S
Sufi
Guest
I guess this is why the Jews have a problem with Christians talking their book and adding on and subtracting off.
- Status
J
jimmy
Guest
Of course your sure, because that gives you reason to reject it. If he did tamper with it, I would gaurantee that they could tell you if he tampered with it with the science they have. Even if he did tamper with it it still wouldn’t change anything. It is not like that is the only copy of the bible in existence. There were probably a couple hundred million bibles in print at the time. So if that one was tampered, there were still a couple hundred million more to work with.
J
jimmy
Guest
What is your point? I don’t see how this has anything to do with what I said.
T
THEKING
Guest
i see the contrary
Stalin was no religious person. He has no reason to tamper with anything. It’s not that he was in possession of the sole evidence anyway. Why don’t you get the 3 set volume of the Dead Sea Scrolls to appease your conscious about this topic?
M
mercygate
Guest
Sufi, you are an intelligent guy. You have the intellectual ability and at least a fundamental grounding in scholarly method. You must know that the fact that Stalin inherited that Bible when he came into power has nothing whatever to do with anything, least of all the integrity of the text.
Are you suggesting that he changed it to support his vicious ideology? Absurd! The pages had been photographed and dispersed to reputable scholarly libraries. Any change would have been recognized.
It is as likely that Stalin was eager to sell it, not only for the money, but to get such a sacred thing off Soviet Communist soil, where it could serve as nothing but an indictment of his whole blood-saturated regime.
M
mercygate
Guest
I just saw a paperback edition of them at Barnes & Noble this morning: The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English.i see the contrary
M
mercygate
Guest
What “adding on” are you referring to? What Christians refer to as the New Testament?
And what “subtracting off” are you referring to? There is nothing in the Hebrew canon that Christians do not accept. Can you clarify your statement?
T
THEKING
Guest
i think he is refering to what Luther eliminated?
M
mercygate
Guest
Could be. Sufi? Is that what you had in mind?
D
Dale_M
Guest
I hate to cite wikipedia, but it states that the Protestant Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh are identical in material, except the Protestant version has changed the order of the books and has split some of the Tanakh books into multiple books, for example the Books of Ezra and of Nehemiah form one book in the Tanakh.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament
Perhaps this is, in part, what Sufi refers to?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Testament
Perhaps this is, in part, what Sufi refers to?
T
THEKING
Guest
yea, or could be that Catholics added more books. Anyway, do these books have anything to do with the core belief of Christianity? that is, incarnation, trinity, salvation ecc?
J
jimmy
Guest
So? What is the point? The protestants removed the deuterocanonicals in the 16th century. The Jews didn’t have a set canon until around 100AD so their opinion on what the canon is is irrelevant since they didn’t set it until after Christ. The only thing that it means that the protestants have the maseretic canon is that they have accepted a post Christianity canon. The Church however accepted the entire septuagint as scripture.
No, it simply means that the Jews had no authority to decide the canon when they did because the Christ came and they rejected Him. The protestants followed apostates in the deciding what they thought to be scripture.
It is protestants that break the teachings of Christianity down into the core beliefs and not core beliefs. You have made a false dichotomy. As if you can reject certain things and say, ‘well that is no a core belief so I reject it.’ Everything is core beliefs that the Catholic Church teaches since it deals with God. And as a matter of fact yes they do deal with the things you mention. Wisdom 2 offers one of the best prophecies of Christ. Ecclesiasticus is one of the best of the wisdom books and definately deals with salvation. Tobit deals with issues of salvation. So does Maccabees and Baruch.
T
THEKING
Guest
thank you Jimmy
One thing you must put in mind though. When a Muslim has enough evidence that what we have in the Bible is taught by Jesus, and the disciples and not “made up”. he’ll become Christian. But the problem is that Muslims look at the Bible from an Islamic point of view, that is, they project their idea of the Quran on the Bible. Muslims do not get it that the Christian belief in Incarnation, crucifixion and salvation pre-dates the canonization of the Bible and goes back to the late first century or 2nd century in the writings and letters of the Church Fathers who included disciples of Jesus’ disciples and who quoted nearly the whole NT…which means a direct and immediate chain of euewitnesses and believers. So yes a Muslim will find variations and different translations, but he cannot understand that these mean nothing to a Christian since the belief of Christianity pre-dates the Bible by centuries.
One thing you must put in mind though. When a Muslim has enough evidence that what we have in the Bible is taught by Jesus, and the disciples and not “made up”. he’ll become Christian. But the problem is that Muslims look at the Bible from an Islamic point of view, that is, they project their idea of the Quran on the Bible. Muslims do not get it that the Christian belief in Incarnation, crucifixion and salvation pre-dates the canonization of the Bible and goes back to the late first century or 2nd century in the writings and letters of the Church Fathers who included disciples of Jesus’ disciples and who quoted nearly the whole NT…which means a direct and immediate chain of euewitnesses and believers. So yes a Muslim will find variations and different translations, but he cannot understand that these mean nothing to a Christian since the belief of Christianity pre-dates the Bible by centuries.
E
exoflare
Guest
I don’t think it’s even that simple. Even when faced with all the evidence in the world, most Muslims will still opt to assume Mohammed was correct in everything that he said so that overrules everything else - Mohammed MUST have been correct in their eyes. Why they choose to hang on to such a baseless assumption is beyond me, but in my experience this is the one key issue that prevents Muslims from using reason to evaluate anything in a religious dialogue.thank you Jimmy
One thing you must put in mind though. When a Muslim has enough evidence that what we have in the Bible is taught by Jesus, and the disciples and not “made up”. he’ll become Christian. But the problem is that Muslims look at the Bible from an Islamic point of view, that is, they project their idea of the Quran on the Bible. Muslims do not get it that the Christian belief in Incarnation, crucifixion and salvation pre-dates the canonization of the Bible and goes back to the late first century or 2nd century in the writings and letters of the Church Fathers who included disciples of Jesus’ disciples and who quoted nearly the whole NT…which means a direct and immediate chain of euewitnesses and believers. So yes a Muslim will find variations and different translations, but he cannot understand that these mean nothing to a Christian since the belief of Christianity pre-dates the Bible by centuries.
T
THEKING
Guest
well true but there is hope
all the ex-Muslims now Christians i know either had visions of Jesus, or used logic to see that someone like Muhammad cannot be a prophet, and that the Bible cannot be corrupt. If you ask Muslims themselves, they dont know how or when or by whom it was corrupt, which speaks a lot. Quran is different hence Bible must be corrupt.
M
mercygate
Guest
All of this back and forth about corrupt/incorrupt texts is kind of beside the point.well true but there is hope
The question was: Where is the Oldest Bible? The QBQ (question behind the question) is: How do Christians and Jews know their Scriptures are accurate?
OK. We have a really good answer: The multiplicity of ancient texts, which corroborate one another across a span of centuries and in different languages, constitute a credible basis for recognizing that the Jewish and Christian documents – taken merely as documents and not believing them in any way to be inspired or “special” – represent an authentic and reliable corpus.
If a Muslim has been taught that the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures have been corrupted, we need to counter this teaching by nothing other than bald facts. The integrity of the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures is easily recognized by anyone who looks at the matter with a dispassionate regard for the facts.
Sneering at a widely held Muslim teaching will scarcely encourage open inquiry. Our friend Sufi did not come here with an accusation. He came with an honest question.
R
Rocky
Guest
I guess I want to ask Sufi if he thinks there ever was a time when the written scriptures of Jews and Christians was uncorrupted. In other words, if we could find not just copies but the original papyrus of the Gospels, epistles and Revelation, and if it corresponds in all respects to what is now written in our bible would you believe this to be a proof of the truth of our religion? Or would you just say that those who wrote these words down corrupted the message of Christ from the beginning?
Actually, the above is a question to Sufi and only to Sufi. Please, everyone else, do not conjecture as to what you think Sufi or any other muslim would say or not say regarding the question.
Actually, the above is a question to Sufi and only to Sufi. Please, everyone else, do not conjecture as to what you think Sufi or any other muslim would say or not say regarding the question.
R
Rocky
Guest
Actually, the above is a question to Sufi and only to Sufi. Please, everyone else, do not conjecture as to what you think Sufi or any other muslim would say or not say regarding the question.
- Status