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Wayne
As far as this thread goes, you write, "You don't say anything about the inspiration of the Holy Spirit." However, in my initial piece I wrote, "These assessments involving communication theory do not challenge the inspiration, motivation, or intention that prompted encoding the original scriptures."

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Wayne 2/27/09
Eloquently expressed, Steve! This is precisely how I once thought. It is the current western Christian tradition in a nutshell.
While I don’t currently think this way, I recognize the beauty in it. From my encounters, I think that folks who are thinking along the lines of Karen, no longer attribute “divine authority” per se to any ancient literature. I personally now see all such texts: The Bible, The Koran, The Bhagavad Gita (sp), and so many others as snapshots of human consciousness with varying longitudinal reflection and widely varying historicity. I see all literature as being distinctly of human origin and reflecting a nearly full spectrum of the evolution of human consciousness, from the most base to the most sublime.

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Wayne
I reread my post to try to see where you might have picked up your ideas of what I mean and I can't find it.

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Wayne
I am asserting and explaining that our reference to God using the term, "Word", is solely due to a perpetuated mistranslation.
I am asserting that the term, "logos", when considered in the full context of it's usage from the 6th century BCE onward to the 1st or 2nd century CE, carries far greater significance than the terms, "verbum" and "word" could ever hope to.
I am asserting that John's Gospel suffered a disservice by this mistranslation.

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Steve
I have never thought that the Gospel of John was teaching that the preexistent Logos was the scripture and I don't know any other Christian that would think that way including my own kids when they were Sunday School age. If the Son of God existed before creation then how could the Word be confused with the scripture?

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Steve
You seem to have developed a superior attitude in relation to Christians, as if you think you have found some kind of higher revelation above people that believe in Jesus as their savior, and his death and resurrection as the work that he did to make that salvation available to those that would believe in him.

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Steve
You leave the impression that you think you have evolved or developed beyond that and that you see higher or better truth in the Bible as a myth.

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Wayne
No, Steve, you are not the typical reader. And I do not look down on Christians. I'm not wrestling with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers. There is no need to attack me.

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Wayne
Remember the telephone game?

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Wayne
During the 2nd century C.E., the gospels and other Greek scriptures were translated into Latin to serve the still-expanding Roman Empire. In John’s Gospel the Greek “logos” was translated into the Latin term “verbum”, which simply means “word”. It can hardly be denied that somewhere in the decoding and re-encoding process of translation entropy was at work. Centuries later, no correction was made when the scriptures were translated from Latin into English. At that time “verbum” became “word”, a two step departure from “logos” and the intent of John’s Gospel (Fideler 38). This departure is so huge in fact, that according to E. R. Goodenough, anyone studying the religion and cosmology of the Greeks “must first of all wipe that meaning [“Word”] from his mind and use the untranslated term “logos” as he would use a new term in chemistry” (qtd in Fideler 38). The impact of this entropy is far reaching. Because “word” has a very limited definition in English, the typical reader is easily confused and tends to adopt the belief that the words of scripture are in some way God. This contributes to the belief in scriptural inerrancy and comprises a vicious circle of entropic messaging. It is sadly ironic that “logos” also denotes “intention”, “meaning” and “purpose”. However, the degeneration of the word “logos” is only one of numerous examples of translational entropy.

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Wayne
the typical reader is easily confused and tends to adopt the belief that the words of scripture are in some way God.

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Wayne
Having read most of his work, I find Rhom's 3 quoted points somewhat misleading. In contrast to point #1, Ehrman's view is that the overwhelming bulk of manuscript differences are simple, accidental mistakes, easily corrected by majority texts.

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Steve
Rhom distilled Ehrman's main points quite nicely, and they could have been a word for word echo of what I have heard from you and have been debating with you about.

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Rhom
1)Professor Ehrman takes an extreme position that variations within the text of the NT are not accidental, but that they are intentional based on the social, doctrinal, cultural or personal beliefs of the person who happened to do the copying (so if that person didn't like something in the text, he just left it out or changed it).

2)He believes the text of the Bible has been altered hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and that our current Bible is so far off from the original that it is nearly impossible to reconstruct what the original actually said.

3)He believes there were no uniform Christian beliefs in the first and second centuries, that there were no universally accepted books, and that a good portion of what we believe was made up in the third centuries and beyond.

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Wayne
Ehrman's views and motives are misrepresented, however. He's refreshingly upfront and open about it.

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Rhom:
1)Professor Ehrman takes an extreme position that variations within the text of the NT are not accidental, but that they are intentional based on the social, doctrinal, cultural or personal beliefs of the person who happened to do the copying (so if that person didn't like something in the text, he just left it out or changed it).

2)He believes the text of the Bible has been altered hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and that our current Bible is so far off from the original that it is nearly impossible to reconstruct what the original actually said.

3)He believes there were no uniform Christian beliefs in the first and second centuries, that there were no universally accepted books, and that a good portion of what we believe was made up in the third centuries and beyond.

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Wayne
Still haven't read Ehrman though, right?

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Wayne
Never-the-less, I'm not Ehrman. I picked him out for your benefit. He has had a long-term quandary with the issue of suffering, whereas my path has been blessed with faith and high-ground for dealing with that issue differently. Everyone is somehow unique where the rubber meets the road it seems.

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Wayne
Ehrman's views and motives are misrepresented, however. He's refreshingly upfront and open about it.

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Rhomphaia

I had a professor exactly like Bart Ehrman when I was in college (Professor Ehrman is the Chair of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina). Like Ehrman, my professor was the chair of the department, and had beliefs that were almost identical to his. His "evidence" brought me, as a 19 year old College Freshman to the closest point I have ever been to leaving the faith. It nearly destroyed my faith, and it did destroy the faith of many students around me.

My life was saved by Josh McDowell and his "Evidence that demands a verdict" series (particularly the second half, that addressed the Documentary Hypothesis, Radical Criticism, etc.).

Professor Ehrman takes an extreme position that variations within the text of the NT are not accidental, but that they are intentional based on the social, doctrinal, cultural or personal beliefs of the person who happened to do the copying (so if that person didn't like something in the text, he just left it out or changed it). He believes the text of the Bible has been altered hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and that our current Bible is so far off from the original that it is nearly impossible to reconstruct what the original actually said.

He believes there were no uniform Christian beliefs in the first and second centuries, that there were no universally accepted books, and that a good portion of what we believe was made up in the third centuries and beyond. This man is NOT to be lightly disregarded as he has debated and largely held his own against the most pre-eminent minds and scholars in Christianity. He started as a sold out evangelical who believed in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible (he believed it was letter for letter inerrant, or it could not be from God). As he studied the actual manuscripts, his discovery of variations within the documents shattered his faith, and rather than focus on how the variations had so LITTLE effect on doctrine, he instead decided that the existence of variations proved that God was not involved in the creation or maintainance of scripture, and focused on any case where it made the exact meaning of the verse uncertain. He no longer believes there is a god at all (and remember, he is the chair of the religious studies department at his university).

His own journey is a good example of how we need to make sure our faith actually reflects reality, rather than staunchly holding to a position that runs counter to reality, and then allowing it to be shattered (rather than modified or adjusted) by evidence. I looked at the same evidence that he looked at, and I was willing to alter my belief that the CONTENT and DOCTRINES of the Bible are completely inerrant without the Bible being inerrant letter for letter. Why? Frankly because it didn't NEED to be letter for letter inerrant for the message to remain unaltered and completely intact. The variations didn't change the message at all.

So I concluded that when Jesus said that not the tiniest Jot or Tittle of the law would pass away, he was actually referencing the tiniest doctrine or teaching, NOT the literal letters themselves (which actually makes a whole lot more sense to me, considering how often Jesus refused to be legalistic and went past the surface language to get at the meaning under the laws). The evidence supports that as not one single "variation" in any manuscript will have any noticable difference on the content of our faith.

The truth is that the Bible is startlingly reliable, DESPITE literally hundreds of thousands of variations over more than 25,000 texts, for the simple reason that the vast majority of those variations simply make no difference in the meaning (such as the variations I pointed out in the verse above in Philippians, which actually qualifies as about 25 variations, not just two).

There really ARE verses for which we are very uncertain what the original text said, and SOME of them really would alter the meaning of the verse, but if every single one of them were included in scripture in the most extreme form, it still would not alter our doctrine nor change any of the central beliefs of Christianity. For example, if the last 16 verses of Mark really WERE discarded (as Ehrman says it should be), it would not change our view of the resurrection for several reasons:

1) the resurrection is PREDICTED in Mark numerous times in undisputed passages (which raises the question of why the "predictions" would be in there but the fulfillment of those predictions would not be - something people like Ehrman cannot effectively answer)
2) the resurrection is detailed in three other gospels where the content is undisputed.
3) the resurrection is a major topic in the majority of the rest of the NT, and is presented as a fact that can be attested by EYE WITNESSES.

Anyway, the point is that there are going to be MORE AND MORE of these kinds of people as we get closer and closer to the end. Satan will use ANY kind of leverage we are willing to give him if it means damaging our faith or that of any person around us. Ehrman is not the last, nor the best tool that Satan will use against our faith. He will continue to attack from all sides and use whatever method happens to work at the moment.

Frankly, Ehrman's ideas have had less of an impact on Christianity than such books as "The DaVinci Code," which is based on ZERO actual facts (in fact, there is so little evidence for the claims in the DaVinci Code that about the ONLY thing said in that book that can be supported with proof is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene actually existed), yet polls revealed it actually ALTERED the religious beliefs of about 20% of the people who read the book or saw the movie. That is many tens of thousands more people than Ehrman has ever effected.

The bottom line is that we are at war, and we need to make sure we never forget it.

Grace and peace to you,

Rhomphaia