Thread: God's Name

Originally Posted by bitpicker

all scripture has been rewritten and modified beyond recognition.

Not so sure! Remember the Qumran scrolls (at work, so can't check it up..) But essentially they were several thousand years old Torah scrolls that were found hidden away in a cave in an inaccessible mountainous area. When they were investigated, they found, if I recall correctly, that there were only a few letters that were different to the Hebrew "Torah" today! To Jews, it was a fantastic sign of the holiness of their Torah.

In the New Testament, I think they removed the "apocrypha" books and found some signs that a section had been added to one of the testaments during the Middle Ages. But that was about it! Apart from that, the the gospels were written 50-100 years after the death of Jesus, approximately. To some degree they are supported by a totally independent Roman history writer that was a contemporary of Jesus, but not a Jew. He wrote about it simply because it was major news in the area at the time. His name was Josefus.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Not so sure! Remember the Qumran scrolls (at work, so can't check it up..) But essentially they were several thousand years old Torah scrolls that were found hidden away in a cave in an inaccessible mountainous area. When they were investigated, they found, if I recall correctly, that there were only a few letters that were different to the Hebrew "Torah" today! To Jews, it was a fantastic sign of the holiness of their Torah.

Yes the Dead Sea Scrolls have pretty much cleared up any Islamic complaining that the "bible was changed". The odd thing is that nowhere does the Koran actually say that the Bible was changed. This accusation must have come from later Muslims with no Koranic authority.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Not so sure! Remember the Qumran scrolls (at work, so can't check it up..) But essentially they were several thousand years old Torah scrolls that were found hidden away in a cave in an inaccessible mountainous area. When they were investigated, they found, if I recall correctly, that there were only a few letters that were different to the Hebrew "Torah" today! To Jews, it was a fantastic sign of the holiness of their Torah.

But the Torah is older than those scrolls. Yes, after the Torah as a set collection had been established, it was handed down the generations and replicated in a very meticulous fashion, and it's no surprise to me that some versions of it were found among those scrolls. The Qumran scrolls are from a time betwen 250 BCE and 40 CE, which makes them a lot younger than the Torah.

You only have to read the creation myths in Genesis to see that there are two, following one after the other. Later Moses gets the set of commandments three times, and the third version is completely different from the first two (and completely useless as well, who needs commandments like "Thou shalt not cook a kid in the milk of its mother" or "Thou shalt not walk up the stairs to the altar before your son lest he see thy privates" today. There are inconsistencies and internal conflicts everywhere, one only has to read the text oneself instead of just listening to the easily digestible excerpts presented in church.

In the New Testament, I think they removed the "apocrypha" books and found some signs that a section had been added to one of the testaments during the Middle Ages. But that was about it! Apart from that, the the gospels were written 50-100 years after the death of Jesus, approximately. To some degree they are supported by a totally independent Roman history writer that was a contemporary of Jesus, but not a Jew. He wrote about it simply because it was major news in the area at the time. His name was Josefus.

You are completely wrong. You really need to read up on this before you talk about it, no offense, this is just a conglomeration of half-remembered facts. "Apocrypha" is a word of different meanings in the Catholic and Protestant Curches respectively. In the Catholic Church it refers to all the books considered for inclusion in the Bible but rejected as wrong or heretic during the 2nd century CE. It includes such works as the gospels of Magdalene and Thomas, some of which interestingly enough can also be found among the Qumran scrolls. In the Protestant church the term is often applied to some books from the Old Testament in the standard Catholic bible which Luther removed from the bible, while the former apocrypha are called pseudepigraphs. Historians have yet other views, so whatever term you want to apply, there is a very large number of texts not included in the Bible you know for mostly political reasons, and very early on in the process of the development of the Christian faith.

Actually if you care to look into any commented edition of the Bible you will find such information. Or you can read such books as "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels, who after all is a professor for religious studies, or the more accessible (if somewhat biased) "The Jesus Mysteries" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. You don't have to follow their theories in order to see how much really has been faked in the bible.

The earliest books in the New Testament are the parts of Paul's letters which are not demonstrably forged, and they are from about 56 to 70 CE. The canonical gospels and other texts included in the New Testament are even younger. What's very interesting, and shown in the books I mentioned, is how that faith developed from a very mythical and absolutely not literal faith about an ideal man Jesus to a literalist faith which posited that a person Jesus really existed.

As for the very scant and far too vague historical references to Jesus, they have all been discounted. And Josephus was in fact a Jew, not a Roman historian, who wrote about the history of his people in an apologetic fashion in the wake of an uprising against Roman rule, and he supported the Romans. He in fact denounces several would-be messiahs and remains a Jew throughout. Would he do that if he believed that Jesus was the real messiah? What's more, the -for Christians- interesting passages in Josephus only turn up for the very first time in the 4th century CE, when bishop Eusebius mentions them. You'd think someone would have noticed them sooner. You know, not only the religious texts have been tampered with, but also the historical texts. Christian scribes in cloisters have copied them, and it was easy for them to add material as they saw fit for their needs. The passages in Josephus, which deal with Jesus, are widely seen as such additons today.

Really, this is a far too complex and wide-reaching topic for IIRCs and "I think that's". Whether certain specific elements of the Bible are forgeries and not is open for debate, and should be debated by theologians and historians. But the fact as such, that a lot of the Bible has been tampered with in no meaningless fashion, is simply demonstrably true. Unless you want to preserve your faith by any means possible I suggest strongly that you read up on this topic, if you are interested.