Wednesday 20 May 2009

Are all the references to jebus xian forgeries?

Now I think ive hit gold with this one. I was thinking about how bart ehrman makes a big thing of how we dont have the origional manuscripts for the bible and so dont know what the origionals said. Well what if we use his argument and apply it to the question if wheather jebus existed? Suppose none of the origional manuscripts mention jebus and every reference to jebus in the bible were a textual variant. Well, then the bible would have never mentioned jebus. Seeing all the other references to jebus are known to be xian forgeries we know xians were faking documents to justify there a priori assumption jebus existed. Moreover earl dhorethy has pointed out that there are pssages in the bible that clearly state jebus didnt exist. So can you prove to me that any of the references to jebus were in the original manuscripts when we dont have the origional manuscripts?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Since we dont have any original copies of Sopheclies plays, its possible that he never mentioned Oedipus, and that all mentions to Oedpus were later forgeries. Can you prove the originals mentioned Oedpus, when we dont have the originals?

johnny said...

Mike,

STAL has given you a nice, concise
response. To unpack the response a little, do you realise that the intent of your argument entails that (if you were correct) no second hand testimony could be accepted in evaluating historical events?....

And, just so you're aware, courts (with Judges and lawyers and such) would not be able to function, if you argument were sound and valid. (the judge -- and jury have to make decisions, based, not on first hand knowledge, but on second or third, etc.... in other words, the judge and jury were not the eye witnesses themselves.)

Ehrman is right, that we don't have 100% knowledge of the complete contents of the original mss (autographs). But, there is a very high degree of confidence.

In fact, with the amount of mss. and the ages of them, as STAL has pointed out, the Bible has earned a better degree of confidence than any ancient text.


Furthermore, you said, "we know xians were faking documents to justify there a priori assumption jebus existed".... could you please explain where someone could get an a priori assumption, if there is no reference to Jesus?

johnny

Unknown said...

hehe my point was that if we applied his argument to a non-Christian work(like say Sophiclese's plays), it would be laughed out of academic circles. Thats usually the best way to test any claim about authorship/manuscripts of the Bible(or any ancient work for that matter): would we accept the criteria if they were applied to a comparable work?

Or to put it another way: its patently absurd to think that a series of books about Jesus would never have mentioned them. Just like its absurd to claim that a series of plays about Oedipus(or in Antognies case, his daughter) would never have mentioned him.

johnny said...

Sorry, i wasn't very clear. The 3rd and 4th paragraphs were intended to expand a bit on your (STAL) post. The first two paragraphs are in response to the combination of your argument, using the entailment of Mike's.

johnny

Unknown said...

ah ok. Its cool. I think I'll wait and see what Mikey has to say to this.