[clue-talk] How do CLUEbies vote?

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 09-30 12:28, Kevin Cullis wrote:
> Sean,
> 
> I appreciate your candor and thoughtfulness in your postings, it's  
> nice to have a meaningful discussion with you about these subjects.  
> Thanks. Oh, my comments below.

To be honest, I enjoy it, too. Reasonable discussions of topics as
fascinating as religion and politics (that are usually off the table in most
real-world situations) will always provide me with interest, though. :)
 
> On Sep 30, 2007, at 9:01 AM, Sean LeBlanc wrote:
> 
> >Assuming he was actually a historical Jesus, and what he said was  
> >captured
> >accurately (and not edited through the years), yeah, I think some  
> >of what he
> >did/said was great - the violent parts I could do without, but  
> >maybe that's
> >my Quaker imprinting speaking. I say "if" he was historical,  
> >because of
> >arguments like the one presented in "The God That Wasn't  
> >There" (trailer):
> 
> One of the interesting facts about the Bible, or all of the letters  
> that compose the Bible, is that we've got more numbers of manuscripts  
> of the Bible numbering in the thousands and which are so close to the  
> original date of authorship compared with Greek literature that is  
> "accepted as fact" that it makes you wonder what people are thinking.  
> i.e. most Biblical manuscripts are about 100-200 years away from the  
> original date while the Greek manuscripts are hundreds more years  
> away from the date of authorship.
> 
> From my History degree the one thing that I remember is the concept  
> of primary and secondary sources. Primary sources are first hand  
> accounts of something while secondary sources are writings about  
> primary sources. All of the Bible manuscripts are primary sources,  
> not secondary ones. The Bible has never been edited because we have  
> nearly a complete record of the accuracy of the letters of the Bible,  

Wait a second. That's not what I understand at all. In fact, one of the
books on my "to read" list is by a Biblical scholar who contends the exact
opposite. He started out with faith, and after delving into the Bible during
his theological studies, ended up agnostic. That's pretty profound, if you
ask me. It's Misquoting Jesus, by Bart D. Ehrman.

http://www.powells.com/review/2007_07_14

Quote from review:

"Those who call the King James Version of the Bible the unerring word of God
have a slight problem. The New Testament of the KJV (as the King James
Version is usually referred) was translated into English from a version of
the Greek New Testament that had been collected from twelfth-century copies
by Erasmus. Where Erasmus couldn't find Greek manuscripts, he translated to
Greek from the Latin Vulgate (which itself had been translated from Greek
back in the fourth century). Here the problem splits into two problems.
First, Jesus spoke Aramaic --- his actual words, never recorded, were only
rendered in Greek in the original gospels. Thus, the KJV consists of Jesus'
words twice refracted through the prism of translation. Second, Erasmus's
Greek New Testament was based on handwritten copies of copies of copies of
copies, etc., going back over a millennium, and today is considered one of
the poorer Greek New Testaments. It is this second problem that Ehrman
spends most time on in Misquoting Jesus, a fascinating account of New
Testament textual criticism.

Many people have a vague notion that all the original biblical texts are
preserved in vaults somewhere, and translators work from those original
texts. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. The earliest surviving versions
of the gospels are handwritten copies dating from centuries after the
original texts were written. Also, we don't just have a single version of
each gospel; we have many versions, and even more fragments. The trouble is,
none of the versions agree with each other. As Ehrman puts it, there are
more points of disagreement between manuscripts than there are words in the
Gospels. So which one is right? How can one tell what the original authors
intended?"

> i.e. 1 out of 1000 words might be in error, but that one word does  
> not affect the context at all. So based on this short description,  

Really? "Young woman" being translated as "virgin" doesn't change the
context at all?

> let's trust the Bible's veracity, unless you want to delve more into  
> these details, you can go here (
> http://www.ankerberg.com/ ) for another source of information.

I'll try to check it out. Even if the Bible was never edited, and it's
original was in English, and we had a MD5 checksum to ensure that it was
never edited, that would *still* require it's claims to be independently
verified. 
 
> So, now the question becomes: what about translation and  
> interpretation. While the source can be trusted, translation and  
> interpretation are where things can diverge some into all sorts of  
> directions. When translating and interpreting the Bible you come from  
> four perspectives:

Interpretation is THE central problem, IMHO, when it comes to stemming the
tide of fundamentalism. In the past, people were kept from knowing any sort
of "problems" in the Bible or having pangs of doubts by being kept in the
dark: by preventing it from being translated into the vernacular:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_translations_of_the_Bible

I suspect having the printing press which allowed many more Bibles to fall
into the hands of the laity had something to do with Enlightenment, which
allowed many dangerous questions to enter people's minds, and maybe even
voiced.

Now, it seems that things have come full circle in a way. Now that most
everyone can read, and can get a Bible in their own language, a lot of
questions are asked - I know apologetics goes back centuries, but there
seems to be more than ever. Why does something that should be obvious need
interpretation? It's a very difficult problem...if the Bible is the inspired
word of God, and I need special interpretations that come from man to
interpret it "properly" (and often at odds from other interpreters), doesn't
that pose a problem? Ever notice those interpretations change with the times
and the sort of progress mankind has made? How does that square with God's
law being immutable?

Why do some people claim it's literal...and yet need apologetics to explain
away the "problems"? For example, one point that seems to be troublesome is
the genealogies of Joseph. If Jesus is born of a virgin, why try to trace
Jesus back to King David, through is (non)father? Of what consequence is
Joseph's lineage? Seems to problematical...so it's literally true, except
for the parts that aren't?

Why do I need someone to explain that problem away if it's literal? For a
summation of the problem, see:

http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/gen_jesus.htm

I'm sure there are others, but that's one that seems to be very interesting.
It seems one author felt the need to tie Jesus to King David to fulfill
prophecy. Very troublesome if you're born of a virgin, though! 


> 1. Historical context: what was going on during that day and time for  
> the person to write what they've written
> 2. Categories: looking at each word throughout the Bible and seeing  
> for convergent and divergent definitions and building doctrines based  
> on careful analysis.
> 3. Exegesis: looking at the words to be as accurate with the text.
> 4. Character of God: God is both Love and Judgement as well as other  
> aspects, all have to be in sync.
> 
> As #4 above, the one factor that comes into play the most is the  
> aspect of God's Love and Judgment toward people. Most liberals talk  
> only about God's love and rarely, if never, of His Judgment.  
> Conservatives are on the other end of the spectrum and talk mostly of  
> Judgment and rarely Love. To put this in perspective, if you have  
> kids, at what point does your love of your kids stop, probably never,  
> but at what point do you punish your kids for doing wrong? Same goes  
> for the Christian's Father in Heaven, while most non-believers say we  
> get away "with murder" do not realize that we don't and we're held to  
> a higher standard with Love being the guiding force. What most non- 
> believers and some believers don't realize is that God allows  
> Christians to be punished by non-believers to keep us in line with  
> what He wants, but only with God's permission for He controls it all.  
> If you read Habakkuk chapters 1-2 you'll see that God allows the  
> Chaldeans (in our present day the Taliban, to provide some  
> perspective) to punish the wrong doings of the Jews, or today's  
> Christians. If we are doing God's will things go better for us, see  
> Proverbs 16:7 "When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his  
> enemies to be at peace with him."
> 
> So with interpretation comes some errors, Some churches emphasize one  
> doctrine over another without looking at all parts to come to a  
> correct conclusion. Man either adds to or takes away from what God  
> states, i.e. either extreme asceticism or lasciviousness. For  
> instance, water baptism of a Christian is commanded by some  
> denominations, but when you read the Bible there is no reference of  
> the Apostles being baptized. Why? Because God is saying that it is a  
> ritual and NOT necessary for salvation and getting into heaven. If  
> you see the film "Luther" you get a good glimpse of what the  
> Reformation is about and why rituals are not the issue and the Bible  
> is the main point.
> 
> While you might abhor violence, I, too, don't want it around either,  
> but then again, why is it here? Because there is evil in this world  
> and good must triumph over it at some point.

Well, some of the violence seems pretty arbitrary - killing someone for
working on the Sabbath? Killing someone for using the lord's name in vain?
Stoning to death a bride who isn't a virgin? Seems to be lots of dubious
morality in the Bible IMHO. There are a whole bunch quoted here, one of
which includes God asking for the first-born sons:

http://www.coppit.org/god/morals.php#Cruelty

If it's literal, why would a statement like this need apologetics to explain
away?

"Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. You must give
me the firstborn of your sons. Do the same with your cattle and your sheep.
Let them stay with their mothers for seven days, but give them to me on the
eighth day." (Exodus 29-30)

I don't think any Christian (or Jew, or Muslim) would defend a literal
interpretation of that these days.


-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at comcast.net  
http://sean-leblanc.blogspot.com/
We've eliminated what is undesirable and kept what is good. 
-Computer scientist James Chu, whose China Internet Corp. is building an 
"intranet" that limits access to non-Chinese parts of the Net