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Servant wrote:I would suggest that Mormons consider this video, and the statements being made here. These scholars don't use ad homs and nasties to get their point across (which is so often found in Mormonism) - but actual intellectual examination and explanation:

maklelan wrote:

Servant wrote:I would suggest that Mormons consider this video, and the statements being made here. These scholars don't use ad homs and nasties to get their point across (which is so often found in Mormonism) - but actual intellectual examination and explanation:

And as you can see in the threads I've been participating in here, when people put down the sledgehammer of sectarianism, I am perfectly reasonable. Fundamentalists can't engage such discourse, though. You only respect intellectual examination and explanation when it serves your dogmatism. When it challenges it, you hate it.

When you take all the manuscripts that we have, there are no variations of any significance.

maklelan wrote:Well, having watched your video, I have a few concerns.

First, the discussion of Old Testament textual criticism is phenomenally misleading, as it addresses only Masoretic principles of textual preservation, which date to up to a millennium after the actual composition of the texts they are preserving. By the time the Masoretes got the texts, they had already been circulating and getting edited and redacted for literally centuries. Rabbi Richman's claim that there are no discrepancies between the most ancient manuscripts and the ones we use today is a laughable falsehood. I was responsible for putting together the critical apparatus of several chapters of Isaiah for the new BHQ edition, and I found textual variants in literally every single verse of every chapter for which I was responsible. The Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the Vulgate and Samaritan Pentateuch show numerous, numerous variations in the manuscripts. While many of them do not affect the sense of the passage, many of them do, and quite significantly, too. This video presents either a grotesquely ignorant or a deliberately misleading picture of the nature of textual criticism and the state of the Old Testament manuscripts.

The claim that there has been no "systematic change or major omission" is also misleading. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint show that, for instance, the Book of Jeremiah was a full 1/8 shorter in the versions circulating aroudn the turn of the era. The version you read in the MT has been significantly, and systematically, expanded. 1 Samuel is also vastly different in the Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls. We might also point out that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Samaritan Pentateuch show the Samaritans were actually right that the original version of the exodus tradition has the Israelites establishing the altar on Mount Gerizim and not Mount Ebal. Then there's the systematic use of the word "angel" to alter the meaning of passages where God himself was said to have visited and interacted with humanity. The Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls show that as well.

Then we have the very conservative Simon Gathercole appealing directly to faith by implying that Jesus' appeal to Isaiah must mean it was accurate. How silly. That has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with textual criticism. He mentions that Jesus reads out a scroll from Isaiah, but he neglects to mention that that scroll does not match the version of Isaiah preserved in the MT. Does your Bible change that text in the Old Testament to match the version read by Jesus Christ himself? I'm willing to bet it does not. Don't you trust Jesus?

Next, on the New Testament, Dr. Williams is not being totally forthcoming by saying the Bible of the Christians inside and outside the Roman Empire agreed. They simply did not. Early New Testament manuscripts these days are actually grouped according to broad typological similarities. We have the Western family that has a specific collection of variations, the Byzantine family that has another profile, and the Alexandrian, which has a third profile. There are some other minor ones, too, but these are the major ones. It should also be added that their canons were quite a bit different from each other for centuries after the life of Christ. The picture this video and its editing is painting is incredibly misleading and dishonest (or naïve).

Williams later states that there's no problem establishing the original text because "if one scribe makes an error and fifty scribes don't make that error, we know what to do." The problem is that you have no empirical way of unilaterally determining what is and isn't an error. There are numerous errors that were proliferated by fifty scribes and avoided by only one. What happens if we just assume the one is the error? Well, we end up with vastly different manuscripts with more errors in them than agreement, which is exactly the situation. This video's editors and the conservative scholars they are quoting are promoting fundamentalist misrepresentations of the state of New Testament textual criticism.

I will end with this statement from Dr. Williams:

When you take all the manuscripts that we have, there are no variations of any significance.

This is flatly and demonstrably false. There are numerous, numerous variations of great significance. I've discussed them for years and Catherine has ignored them for years.

Servant wrote:But Christians have engaged you often, and have proven you to be wrong.

Servant wrote:You just put them down, as you just did here. I like the style of the scholars in the video linked to - they aren't interested in asserting their own authority, but that of the Bible.

Servant wrote:By the way, you have a really unclear, skewed and biased view of what and who fundamentalists are. Maybe a trip to Colorado City will give you more insight into fundamentalism on the other side of the coin.

Servant wrote:I believe these scholars made an excellent argument for their view.

Servant wrote:I think your form of "textual criticism" has always had one goal, maklelan, and that is to DISCREDIT the Bible - the very book the Mormons claim to believe (as far as correctly translated). It is not a "fundamentalist misrepresentation" of the New Testament to claim that the Bible (along with the Book of Mormon) teach that Christ was raised from the dead. Even Mormons attest to his resurrection. This is the central point in human history - and you have avoided confronting that issue so often. Do you believe that Christ rose from the dead?

Servant wrote:Furthermore, not one textual variant has ever changed one core Christian doctrine - even though you have claimed in the past that "Adoptionism" (a heresy that generally teaches that Jesus was "adopted" by God at his baptism) was the earliest Christian belief - but it is not taught in the New Testament at all, and there are numerous texts fully teaching Christ's deity.

maklelan wrote:

Servant wrote:I believe these scholars made an excellent argument for their view.

That's because you don't understand the scholarship and they agree with your dogmatism.

Servant wrote:I think your form of "textual criticism" has always had one goal, maklelan, and that is to DISCREDIT the Bible - the very book the Mormons claim to believe (as far as correctly translated). It is not a "fundamentalist misrepresentation" of the New Testament to claim that the Bible (along with the Book of Mormon) teach that Christ was raised from the dead. Even Mormons attest to his resurrection. This is the central point in human history - and you have avoided confronting that issue so often. Do you believe that Christ rose from the dead?

Again you have to retreat from actually engaging my argument to these silly attempts at rhetorical distractions.

Servant wrote:Furthermore, not one textual variant has ever changed one core Christian doctrine - even though you have claimed in the past that "Adoptionism" (a heresy that generally teaches that Jesus was "adopted" by God at his baptism) was the earliest Christian belief - but it is not taught in the New Testament at all, and there are numerous texts fully teaching Christ's deity.

There is not one text in all the Bible that suggests Christ is God, and adoptionism is certainly taught in the New Testament as well as in the earliest Christian literature. I have also pointed to numerous textual variants that undermine core Christian doctrines, including the simple fact that inerrancy is flatly precluded by the thousands and thousands of variants. Even variants like those of Acts 15:16-17 show the mistakes and errors are original to the autographa. So either inerrancy isn't a core doctrine, or you're just wrong. Obviously it's the latter. You're just asserting falsehoods, Catherine, because you cannot even begin to engage my case.

maklelan wrote:

Servant wrote:But Christians have engaged you often, and have proven you to be wrong.

No they haven't, and no they haven't. You can't point to any instances of this, Catherine.

Servant wrote:You just put them down, as you just did here. I like the style of the scholars in the video linked to - they aren't interested in asserting their own authority, but that of the Bible.

That's the problem, though. They appeal to a faith-based notion of the Bible's authority and misrepresent the actual scholarship.

Servant wrote:By the way, you have a really unclear, skewed and biased view of what and who fundamentalists are. Maybe a trip to Colorado City will give you more insight into fundamentalism on the other side of the coin.

As I've shown numerous times over, Catherine, I've got the scholarship to back me up regarding fundamentalism, and you do not.