I though[sic] his full name was I am that I am. Meaning that he is the being who just... is (is is being used as a verb here). You know, because back when the Bible was written, many people were named after their trade, and since God's trade was being there, that's what his name was.
Its also often seen as God describing Himself as a necessary being.
I never heard what you are talking about Jedi. Every book or archaeological magazine that I have read that had something to do with the major events in the Bible, keep saying the same thing, that the Bible's history is still extremely hazy and every discovery we make regarding it, just confuses the text further.
Perhaps you should read books outside of the Jesus Seminar. People like Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Funk, Burton Mack, and Robert J. Miller come to conclusions that are based primarily on their own presuppositions. The fact that you havent read of any discovery thats supported the Bible screams that your readings are very one-sided. What about Hezekiah and the Siloam Inscription (the oldest Hebrew script in existence)? Or perhaps the Prism of Sennacherib?
Not a single event in the Bible has been accurately proven to have happened, and those that evidence say DID happen, happened very differently than the Bible's accounts say they did.
Again, it seems your knowledge of archaeology is very one-sided and very narrowly limited. Archaeologist Nelson Glueck asserts, It may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible (Rivers in the Desert: A History of the Negev, 31).
As for religions that predate Judaism. Here's one: Zorasterism, the earliest monotheistic religion discovered to date, and records of it showed that it was popular throughout the fertile crescent where civilization arose thousands of years before Judaism. Not only that but many Zorasteristic scriptures have survived, many in better condtion[sic] than later scrolls.
Ah, but not in not in such great number as the manuscripts on Judaism. The more manuscripts, the better. Frederic G. Kenyon writes, "The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, or early translations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world (
http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/DAILYF/2002/08/daily-08-23-2002.shtml).
Besides, translating scrolls and pachment[sic] isn't as simple as you make it sound Jedi.
That would be why people dedicate their entire lives to it.
There are not just thousands lying around waiting for us to compare.
Yes, there are. Tens of thousands of Old Testament Manuscripts, and even more for the New Testament.
A situation more fitting to the actual situation than I l*ove you to I llove y*u would be I **** **u to * ***e **u.
Hardly. The overwhelming majority of all variants are a result of the common scribal errors such as Haplography, Dittography, Metathesis, Fusion, Fission, Homophony, Homoeoteleuton, and accidental omissions. None of these are as serious as you make them out to be, where nearly all of the text is magically turned illegible.
You cannot just translate a few letters and fill in the blanks, a mistake of only a single letter could change the meaning of the text completely.
Thats why there are thousands of manuscripts out there to use for comparison and correlation. Its not just one little illegible manuscript that you have to guess the message of.
I don't want to be looked at as a heretic or something, I am a Christian.
Really? Wow. My apologies I mistook you for another atheist looking for a fight here.
Numbers DO have a beginning by the way. WE invented numbers.
Okay, now I just think youve lost a lot of credibility by saying this. Mathematicians would laugh at you from Harvard to Princeton. Mathematical numbers and laws exist objectively from our perspective of them. If we really made them up, then in math, there is no real right or wrong answer, since its purely imaginary. As such, it makes little sense to correct a child on his math homework. If numbers are nothing but things from human imagination (since we made them up), then me saying, "1+1=2" is just as true as saying, 1+1=82 or even saying, You have to chop off all thirteen heads of a unicorn to kill it. All three are things I, a human, simply made up," and if I make something up, then it's whatever I want it to be.
Without someone to name them then there is no "five".
So without someone to name a gorilla, there is no gorilla.
Same thing with 180 degrees in triangles, if we had a different measurement for degrees, then triangles might have 31 degrees in them, or four thousand.
Youre confusing the matter now. Words are REFERENCES. Did you not read what I typed? The reference doesnt necessarily change simply because the word changes.
Numbers were INVENTED, they didn't form. Two trees standing side by side have no number if there is no sentient species to call them so.
And if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and no ones around to hear it, it doesnt make a sound.
A tiger in the wild would see two trees and just call them "shelter" or a good place to sleep for the night.
Simply because some being does not recognize or see the existence of a particular thing does not decide whether that actual thing objectively exists.
Does that answer your question?
I just wanted to hear you say that. Its sort of like Socrates reduction to absurdity, and its neat to see someones stance be brought down to it.
We also invented the laws of physics.
Im hearing more laughing coming from graduates of Harvard and Princeton. Youre a very funny fellow.
Well, I don't quite agree with your last two posts, Tyr. Numbers have always existed; your argument is that they were not always comminicable[sic].
Thanks, Jodrey. Nice to be on the same side for once, eh?
Well, the way I understand it is that these copies grow in number like the branches of a tree. If one error is made, that error would be copied through to the following three branches, then grow to the next fifteen, and maybe into thousands.
This is why the earlier the manuscript, the better. Whats really neat, though, is that manuscripts thousands of years apart (i.e. the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text manuscripts) remain 95% identical, with the other 5% mostly being nothing more than slips of the pen or spelling mistakes that are pretty easy to identify.
Where changes occur is very important, if they occur.
Oh, of course. However, from my research into this subject, there hasnt been any serious discrepancies concerning doctrine that isnt supported in an undisputed passage elsewhere.
What if the originals that were copied themselves are deliberately switched or tinkered with before the copies?
And what if these posts of mine really arent typed by an intelligent human being, but rather, a brainless monkey typing madly on a keyboard only because it has an overactive nervous system? I think we have to go what is most reasonable here. Ockhams Razor, baby.
Interesting. Can I take a look?
I can point you in the general direction, but the material is too much to type up here. Theres a decent amount of it in the
Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Dr. Norman L. Geisler (under Old Testament Manuscripts, and New Testament Manuscripts). Theres also other things you can look into like
A Survey of Old Testament Introduction by Gleason L. Archer,
Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts by Kenyon G. Frederic, and so forth. You might also what to look up F.F. Bruce and see what hes written on this subject of manuscripts.