Trump exposes Israel's PM Bibi, "No two state solution."
(twitter.com)
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I was recently reading an article where supposedly they found cases where radiocarbon dating is not at all accurate. I think its just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to subjective analysis of scholars, I completely ignore it. The way sciences are destroyed is by making it all subjective rather than objective.
To me the most important aspect is he origin story of of the DSS. Does not pass the sniff test in multiple ways.
But originally, I was not even thinking about this aspect. I was simply thinking about the subjective interpretation of ancient Bible when it was converted to various languages including English.
There is a book called Naked Bible, by a guy who researched the original manuscripts in Vatican for many years, who did a completely literal translation without an subjectivity - and what it indicates is ... very interesting .. to say the least.
But it any case, I dont like to rub against people's religious beliefs too much. If you want to believe that the version of Bible people are reading at their homes accurately describes the ancient teachings - thats your prerogative. I dont think we will be able to convince each other otherwise.
You see, this issue is not merely a matter of "believe whatever you want to believe." I, just like you, want my beliefs to be based in facts and not falsehoods.
One can say they don't believe what the Bible has to say in it's content; that's' an entirely reasonable statement to make. But one cannot say - with any factual basis - that the Bible we currently posses has been changed beyond any semblance of what the original authors wrote.
We haven't even discussed the fact the we can reconstruct almost the entire New Testament with simply the quotations from the early Church Fathers.
According to some sources, there are more than 36,000 quotations of the New Testament in the writings of the early church fathers who wrote before the council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.
These quotations cover almost all of the New Testament books, except for a few verses. Some researchers have claimed that only eleven verses of the New Testament are not quoted by the early church fathers
If the New Testament did not have the enormous amount of manuscript evidence in its corner, it would still be possible to reconstruct most of it using only the quotations of the early church fathers.
#TheBibleIsReliable
Unfortunately, you rely on subjective opinion of "experts" and "scientific methods" to decide what is fact and what is not. If you want to ignore the valuable lesson we learnt about science and experts, in the most painful way possible, for the last 3 years - its your prerogative. I would not be forgetting that lesson in a long long time.
Would be happy to see someone reconstruct from the quotations of Churh Fathers, and compare the difference between that and the actual New Testament. According to you they are almost the same. That small minor difference - that could be the key message that has been changed.
Allow me to give you a simplified analogy of how textual critics reconstruct the originals with a very high degree of accuracy (99.5%) using the 25,000 plus manuscripts and copies and fragments we possess.
Imagine you have a handwritten letter from a friend, but there are a few smudged or unclear words. To understand what your friend meant, you might ask other friends if they have copies of the same letter. If many friends have copies, and most of them have the same words, you can be more confident about what your friend originally wrote.
Now, think about the Bible as a very old and important letter. Over thousands of years, people have made copies of it by hand, just like your friends with the letter. Some of these ancient copies have small mistakes or missing words due to human error, just like the smudged words in your letter.
The more copies (manuscripts) of the Bible we have from different times and places, the better we can compare them. If most of the copies have the same words, we can be more confident about what the original text said. We can even see where mistakes crept in because they won't match the majority of the copies.
Having lots of manuscripts allows scholars to carefully study the text, cross-reference them, and piece together the most accurate version. It's like having many friends with copies of the letter; the more you have, the better you can reconstruct the original message.
So, in the case of the Bible, having a wealth of manuscripts from various times and places (which we have) helps ensure that the text we have today is very close to what was originally written, despite the centuries of copying and potential errors. This makes it one of the most well-preserved and accurately reconstructed ancient texts in history.
You didn't address the two specific points I raised. Instead you gave me an analogy of how you can reconstruct a text from many different copies of similar text - which as a general process does not require that much explanation.
Let me change the course of this discussion and tell you where I am coming from, because you might be misinterpreting my stance as I dont believe anything in Bible.
I believe that both Old Testament and New Testament are records events that happened in the history. I believe humanity had contact with other wordly beings, and set in course the flow of our civilization. I believe some of these beings were not so benign whereas others were. Jesus, for instance, was a pure and benign being who was sent here to correct our course as a civilization, bring awareness to the nature of Evil and to set us back on the right path.
However, I do believe that many layers of interpretations have crept into the Bible, that alter the meanings from the originals ever so lightly. Some of this is natural, some of this was planned.
I believe that for the most part living your life according to the teachings of Jesus is a good way to lead a good life as individuals, and free life as a civilization.
However, I do believe that using Bible prophecies, specifically, to decide our course of action - esp in relation to Israel - is extremely dangerous because very small changes can end up giving completely different meanings, and also this is an area that is most prone to intentional obfuscation by people with vested interests.
I will end this with my own stand that nothing you have provided me establishes as a fact that the Bible we can read today is exactly as it was transmitted to the Humans from the other worldly beings. Not to the point where I am willing to bet our future on some prophecies.