Many of them actually know that, but literally believe God guided the hand of the people doing it.
Which isn’t exactly a large leap if you’re a believer. If you believe God can do all the other stuff, divine inspiration isn’t exactly near the top of “well that’s just hard to believe”
Right, exactly. Not sure how it makes any sense to have those different translations and create one that way, but they just say he “works in mysterious ways.”
The Vulgate Bible was the first to unify the old and new testsments under a single language and was, by and large, the basis for the King James Bible.
Example, the Latin in the Vulgate is pretty easy to follow:
1 In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi: et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona: et divisit lucem a tenebris.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Wow, I don’t know more than a handful of Latin words and I only speak Drunk Hillbilly fluently and I could still get most of that.
I recommend the NRSV or the NRSVue.
How do the Jewish Torah and Talmud fare? Are there much more authoritative texts for those and the Quran?
The first Qur’an was written within two years of Muhammads death. The Qur’an was standardized under caliph Uthman several years later, and all other copies were ordered to be burned or buried, or however one would respectfully retire a holy book. The closest English word for Qur’an is generally regarded to be ‘recitations’, as it was not originally meant to be a text. So, to maintain the integrity of the Suras (chapters, sort of), each one was required to be verified by multiple independent witnesses. Written Arabic was even elaborated to include information about how it was to be read (literally read aloud, not interpreted).
The relative speed with which this all occurred meant that some of these sources were indeed very close to Muhammad during his life. His wife A’i’sha, for example. Still, you can raise doubts by pointing out that the Suras may not have survived oral transmission fully in-tact, or that changes may have occurred over the 20+ year gap between Muhammads death and it’s final transcription, and indeed many scholars do. I believe there is some degree of variation in manuscripts and sources.
But the general view among believers is that the Qur’an is the literal, unadulterated word of God, and we know that great care was taken to preserve it.
Not an expert, just took an Intro to the Qur’an course.
God is all powerful, but not powerful enough to preserve his own inspired writings… or talk to anyone plainly because, ugh, why would they create language then stoop so low to use it… I mean they are so busy with those cosmological constants and quantum fields and all. How could they possibly have the time to act like sane reasonable people, or write down any of those ontological and undisputable fundamental building blocks of the universe.
God waited 14 billion years until humans appeared. And then he waited another 200,000 years until finally revealing the one and only true religion to them. And he gets really upset if you play with your wiener. Makes perfect sense.
Although god gets upset if you play with your weiner, it becomes okay after you tell your priest about it…but the forgiveness doesn’t stick. You have to tell that priest after every time to be forgiven.
/Catholicism
Gee, I wonder why that is …
Now I’m wondering, if your priest plays with your weiner for you, does god consider that instant forgiveness or do you still need to see your priest in confession? Does it count if he hasn’t confessed to another priest? What if those priests played with their weiners together? If all the priests are giving each other handies, is there no (dong related) forgiveness for anyone?!
There are no losers in catholicism, only wieners.
Actually that is 100% faith since faith requires the absence of evidence. No stronger faith that when you fully believe in some bullshit some assholes vomited up.
The game of telephone has been played long before telephones were invented.
Then there’s also in a sibling desert religion how “40 figs” became “40 virgins” and nobody remembers when or how it happened… or even that the switch happened, at all.
What was it again, the new testament was written in the 3rd century after christ, while the old testament has lore from the Gilgamesh/Atrahasis epos?
Well technically that’s not quite right, there was no definitive (christian) compiled source material before King James bible and the translators translated directly from latin using the oldest texts they had available. Collecting all of the manuscripts and scrolls they studied before compilation was an incredible effort that I actually commend them for.
But yes, Faith at its core is a belief without evidence. By mere definition it is ignorance in the modern world. It’s what turned me away from the church from a young age despite my catholic upbringing.
Perhaps you meant “as well as” instead of “despite”, though.
No, it’s correct as it stand. I think you’re having trouble reading it?
I turned away from beliefs without evidence IN SPITE OF the fact that I had a catholic upbringing.
Despite. That’s how that is used.
Yes “as it stand” is really driving the point home here. My bad, son.
Nah, it’s really not driving anything home, stop reaching and admit you made a mistake, it’s not the end of the world.
Bring back the Septuagint! It has a cool name.
Based on this description, KJV should be pretty accurate then. You wouldn’t have needed the original texts by the apostles.
You’re saying vast amounts of people copied the apostles’ texts at the time. Any mistakes made would have been like typos if the majority of people copying it were doing so honestly.
After that, King James of England ordered that the Bible be translated into English by a group of collaborating scholars who had gathered as many versions of the text as possible.
Whether stuff in the Bible is true is a whole other question. I’m not a Christian myself but it seems to me like they would have ended up with quite an accurate text for English speakers.
Faith is insanity.
Nah just gullibility. Plenty of seemingly intelligent people also believe it
I think the KJV-only movement is largely an American insanity. Elsewhere I see the NIV or NASB being used more. And they’re translated from earliest Greek texts wherever they’re found. Earliest complete texts are about 325ad with fragments earlier
The “10s of thousands of variations” line is disingenuous. Manuscripts overwhelmingly only differ on grammatical and typos type differences. A bit like if everyone was asked to tell the story of Goldilocks. You’d get 1000 variations, but the essentials of the story would be apparent clear as day.
Maybe, but the essentials are still pretty nuts. The NIV doesn’t change things like Jesus saying anyone who doesn’t believe in him is condemned or Paul saying he doesn’t permit a woman to teach or, you know, the entirety of the Old Testament.
Yes. But the graphic is painting the idea that the text can’t have been transmitted accurately. Whereas it’s most likely we have good portions of what Paul actually taught, less so the historical Jesus but some parts more likely than others. The OT is different given it’s largely legendary. But, even so, it’s transmission from the post exile communities that first authored it is surprisingly accurate. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in the late 1940s pushed back the earliest OT texts we have a full thousand years from ~900ad to ~100bc. The level to which they were accurate copies was astonishing showing that textual transmission in the ancient world was more reliable than previously thought.
This isn’t a religious point of view, but rather one of secular scholarship.
But it’s really well written!
Except that it really isn’t.
