Earliest Surviving Christian Bible

[houseisland]

BBC: Historic Bible pages put online

See it at: http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx


BBC: ... oldest known Bible ... is markedly different from its modern equivalent. What's left out?

"Mr Ehrman was a born again Bible-believing Evangelical until he read the original Greek texts and noticed some discrepancies. The Bible we now use can't be the inerrant word of God, he says, since what we have are the sometimes mistaken words copied by fallible scribes. .... Fundamentalists, who believe every word in the Bible is true, may find these differences unsettling."

An aside: not that it really matters and not that it is at all relvant here, being only tangential to the unsettling aspect of things, but King James I, the one who had the King James Bible created, the one we all know so well, may have been quite flamingly gay or bi.

Back on track: Brush up on your Hellenistic Greek, there. And your Codocology and Paleography, too.

To will implies delay, therefore now do;
Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge too
The mind's endeavours reach, and mysteries
Are like the sun, dazzling, yet plain to all eyes.

___________________________________________



It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[NooNoo]

These were still later than the Council of Nicea and Constantine's efforts to rationalise the various writings. Constantine had 300 other text burnt. We owe this bible to the editorial eye of one man. It's never been the "word" of God. It has always been a collection of stories from which Man can learn of God.

[Stalemate]

Based on the impact this collection of books has had on my life, I would respectfully, yet whole-heartedly, disagree that the Bible is not the Word of God.

But you guys already expected that.

We could spend months picking apart translation and copying errors, but in the end doctrine will not be changed since it can be cross-referrenced to other books. Typos can be caught simply by comparing it to other copies. Translation choices of terms is always a matter of interpretation of context and will vary - not only from language to language, but within the same language as well at times. If I translate the word "feline" to "cat", "tiger", or "" it becomes a more detailed term, yet never loses its meaning if the context supports it.

The epistemological argument has been characterized by some as an example of overbelief. A single error in the Bible should not lead one to conclude that it contains no truth. If one finds one's spouse wrong on some matter, one would be wrong to conclude that one's spouse can never be trusted on any matter. (http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/inerranc.htm)

That previous quote's link also has a definition of inerrancy: "Inerrancy is the view that when all the facts become known, they will demonstrate that the Bible in its original autographs and correctly interpreted is entirely true and never false in all it affirms, whether that relates to doctrine or ethics or to the social, physical, or life sciences."


From another source:

Q: What does it mean that the Bible is "infallible"?
A: It does not mean without any errors whatsoever, but without significant error in doctrine or practice. A person can still be a genuine Christian as C.S. Lewis was, if they believe the Bible is infallible, but falsely think the Bible is not inerrant.


Q: When people say the Bible is "inerrant" what does that mean?
A: When conservative Christians say the Bible is inerrant, they mean without error in the original manuscripts. In subsequent, copies, God permitted copyist errors. All who say the Bible is inerrant say the Bible is infallible. Not all who say the Bible is infallible say it is inerrant.

Q: If "inerrancy" does not have a problem saying small copyist errors have crept in, and the original manuscripts no longer exist, would it not be just as simple to say the errors were in the originals?
A: Conservative Christians do not believe that because of our view that the Bible is God’s word, and God did not make any mistakes when His word was originally written.

[CeeBee]

A new monk arrived at the monastery. He was assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. He noticed, however, that they were copying copies, not the original books. The new monk went to the head monk to ask him about this. He pointed out that if there were an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies.

The head monk said, 'We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.' The head monk went down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original.

Hours later, nobody had seen him, so one of the monks went downstairs to look for him. He heard a sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and found the old monk leaning over one of the original books, crying.

He asked what was wrong.

'The word is 'celebrate,' not 'celibate'!' sobbed the head monk.

From here (many popups too)

[houseisland]

Originally Posted by CeeBee

From here (many popups too)

"Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo."

Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, Bishop of Hippo Regius.



(Hint.... Google is your friend.)



___________________________________________



It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[houseisland]

Originally Posted by NooNoo

These were still later than the Council of Nicea and Constantine's efforts to rationalise the various writings. Constantine had 300 other text burnt. We owe this bible to the editorial eye of one man. It's never been the "word" of God. It has always been a collection of stories from which Man can learn of God.

Hi.

Agreed. Too which I might add the following rambling....

Let us start with a proposition that language is fundamentally indeterminate. There is, for example, nothing that irrevocably ties the phonological utterance, /rQk/, to anything in particular. It his only by historical consensus that the utterance might be interpreted as: a large rugged mass of stone forming a cliff, crag, or other natural feature; a large stone, a boulder; a stone of any size; a curling-stone; a source of danger or destruction; a thing providing a sure foundation or support; a source of shelter or protection; a coin; a precious stone, especially a diamond; an ice-cube; a testicles; a small piece of crack or of crystallized cocaine; a distaff; the quantity of wool or flax placed on a distaff for spinning; swaying to and fro; musical rhythm characterized by a strong beat; a mythical bird of Eastern legend, imagined as being of enormous size and strength. Language is only ever what a consensus of native speakers consent to its being at any given time. When we add complexity of dialects, idiolects, and speech communities to a language the level of indeterminacy rises.

Let us add a further proposition that all aspects of language are inherently unstable. Only change is constant. Look at the speech habits of people in movies from the earliest talkies on. Language changes in profound ways in the course of generation. Literacy and printed texts add stability to formal language, but they only slow process of change. Orthography changes. Pronunciation changes. The semantic fields and affective domains of words change. Grass was once gærs. Mirror is becoming mere. Man didn’t always mean man; Ælfred’s Anglo Saxon Bible speaks of Adam and Eve as the two men. An apron was once a napron. Nice once had foolish as its primary meaning. Sentence once meant thought or meaning. The English of Caedmon was not the English of Chaucer. The English of Chaucer was not the English of Shakespeare. The English of Shakespeare, if not printed in a normalized text, is almost completely incomprehensible to most native speakers of modern English. Spelling before the 18th century was phonetic only in relation to the dialect/idiolect of a scribe or type setter. There were no standard conventions. The English of the 18th century, while more easily read than Shakespeare, is not more easily understood. Even 19th century literature is passing out of our range of easy comprehension.

Let us add a third proposition that transmission of text (in its larger sense) is fraught with hazard for error. Try the grape vine game: twenty people stand in a line; the first one whispers into the second one’s ear, “Vista is a great OS!”; the second one whispers into the third one's ear and so on; the twentieth one reports that “Vista is complete BS!” It is almost impossible to copy a lengthy passage of text without error. The problem is that we process language at the level of meaning, not at the level of words and phrases. Our tolerance for not understanding is quite high, and we gloss over and guess at things we do not understand, often without realizing we are doing it. We unintentionally paraphrase. There is great skill and mental discipline involved in being an accurate copyist. In my experience no two scribal copies of any text (of some length) are ever identical. Even before the advent of machine book presses, every copy of a hand press book was unique in its combination of errors – often using a scribal fair copy which might contain errors in its self, the type setter would set a form (which might contain multiple pages), and printing would start; proof reading would be done as the pages were coming off the press, and correction would be made on the fly in an ongoing manner; the erroneous pages would not be discarded (paper was too expensive); there might be three or four variant printings off the same form by the time/if all the typos were caught; and then the process would start all over again with the next form; finally when all the printed sheets were folded into signatures and all the signatures gathered and bound into a complete book, the book would contain a unique and somewhat random collection of errors.

Try your hand at reading some English, a sampling dating back a 1000 years or so:

Caedmon MS - 11th Century? - Containing Oldest Known English Hymn
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msjunius11/1.jpg
http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collectio...ipt=msjunius11

Bede - 11th Century MS
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/corpus/ms279b/1r.jpg
http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collectio...uscript=ms279b

Langland - 14 Century MS
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/corpus/ms201/f1r.jpg
http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collectio...nuscript=ms201

Gawain Poet- 14th Century MS
http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/twomey/sggk/sggkfol1.JPG
http://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/twomey...anuscript.html

Chaucer - 15th Century MS
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/corpus/ms198/2r.jpg
http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collectio...nuscript=ms198

Another Chaucer MS:
http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhib...tion/14_02.jpg

Digby Plays MS - 16th Century Copy of Late Mediaeval Text
http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleia...gby133/22r.jpg [Link fixed]
http://image.ox.ac.uk/show?collectio...ipt=msdigby133

Now let’s add the complexity of dealing with non-standardized, hand written Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek primary texts, all scribal copies distantly removed from biblical times. Let’s add the complexity of the scattered, ungoverned, independent, and somewhat cryptic (in the sense of secretive and hidden) early Christian churches (in the sense of communities of worshippers), each maintaining its own set of texts, each drifting in its own direction. We have the Gnostic gospels. We have the gospel of Judas. We have the Codex Sinaiticus. (Why did God allow them to survive?) Even by the time of Jerome (the compiler of the first Latin Vulgate bible) and after the First Council of Nicea, there were still schismatics like the Donatists. We have the two oldest churches, the Armenian and the Coptic Churches. We have the Greek Orthodox Church. We have the Roman Catholic Church. We have the Anglicans, Calvinists and Lutherans. We have… We have…. We have… --- Well we have Emo Philips: ”I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you christian or buddhist?" He said, "Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?" He said, "Baptist!" I said,"Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god or baptist church of the lord?" He said, "Baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too! Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed baptist church of god?" He said,"Reformed Baptist church of god!" I said, "Me too! Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.” --- Where is the Qumran Bible, the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, or the Marcionite Bible? Do we assume Koine or Aramaic primacy for our New Testament? Do we go with the Septuagint or Masoretic traditions for our Old Testament? Jerome chose the Masoretic for the Vulgate, which superseded the Vetus Latina which had used the Septuagint. If we go with the Vulgate, do we choose Jerome’s or Bede’s Vulgate or the 1960’s revision. Should we learn Latin? [Edit: Should we learn Koine Greek (very difficult)? Should we learn Aramaic and Hebrew (even more difficult in that they are not Indo-European languages)?] Or should we rely on English translation? Whose? Caxton’s? Or do we choose a Protestant Bible? King James? Is the faith of the Egyptian Copt with his Septuagint/Koine tradition Bible any less than that of the Evangelical Christian Fundamentalist with his King James Bible? I don’t know. I am confused.

Literally? http://www.pibburns.com/augustin.htm
___________________________________________



It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[houseisland]

Not enough room allowed to fit in revisions to paragraph 1 above.



"Let us start with a proposition that language is fundamentally indeterminate. There is, for example, nothing that irrevocably ties the phonological utterance, /rQk/, to anything in particular. It his only by historical consensus that the utterance might be interpreted as: a large rugged mass of stone forming a cliff, crag, or other natural feature; a large stone, a boulder; a stone of any size; a curling-stone; a source of danger or destruction; a thing providing a sure foundation or support; a source of shelter or protection; a coin; a precious stone, especially a diamond; an ice-cube; a testicles; a small piece of crack or of crystallized cocaine; a distaff; the quantity of wool or flax placed on a distaff for spinning; swaying to and fro; musical rhythm characterized by a strong beat; a mythical bird of Eastern legend, imagined as being of enormous size and strength; [Edit: Move (esp. a person or cradle) gently to and fro; bring to or into a state of sleep or rest by this means; Cause to sway to and fro or from side to side; Sway to and fro under some impact or stress; shake, vibrate; stagger, reel; Swing oneself to and fro, esp. while sitting in a rocking-chair; Of popular music: possess a strong beat, esp. in 2/4 or 4/4 time; exhibit the characteristics of rock music; Dance vigorously to or perform such music; Distress, perturb; surprise, dumbfound; Surround or wall with or as with rocks; Throw stones at; Remove the fur from the inside of (a kettle); Make hard like a rock; Form crystals; Purify (alum) by recrystallizing it after previously dissolving it]. [Edit: Then there is the problem of discrete phonemes versus allophonic variations of a phoneme - the speaker/phonetic writer and the listener/reader may not recognize the same meaningful pronunciation/othogrpahic distinctions between phonologically similar words of different meanings. There is considerable ambiquity between dialects. /rQk/, /rUk/, /rVk/, /rak/, all single syllable phonemes, differ only in their vowels, and there can be inter-dialect confusion within this vowel group. So we can extend the problem of /rQk/ somewhat -- /rUk/: A black raucous-voiced Eurasian bird of the crow family, Corvus frugilegus, which nests in colonies; A greedy or grasping person; A cheat, a swindler, esp. at gambling; A foolish person, a gull; A crowbar; Each of the four pieces set in the corner squares at the beginning of a game, moving in a straight line forwards, backwards, or laterally over any number of unoccupied squares; a castle; Smoke; steam; mist, fog; drizzle; Smoke; steam; be foggy or misty; drizzle; Cheat, swindle; esp. win or extract money from (a person) by fraud; charge (a person) extortionately; Win or take by fraud -- /rVk/: A gathered heap or stack of fuel or other combustible material; A measure of capacity spec. of coal; A haystack, a corn-stack; A large number or quantity; a multitude, a crowd; A rough heap or pile of anything, a bundle, a cluster; A group of three players who follow the play without fixed positions; A loose scrum in which the ball is on the ground; Nonsense, rubbish; A ridge, a wrinkle; esp. a crease or fold in fabric, a carpet, etc; (Cause to) form a ruck or rucks; (cause to) crease or wrinkle; A quarrel; a row; a fight, esp. one involving a number of people; Squat, crouch, cower; Give information about a crime or criminal; inform on. Also, reject or disown a person. -- /rak/: wreck, wreckage, refuse; A hard blow or push; a rush, a collision, a crash; a noise as of this; (A mass of) high thick fast-moving cloud; driving mist or fog; A rush of wind; a gale, a storm; A (narrow) path or track; esp. a track or breach made by an animal, as a deer.] Language is only ever what a consensus of native speakers consent to its being at any given time. When we add complexity of dialects, idiolects, and speech communities to a language the level of indeterminacy rises."

It has also occurred to me that I haven't mentioned the difficulties and complexities of translation, nor the problems of interpretive, allegorical, metaphorical readings of a translation without reference to primary source texts. But... oh well....



Have a nice day.

___________________________________________



It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[houseisland]

I don't know why but it seems appropriate to add this:

John Donne is one of my heroes.


Wikipedia: John Donne

One of my fav's seems particularly appropriate here: Satire III (Nicely annotated. Don't think of satire exactly in its modern sense, OK?)

Highly recommended:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/23772


Random House


___________________________________________



It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[El_Squid]

I find it fascinating that he begins life a Catholic, reconsiders his faith in the face of life's cruelty and injustice, then ends his life in the Church of England, a dissident branch of the Catholic Church specifically created to justify and legalize the divorces of good old King Hank the Octal.

Considering the punishments involved in openly practicing Catholicism, I would probably change sides as well and join the government sanctioned religion. Part of me hopes I have the courage to stand and be counted, regardless of the consequences, but as Donne, I am but a fallible human with all the frailties thereof. He did, after all, make great contributions to the world.

[houseisland]

Originally Posted by El_Squid

I find it fascinating that he begins life a Catholic, reconsiders his faith in the face of life's cruelty and injustice, then ends his life in the Church of England, a dissident branch of the Catholic Church specifically created to justify and legalize the divorces of good old King Hank the Octal.

It was quite normal. The aristocracy and gentry were largely Catholic, either overtly or covertly. There was a balancing act for individuals of faith. What did you do if you were both a Catholic and a loyal Englishman? Gregory wanted you to kill Elizabeth and to be ruled by Spain. What did Donne do? I do not believe Donne's Christian faith wavered, but we know he read with great interest Machiavelli's criticisms, not of the Catholic faith or Christianity per se, but of the self-interested mundane political corporation of the Catholic Church, a business too much involved in the affairs of Cesar and Princes, as it were. Can you remain a member of the Catholic faith and reject its worldly and corrupt representation on earth? If yes, I would argue that Donne remained a Catholic. I would also argue that Luther remained a Catholic in this sense too, but then what do I know?

The nub of the problem is that when an organized religion turns its attention from matters of God and spirituality to money, land, power, politics and casting stones at others, people start getting killed. The word "massacre" in its common usage does not seem to have entered the English language until the 16th century. It is from the French word for a butchery. It's entrance to the English language was probably from the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of the French Huguenots. Normal soldiers refused to kill the women and children. The work was delegated to butchers.


Wikipedia: St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

How can you tolerate a Church which is delighted with an event such as the above, a Church whose agents were its instigators? If you believe in God, how can you view the above as God's work? How as the ruler of an independent nation can you tolerate members of a Church whose leader has declared a holy war on you and whose members are plotting/attempting your assassination? All in all, the English were very lenient with Catholics, especially under the circumstances. There were periods of great fear and paranoia which resulted in clamp downs and stepped up persecutions. St Bartholomew's Day was not especially reassuring.

Hmmm .... sounds familiar, doesn't? All 11s and 9s?

Originally Posted by El_Squid

Considering the punishments involved in openly practicing Catholicism, I would probably change sides as well and join the government sanctioned religion. Part of me hopes I have the courage to stand and be counted, regardless of the consequences, but as Donne, I am but a fallible human with all the frailties thereof. He did, after all, make great contributions to the world.

Punishments? Yes and no. Yes, they could be severe and cruel. No, they could be almost nothing at all. If you were well off and Catholic, you were at risk of persecution by those who coveted your money and land. If you were Catholic and you were involved in politics, which was always factional and ruthless, you were at risk of persecution. If you were quiet in your faith, often a blind eye was turned -- there was an expressed policy that the state did not want windows into men's souls. There are long lists of Catholic recusants who seem to have suffered very little. I would much rather have been a Catholic in England than a protestant in France. The CIA, KGB, Stasi, and Khmer Rouge in their worst moments never really held a candle to Gregory and his unholy minions.

Evil times. Evil times.

"and if you say that only evil exists
then history will whisper back:
all great things are evil"

田村隆



___________________________________________




It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[El_Squid]

Ah, yes. All-in-all a very brutal time period. Always so when it involves fanatics of any stripe. Nothing fuels the fires of evil as does the certainty of being "in the right". I include political, economic and any belief system, actually, as the old saw declares, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions".

Speaking of which, the Boondock Saints: All Saints Day is nearing its theatrical release. I await this movie with equal parts joyful expectation and chilling dread, as the first one was such a fun, ridiculously over-the-top violent comedy that a sequel just begs to be disappointing.

[houseisland]

Wikipedia: City of God

"Despite Christianity's designation as the official religion of the [Roman] empire, Augustine [of Hippo] declared its message to be spiritual rather than political. Christianity, he argued, should be concerned with the mystical, heavenly city the New Jerusalem — rather than with Earthly politics."


English Text: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.html

____________________________________________



It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!