Hi Nine Two: Yes, this is exactly why I would have chosen well-educated people who had access to the best means of recording important information. There are a number of possible reasons for why He didn’t, but the question is what I would have done.
So you would have chosen scribes and done all your preaching in a scriptorium? I don’t think the message would spread very far. At any rate that is a misunderstanding of his teaching.
Not actually. I don’t believe the Iliad is a true story. What I do pay attention to is what scholars have to say about origins and authorship. They do painstaking work, the outcome of which looks rather convincing to me.
The Iliad has never been accepted by anyone to be a history, even among the ancient Greeks it was simply a legend. I’m talking about works whose history is not under scruteny. Tacitus, Caesar, Cicero, Socrates, etc.
I think they are only being honest with themselves. There is nothing to fear in knowing. What I want to believe and what I am compelled to believe through the guidance of reason and facts are not always the same thing.
My point is there is a double standard. If someone wants to question the authorship of a gospel because we only have it ascribed to them 100 years after it was written, that’s fine, but they need to do it for everything.
I think it plays a huge role, and the logic in that thinking to me is easy. Learn another language fluently and then watch a movie in that language with English subtitles and you will see some interesting things. Every translator will invariably say some of the things differently. In some ways it will be subtle and in some it will be profound. Imagine if it went from language to language by one translator and another. The movie would be a mess. Now for the Gospels. Add to all this the fact that there were no written texts of the Gospels for 70 to 90 years and then the fact that what we have are result of hand written copies of hand written copies of hand written copies many times over, passed around from person to person, each with his own view and we have another problem still. This Christmas, play the old game at your dinner table where you whisper something into someone’s ear and so on around the table until what you said comes back to you after having been whispered by several people and you will have made my point. Authorship, translations. passing on mouth to mouth, hand copied copies - they’re all a very big deal.
I honestly wish that were not the case, but here we are.
I know enough Greek to know these issues with translation. Translation doesn’t play into it because new, modern copies, are all based off the oldest Greek copies, and the old Greek copies (the Alexandrian manuscripts) don’t have any real theological difference between them. The odd one has a story borrowed from another source (Mark), but the texts are largely all the same. But your texts, do you have anything approaching the original manuscripts? Can you honestly claim you have texts nearly as close to the event as Codex Sinaiticus? If not then it is a case of holding us to double standards.
A small amount of research into Hinduism will give you about the same as a small amount of research into Christianity. That is why I am spending a lot of time with you guys. Our paths to God are very diverse, yes, but we believe they all lead the same place. However, I have never seen any Hindu argue with any other Hindu over what any Hindu scripture means. It is very plain and direct. Some may use the path of tantra and others might use the paths of yoga. They are polar opposites but every Hindu knows they lead to the same place. This is in the same way that you and I could start out in airplanes in New York. One will circle the globe going east and the other will do the same going west. Opposite directions. Same destination.
My point was that your scriptures are not consistant in a way that is very easily found. Whether you’re all happy-go-lucky-love-one-another or hate-anyone-who-disagrees or somewhere inbetween doesn’t matter. A small amount of research into Christianity shows the same thing as a small amount of research into Hinduism, there is a lack of agreement on a number of things. For example I was reading on the incarnations of Vishnu, and there doesn’t seem to be any agreement on the identity of the last several - most likely owing to the Hindu need to absorb all other religious traditions into itself. If you can give me a definitive list on the avatars of Vishnu that I can take to any hindu and get complete agreement from, because that certainly is something central, then maybe I’ll agree that you all are the same, as it is I’ve heard three different accounts.
I guess I messed up the question. I was wondering if Jesus said who the heretics among Christianity would be. Was it the Gnostics, would it be Martin Luther, or Irenaeus? Would it have been the people who were later burned at the stake or the institution that burned them? This is what I would like to know.
If Jesus had said “And those of you living 1500 years after me, watch ye for those who call themselves ‘Lutherans’” then I am quite sure no one would have ever called themself a Lutheran, thus voiding any good that would have done.
That said I don’t consider Lutherans aren’t really a major heresy, they are a movement that got some things wrong. Heresies like Palagianism can be shown to be false with a single verse (John 6:44). Arianism is contradicted by the first several verses of John.
I wasn’t trying to avoid anything. What would you like met to clarify?
You seemed to be tiptoeing around an answer.
It leaves the door open for dialogue.