666...wrong number, all these years!

[alec]

Scribe errors, my ass. More like revisions to the bible by the church, as translation itself doesn't skew things apart like that. And Hebrew isn't that touchy like Arabic, where a speck of fly shit could alter the entire meaning of a sentence.

With the rest of the ommissions from the Bible and the other stockpiles of texts under the Vatican, I would put more faith into something that would be a handcopied original version, than the mass-produced version for the masses cooked up from the many years of church power. Remember, it was sacrilidge at the time of the originals to violate samizdat copies of the scripture. The church had little qualms about violating that during the times it was convenient to have commoners illiterate and stupid in order to gain power through many governments.

Now that they can't change the bible without public scrutiny, the recovery of old originals should be interesting to use to see to what level the church has altered the scripture to suit their little socio-political empire.

We are talking about a copy made in the third century. If I remember correctly - and I do - there weren't any printing divices at that time. So we're talking about some lonesome guy, sitting at a desk or even on the ground, bored out of his mind, copying the New Testament. He's busy copying the passage that mentions the number 666, but hey, what the heck, his wife or his best friend is getting pretty horny and wants to give him some head, so he goes: "Just a minute, my little bitch, I just have to finish this!" and woops! before he knows it (getting pretty horny himself), he makes a small mistake. Instead of copying 666, he writes down "616". After which he gets his blowjob or whatever. Scribal errors are very common, you know. Before the invention of the printing press, all books were handwritten by very patient people. But people make mistakes. It's that simple.

I studied this crap - which it is - at university. Textual criticism - the comparison of different manuscripts and so on - isn't an exact science, but the tools it uses are pretty darn good, finetuned by trial and error. Don't forget that from all the manuscripts of the New Testament that we have, this tiny little fragment is the only one that mentions 616. The probability that this is nothing but a scribal error is thus VERY big.

Now, don't get me wrong Roshambo, I'm no Bible lover, quite the contrary actually, but when you just look at the Bible as a literary text, that newly found fragment doesn't mean shit.

Just for comparison: we have X copies of Hamlet. Some are old handwritten copies, some are printed ones. All of these texts contain a certain amount of errors. Sometimes thegy who copied the text, made a mistake, sometimes the printer made a mistake. Textual criticists use ALL of these texts to distilate the REAL text, the one that was written by Shakespeare. That's quite doable, actually. Meaning: it's been done. Now, just say, someone finds a new copy in his cellar, a very very old copy that does not mention the famous phrase: "To be or not to be, that's the question." Let's say, it reads: "To be or not to be, that's the gesture." Do you really think, that would make all the other copies into falsifications? Hm. Isn't it more logical to assume that "gesture" is a mistake in that newly found copy? A simple, human mistake on the part of the guy who copied t or printed it? I would think so, yes sir, I would.

Anyway: the Vatican and the Church can suck my Belgian ass. I just want to say that this fragmet which mentions 616 is probably just an unlucky find. Hyped by the media who love crap like this. "Wow, the DEVAL does not carry the mark 666, but the number 616, jeez, our viewers/readers will LUV this crap, let's put it in the one o'clock news/newspaper etc..."

 

[greatatlantic]

Revelation 13:18, "Wisdom is needed here; one who understands can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a person. His number is six hundred and sixty-six."

I believe that is the only passage in the bible to mention 666. Anyways, the nice thing about Catholic Bibles is they include a bunch of footnotes telling you why you shouldn't take a passage litterally. I'll go ahead and type out the entire footnote.

"Each of the letters of the alphabet in Hebrew as well as in Greek has a numerical value. Many possible combinations of letters will add up to 666, and many candidates have been nominated for this infamous number. The most likely is the emperor Caesar Nero (see the note on 13,3), the Greek for of whose name in Hebrew letters gives the required sum. (The Latin form of this name equals 616, which is the reading of a few manuscript.) Nero personifies the emperors who viciously persecuted the church. It has also been observed that "6" represents imperfection, falling short of the perfect number "7", and is represented here in a triple or superlative form."

This bible is several years old, so the 616 is nothing new, and has been known for some time. There are many reasons as to why 666 was more dominate than 616...or at least theories. For example, most of the Christian population at this time was Greek speaking.

As for the Church re-writing the bible to suit its needs, baloney. Now, incorrect translations happened, but the bible used today is based on the same texts used by Ethopian Christians, Persian Christians, Byzantium Christians... you get the idea. Now, mistranslations did happen, with some funny results. Check out this picture, notice how Moses has horns? Somebody misread a bible passage, so rays of light became horns. And since it was in the Bible, gosh darn it, it had to be true.

http://photoalbum.datafox.org/albums/rome2004moses/PICT6310.sized.jpg

 

[Question]

Im pretty sure the infamous "witch line" was deliberately rewritten by a certain emperor in a certain bible edition.

That would make 1 count of deliberately rewriting the bible to suit his/her/their needs.

 

[greatatlantic]

Im pretty sure the infamous "witch line" was deliberately rewritten by a certain emperor in a certain bible edition.

That would make 1 count of deliberately rewriting the bible to suit his/her/their needs.

Chapter? Verse? Name of Emperor? Edition?

Not to mention that even if true, is an emperor the Church? I find it hard to believe, though. Sacred Scripture was just that, sacred. Those who needed to change it were quickly branded heretics. While Roman emperors played a large role in Christendom, they were pretty much expected to stay out of theology. Still, that doesn't answer how one person who controled only part of Christianity, and certainly didn't control of Christianity's libraries, was able to rewrite scripture.

 

[Roshambo]

We are talking about a copy made in the third century. If I remember correctly - and I do - there weren't any printing divices at that time.

So printing presses make everything legit, despite their current use in the media to print garbage? Oookay. Just wait until we have historians or aliens trying to piece together our history of the last three centuries and come up with as many versions as there were victors, victims, and someone who decided to print reality without bias or design, or possibly some chucklehead who did something for a laugh.

So we're talking about some lonesome guy, sitting at a desk or even on the ground, bored out of his mind, copying the New Testament. He's busy copying the passage that mentions the number 666, but hey, what the heck, his wife or his best friend is getting pretty horny and wants to give him some head, so he goes: "Just a minute, my little bitch, I just have to finish this!" and woops! before he knows it (getting pretty horny himself), he makes a small mistake. Instead of copying 666, he writes down "616". After which he gets his blowjob or whatever.
Scribal errors are very common, you know. Before the invention of the printing press, all books were handwritten by very patient people. But people make mistakes. It's that simple.

Well, first it would be considered a blasphemy to do so. Second, while in English a 6 doesn't look that different from a 1 or some other language means, it is quite different than ancient Greek's Milesian system of numeration.

I studied this crap - which it is - at university. Textual criticism - the comparison of different manuscripts and so on - isn't an exact science, but the tools it uses are pretty darn good, finetuned by trial and error. Don't forget that from all the manuscripts of the New Testament that we have, this tiny little fragment is the only one that mentions 616. The probability that this is nothing but a scribal error is thus VERY big.

Or just means that you fell for the prevalent representative as legitimate, when that is far from the scientific method as possible. The "prevalent representative" belief worked well for the ages where people were held illiterate for those in power to control easily, and I refuse to think along those lines. That is cattle mentality.

Or that you're ignorant to the fact that the Catholic Church was around as an institution long before the New Testament was penned and compiled into the Bible.

Or you're naive to the fact that other churches were formed from the political maligning of the scriptures into what the Church wanted for power at that time. This includes the Church's blessing to kings as having "holy domain" to rule.

Or that you're naive of the fact that the original Hebrew scriptures were decided by a council to pick from a selection of the Tanak. Or you're naive of the Church doing the same exact thing for the Bible, unless you think the hand of God was the one who compiled them, or that Jesus collected up all of the books after he rose and shat them out all over the first pope.

Or that you're naive of the Church's fondness for misinformation and political swaying.

Or that you're naive to the fact that if a single character was mis-stroked, after laboriously washing of the hands and other purification prayers, the entire scribed page would have been destroyed as the work was held to be "the word of God" and therefore must be a divine copy.

I really doubt that you have studied knowledge methodology at a university, because you make glaring errors as the above and try to make a really laughable excuse for it. The script in question can not and should not be regarded as irrelevant because you want to play Sesame Street with Scripture.

If you knew anything about Oxyrhynchus, then I doubt you could easily make such remarks, when it is a suspected to be a possible branch of the Library of Alexandria. It would certainly be ironic that Theophilus was following a "holy edict" by Theodosius I, and might have almost destroyed one of the few possibly correct versions in their pursuit to destroy the pagans. Ahhh, religion and empires, gotta love the mix between the two. By the way, having 666 changed to 616, or any such relation between the two, using the phoenetic enumeration of the Christians then, would have been one way to distance the new Roman Empire Christianity from the paganism of (Nero) Caesar's and Caligula (Gaius) Caesar's time and what they did to the followers of Christ. Both could have been used, but one stuck. Just thought I'd point that little connection out, too.

In either case, neither number appears to have anything to do with Lucifer except as an embodiment as a pagan Roman emperor, and in that regard both numbers would be correct and false at the same time.

Now, don't get me wrong Roshambo, I'm no Bible lover, quite the contrary actually, but when you just look at the Bible as a literary text, that newly found fragment doesn't mean shit.

When you look at it historically and as a literary text, the Bible is fragmented, incomplete, and contradictory given the omitted books written by the same Churchdamned authors. Or Goddamned, if you think the Bible is the word of God. It has been put through two major book revisions before it came to be in the current form. It would be foolish to believe that with the official patch notes of the church, they didn't put in a few stealth nerfs or tweaks.

Just for comparison: we have X copies of Hamlet. Some are old handwritten copies, some are printed ones. All of these texts contain a certain amount of errors. Sometimes thegy who copied the text, made a mistake, sometimes the printer made a mistake. Textual criticists use ALL of these texts to distilate the REAL text, the one that was written by Shakespeare. That's quite doable, actually.

So if the majority of one type has a prevalent passage, then it must be correct? What then about popular and repeated printing of incorrect versions and subsequent versions?

That is flawed, stupid thinking, especially when you can figure that the printed versions may be from an incorrect manuscript itself. Such is the case in the time from the Bible's inking, when the handwritten version to be copied could have been passed down from above as new canon to be established. That is the only way I could think of any honest Christian scribe at that time could come up with a difference. It could have also been from political pressure and the designs to establish Christianity into the Roman empire.

I have to believe that what the church puts out is not necessarily to be the truth, given their dishonesty and bullshit in history. The validation of text on grounds of common popularity is garbage, and therefore the writing found in Egypt can't really be wholly dismissed unless the background is well established. That isn't done by using "well, most of the texts say THIS, to that one can't be right." Averages work for mathematics, they do jack shit for literary work and history.

Meaning: it's been done. Now, just say, someone finds a new copy in his cellar, a very very old copy that does not mention the famous phrase: "To be or not to be, that's the question." Let's say, it reads: "To be or not to be, that's the gesture." Do you really think, that would make all the other copies into falsifications? Hm. Isn't it more logical to assume that "gesture" is a mistake in that newly found copy? A simple, human mistake on the part of the guy who copied t or printed it? I would think so, yes sir, I would.

Without looking at the origins of said copy? Now you're just making asinine assumptions about the article, without any contextual basis of reference. It could have very well been an early manuscript by Shakes himself, stowed away for later reference, and forgotten.

Anyway: the Vatican and the Church can suck my Belgian ass. I just want to say that this fragmet which mentions 616 is probably just an unlucky find. Hyped by the media who love crap like this. "Wow, the DEVAL does not carry the mark 666, but the number 616, jeez, our viewers/readers will LUV this crap, let's put it in the one o'clock news/newspaper etc..."

If you want an "unlucky find" for the church, get into the Vatican archives. Even those who were raised Catholic (try for previous Catholics, as current ones tend to still believe the crap in denial even moreso than a self-hating Jew) can tell you that the Bible isn't the only thing the church teaches from, and Catholic school itself will reveal a number of interesting facts and holes in the religion/scripture if you're willing to tune out the dogma.

As for this matter, depending on what kind of public face this issue gets, it probably would rely on the church itself declaring one way or another to give it legitimacy in the public view. Just like the Crusades and other famous beneficial things the church has done in the past.

 

[alec]

Hmpf... I expected this much. No offense, but you are so damn predictable.

Anyway. Without further ado: you are right, Roshambo.

So printing presses make everything legit, despite their current use in the media to print garbage? Oookay.

No, printing presses do not make everything legit. Of course they don't. And of course texts have always contained "mistakes", writers are biased, the truth gets contorted from time to time, history is made by historians and not by reality itself, and so on. I was thinking more of present day practices. When a writer wants to have his manuscript printed out, he does not offer the publisher a handwritten manuscript anymore which had to be put to print by a third party. No, nowadays (in most cases, that is) he gives the publisher a cd rom or a dvd romwhich contains his own typed text and which can be put to print almost immediately. There can still be grammatical mistakes in it, but at least it's his version and his mstakes, not ones made by a scribe who had to copy his text or a drunken publisher or whatever.

Anywa: it doesn't matter. It was a terrible example. Please forgive my ignorance, Roshambo. I personally blame it on the whiskey.

Just wait until we have historians or aliens trying to piece together our history of the last three centuries and come up with as many versions as there were victors, victims, and someone who decided to print reality without bias or design, or possibly some chucklehead who did something for a laugh.

Yeah... right... Let's wait for the aliens...
I'm fully aware of what you write here. That historic accounts are made by writers who are biased, or who have to choose between style and the truth, or who are simply misinformed, and so on. Let us not forgive the reader as well, who often is too stupid to interpret a text correctly, who lacks certain knowledge on the subect, and so on. Postmodern literary theory has a whole bunch of explanations why the world, why history, why reality are so fucked up and wrong. I'm not unfamiliar with the subject.

Well, first it would be considered a blasphemy to do so. Second, while in English a 6 doesn't look that different from a 1 or some other language means, it is quite different than ancient Greek's Milesian system of numeration.

greatatlantic aleady pointed out that the number 616 is a well-known variant somehow. I presumed it was a scribal error, because I don't read the Bible and certainly not the footnotes. I also don't know any Greek, because Greeks are gay. That is a known fact.

Or just means that you fell for the prevalent representative as legitimate, when that is far from the scientific method as possible. The "prevalent representative" belief worked well for the ages where people were held illiterate for those in power to control easily, and I refuse to think along those lines. That is cattle mentality.

Or that you're ignorant to the fact that the Catholic Church was around as an institution long before the New Testament was penned and compiled into the Bible.

Or you're naive to the fact that other churches were formed from the political maligning of the scriptures into what the Church wanted for power at that time. This includes the Church's blessing to kings as having "holy domain" to rule.

Or that you're naive of the fact that the original Hebrew scriptures were decided by a council to pick from a selection of the Tanak. Or you're naive of the Church doing the same exact thing for the Bible, unless you think the hand of God was the one who compiled them, or that Jesus collected up all of the books after he rose and shat them out all over the first pope.

Or that you're naive of the Church's fondness for misinformation and political swaying.

Or that you're naive to the fact that if a single character was mis-stroked, after laboriously washing of the hands and other purification prayers, the entire scribed page would have been destroyed as the work was held to be "the word of God" and therefore must be a divine copy.

I really doubt that you have studied knowledge methodology at a university, because you make glaring errors as the above and try to make a really laughable excuse for it. The script in question can not and should not be regarded as irrelevant because you want to play Sesame Street with Scripture.

If you knew anything about Oxyrhynchus, then I doubt you could easily make such remarks, when it is a suspected to be a possible branch of the Library of Alexandria. It would certainly be ironic that Theophilus was following a "holy edict" by Theodosius I, and might have almost destroyed one of the few possibly correct versions in their pursuit to destroy the pagans. Ahhh, religion and empires, gotta love the mix between the two. By the way, having 666 changed to 616, using the phoenetic enumeration of the Christians then, would have been one way to distance the new Roman Empire Christianity from the paganism of (Nero) Caesar's time. Just thought I'd point that little connection out, too.

Damn it, Roshambo: you are right. I can't even begin to tell how my own stupidity amazes me. Truly: next time, when I don't know shit about the subject, I'll just shut up.

I did study Germanic languages at the university of Ghent, though. And one of my courses dealt with textual criticism. There's more to it than just taking the prevalent representative, of course. Dating matters a lot more, but that doesn't always mean that older manuscripts are more right than newer ones. It's complicated stuff, which I won't go into for two reasons: my English is not good enough to explain and my brains are getting pretty tired. It's wrong of you to assume that I didn't study the subject, though.

When you look at it historically and as a literary text, the Bible is fragmented, incomplete, and contradictory given the omitted books written by the same Churchdamned authors. Or Goddamned, if you think the Bible is the word of God. It has been put through two major book revisions before it came to be in the current form. It would be foolish to believe that with the official patch notes of the church, they didn't put in a few stealth nerfs or tweaks.

Hey, get this: I actually had a course in that as well. "Introduction to Christianity" by Prof. Vermeersch. Well, it dealt with the subject matter somehow.
Again, I am well aware of the textual history of the Bible, the revisions, some of the alternate passages. I am well aware of the "apocriefe" (Dutch) texts. And as a writer, I do tend to look at the Bible as a strictly literary text. Fragmented, incomplete, full of contradictions. Which is no wonder since it is the work of not one, but several writers. I tried reading it about two years ago, but was amazed by the lack of quality. It's full of goddamn awful poetry, really bad poetry, really really bad poetry, and stuff that doesn't make any sense. There's two versions of the creation story in there as well, and both versions have a different order. Jeez.

So if the majority of one type has a prevalent passage, then it must be correct? What then about popular and repeated printing of incorrect versions and subsequent versions?

Textual criticism has tools for this. Like dating the versions, for instance. I thought that would be obvious.

That is flawed, stupid thinking, especially when you can figure that the printed versions may be from an incorrect manuscript itself. Such is the case in the time from the Bible's inking, when the handwritten version to be copied could have been passed down from above as new canon to be established. That is the only way I could think of any honest Christian scribe at that time could come up with a difference. It could have also been from political pressure and the designs to establish Christianity into the Roman empire.

Yeah, it's flawed, stupid thinking. Textual criticists are stupid.

Funny, though, how most (if not all) handwritten copies contain various scribal errors. Hey, maybe in the past, books were very expensive and people didn't just throw them away when they contained a few grammatical or other errors. Just a thought, you know.

I have to believe that what the church puts out is not necessarily to be the truth, given their dishonesty and bullshit in history. The validation of text on grounds of common popularity is garbage, and therefore the writing found in Egypt can't really be wholly dismissed unless the background is well established. That isn't done by using "well, most of the texts say THIS, to that one can't be right." Averages work for mathematics, they do jack shit for literary work and history.

I really have to stop assuming that people can fill in the blanks (in my posts) themselves. I thought that it would be obvious that I was not trying to explain all the tools that textual criticism uses in trying to construct the right text from various copies. Dating the fragments/manuscripts/versions is probably one of the most important aspects in the process. By comparing the versions, these dates can be figured out. In more than 90% of the cases, though, the prevalent representative turns out to be the right one.

And I already stated that literary criticism is not an exact science. That doesn't mean that the processes, the tools it uses are bad.

Without looking at the origins of said copy? Now you're just making asinine assumptions about the article, without any contextual basis of reference. It could have very well been an early manuscript by Shakes himself, stowed away for later reference, and forgotten.

Dating.



Jeez.

If you want an "unlucky find" for the church, get into the Vatican archives. Even those who were raised Catholic (try for previous Catholics, as current ones tend to still believe the crap in denial even moreso than a self-hating Jew) can tell you that the Bible isn't the only thing the church teaches from, and Catholic school itself will reveal a number of interesting facts and holes in the religion/scripture if you're willing to tune out the dogma.

As for this matter, depending on what kind of public face this issue gets, it probably would rely on the church itself declaring one way or another to give it legitimacy in the public view. Just like the Crusades and other famous beneficial things the church has done in the past.

I'm an atheist. People around here kinda sorta know that. And no: I'm not making that up. However, I do not believe in conspiracy theories involving the Vatican and Catholics. I also do not believe - contrary to you - that aliens will one day land on the surface of the earth and try to reconstruct our history. Which will, undoubtedly, be a hard task. I'm more of a realist. It works for me.

Now, just to conclude this post: while typing I was thinking about all the other posts of you I have read on these fora. You're a very intelligent homo sapiens sapiens, Roshambo, I have to admit that. Your knowledge of just about everything - from programming over personal hygiene to history - is just to much to grasp for naive beings like myself. No offense, trust me. I am not trying to be cynical here at all, you have my word. But just a few questions, just out of curiosity:

One: are you an only child?
Two: are you married/engaged?
Three: do you have a lot of friends?
Four: do they love having conversations with you?

I'm just curious, really. It's just that - even though you're always right and cool and a real asskicker and stuff -, you strike me as someone who must be quite annoying in real life. I mean, if your posts are a good representation of how you act in real life conversations, I seriously doubt that a lot of people like you. You always seem to waste so much energy on bringing other people down, showing them they are stupid or naieve or less skilled in the usage of the English language than yourself. That's not very nice. Actually, I know no one who appreciates that. It might be considered 'cool' to be so knowledgeable, but it can also easily be considered rude to - en passant - bring other people down. Just a thought. You can't expect that everybody is as smart as you are, you know. Maybe some of us excell on other levels, like sociability or love. I wonder...

 

[Roshambo]

Hmpf... I expected this much. No offense, but you are so damn predictable.

A bit. Forthright and blunt as well.

No, printing presses do not make everything legit. Of course they don't. And of course texts have always contained "mistakes", writers are biased, the truth gets contorted from time to time, history is made by historians and not by reality itself, and so on. I was thinking more of present day practices. When a writer wants to have his manuscript printed out, he does not offer the publisher a handwritten manuscript anymore which had to be put to print by a third party. No, nowadays (in most cases, that is) he gives the publisher a cd rom or a dvd romwhich contains his own typed text and which can be put to print almost immediately. There can still be grammatical mistakes in it, but at least it's his version and his mstakes, not ones made by a scribe who had to copy his text or a drunken publisher or whatever.

I am well familiar with toda'ys printing methods.

So...what does this have to do with the church's scribing/printing methodology? So much for "learning" text criticalwhatever you pulled from your ass, since it appears that you didn't care to apply it with educated context. Nothing personal, but your application left a lot to be desired.

Yeah... right... Let's wait for the aliens...

I was making an example of trying to understand a culture from the outside, much like most people today and history, especially a history that has had political schemes of their own for centuries.

I'm fully aware of what you write here. That historic accounts are made by writers who are biased, or who have to choose between style and the truth, or who are simply misinformed, and so on. Let us not forgive the reader as well, who often is too stupid to interpret a text correctly, who lacks certain knowledge on the subect, and so on.

Which was only more rampant and actually used as a political device by the church and many countries in Christian history.

Postmodern literary theory has a whole bunch of explanations why the world, why history, why reality are so fucked up and wrong. I'm not unfamiliar with the subject.

I don't subscribe to the belief that everything has some hidden meaning, but there must be an explanation or connection betwixt elements that arise. I am not going to derive from IT that Stephen King is a sexual deviant or whever the garbage official literature studies are into these days with over-analyzing mateiral over the heads of the authors without any sense of context.

greatatlantic aleady pointed out that the number 616 is a well-known variant somehow. I presumed it was a scribal error, because I don't read the Bible and certainly not the footnotes. I also don't know any Greek, because Greeks are gay. That is a known fact.

I didn't have to read the Bible in order to understand that both numbers are essentially in reference to pagan Roman emperors that persecuted Christians. It is not surprising then, if they are used interchangeably (kind of like the ancient Greeks themselves) within the same contextual usage. In this, they are both correct in that it labels someone as an evil person through the numeric code. They are both false in that they don't have anything to do with Lucifer.

The ancient Greek Milesian numeration system isn't that hard to find, and to presume when discussing factual aspects is just a discourtesy in conversaion and intellectual considerations.

To counter your later questions since I do not care to really address them outside this context, if you are going to discuss material such as this seriously, then stow the bullshit. That's all.

Damn it, Roshambo: you are right. I can't even begin to tell how my own stupidity amazes me. Truly: next time, when I don't know shit about the subject, I'll just shut up.

Well, if you're going to claim knowledge and ability, then not even bother to try and practice as if you do have those credentials, then what does that mean?

I did study Germanic languages at the university of Ghent, though. And one of my courses dealt with textual criticism. There's more to it than just taking the prevalent representative, of course. Dating matters a lot more, but that doesn't always mean that older manuscripts are more right than newer ones. It's complicated stuff, which I won't go into for two reasons: my English is not good enough to explain and my brains are getting pretty tired. It's wrong of you to assume that I didn't study the subject, though.

When you cite such and neglect to apply it, I have to call bullshit. As would any good professor. Deriving context, including an origin and purpose, should be as important if not more important than the dating of the subject. Even the mistakes should have a contextual footnote, to discern the why and reason for the deviations.

Hey, get this: I actually had a course in that as well. "Introduction to Christianity" by Prof. Vermeersch. Well, it dealt with the subject matter somehow.
Again, I am well aware of the textual history of the Bible, the revisions, some of the alternate passages. I am well aware of the "apocriefe" (Dutch) texts.

The Apocrypha, and a few omitted books by several of the Bible authors as well.

And as a writer, I do tend to look at the Bible as a strictly literary text. Fragmented, incomplete, full of contradictions. Which is no wonder since it is the work of not one, but several writers. I tried reading it about two years ago, but was amazed by the lack of quality. It's full of goddamn awful poetry, really bad poetry, really really bad poetry, and stuff that doesn't make any sense. There's two versions of the creation story in there as well, and both versions have a different order. Jeez.

Exactly! It is a product of humans, and therefore subject to human problems all around. I'll believe a work of God when it is written on the side of a cliff in lightning, in 30' tall letters, on a clear day because by nature man cannot be trusted to keep fact as fact.

Textual criticism has tools for this. Like dating the versions, for instance. I thought that would be obvious.

Dating means nothing without context or version origins, and could just mean that an earlier version was a maligned copy of an original. *coughJosephSmithcough*

Yeah, it's flawed, stupid thinking. Textual criticists are stupid.

Nope, just the ones that make assumptions based upon majority presence. Just like you did in your example. I know the ones who do this seriously and without bias probably do use a better method of research.

Funny, though, how most (if not all) handwritten copies contain various scribal errors. Hey, maybe in the past, books were very expensive and people didn't just throw them away when they contained a few grammatical or other errors. Just a thought, you know.

No, in the past, people used scrolls that were later bound into books. Changing a mistake on the page, if not caught during the scribing process, would have been simple. In such a method, forgeries are possible to happen and should be a consideration when looking into the subject. The church also had strict doctrines held over from the Hebrew practices of scribing holy scriptures. Whether they were adhered to, especially in this case, is another manner to look up. The "mistake" also means little when the difference is far different than the possibly of a fly taking a shit and changing the message of the Koran.

Again, dating means little when you don't look further into the origins.

I really have to stop assuming that people can fill in the blanks (in my posts) themselves. I thought that it would be obvious that I was not trying to explain all the tools that textual criticism uses in trying to construct the right text from various copies. Dating the fragments/manuscripts/versions is probably one of the most important aspects in the process. By comparing the versions, these dates can be figured out. In more than 90% of the cases, though, the prevalent representative turns out to be the right one.

Sorry, when you say "blanks", I think you mean "holes", and in this case you're still making an assumption based upon averages and statistics, without taking the subject matter into context. Dating only goes so far, and unless you figure out the why, you can't really discern the validity of either article.

And I already stated that literary criticism is not an exact science. That doesn't mean that the processes, the tools it uses are bad.

I would certainly hope that "assumption" is not one of their tools.

Dating.



Jeez.

Factioned church/persecution/politics/historical reasons...all put doubt to the face of simple dating. This isn't like chasing down the first print of Frankenstein. Fiction has very few of the problems that a piece of religious dogma has around it.

For instance, Scientology material.

I'm an atheist. People around here kinda sorta know that. And no: I'm not making that up. However, I do not believe in conspiracy theories involving the Vatican and Catholics. I also do not believe - contrary to you - that aliens will one day land on the surface of the earth and try to reconstruct our history. Which will, undoubtedly, be a hard task. I'm more of a realist. It works for me.

I'm a pragmatist.

The world is flat, the Earth is the center of the universe, and no intelligent life can be found in Africa outside of Egypt. All bullshit but was believed to be held as fact. I don't believe that life exists elsewhere without proof, but if they were to try and discern our history, much like an unbiased history of the Chinese or history itself for most modern people, it would be quite a task that would have to weed out a lot of bullshit. I was simply making a parallel in that case without the assumption that the world is exactly as we know it today.

As for the Catholic church, it has a lot of records to hide, many that would undoubtedly compromise its position in both politics and history.

One: are you an only child?
Two: are you married/engaged?
Three: do you have a lot of friends?
Four: do they love having conversations with you?

No, if you count being raised with cousins and around many generations of my family.

Not in the conventional sense, because we both believe that it is based upon putting far too much emphasis upon everything revolving around the union, and that's stress that we could do without even though we figure it wouldn't be much of a problem. Besides, nothing wrong with having a friendly fuckbuddy or three, especially if your other half is drooling at them as well.

Not a LOT, per se, but about a dozen or so good friends in a core social circle, plus several friends around the world on station or whatever.

And yes, they do like having conversations with me, because when I do not have the information on hand, I try to educate myself about it rather than make a hasty judgement or assumption about a subject material or methodology. I share this with them, they share their own views and information that they have found about the subject with me, and we go from there. We do not care to follow football, hockey, or soccer, because we would rather be out doing it then verbally suck the cock of an overpriced jock.

I'm just curious, really. It's just that - even though you're always right and cool and a real asskicker and stuff -, you strike me as someone who must be quite annoying in real life. I mean, if your posts are a good representation of how you act in real life conversations, I seriously doubt that a lot of people like you.

In real-life, it is also easier to hand someone a piece of reference and explain in context than to just explain it to them. Since certain grounds were already covered here, I had to choice but to make an explanation.

You always seem to waste so much energy on bringing other people down, showing them they are stupid or naieve or less skilled in the usage of the English language than yourself. That's not very nice.

Sorry, that comes from first being in the military, and then being a manager of many people. If you can't tell someone when they are wrong or not following what they claim, then all you are left with is incorrect conclusions stemmed from assumptions. If you can't explain why to them, then why bother with them?

Actually, I know no one who appreciates that. It might be considered 'cool' to be so knowledgeable, but it can also easily be considered rude to - en passant - bring other people down. Just a thought. You can't expect that everybody is as smart as you are, you know. Maybe some of us excell on other levels, like sociability or love. I wonder...

If a manner of coming to a conclusion is erroneous, then I will point that out. If a person is just plain stupid to the point of not realizing it for themselves, then that will be remarked as well and isn't really anyone I could tolerate being around. Let me rephrase that. Those who claim something and yet don't even try to apply it are those I can't really tolerate, and it is getting to a point where people should be licensed to breed before they create more trailer trash. Ignorance is excusable, stupidity is not.

If it comes down to sociability, I am fairly sociable. When it comes down to factual context and assumptions, that is a different matter.

 

[Buxbaum666]

Revelation! 666 is not the number of the beast (it's a devilish 616)

OMFG! I'm gonna kill myself.

...well...who cares? Not me.

 

[Hellion]

I also don't know any Greek, because Greeks are gay. That is a known fact.

Go feck yourself. "Known fact" my ass :!: