I stand corrected.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Informative)
Paul's writings predate the gospels. They are generally accepted to be the earliest in the New Testament.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle#Writings [wikipedia.org]
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:4, Interesting)
He was already polluted with Hellenised Judeo/Roman Levantine religion: he was an enforcer of the Orthodoxy before his conversion. Christianity had no orthodoxy at his arrival on the scene - so he constructed it for his unresolved needs and the social/psychological needs of intended mission.
Absolutely right, it seems to me. However, to someone (i.e. me) who specialises not in early Christianity but in Greek culture, it looks like there's basically no way of reconstructing pre-Pauline Christianity (assuming there were any point in doing so), as the gospels seem to me to be almost as infected with Hellenised philosophical and religious thought as Paul's writings. The ideas of the divinity as a saviour with a personal relationship to the saved, redemption after death, the roles of revelation and gnosis in salvation, and the Eucharist, are pretty well inseparable from the gospel accounts of Jesus, and they're all pretty much straight adaptations of aspects of Orphic/Dionysiac religion. There are various other lesser resemblances (the accounts of the nativity have some passing resemblances to an early poetic account of the birth of Apollo, for example).
So I'd venture the hypothesis that these are all thoroughly and pervasively informed by Paul's theology too. So I'm curious: what is left once you remove the Pauline shell?
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Speaking as an armchair theologian, AFAIK there isn't any belief of early Christianity that can't be directly correlated with a pagan religious tradition, whether it be from the Greek and Thracian culture or various "Middle Eastern" religions/folklores. Early Christianity can easily be viewed as a synthesis of Judaism and pagan religion/folklore.
Co-option and synthesis has been a major theme of Christianity from the very beginning through modern times. St. Augustine's writings were heavily influenced by t
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Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read a few articles about "edit wars" between Paulinists and the early Christians, in which Paul gradually was inserted to a prominent role.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but I'd appreciate a source or two. I've never heard of this before, and I'd like to read them for myself.
(Paul is, interestingly, also the source of most of the "old testament doesn't apply anymore, except for some bits, but we're not going to tell you exactly which!" dogma)
Oh? The text I see most frequently cited in this connection is the account from Acts 10 of Peter's dream about food.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Insightful)
But it isn't responding to a troll, PKD is correct.
They should call it Paulism instead of Christianity.
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re: Paul.
Changing sides is not conversion - merely allegiance or profession and expression.
Conversion is the changing of one's fundamental nature. It is repentance from one's self.
Paul went on to do with a pen that which he had formerly done with a sword, now in service of his former nemesis. In name, he changed but a letter, showing both his great attachment to small material indicators and his basic re-confirmation of the identity prior to Damascus.
No doubt he had a powerful experience - possibly even o
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...well-written retort to a troll post.
Really? Asking why people would go to their grave believing a lie is somehow deep? There have been a helluva lotta people that have gone to their graves believing contradicting things. Even if you believe that one subset of them had it right, most of them had it wrong. Dying for a belief does not necessarily make your belief correct, it just means that you believed it strongly or had other motivators.
Just because somebody decides to be a martyr (or in Paul's case leave an easy life for a tough one) doe
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Insightful)
He saw there was more money in it?
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My belief gives me enough reason to continue living. I don't need a fairy tale to help others and follow the same morals that have been around since before Christ was a glint in Mary's eye. You know
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The main reason people are willing fight dangerous battles (and other potential sacrifices) is because it is expected of them by the people near and dear to them - their squad, disciples, buddies, parents, comrades, bretheren, or whatever you want to call it in whatever context. Long-lived organizations always have a structure and activities to enhance camaraderie, such as organizing people into relatively small groups with a stable membership, a
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:4, Interesting)
I see this is currently modded as 'Troll', since the Codex obviously has many such references. However, the other possibility is that Philip is unwittingly viewing the manuscript using an Evil Tool of the Devil [blogspot.com].
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You mean like this mention?
http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/manuscript.aspx?book=36&chapter=21&lid=en&side=r&zoomSlider=0 [codex-sinaiticus.net]
Just because some portions were cut off at the end due to age, doesn't mean that it's somehow a conspiracy.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent down. That's not correct at all.
1. Codex Sinaiticus mentions the resurrection many times. What is omitted is the description of the Gospel of Mark. The description in the Gospel of Luke, however, is NOT missing from that text. At best Codex S. supports the theory that the ending of Mark was added later---a theory that a fair number of biblical scholars hold, mind you.
2. Codex Sinaiticus was either written in the last few years of Constantine or after his death. This proves nothing about Constantine's effect on the early church. You'd need something at least a hundred years older.
Re:Written Before Christianity Was PAGANIZED (Score:5, Informative)
C'mon. Why is it that people who are otherwise intelligent, rational thinkers suddenly turn that part of their brains off when it is time to attack Christianity?
Jesus' resurrection is also recounted in the gospels of Matthew (28:1-10) and Luke (24:1-35), passages which are present in the Codex.
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http://paganizingfaithofyeshua.netfirms.com/no_1_original_saviour_gods_orisis.htm [netfirms.com]
http://schools-wikipedia.org/images/803/80360.jpg [schools-wikipedia.org]
http://www.uned.es/geo-1-historia-antigua-universal/1isis_and_baby_horus_mary_and_baby_jesus.jpg [www.uned.es]
Genesis I (Score:5, Funny)
1 In the begining was the psot. And it was frist.
2 And yea, I faileth it.
Potential for translations (Score:5, Funny)
I'm really interested to see what different translators come up with. Now that it's been made available, there is going to be a wonderful opportunity to compare translations and interpretations from a much more 'original' source.
Though, I have this nagging feeling that "And it was Good" might also be interpreted as "Sorry for the inconvenience."
Re:Potential for translations (Score:5, Interesting)
The text of Sinaiticus has been reviewed by scholars already and is part of the critical apparatus used to construct the UBS and NA modern Greek texts of the New Testament. Never mind that we also have manuscripts of individual books that predate even Sinaiticus by 200 years. This is an interesting development in terms of making the text more broadly available, but the impact of Sinaiticus on the actual translations we use today has already happened.
From the standpoint of textual criticism and biblical translation this is a non-story. From the standpoint of broad accessibility this is a great development. Remember that serious scholars have been able to get facsimiles for this text for years...
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Actually I plan on pointing out the major discrepencies as a sign that the bible is in fact fallible and has been manipulated to change it's message over the centuries. With several additonal books that aren't in the current versions one has to wonder why the "words of god" Would be left out. I don't ever expect a reasonable answer. Because trolling religous nutjobs is always fun until they hang you for being a heretic.
Re:Potential for translations (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I plan on pointing out the major discrepencies as a sign that the bible is in fact fallible and has been manipulated to change it's message over the centuries.
What major discrepancies? Yes, there have been a few changes over the years by different translators, typos, etc. But I don't think any of them could be considered major. There are many different ways to translate things from any language. And there weren't any copiers back when the first books first came out. Yes, we can't pretty much be guaranteed that Paul's letters that are in the bible differ slightly from those Paul himself wrote. However, the message is kept constant. If you question the bible with several old sources, you would have to put the same scrutiny in a lot of other historical texts to make sure they haven't been manipulated through the ages where we have a whole lot less evidence than with the bible.
With several additonal books that aren't in the current versions one has to wonder why the "words of god" Would be left out.
Solve it once and for all (Score:2)
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What major discrepancies? Yes, there have been a few changes over the years by different translators, typos, etc. But I don't think any of them could be considered major. There are many different ways to translate things from any language. And there weren't any copiers back when the first books first came out. Yes, we can't pretty much be guaranteed that Paul's letters that are in the bible differ slightly from those Paul himself wrote.
Well, the debate between if the commandment is "Thou shall not kill" or
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The Johanneum Comma [wikipedia.org], for one.
The establishment of the Trinity didn't show up really until the Textus Receptus, the bastardized text based on many, many later manuscripts, and the text on which the King James Version was based. Prior to this (and ALL, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, old manuscripts agree), the passage:
1 John 5:7-8
5:7 "[...] in heaven, t
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If you question the bible with several old sources, you would have to put the same scrutiny in a lot of other historical texts to make sure they haven't been manipulated through the ages where we have a whole lot less evidence than with the bible.
Would that be so bad? If the historical evidence for Julius Caesar is as flimsy as the historical evidence for Jesus, I'm more than willing to doubt the existence of Caesar.
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http://www.hereticalideas.com/2009/06/book-review-misquoting-jesus-by-bart-ehrman/ [hereticalideas.com]
More saliently, Ehrman notes other portions of the Bible that appeared to have been subtly altered in order to combat specific heresies. Particularly, alterations were made in order to counter heresies that contended that Jesus was part of a trinity and was, in fact, the Son of God. Here's one example:
A similar phenomenon happens a few verses later in the account of Jesus as a twelve-year-old in the Temple. The story line is familiar: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus attend a festival in Jerusalem, but then when the rest of the family heads home in the caravan, Jesus remains behind, unbeknowst to them. As the text says, "his parents did not know about it." But why does the text speak of his parents when Joseph is not really his father? A number of textual witnesses [later texts - Ed.] "correct" the problem by having the text read, "Joseph and his mother did not know it."
It's significant to note that both the King James version and the New King James version of the Bible both repeat this alterat
Re:Potential for translations (Score:4, Informative)
The additional books are typical for this period of church history. In the fourth century the church was hashing out the canon of Scripture as evidenced by Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and the various letters that circulated from church leaders discussing the issue. What is more interesting is that Sinaiticus doesn't exclude any of the now recognized books, it only adds to the list. And never mind that certain Christians still hold that these other books are at least useful if not wholly inspired works. If you take the historical context into account your "discrepancies" and objections are not nearly as substantial, especially if you entertain the idea that God works through the processes of history.
Re:Potential for translations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Potential for translations (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me guess: you're either posting from somewhere outside America (most likely Europe), or you're Roman Catholic. American Evangelical Christians do not accept that the Bible is fallible, nor do they recognize denominations that do as actually being Christians! (Yes, as far as a large percentage of Americans are concerned, the Catholics are no more Christian than the Latter Day Saints or the Rastafarians or the Tibetan Buddhists.)
Being Christian definitely does not mean you're a "religious nutjob" as GPP suggested, but, on the other hand, thinking that Christians are all religious nutjobs is not an entirely unreasonable position for an American. In America, those that aren't are very nearly lost in the noise (the nutjobs are very noisy), and can be dismissed as a statistical anomaly if you're not paying careful attention.
Frankly, if some of the sane and smart Christian out there (and I know they're out there) would speak out more often and more loudly against the religious nutjobs who proclaim so vehemently that they are the only true Christians, I would have a lot more respect for Christians in general.
Furthermore you reveal your own prejudices when you assume that someone who doesn't approve of the Christian nutjobs must be an atheist. I assure you that there are plenty of Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Unitarians, Pagans, just plain agnostics, and even a fair number of Christians (especially Catholics) who would be just as happy to slap these fruitcakes who claim to be the One True Christians with a common-sense fact or two.
Re:Potential for translations (Score:5, Informative)
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Don't get me wrong, a world where I could, with enough effort, check is better than a world where I can't check at all(and a world where I can check with less effort is better than one where I can check only with more effort); and I suspect that this will be a boon for any scholars who don't have the time, money, or access to go to the British Library
It's not just NT Greek (Score:4, Insightful)
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It'll probably look like Catholicism, or other branches which place higher importance on faith, tradition, and study than on "literal" interpretations of one book.
Not all, or even the majority, of Christians are fundamentalists. They're just the loudest, and the ones most commonly found preaching on TV.
Re:Potential for translations (Score:4, Informative)
The bible we read today is not vastly different than the one on display (apart from Gutenberg's contribution: the printing press). Practically every bible has footnotes indicating where there are variations in the various manuscripts used in the translations.
Celebrate! (Score:5, Funny)
..... and the old priest looked at the original copy, and came out crying.
When asked why, he looked at the young novice and said "the word is CELEBRATE not CELIBATE"
Re:Celebrate! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Celebrate! (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, it does. 1 Timothy 4:
I'm not trying to bash the Catholics here, but it would seem that people that forbid marrying for priests and meat on Fridays is not really where you want to be.
The Apostle Paul VOLUNTARILY went unmarried because of his faith, but even commented that others would probably be unable to do so, and should marry rather than commit sexual sin. At no time did he criticize married believers such as Peter.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Celebrate! (Score:4, Informative)
Examples:
The veneration of Mary.
The praying to the saints. Yes some Catholics understand that differently, but so many stumble into something that resembles polytheism.
Indulgences.
The vows of celibacy. Sure celibacy is fine (and so is marriage), but they made it into a _requirement_ that priests must have.
The chastity/celibacy of Christ is sometimes used as justification but Jesus and others have referred to himself as the Bridegroom, and there going to be a wedding, so since he's not married yet, he has to be celibate.
We already have enough trouble with the really necessary stuff (following Jesus), why add extra unnecessary stuff that causes problems in so many cases?
Re:Celebrate! (Score:5, Informative)
When a wealthy lord had too many sons, he would have the extras sent either to serve in the military (which cost money, but it was part of the dues to the liege), or to the church. This conveniently got the extra sons out of the way so that his lands could be passed in entirety to his first son.
The son(s) shipped to the church would get a nice title, if the lord donated enough cash (or preferably, land) to the church when he sent his son to them.
The problem is that when some of these sons had sons of their own, they wanted to pass those lands to their sons... and the Church wanted to keep those lands. This caused schisms between the Church and the lords who supported the Church. So the solution was to require celibacy. Then those lordlings could not have sons inherit those lands. If they recognized an heir, then they were guilty of celibacy and the lands were forfeit to the Church (and the lordling would lose their title).
I'm not sure I explained it as well as others could... but the point is that it wasn't just about paying for the children of priests, it was about holding onto the bequests that came in exchange for appointing the sons of Lords to high office.
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I know you are joking, but the Bible says nothing about priests or celibacy. That was invented by the catholic church
The Catholic Church decided the canon of the bible. If you're going to recognize their authority to do that, why wouldn't you also recognize their authority on other matters?
I find that I have a much more positive view of the Catholic Church as an agnostic than I did as a protestant.
Celibacy was not the intent (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look into 1 Timothy, chapter 3 -
"2: A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3: Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
4: One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
5: (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)"
you will see that it was not the intention of the church founders that priests should be celibate.
Finally... (Score:3, Insightful)
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a good use for technology instead of just another way to twitter/facebook/blog what you had for lunch.
Please don't use the word "blog" in connection with lunch. Ralph either, for that matter. Now my stomach's queazy...
Ancient Manuscripts in a Digital Age (Score:5, Interesting)
Sinaiticus is arguably one of the most important discoveries in the history of the textual transmission of the New Testament. Add an exciting controversy involving either idiot Greek monks who had quite literally dumped it in the wastepaper bin or a conniving Russian manuscript hunter-turned-thief making up lies to cover his crimes and you've got a great story that never fails to turn up fundraising dollars.
That said, I wish they could produce software for the examination of the codex that doesn't suck. But because they refuse to release the database of manuscript photos for public download (even though, at least in the United States, those images are uncopyrightable and therefore in the public domain) enterprising folks like me can't build a better system and give it away to people. So you have to suffer with their terrible system if you want to examine the manuscript. It's typical conservator behavior, building unnecessary walls against access to information that should be free.
We really really need to start making sure that digital copies of the ancient literary patrimony are available for free with no conditions -- i.e., in the public domain, but apparently everyone is too interested in fighting for scarce research grant dollars to produce something that all of their academic competitors could use.
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Not saying these people would be trying to follow it anyway, just... ironic.
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What am I missing? If you have all the images in some sort of reasonable format and the images organized linearly (page 1, page 2 .... )w
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We need to be able to download the full-resolution digital images of the manuscript (or something reasonable, say, 150DPI downsamples) and then redistribute them without restriction. But the British are the absolute worst monsters in terms of copyright restriction, and there's no way the British Library would ever permit that kind of freedom with the images.
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That said, I wish they could produce software for the examination of the codex that doesn't suck.
You're a nerd, get on it!
We really really need to start making sure that digital copies of the ancient literary patrimony are available for free with no conditions
Agreed.
Making the most of it (Score:3, Insightful)
This work should be helpful in the translation issues that some scholars and theologians have faced, or worse, perpetuate.
IMO, the most difficult problems in Bible translations is (1) bias based on a reader's idea of what things say and (2) literallist POVs that don't consider that idiom and metaphors in the text shouldn't be taken (ahem) as gospel. One example from a Catholic apologist is the modern statement "it's raining cats and dogs." We today know that means "it's raining very heavily." Write that down in a book, bury it for 2,000 years. What would people then think that phrase means. A literalist will honestly think that cats and dogs fell from the sky. A person skilled not only in translation but in the culture of the time knows it to be a figure of speech--and will NOT change the wording despite that understanding.
And that, in an oversimplified example, is why humankind went from one Christian church to over 23,000. It's become a matter of bad translation and/or interpretation.
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It does actually and literally rain cats and dogs. A few years ago I read about a storm where it rained frogs. That, indeed, is a BAD storm, one that contains tornados that can suck small animals ito the sky, where they'll land miles away. In 2006 it rained birds here in Springfield -- at least, judging by the vast number of dead birds in my neighborhood the next day. It also rained tree limbs, insulation, cardboard, nails, garbage, corrugated steel (which I saw in the tops of trees), and everything that wa
It's all Greek to me (Score:4, Insightful)
From the images they have of the document, it gives "its all Greek to me" a whole new meaning, and it prompts important questions, spiritally meaningful questions, like: What year did we invent the spacebar anyhow?
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What year did we invent the spacebar anyhow?
I guess the spacebar was invented around the same time as the keyboard... But the space was invented in the 7th century [wikipedia.org].
On the Web? I find this surprising (Score:5, Funny)
At least I have an excuse for not RTFA! (Score:3, Funny)
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2. Lifespan: Eternal
3. Copyright: Eternity + 50 years
4. ???
5. Profit!
Re:The validity of this manuscript ... (Score:5, Informative)
If there's a substantial OT manuscript dating to the 4th cent. BCE on consensus then I'd love to see it.
The reason why Sinaiticus is so important is because it substantially a transcript of what is agreed to be the most accurate record of the original text of the New Testament. It's called the "Alexandrian text-type." Almost all of the tiny fragments that predate the fourth century (and they are very scanty indeed) agree with the text of Sinaiticus extensively. As a result, Bible scholars believe that the alterations we find in later manuscripts are untrustworthy corruptions rather than viable alternate readings.
As to the textual corruption that took place in the late first and second centuries AD we have very little evidence and therefore no remedy. Christians believe that God would not have permitted His word to be corrupted beyond our ability to understand it. I am an atheist and work extensively on ancient Greek textual criticism so you can imagine I do not have much patience for this point of view, but the fact is that the New Testament is the most well-attested ancient Greek or Latin text still in existence. Even Vergil's Aeneid, for which we have three manuscripts predating the fifth century CE, is not supported so well, and in the cases like the tragedies of Sophocles we are on much shakier footing.
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Actually, the "corruptions" appear in every new Bible. They are listed in the footnotes. The King James text actually contains all of them in the text itself. This dynamic is well understood and nobody is freaking out over it.
Also, Papyrus fragments predating Siniaticus contain most of the New Testament if you look at all of them as a whole. There is far more agreement than disagreement between the mass, which is to be expected if you understand copying and textual criticism.
Re:The validity of this manuscript ... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the "corruptions" appear in every new Bible. They are listed in the footnotes. The King James text actually contains all of them in the text itself. This dynamic is well understood and nobody is freaking out over it.
Well, nobody who practices Christianity. It's an example of deliberate blindness to textual defects that would cause infinitely more doubt and discussion if their context was not as emotionally felt as one's relationship with one's God. These variants were never problems in the early church and they are not not in Catholicism and the Orthodox churches because there is a very long tradition among them that church fathers, even today, can transmit to their followers the ultimate meaning of God's message and effectively channel God's will through themselves. Protestants are long since severed from that tradition, and their dependence on the determinacy of the text destroys the power of their message. I'm convinced that you cannot have a good knowledge of the history of the textual transmission of the Bible and be a Protestant.
Papyrus fragments predating Siniaticus contain most of the New Testament if you look at all of them as a whole.
That's possibly true but totally irrelevant. The intrinsic reliability of a papyrus fragment is not determined by its age, and if you try to piece together a text based on nothing but papyri of completely different provenances and values you're going to get a Frankentext that looks far worse than even a comparatively late but integral and complete exemplar. I am extremely well-trained in textual criticism and I don't appreciate your snarky comments. If you want to whip out your degrees I'd be happy to compare, but don't think that passive-aggressive appeals to what you think is my lack of understanding will help you.
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Hey, do you mind if I ask you a tangential question since it seems like you know what you're talking about? A while back I ran across some discussion over whether Jesus was an actual historical figure or a mythical one. There's a Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] with a summary and a much longer article [rationalrevolution.net] with some more detailed arguments, for instance. Have you heard of any of this, and if so, do you have an opinion on it? I've been hoping to find another point of view, but most of what I've run across is from Christians wh
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The oldest complete Old Testment dates to the medieval period. The oldest complete manuscripts of a single book are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls which date to the second or third century AD. There are pieces of OT books in artifacts that are from the BC period, but not much.
We, honestly, know a lot more about the NT than we do the OT because of the larger manuscript collection.
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Translated from English to Greek and back, it translates as "Greek"
Why did the little Greek boy leave home? He didn't like the way he was being reared. Why did he come back? He didn't want to leave his little friends behind.
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Re:Inferior translated holy works (Score:4, Insightful)
The Qu'ran is over 500 years younger than much of the New Testament, and well over a thousand years younger than the Old Testament. That's like bragging that Macbeth is better than the Norse Sagas because we have a much better textual history for Shakespeare's plays than for Nordic mythology. In other words, it's a moronic, childish argument.
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It is one more reason why the true followers of God look down on all other competing theologies.
Which is very nice, except everyone else also believes themselves to be true followers of God, has their own reasons for believing this and doesn't really care too much that the Koran hasn't changed.
(On a side note - the Koran may not have been translated but it must have been transcribed back in the days before printing presses. Further, I wonder if some words in Arabic have acquired slightly different meanings over the years....)
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Looking at them solely as literary works, there are more extant copies of Christian epistles dating to within as few as 50 years of Christ than there for any ancient historical work. So, theology aside, there is greater likelihood that other texts are less corrupt than the Koran/Qur'an (the professed earliest texts of which are written in a dialect that did not appear in the historical record until at least 100 years after the texts were su
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Contrast this book with the Holy Koran, which has not changed one iota since it was written
The question is, who wrote it. I could write you a poem about the afterlife that had not been changed one iota. It means pretty much nothing though, because I'm nobody special.
Unchanged does not necessarily mean special, important, or true.
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Contrast this book with the Holy Koran, which has not changed one iota since it was written
Maybe. The original Koran is lost. It was copied off its original materials into book form by the first Caliph after Mohammed's death. The original book was then borrowed and copied and distributed 4 times by the third Caliph, from which all other "official" copies are made (while the rest were destroyed). Diacritical marks indicating vowels and pronounciation were added by the fifth Caliph which some claim actually slightly changed some meaning (it reduced ambiguity in particular words). None of these
Re:Inferior translated holy works (Score:4, Insightful)
...Mock all you want...
--------
Not that I need your permission, but I mock the Qur'an and any other religious text any chance I get, as they are all based on the same absurd premise, namely omnipotence.
You are comparing ONE work of ONE person in "completeness" to the bible, of which the youngest parts are a few centuries older, by several authors, originally in several languages.
But that's not your point. You bizarrely agree that chopping off hands is fair, in the same post where you claim that your god is the "truest" :)
I live in Denmark, and I'm extremely proud that the gov'ment didn't bow to the pressure and apologise for what a private newspaper printed, or even punished them. This was after massive
protests and demands from countries that didn't quite understand the idea that freedom of expression isn't up for discussion, and the government was indeed powerless to punish something
that wasn't illegal.
I've seen religion destroy so much it pains me. /end rant
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Modern democracy is based on Judeo-Christian principles. I'll quote from an insightful essay on the matter:
"It is this point that I wish
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True, religion has destroyed so much; however, much much more has been destroyed by the anti- or non-religious (e.g., Stalin's Communism or Nazism {even though Nazis called themselves Christians, the atrocities of the Nazis were not done "in the name of religion" other than trying to eliminate those of particular belief sets and/or religions [most prominently Jewish]}).
Bullshit. It's amazing how hard christians try to hide the fact that Hitler was a lifelong catholic and so were his followers. Hitler sought -- and received -- support from the catholic church. Later on that proved to be quite an embarrassment for which the church had to apologize.
Stalin is an interesting case. He was educated in a religious primary school and then in a seminary. He gave up his christian faith only to create a state-based religion with him as some sort of demi-god. [Similar examples can be
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Modern democracy may be based on Judeo-Christian principles. But so were monarchies, dictatorships, theocracies, feudal states, slave states, apartheid states, genocidal states, etc.
As much as I dislike religion (I don't think I need to go into why), it is a powerful force for good as well as evil. Just as any human institution can be a powerful force for good or evil. Equal amounts of good and evil are done by the religious and non-religious alike.
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I think "wc -l examples" can handle this problem.
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I'm not going to touch most of your point, since it'd be useless to do so, as you already had formed your opinion before getting your so-called revealing evidence. However, I have one minor point for you: you have quite the job cut out for you to convince the world that Jewish religion came from a bunch of tall tales decided by many committees of fallible men many times over, etc. The Jewish Old Testament is pretty old, far older than what the British library just put online.
So before you decide that - ba
Re:Bible 0.1.1-beta (Score:5, Interesting)
No, what they reveal is the tremendous accuracy of today's modern translations compared to the papyrii and codeces of antiquity. After all, consider the state of Christianity in the first few centuries A.D. - a bunch of "heretics", hated by the Jews, persecuted by the Romans, and driven underground. It was in that environment that the gospels and letters of Paul, Peter, John, etc. were copied, distributed, re-copied, distributed some more, etc.
Were there transcription errors? Sure. You try copying something the size of the Bible in secret, by hand, while fearing for your life! But we can reconstruct the original readings of the books of the NT with tremendous accuracy.
Your insistence that Christians must equate "the literal word of God" with "infallible transcriptions, every single time a book of the Bible is copied" is just plain wrong. That's not what most Christians believe. They believe that the method God used to preserve the text was to have it copied quickly and widely before any single organization could control the process and make "secret" alterations to the Scripture. (Conspiracy theorists who hint darkly about secret councils that burned books or suppressed certain ancient Christian beliefs tend to forget that, even if that was possible, there were no such organizations or counsels like that for many, many centuries . Compare that with Uthman Ibn Affan, who decided which copy of the Qur'an would be canonical, then gathered together and burning all other copies that differed from the official version. Christianity has nothing like that.
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Conspiracy theorists who hint darkly about secret councils that burned books or suppressed certain ancient Christian beliefs tend to forget that, even if that was possible, there were no such organizations or counsels like that for many, many centuries .
Um... What about the Apocrypha [wikipedia.org]
No seriously. What about it? It is there and it is real. This isn't a conspiracy theory. Why isn't that in the Bible? Why are the dead sea scrolls different from what we have today?
And why does the Orthodox and Western Bibles di
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Tried finding it, didn't. Did find this [slashdot.org] but that's only a few days shy of a year ago.
But the wiki [wikipedia.org] mentions:
In June 2005, a team of experts from the UK, Europe, Egypt, Russia and USA undertook a joint project to produce a new digital edition of the manuscript (involving all four holding libraries), and a series of other studies was announced.
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1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 And God said, "First Post!".
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