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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (10896)	4/10/2001 11:17:33 AM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

That's a good question James, and I agree with your sentiment that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." As far as independent corroboration goes I'll have to dig a bit But it is definitely there. Regarding your assertion that the Bible should only be counted as one source because of later editing, I would have to say you are simply mistaken. The scholarly discipline, known as Textual Criticism, or Lower Criticism, involves itself with the task of determining the best representation of the original manuscript. This is possible even if the original autographs are lost, because of the vast numbers of copies available to compare with one another. Add to that all of the very early quotes, from the writings of first and second century Christian leaders, and you have an incredible accurate method of determining, rather precisely the original content. Have you ever played telegraph? That's the game where you whisper into someone's ear and then they have to repeat it to the next person, so on and so forth down the line, until the final message comes out the other end completely different. That is NOT what is happening with the Bible. Rather, take a group of students and give them a page of text to copy. Have 25 date and copy the page as accurately as possible, have five students copy the page rather quickly, and have five students purposely change key portions of the page, so as to change the meaning of a particular aspect. Then give those copies to the next years class of students, and repeat that process for two or three years of classes. Now destroy the original and see if you can determine what the original document said. I think you will find that by comparing the earliest documents with one another you will be able to ascertain with a very high degree of certainty, what the original document said. This, to a large degree is what you have with the Biblical texts. there is an incredible amount of material available to compare with one another. When the Dead sea scrolls were discovered, a text of the book of Isaiah was discovered that predated the oldest extant copy by almost a thousand years. Although there were some very minor differences in spelling and word order, the text was virtually identical to what you would read if you were to open the book of Isaiah in a Bible today and read this; Isaiah 53: "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Greg