Why do Protestants believe in the Bible (not a troll)

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Japher


Yeah, in the English versions we say "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife", not slave... sick-o

That's not the whole thing. The basic tennent of that Commandment is you shall not envy others the things they have.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by The diplomat


No, you're wrong. Recent events are easier to verify than older ones. The Gospels are much more recent in time that the Iliad. So, they would be easier to verify than the Iliad.

Furthermore, this "no-name rabbi" as you say, was not obscure. He spawned an entire religion. The events of te early church affected even the Roman Empire. Paul was taken to Rome and spoke the Gospel. The strong impact that Jesus had on the society of his day, also makes it easier to verify the events. And, we have many sources, like Josephus, who can help us collaborate our findings.

Again, IIRC, we only have one reference to Jesus in any writing that was not written by an early Christian. Of course Christian writing would make Christ seem important; that's the whole point. But it is funny that, based on the other records we have -- Roman and Jewish sources -- He seems not to have made any impression at all.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
About the passage of time:

The general agreement is that John's Gospel was written last, probably around 90 ad. In 90 ad, Christ would have been 96 years old, so John was, what, maybe in his late 80s? And the structure of John's gospel is generally agreed to reflect Greek modes of rhetorical expression ("In the beginning was the word..."), not Aramaic/Judaic modes. So we are to believe that John lived well into his 80s, then recorded his memories in the rhetorical form of a language not his own. Sure, it could have happened; but if you were weilding Occam's Razor, it this what the shave would look like?

if he was hanging arround greeks there is no problem at all

also, John was a young man ( read teens), Jesus was in his early 30s so John was probably late 70s early 80s (and people did live that long back than)

that age would go with someone else assisting in the writing actually (maybe a greek dude), also John was a young man at Jesus's death, he might have had greek influences later in life (depending on what path it took)

Paul deffinitely had a lot of latin/greek influence

Jon Miller

[St Leo]

The reason those four were in and the others were out is those are the only ones that mention Jeshua's divinity.

/me snickers

Another thing I'm curious about is why the Protestants didn't look to Constantinople for spiritual guidance, or the Nestorians.

Well, Constantinople was owned by someone with a different state religion and I don't think Moscow had yet claimed Constantinople's religious role.

The events of te early church affected even the Roman Empire.

Madam Cleopatra affected even the United States. Wow.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by MikeH
Protestantism started off when Henry VIII wanted to get divorced and the pope wouldn't let him, it's just an evolution of Catholicism.

So they didn't reject "The Church" they rejected "A Church".

You're sort of right. Henry had begun to sympathise with the Lutherans in Germany before he initiated his request to anull his marriage to Catherine. Spiritually he felt that the Roman Catholic Church had strayed and beome corrupt, but he couldn't bring himself to seperate partially because of Catherine's influence and partially because ...well, heck, to an absolute monarch the very idea of rebellion is nearly unthinkable. When he finally did break with the Roman Church he appointed an Archbishop who instituted really modest simple reforms.... the removal of phony relics, the abolition of indulgences, the removal of the screens in front of the sacristy which had been used in churches to seperate the clergy from the people, and the translation of services and the Bible into English.

[monkspider]

Jon M- You're right that John was probably the only book possibly written by a firsthand witness.

Diplo- I wish you had given the Gnostic gospels more attention than a cursory look at how various fundy sites want to portray them. You would have found that the verse you refer to is largely seen as something that was tacked on by overzealous editors much later, not unlike the last part of Mark. It is the last verse in the whole book, and uses slightly differernt language, which have led most scholars to believe it was added at a later date.

In any event, I am not saying that the Gospel of Thomas is inerrant. It is merely the work of man after all. All I am saying is that, on balance, it provides a more accurate look at Jesus than the bible that centuries upon centuries of religious dogma has created. You are welcome to disagree of course, but I would prefer you actually try to read them with an open mind before doing so. Such a request may be asking the impossible but hey, I gotta try.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by monkspider
Diplo- I wish you had given the Gnostic gospels more attention than a cursory look at how various fundy sites want to portray them. You would have found that the verse you refer to is largely seen as something that was tacked on by overzealous editors much later, not unlike the last part of Mark. It is the last verse in the whole book, and uses slightly differernt language, which have led most scholars to believe it was added at a later date.

In any event, I am not saying that the Gospel of Thomas is inerrant. It is merely the work of man after all. All I am saying is that, on balance, it provides a more accurate look at Jesus than the bible that centuries upon centuries of religious dogma has created. You are welcome to disagree of course, but I would prefer you actually try to read them with an open mind before doing so. Such a request may be asking the impossible but hey, I gotta try.

You are not asking the impossible. I am willing to read them with an open mind. Just realize that I am a real stickler for traditional doctrine, so I can't guarantee that I'll agree with what I read.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by monkspider
All I am saying is that, on balance, it provides a more accurate look at Jesus than the bible that centuries upon centuries of religious dogma has created.

I am curious. How is it a more accurate look at Jesus? After all, how could a non-eye witness account be more accurate than an eye witness account like the Gospel of John? I am not trying to be mean, but by "more accurate", don't you really mean more compatible with what you want to believe about Jesus?

[Shi Huangdi]

I think we have to give some deference to the people at the time who made the decision, and who were probably much more familiar with the texts and their veracity then the modern reader. I am sure if the GoT and the like were considered authentic they would have made their way into the Bible or at least be considered supplementary religious texts.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
I think we have to give some deference to the people at the time who made the decision, and who were probably much more familiar with the texts and their veracity then the modern reader. I am sure if the GoT and the like were considered authentic they would have made their way into the Bible or at least be considered supplementary religious texts.

Except that the people of the time were engaged in power plays over which version of Christianity would actually prevail. Look at the Council's of Nicea and Ephesus, which branded Arian and Nestorian Christianity as heresies. The Arians and Nestorians both held that Christ was not both man and God simultaneously; the Arian's held that he was divine but inferior to God, while the Nestorians held that he was man on earth but God in Heaven. The mainstream church held that he was always, in all places, both man and God. And how did they determine this Christian "truth"? I mean, how could you determine something like that? The answer is that they put it to a vote of church fathers; the Trinity won, and the Nestorians and Arians wer deemed heretics.

Let me say that again: the divinity of Christ, the central tenet of Christianity for most Christians, was determined by voting on it. This is not a model of getting at the "truth" of anything, which is why I'm not sure we should give some deference to the people who sorted it out. They clearly had an agenda, one which the 4 NT Gospels served while others did not.

[Heresson]

You have to make some choice who You'll believe. During a trial, You also don't know the truth, You try to find it. I think the bishops of that time had enough knowledge to find one version of Gospels more likely to be true than the other

[Proteus_MST]

Considering the Struggle about which Version of the Bible is the right one, I think it´s also very interesting that many small Neo- Protestant Sects (I call them Neo-Protestant to make a diference beteen those ultrareligious Protstants which are refered here in Germany as Freikirchlich [Free Churches] and the Lutheran Protestants which are much more liberal) refer to the Textus receptus as the only true Version of the NT, whereas the catholic Vrsion often gets mentioned to be distorted by the Power of Satan (See Jack Chick ).

They nevr seem to care about the fact, that Erasmus von Roterdam created 4 Versions of the Textus receptus and every Version contains major Differences to the other Versions (and that the modern Versions of the Bible, which are recommended by those Neo-Protestants because they aren´t distorted by Satan mix the 4 different Versions up, taking Parts of their NT from one Version of the TR and other Parts from others).

They also don´t seem to care about that Erasmus used a Latin Translation for Parts of his Textus Receptus and just retranslated it into Greek (as te Textus Receptus was the first printed Greek Version of the NT) instead of using Greek Originals, as he should have done, thus producing Errors, you could have avoided if you had used the Greek Originals.

There are other Points wich are interesting, as Erasmus obviously having invented parts of Sentences within the Bible (as they aren´t found within other Fragments or Translations) and the fact that some Fragments of the NT which were discovered in te 20. Century which are older than the Fragments Erasmus used differ from the Textus Receptus (for example Papyrus P52)

[Jack the Bodiless]

None of the four canonical gospels were attributed to the authors whose names they now bear until well into the second century. They were anonymous before that.

As for when they were written: "Mark" is the only one thought to have been written before AD 70. "Luke" and "Matthew" are derived from "Mark" and another now-lost shared source, referred to as "Q" by Biblical scholars, its contents inferred from passages that appear in Luke and Matthew but not Mark.

"Matthew" was the least competent of the gospel authors, mangling OT references: he was apparently not a native Hebrew speaker, due to his mistranslation of Hebrew idioms.

As for John: his credibility as an eyewitness is somewhat dented by his description of graves opening all over Jerusalem when Jesus rose, and the dead getting up and walking about. This "Night of the Living Dead" scenario wasn't considered noteworthy by anyone else in the city: except for "John", not a single Roman, Jewish or Christian source mentions this.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by The diplomat
I am not trying to be mean, but by "more accurate", don't you really mean more compatible with what you want to believe about Jesus?

I think this question is a firm "yes", and it applies to everybody who thinks some reports are more accurate than others. This includes you as well.

[FrustratedPoet]

Well said Spiff.