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It does in my opinion! A level RE and early 20th century German biblical criticism seriously damaged my faith. Then through studying the rise of Christianity in a module at Queens, learning about the Gnostic scriptures, Nicea etc etc, there has been no doubt in my mind that the Bible is in no way authoritative! The historicity and authenticity of the Bibilcal story is extremely dubious! It is this fact more than the discoveries of science, evolution etc etc etc that convinces me that the whole thing just isnt valid!

This is a fascinating area - the corpus that comprises our "bible" is a very interesting collection. Robin Lane Fox's book "The Unauthorised Version" is a very good introduction. A lot of people will be rather shocked by how recent (and how faked) books like Esther and Daniel turn out to be. On the other hand, he makes a case for the fourth gospel to be a genuine first-hand account (albeit rather late).

Ah, my absolute favourite subject!!!! Thanks for this William.

I agree with the thrust of what Joe #1 said above: once one has studied the canon, come to understand its history and how it came to be as it is, it's impossible to hold sensibly to Sola Scriptura, that it alone is inspired of God and that everything in it is inspired of God, that it is the 'Word' of God, let alone that it's infallible or inerrant.

I don't believe in the need for a canon of Scripture. There are an infinite number of works of literature and art by an infinite number of people throughout the ages who testify to God in various ways, whose works are inspired in some way, and some of the books of the bible certainly qualify. But to claim that only Scripture and all of Scripture comprises the 'Word of God' is, in my opinion, asinine.

Perhaps the writings of Will and commentators, when dug up in a thousand years, will be used as a basis of a new religion.
Any suggestions for who could take on the role of 'god', 'mary' and 'judas' etc?

Interesting suggestion, Thomas. I personally have my own version of the creation story that I could publish as myth - of course never calling it a myth, ensuring that people will take it literally - thereby securing my role in the belief systems of millions of people thousands of years from now.

The bible as wikipedia. Very cool. Anyone got a passage they would REALLY like to edit!? I'd take out the stuff about killing your enemies children for a start.

Good point. 1 Samuel 15. Flagged for immoral conduct by a deity.

John, I don't mean to butt in here, or tell you how to re-cast your views, but I think the name of the god to which you refer is "Humanity".

How many of the people speaking approvingly of Bart Ehrman's book have explored the matter beyond A Level RE? A few considerations:

Ehrman purportedly came up with 400,000 textual variants. A small number of these variants are significant, but the vast majority of them are single letters which are different between one manuscript and another. Yet Ehrman insists that in each case the variants spring from a hidden agenda on the part of the scribes. Incredible!

These variants occur over a total number of more than 6 million total pages of manuscript, which is not a lot especially considering the trivial nature of so many of these variants.

There are many times more manuscripts for the Hebrew and Christian scriptures than there are for any other ancient text (and many not so ancient ones - even Shakespeare's plays show large numbers of variants!). And the earliest manuscripts we have are much closer to the time of composition. There are huge numbers of variants in every other document from ancient times, and yet other ancient texts are credited with a degree of reliability that is not attributed to the Christian Scriptures.

In none of these variants is any major Christian doctrine affected. This is actually quite remarkable, given the number of minor variants!

Bart Ehrman began his theological studies at Moody Institute, which was ultra-fundamentalist. There he would have been "fed" the view that the Scriptures are infallible and inspired IN THEIR ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS. This means that not a single variant can be tolerated (a bit like the way Moslems view the Q'uran). It came as a shock to find, when he went to Wheaton (or was it Princeton?), to find that there were any variants at all. This led him eventually to throw out the baby with the bathwater. How can the Christian gospels be reliable sources of truth if there is even ONE variant? (He has actually said that one would be one too many).

Amenhotep- In the sense I think you mean what you said, I think you're right...

See here for two interesting progs. on the Dead Sea Scrolls with Roger Bolton

/religion/programmes/misc/deadseascrolls.shtml

and here for The Wikepedia Story with Clive Anderson
Look under Tuesday's Choice of the Day

/radio4/

Roger: No point referencing Shakespeare's plays in defence of the Bible. That's the point - shakespeare's works are fiction, and they also show signs of being worked on by more than one hand. There's more unity in Shakepeare's plays than in the Bible since they are mostly the work of a single mind. No one is claiming divine inspiration for Shakespeare and no one to my knowledge has ever been executed for attacking a shakespearean play!

Harold Wilson is reputed to have said, "Always write the first draft, then something of your original work will remain."
The original work in the Bible is still there!
Unlike a wiki the revision and editing has stopped- interpreting it, well that's another story.

Why would RICK think that the revising and editing of the Bible has stopped?

Everytime a new Greek edition of the New Testament is produced (e.g., the NRSV or the RSV), a committee of experts have to put together an agreed text from available sources and then make decisions about which sections to include/exclude. They also have to decide how to translate contentious words. It's simply not true that the process of editing and revising has ended.

Galen,

I wasn't comparing Shakespeare with Scripture as history. Of course Shakespeare is fiction. But that's not the point. When people buy a Shakespeare play they assume that what they are reading is what Shakespeare actually wrote, even though there are a huge number of textual variants that they are not aware of unless they actually study Shakespeare academically

I mean that we haven't got a 7th Isaiah or serious redaction of the original sources. Translation is another matter. The NRSV and RSV are not in Greek they are translations. The best standard Greek New Testament is the Nestle Aland one- it shows the variants (p45 etc...). (https://nestlealand.uni-muenster.de/)
There are of course many variant readings in the Greek- but they are very old. Redaction of these has stopped.
David, you are right about the issues around translation.

Even if Rick is right and the "revision and editing" has stopped (which David Oxford rightly refutes), there was a long, long, long, long period wherein hopefully even Rick would concede that heavy revision and editing occurred.

**If** several authors were involved in writing a book in the bible how would that negate the possibility of it being fully inspired by God?

I think when people think of inspiration of scripture they think of the occult practise of automatic writing, wherein the human personality goes virtually into standby mode while the writing "happens" in a single session.

This is not the way God works with people, he works with them and not steamrollering over them.

I have no problem with accepting that something maybe inerrant albeit it may beg and borrow from other texts; We cannot say that there exists no truth or wisdom at all on any matter outside the judeo Christian world.

I think this term about literal interpretation is a bit of a strawman argument; nowhere that I know of does the bible use the term literal, BTW.

Its a bit naughty to suggest these matters flummox intelligent believers though.

For example, I was reading Encyclopaedia Britannica recently and its main entry on hermenuitics was written some years ago by orthodox Christion theologian FF Bruce, who was a world authority on all these matters and a conventional evangelical...

nice try Will, try again...

;-)

PB

PB- Do you believe the Encyclopedia Britannica to be an authority on critical scholarship of the bible? You'd do well to read through the debate William links to above for an idea of how to better frame this discussion.

Hi John, long time no speak.

My answer is no, of course not, it was really an aside as I just happened to have read it.

But EB does not take amateurs to write any of its entries.

My point is that Prof FF Bruce is still considered a world authority on these matters even some years after his death, as EB still uses him as an authority.

If Bart starts out from the position that he does not realky believe the bible he can interpret the evidence in all sorts of ways.

All I am saying is that there are many FF Bruces out there who have the time and talent to study this where I dont - and they come to exactly the opposite conclusion as Ehrman.

It often seems to come across on this blog that intelligent and scholarly people cannot believe the bible to be the inspired word of God, and I am really just challenging that belief.

cheers

PB

PS Isnt it funny how new conservative Christian tomes never appear to get reviewed on SS or W&T?

To Roger- I can assure you I have looked into the matter well beyond A Level RE. My point was that A level RE begun the process of doubt for me!

While the debate over editing and the impact of the period between the death of Christ the writing of Mark's gospel is interesting, for me it isnt the most important feature when considering the claims of the Bible.

The history of the early Roman Empire, the elevation of Christianity from a virtually insignificant Jewish sect to the offical church of the Roman Empire and the dubious but not altogether suprising conversion of Constantine are much more interesting. It is when this period is understood that the validity of the Bible, and indeed any claims that Jesus was in fact divine, become difficult to justify!

PB- Ah, that old chestnut! Well, I certainly agree with you that some very intelligent and educated people come to some very different conclusions about how to read the bible (Ehrman and Craig are two such people in Will's link above). But that doesn't mean that both are correct about how to read it, and the fact that intelligent people defend inerrancy doesn't mean that the arguments against it are invalid. As always, the arguments stand or fall on their own merits and don't consult the credentials of their proponents before doing so!

Hi John,

Fair point. The arguments do stand or fall on their own merits and not on the credentials of the opponents. What I can't stomach is the fact that so many people have allowed themselves to be persuaded by the seemingly innovative arguments of the Dan Brown brigade, and have enlisted the scholarship of people like Bart Ehrman without really even engaging with it, and certainly without even considering the fact that there is a huge amount of outstanding scholarship on the other side. To be fair, if they really want to be able to defend the unorthodox position they need to have shown that they have researched it and have understood the orthodox position. That applies equally to my defence of the orthodox position of course. I'm working on it.

Roger- Agreed.

It looks like that those, other the Rev Rick Hill, have not checked out what the Bible has to say about the closure of the canon.

JW

Your post 21 goes without saying in my mind, but of course saying it makes you not one jot closer to proving your side is correct.

I am simply challenging the often implicit suggestion I perceive that only ignorant and unintelligent people believe we still have the original word of God. Of course that is utterly untrue.

Remember that chap CS Lewis too? He was an athiest and historian of literature but was still convinced of Christ and rthe scriptures. That is not an argument from authority as I am not using to prove any absolute point, other than that he existed.

I am also saying that I do not intend to take up this debate with John from scratch right now.

Scripture says those who choose to reject God will by default choose doctrines to suit itching ears, Roger.

Has faith got any place at all in this discussion or should it be totally excluded in favour of reason?

PB

by the way Amen and Dave

it seems a bit naughty to take out of context the bit about "killing the children of your enemies".

1) They were not arbitrary enemies of Israelis, they were explicitly enemies of God; they were engaged in child sacrifice, demon worship bestiality, enforced temple prostitution of all women in society etc etc.

2) God did not ask Israel to seek out and kill children; he ordered Israel to wipe out the entire people groups who were so wicked in his sight, presumably to break the cycle of suffering and evil.

That sort of puts the "child killing" God into a different light, doesn't it?

Otherwise, how many future generations of the weak and innocent in that pagan society would suffer child sacrifice (being burnt alive to Noloch), enforced temple prostitution and how many animals would continue to suffer sexual abuse by humans?

I for one will decline to put God in the dock on this one... but you do as you see fit.

PB

Anonymous (aka Christian Hippy)- Isn't consulting the bible about the authority of the bible a little circular reasoning? In any case, what the bible says at the end of Revelation does not speak about the Good Ol' King James Version of the Protestant Bible (or any of the other many potential formulations of the canon), it speaks exclusively about the book of Revelation and says nothing about "closure of the canon".

ref executing wicked people groups to several generations...

there is also the point about establishing the principle that God holds your generations following you responsible for your sins...

No doubt that was also to some try and put moral brakes/fear on sinning mankind, as we continually foul God's attempts to make us love him and live moral lives without violating our free wills.

PB

PB Why do you set up a faith v reason dichotomy? Do you believe that faith is contrary to reason? I think not! Scripture appeals to reason: "Come let us reason together says the Lord". The thing is of course that "The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving". It's not that reason is keeping people from faith. It's that default, a priori unbelief is keeping them from reasoning properly!

All the criticism of the bible texts have never to my knowledge never produced one variant reading that has come close to affecting any core doctrine.

There are around 4000 mss of the bible or parts of the bible dating over millenia.

This is far more than of any other ancient writings.

Although there are slight variations between them over millenia (as would be expected with copying by hand) none of these variations come even close to undermining the truths of the Christian faith.

The implication is that the many MSS from many epochs have remained unchanged.

So it is clear there has been no change in the NT MSS since the time of Christ. (I am not discussing OT here in detail).

Oral traditions were very strong until the first NT writings and have been reliably stored in the writings (Prof FF Bruce and others).

NT CANON
The criteria for inclusion in the canon is sensible enough; books had to be of apostolic origin, ie written by an apostle or under auspices of one eg Mark's gospel is based on preaching of Peter.

Eusibius bishop of Caesara 264-340 in his "church history" said the canon then was the same as today.

Enc Britannica; Late-2nd-century canons;-

鈥溾�ome principles for determining the criteria of canonicity begin to be apparent: apostolicity, true doctrine (regula fidei), and widespread geographical usage...

"The criteria of true doctrine, usage, and apostolicity all taken together must be satisfied, then, in order that a book be judged canonical....

"鈥rigen (died c. 254), Clement's pupil and one of the greatest thinkersof the early church, distinguished at least three classes of writings, basing his judgment on majorityusage in places that he had visited: (1) homologoumena or anantirrh膿ta, 鈥渦ndisputed in the churches of God throughout the whole world鈥� (the four Gospels, 13 Pauline Letters, I Peter, I John, Acts, and Revelation); (2) amphiballomena, 鈥渄isputed鈥� (II Peter, II and III John, Hebrews, James, and Jude); and (3) notha, 鈥渟purious鈥� (Gospel of the Egyptians, Thomas, and others). He used the term 鈥渟cripture鈥� (graph膿) for the Didach膿, the Letter of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas, but did not consider them canonical."

It seems to me that the whole bandwagon about disputing mss and the canon is a bit of a read herring.

By this I mean I have yet to hear the sceptics make a serious and specific case as to what has been lost or what we have taken on by mistake.

It seems the whole thing is just a sceptical war of attrition which does not bear scrutiny.

From another point of view, the character of God must have some bearing; If he is Almighty and good, then certainly he would want ordinary people to have his written word in a reliable format.

The incarnation in the form of a joiner and the testimony of Christ as to the immutability of the scriptures supports this.

I also question the reference to biblcial literalists. This term is often taken to imply that such are deluded and marginal.

But on the contrary, the primacy of the plain reading of scripture has always been the view of the backbone of the church; eg Chrysotom, Jerome, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, Colet, Wesley, Knox etc etc to name only a very few.

Overuse of allegory has in contrast been arbitrary and of limited value.

As a general rule the primacy of the plain reading of scripture has always been the core of a growing church and the rejection of it the hallmark of a declining one; you can test any growing or shrinking churches yourself to see how well that fits in your own locale.

PB

PB- The reason you think this is because:

(a) you only read texts that skim the surface of the topic to provide an overview (and frequently ignore the parts you don't like to arrive at the conclusions you already wanted to arrive at) like the Encyclopedia Brittannica,

and

(b) you have not read any of the many books written on this topic by people whose position you do not already agree with to begin with. Try picking up a book intended for a wide audience like Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus'. Afterward, you'll have a more balanced opinion on the subject.

JW

What does "Books intended for a wide audience" actually mean John?

Are you saying CS Lewis and FF Bruce writings on this subject and Enc Brit are not meant for wide audiences???? Curious.

I dont have the time to read every trendy apostate book that comes out (Will said this is an old claim repackaged) - have you read FF Bruce on this topic, I wonder, so you can have a balanced view too, or are we both "biased"?

Go ahead and make the strongest claim you can form Ehrman's work and we will look at it.

I have had this discussion with you before and the bottom line I remember was that you were not able to suggest any other book that should be in the NT canon.

The received wisdom in Christianity at present is that there is no real difference between MSS that would challenge any orthodox Christian beliefs.

The rule of thumb for NT books, I understand is that they should have apostolic writer or source (Peter was the source for Mark).

The Gnostic gospels teach salvation by secret knowledge, not faith, so they simply cant dovetail.

What are we really missing?

It seems this is just a long subtle war of attrition on the bible.

I think I can safely say that no church has every thrived on the teachings of sceptics.

BTW, how does a liberal determine that his view of the Christian faith is not just his own views superimposed on the bible, if he does not take literal readings as of primary importance?

PB

.... in orthodox Christianity there is agreement the 5000 plus almost identical mss and parts of mss from early after the resurection until centuries later attest to the fact that the text has NOT been altered.

How does Ehrman get around this?

Sir Frederic Kenyon, former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, was one of the foremost experts on ancient manuscripts and their authority. Shortly before his death, he wrote this concerning the New Testament:

"The interval between the dates of the original composition (of the New Testament) and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established." (The Bible and Archeology, pp. 288-89).

Prof FF Bruce, says: "The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning."

He also states, "And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded beyond all doubt" (The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? p. 15).

CS Lewis, a leading English scholar at Oxford University said that as an historian of literature he had no doubts the bible was the word of God; he was especially convinced by the level of unncessary detail in narratives and the fact that the alternative would have been the creation of fictional novel writing long before it actually happened.

PB

PB- Sorry this took so long.

"I have had this discussion with you before and the bottom line I remember was that you were not able to suggest any other book that should be in the NT canon."

To the contrary PB, I said I don't believe in the idea of a canon in the first place. There certainly are a number of interesting texts from the gnostics and others that are worthy at least of consideration. Of course you're also restricting the conversation to the NT, why not look at the OT in the same way? It wasn't until the Reformation that the Apocryphal books like Tobit and Judith were removed by Protestants, the same characters whose actions you defend to justify your current canon and yet whose opinions would arbitrarily have removed some of those you now regard as sacred.

"The rule of thumb for NT books, I understand is that they should have apostolic writer or source (Peter was the source for Mark)."

Most scholars now agree that the NT contains at least a few psuedopigraphs. If they're right (and they're the experts so it's reasonable to believe that they are), then there are no apostolic sources for those books.

"The Gnostic gospels teach salvation by secret knowledge, not faith, so they simply cant dovetail. What are we really missing?"

You're completely missing the point. Say we have a hundred documents ('books') by early Christians. These represent what these Christians believe. We start to read them, and we find that some of them agree with each other, some don't so easily. There are contradictions between what Christians believe. How do we resolve it? Today, we would simply present them all and say, "Here's what we have. It seems that these Christians disagree over what to believe." But that isn't what happened. What happened was that people selected books which correlated with the beliefs they held, and passed only those selected as the canon. What happened was that people edited parts of books where contradictions still existed to eradicate them. What happened was that people invented the canon by processes of filtering, and it was those beliefs that survived to the following generations. I don't think it's surprising, therefore, that the bible agrees so well with itself. It was pre-selected to do exactly that!

"I think I can safely say that no church has every thrived on the teachings of sceptics."

So you'd rather thrive on a falsehood than fail searching for truth? No wonder I have a hard time understanding you.

"BTW, how does a liberal determine that his view of the Christian faith is not just his own views superimposed on the bible, if he does not take literal readings as of primary importance?"

That question equally applies to the conservative, since it is patently obvious that there are a plethora of ways in which to interpret the bible and most Christians superimpose the teachings of their church tradition upon it in any case. The real question is, 'Are we interested in truth and knowledge, or are we happy with relying upon the choices of the historical characters of church tradition to tell us everything we need to know?'

John, those are very good points. However, the preselection principle in establishing the NT "canon" is not quite as simple as a selection for mutual agreement, as a quick perusal of the resurrection contradictions shows. For example, why do we have 4 gospels, instead of one? We know that more were written, but they weren't selected.

The reason is of course very simple - each of the 4 was the principal gospel of an lobby within early Christianity. In unifying the disparate Christian communities, each took with them some baggage. Much got chucked. Some rubbish & fakes ended up being incorporated into the NT.

So group A had been using "Matthew", and insisted that it go in; group 2 were using "Mark" and so forth. What we have is fossilised evidence of actual conflict and argument that was only resolved by the decision to put these 4 in; presumably the other groups were outvoted at this stage.

Early d'Hondt, if you will. Or maybe "Pop Idol" - except the competition was cut short before the final.

By happy fortune, this also fossilised the ghostie stories that had grown up around the resurrection. These are all completely all over the place, in stark contrast to the relative harmony of at least the synoptics (although that is very shaky in places too). This is also a flat contradiction of PB's rather strange assertion (apparently quoting FF Bruce) that oral history in C1CE was "reliable" - it was anything *but* reliable, just as it has always been.

Amen- I agree, and what's striking to me is the unwillingness of PB and the unwillingness of Christian churches to simply acknowledge the messy history of the canon. They want to avoid the bible looking anything less than inspired, infallible etc. so they bury all this messy history which shows how arbitrary the whole thing is.

I apologise for delay this time JW

I dont buy that "most" scholars believe there are pseudo books in the NT at all, sorry. Try to stand up "most" perhaps.

As I understand it church historian Eusibius recorded that the NT canon accepted by the christians almost universally in his time were the same as those we now have in the NT. Why airbrush that history?

I certainly agree that books were filtered out of the NT and rightly so - you cant say that gnostic and anti-gnostic books came from the same God - if you believe them to be inspired.

Youve misrepresented me - I never said I would like to thrive on falsehood, I'm simply saying the church consistently grows on the current canon and doesnt on anything else. fact. A relevant question is, if God really works through other canons, where are the churches today that use them?

You are wrong in suggesting that church leaders chose the NT canon. As I said, Eusibius recorded the NT canon was universally accepted before it was formally accepted by church "leaders". In my understanding it was democratic and organic before it was formal and official.

You didnt answer how you avoid superimposing your views on scripture. A bible believer can avoid this by taking the whole bible in context and avoid leaning on questionable proof texts alone.

Amen - please demonstrate any fake books in the NT

later guys, keep well

PB

PB says- "I dont buy that 'most' scholars believe there are pseudo books in the NT at all, sorry. Try to stand up 'most' perhaps."

No, I won't do your research for you. My statement stands for itself, although a good question to ask is why you don't believe the NT contains psuedopigrapha. The reason is that you consider all the books of the bible as equally inspired and equally valuable while all other books outside the canon cannot be considered in the same way. This black-and-white definition is certainly not the only valid way to think of ancient Christian texts. Consider this quote:

"...the Epistle of James is no truly apostolic epistle...

Sounds like something I would say. And

"...I do not regard [James] as the writing of an apostle..."

And on the book of Jude:

"...it is an epistle that need not be counted among the chief books, which are supposed to lay the foundation of faith."

And on the book of Revelation:

"For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it; Christ is neither taught nor known in it..."

Who said these things about the holy infallible inerrant inspired Word of the Living God??? Answer: Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism. Despite what you seem to think, PB, Christians have not always held to this rigid definition of the canon as found in modern-day evangelicalism. The canon was up for discussion, as these things always should be.

"I certainly agree that books were filtered out of the NT and rightly so - you cant say that gnostic and anti-gnostic books came from the same God - if you believe them to be inspired."

You seem to regard the gnostics as some kind of evil, but what you patently fail to understand is that they were just as likely to have become established orthodoxy at the beginning: their beliefs were some of many Christian varieties of belief which gained followers. The one we have is the one best placed to spread: that believed by the Romans, who had the Roman Empire, and subsequently the Roman Catholic Church.

"A relevant question is, if God really works through other canons, where are the churches today that use them?"

There aren't any churches using alternative canons.

"You didnt answer how you avoid superimposing your views on scripture. A bible believer can avoid this by taking the whole bible in context and avoid leaning on questionable proof texts alone."

How is that a stronger position? I can claim to do the exact same: in fact, NOT having a preselected canon forces me to consider context and authorship and many other necessary prerequisites for reading ancient texts.

Is the bible like Wikipedia? No. Why ?

I am going to paint in broad strokes here, and doubtless this will annoy a few people, but what the hey...

And I am not addressing here issues of canonicity and inspiration.

Let me start with an example from my own experience. I am not only a biblical critic, but I also maintain an interest in modern history. I decided to look at a certain issue on Wikipedia, pertaining to an incident that I have read about very extensively. I found that the relevant article on Wikipedia was tendentious and inaccurate. A review of the history of the page showed that it had initially been a solid and reliable article that was subsequently hijacked and extensively re-written so as only to reflect one rather bizarre POV. I carefully revised the article myself, keeping in the contentious material but re-instating much of the more balanced material. But very soon thereafter the new material had been removed and the bizarre POV once again prevailed. Now, the wikipedians will point out that there are procedures that I could / should have instigated in order to correct this sort of thing, Doubtless, but life is too short and I am too busy to be getting into disputes with lunatics on Wikipedia. But the point is this: why many people think that Wikipedia is broken beyond repair is that it contains a great deal of material that is inaccurate and muddled. Any person can edit articles and insert their two cents. Perfectly good articles can be mangled beyond recognition by people writing without any authoritative knowledge of the subject.( Yes, I know that Wikipedia articles are meant to be referenced... and they are...often to other crackpot web pages.)

Now, the question is, did something similar happen to the text of the Bible? I don't think that any academic biblical critic, of any shade of opinion, seriously denies that there has been redaction (editing) of the biblical text. Sources were assembled and final forms crafted according to the purpose of the authors and editors. Every reputable scholar - both conservatives and radicals - accepts this as a given.

That having been said, trends ebb and flow within all academic disciplines, and within modern biblical criticism the trend is very much away from atomising biblical texts into sources and redactional layers, and towards recognising the literary unity of texts. New Literary Criticism has undermined many of the assumptions concerning the history of composition of biblical texts, assumptions that had previously seemed unassailable.

We don't have time to discuss this at length here, but this shift has resulted from two factors. 1) Source Critics and Redaction Critics failed to reach a consensus on the nature and scope of the purported sources and redactional layers. Many rightly concluded that the whole enterprise was a hiding to nothing. 2) Whereas in the C19 and up to the mid C20 it was often averred that the sources were very crudely redacted into a final form, modern scholars increasingly recognise the remarkable skill and literary artistry displayed by the authors / redactors. The OT books in particular display a degree of complexity of composition that is almost unrivalled in the Ancient Near East. Crude is just not a word that applies to the composition of these texts.

The NT is written in koine Greek, and tends to be very down to earth in style; but no-where could it be said to be illiterate.

In terms of the transmission of the text, we can speak to two phases; pre-literary and literary. It is quite likely that many biblical books were only ever in literary form, such is the complexity of their structure.

It has been demonstrated by anthropologists that pre-literary peoples, and those peoples with very strong traditions of oral transmission of stories, are remarkable defensive concerning those oral traditions. The stories within a tribe are well known by the tribe, and those who relate the stories are highly circumscribed in how they may tell a story. Any substantial deviation from the accepted facts of a story meets with the disapprobation of the community. In other words, oral traditions were (and are) very stable and there was no room for significant revision.

Once stories were committed to writing, the scribal traditions were such that there was virtually no opportunity for anything but the most minute deviations to creep in. The keepers of the traditions - often called tradents in biblical criticism - handed over the stories from one generation to another, in fundamentally unaltered form.

Brevard Childs makes the point that although the redactors may have edited and rewritten texts to some greater or lesser extent, they were still tradents, and so their work did not alter the meaning or substantive content of the source texts; any material that they might have added in (and that remains contentious) would be in keeping with the tenor and purpose of the pre-existing material.

It is for these reasons that although textual variants of the OT and NT exist, the variants are insubstantial and almost entirely irrelevant. The textual variants are almost exclusively related to matters of spelling and grammar. Textual critics have the slow and painstaking job of comparing these variations within the text, but the vast majority do not amount to more than a misplaced letter here and there that in no way alters the meaning of the text.

So, is the Bible like Wikipedia? No. It was just simply not the case that every Tom Dick or Harry could throw in their ideas and change the biblical text as they saw fit. Once a tradition was established, the community was committed to keeping the established tradition static (including, as is often the case in the OT, where the tradition shows the community in a bad light).

And whereas Wikipedia is often dominated by the sub-literate, the tradents of scripture were demonstrably highly literate. Wikipedia is all about popular access, but, in contrast, the tradents were a very small and specialised elite entrusted with the preservation of the text, which they took to be their sacred duty.

Indeed, some radical scholars have been keen to emphasise the elitist nature of the tradents and suggest that they recorded traditions in such a way as to perpetuate their dominance over the mass of the people. If this scenario is correct - and I don't consider this idea very probable - then it puts an even bigger hole in wikipedia-like thesis.

So, that is my two cents. Whether or not you believe that the bible is inspired by God is irrelevant in this debate, the history of the transmission of the biblical text just does not bear comparison with the textual history of a wikipedia article.

Shibboleth- Thanks for your insightful comment. I'd be interested to hear how you think your assessment relates to what we've been talking about above.

John

lets just nip this unsubtle new tactic emerging on this blog;

It seems to be when my opponents on this blog have run out of road/ logic/facts this is the new black.

"I wont do your research for you PB"

That is a total cop out, an admission of bankruptcy and an ad hominem attack all rolled into one, for the record.

(eg when I challenge you to produce evidence of sceathers or mutations which elevate an organism out of the range of natural variation/selection into a new species.)

But mostly it is an admission of intellectual failure.

While I am a layperson and am used to your occasional nonsense, when a professional in the field offers to inform you I think you are just being rude to react to them in the manner you just spoke to Shib (that is not to say I agree or even understand all they said). It is patently obvious that what Shib said was wholly relevant to the subject.

Let me rephrase what I said before that John, I am stating that most of even most liberal scholars fully accept our canon, and I have checked some respected reference books.

Only an idiot would suggest there has been no debate about the canon, so we can park that right there.

I have read up some more on the topic John and I think the following are pretty well established.

1) BY around the end of the first century, there is evidence of the four gospels, and the Pauline epistles circulating in widespread use in the church in the form of two collections. Thje book of acts was originally part of Luke and was seperated early on. So early on you have the four gospels and pauline espistles in widespread use. So there is the embryonic canon right there. Before this was the living witness of the apostles and apostolic men. Peter wrote of Paul's epistles as "scripture" by the way.

2) The final offical formation of the canon was provoked by Marcion, a gnostic, who created a gnostic canon.

3) The current canon was not imposed on the early church but the church recognised the canon already in use.

4) A number of standards were used to formalise the canon; they had to be by apostles or "aposotlic men"; their authority had to be widely recognised in the church; obviously they had to harmonise with the rest of scripture (gnostic writings just cant do this, even Enc Britannica recognises this if you care to look it up, ref sources "Jesus Christ".

Even if you just took the four gospels, acts and Pauline epistles, were clearly almost an official canon after the passing of the apsostles, the books that have been left out just cant gel with them, as far as I understand it.

THese ranged from valuable but uninspired, to spurious, to "wicked".

Overall I think your key mistake is that you appear to believe that church leaders imposed their idea of a canon whereas in fact it was simply a recognition of what already held authority.

I think we have also overlooked the testimony to the canon of the persisting church. It is a bit like a diesel engine saying that diesel works well.

PB

PS Perhaps a more important point is that about the inspiration issue, which to me seems to be the real target of the cynicism.

If Christ said the word of God would not pass away, then that has to stand for something, it seems hard to take a middle ground on this point; if the bible is the word of God then there has to be a reasonable argument that this in itself presumes its preservation over time.... if it is the word of God.

also JW, do I need to restate, we are talking over 5000 mss or parts of mss which exist of the nt alone, written over a period of centuries by many different copyists in different locales and languages;

My point is this, to repeat what i said before and what shib is also saying; the consistency of all these mss over centuries is the main point to note; differences are insignificant and do begin to challenge christian belief; wikipedia could not begin to share that sort of immutability over centuries:

this refutes the idea that the bible has been constantly reedited over centuries and still is on an ongoing basis:

btw the other books added to the early pauline and gospel collections are written by apostles and apostolic men so their authority as being familiar with the life of christ was accepted;

the book of revelation also claims to be a message from, god,,,, how many of your other books will claim that

it seems to me your rejection of the canon could be argued to be more to do with the presuppositions you bring to the facts than the facts themselves

your ignorant blanking of a bible scholar could add weight to this viewpoint:

pb

PB, this ranks among your most ridiculous and ignorant remarks to date: "...I think you are just being rude to react to them in the manner you just spoke to Shib..." - I actually agreed with Shibboleth for the most part, PB. I wasn't making any arguments at all against it and referred to it as "insightful" (did you miss that part or did your fertile imagination read into it sarcasm that wasn't there?) - what I was asking is whether Shibboleth had any comments about what we've been talking about - formulation of the canon. As you'll notice, at the start of what Shibboleth said was that there was no comment in his post about canonicity or inspiration. PB, as usual, you've spoken before you've understood what you're speaking about.

"Overall I think your key mistake is that you appear to believe that church leaders imposed their idea of a canon whereas in fact it was simply a recognition of what already held authority."

False. Show me where I've ever said or even implied that.

"My point is this, to repeat what i said before and what shib is also saying .......[zzzzzzzz]......... wikipedia could not begin to share that sort of immutability over centuries"

I don't contend that, and I've never compared the bible with Wikipedia.

"your ignorant blanking of a bible scholar could add weight to this viewpoint:"

WRONG, AGAIN. See above.

When are you going to learn to think before you speak?

I am very thick skinned, but thanks to pb and John for not being nasty to me!

JW

I will offer a full apology if you can show how post 41 was not meat as sarcasm.

PB

John

In case you come back, I dont want to avoid this issue.

It appeared to me you were blanking shib with sarcasm in post 41, as you are not unknown to do.

So if this is not the case I reserve the right to be wrong and offer an apology in full.

IMU to reject the notion of the canon is to reject the democratic verdict of the church itself throughout history, so I had understand you were effectively claiming it was an artificial construct by certain leaders.

PB

John

In case you come back, I dont want to avoid this issue.

It appeared to me you were blanking shib with sarcasm in post 41, as you are not unknown to do. It also seemed so obvious that his comments were relevant I could not understand how you could not see this.

So if this is not the case I reserve the right to be wrong and offer an apology in full.

IMU to reject the notion of the canon is to reject the democratic verdict of the church itself throughout history, so I had understood you were effectively claiming the canon was therefore an artificial construct by certain leaders, which seems to be borne out by your more recent comments on another thread.

No hard feelings

PB

PB- No problem. I wasn't being sarcastic at all, actually, and am happy to agree with Shibboleth on much of what he said. Where we disagree is the conclusion we draw from the facts; ie. canonicity and inspiration. I'll see you over on the newer thread on this topic to continue.