Do you even know what this thread is about? Or how to make sentences, especially those that have meaningful content? syduck:
Did you not even read the post he was replying to? Awakening was saying that "God dictated the Torah to Moses at Sinai" is an unfalsifiable claim, thus the challenge to disprove it is not fair and the failure to disprove it does not lend credence to the claim.
Hmm ... so the Bible is completely unbiased and those that believe in the Bible and the accompanying scripture and recorded history are also unbiased? Perhaps I'll roll my eyes now.
I think Johnno was pointing out that the truth of this claim wasn't the issue at hand... the claim was only brought in as part of an explanation about what Jews believe. The thread isn't about the truth of the Jewish claim. By the way, did you catch the last post I made in the "Do you believe in God" topic we de-railed to talk about ethics? (makes me seem hypocritical for backing up Johnno's 'off-topic' call! ) I was interested to see you comments on it.
The point he made was about whether it can be proved that the Bible was divinely inspired. I'll have a look at it.
I'm glad at least SOMEONE is paying attention around here. The amount of "tradition" you have behind your claim is not relevant. If it were, we should all be following the oldest, longest-established religion. What about the Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Shintoists, Taoists, Scientologists, Hellenists, Jainists, Bahá'ís, etc. who all claim to have a great deal of historical tradition that agrees with their take on the nature of the universe? Who's to say that your particular x-thousand year old tradition is the real, true tradition that should be followed? I'll tell you who: nobody. The only thing you do have is that very 3000 year old tradition you mention that, like all other ancient traditions, is primitive and flawed in its view of the world. As I've already mentioned in this thread, there is no rational reason to believe that the Bible (or any other holy book, really) has come from God, vicariously or otherwise. If someone could prove otherwise, there would be no question as to the verity of that religion. Trouble is, nobody can do that, and we continue to live in a world fragmented by different religions coming from different holy books, all claiming to be the true word of their god(s), or some equivalent. In direct reference to the quotation above, yes it is of course the job of someone making a claim to back it up. That's all I was saying originally. Your assertion was that the Mishnah has been passed unerringly through the generations from Moses to today, and I was telling you that you needed to prove it. I was calling your assertion into question, as I do not believe it is adequately supported. So it would seem that we agree, no?
I think 3000 years backwards in time puts us more or less in the reign of King Solomon. I'd like someone to point me toward a resource discussing the evidence that today's oral tradition is the same as what King Solomon had. I'm very skeptical that any oral tradition from Moses survived the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities.
About 3,000 years puts us at Sinai. The Oral Torah , along with much of Gemara, was written down during the Babylonian exile, hence the term Babylonian Talmud.
I agree! A large basis of my skepticism of religion is that the holy books of the world can't be proven to be anything more than folk tales.
I believe that social and moral zeitgeist evolves over time. The problem is that this doesn’t mesh with the Bible. To agree with a changing morality creates numerous problems. If you accept that morality changes over time, why would you disagree with current morality on the basis of an ancient book? The only answer here is that you hold the truth of the contents of the book to be eternal, and thus deny a changing morality. I feel the problem with this lie with people within the Biblical era simply took the morality of there time as the morality, unaware that morality changes. The Bible instructs us to do many things which according to current morality we regard as absurd. The bottom line is that either morality changes, making a majority of the Bible outdated, or, the majority of the Bible is in fact currently valid, meaning morality doesn’t change. I didn’t right the following, but it pertains to this thread nevertheless… Advice needed on Old Testament law I do need some advice from you, regarding some elements of God's Laws and how to follow them. 1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians? 2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her? 3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense. 4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them? 5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it? 6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination? 7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here? 8 . Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though Lev. 19 expressly forbids this: 27. How should they die? 9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves? 10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair? (Lev. 20:14) Jesus didn’t just teach the golden rule (which was not even unique to Jesus). Jesus also endorsed Old Testament law: John 7:19: “Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?" Matthew 5:17-19 17Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. 18For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. 19Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
What does this matter… if they derived from God they should be internally consistent. What you're saying implies a changing morality (diffrent eras) and written by diffrent people. No. Paul wrote approx 25 years after Jesus allegedly died. And his only ‘meeting’ with Jesus was via a vision! Paul neither met Jesus nor was he a contemporary of his.
It seems that early Christian leaders were somewhat forced to compile the Bible canon. I can’t remember all the details off the top of my head but one scholar of the time created a Christian canon before the Christian leaders did. He analysed the OT and the NT and determined that Yahweh and Jesus must be different gods due to the differences between them, so his ‘bible’ didn’t include the OT. He also only included a few of Paul’s letters, and one or two of the canonical gospels. This is one of the things that compelled the ‘powers that be’ to determine what exactly should and shouldn’t be allowed. This resulted in the Bible we have today.
You're thinking of the Marcionite New Testament. That was compiled by a gnostic and was the first to use Pauls letters. Apparently, Paul had been severely edited by the time we got the Orthodox New Testament as we know it now. The introduction to Price's Book gives a nice brief history of the evolution of the New Testament. (Aikimac, you might be interested in the book. It's written by a Pentecostal Christian who has compiled all the surviving 'gospels' and has studied the history of the time to see what part they played in the devellopment of the Orthodox NT.) I bought my Dad this book for his birthday. Apparently there's one account of Jesus where he went around killing people... I'll have a closer read when I go back to Leicester.
You're either not reading carefully or deliberately missing the point. And no, I'm not going to bother adding any content to this post or explaining further, but if you would read my posts carefully, you would realize that your statement is completely irrelevant.
Please don't state I've missed the point and then fail to explain your assertion! I fail to see just what is wrong with my post. What issue do you specifically have with it? You said Paul literally witnessed Jesus' ressurection. Well no, he didn't. He never even met him! His only 'enounter' with Jesus was via a vision. All this tell us is that Paul had a vision (not uncommon in that period, or even today) and to draw any other conclusion is an error.
Yes, that’s who I was thinking of. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon Marcion of Sinope: c. 150, was the first of record to propose a definitive, exclusive, unique canon of Christian scriptures. (Though Ignatius did address Christian scripture, before Marcion, against the heresies of the Judaizers and Dociests, he did not publish a canon.) Marcion rejected the theology of the Old Testament, which he claimed was incompatible with the teaching of Jesus regarding God and morality. The Gospel of Luke, which Marcion called simply the Gospel of the Lord, he edited to remove any passages that connected Jesus with the Old Testament. This was because he believed that the god of the Jews, YHWH, who gave them the Jewish Scriptures, was an entirely different god than the Supreme God who sent Jesus and inspired the New Testament. He used ten letters of Paul as well (excluding Hebrews and the Pastoral epistles) assuming his Epistle to the Laodiceans referred to canonical Ephesians and not the apocryphal Epistle to the Laodiceans or another text no longer extant. He also edited these in a similar way. To these, which he called the Gospel and the Apostolicon, he added his Antithesis which contrasted the New Testament view of God and morality with the Old Testament view of God and morality. By editing he thought he was removing judaizing corruptions and recovering the original inspired words of Jesus and Paul. Marcion harshly edited the ten epistles by Paul as well as the Gospel of Luke. However, he defends Luke as the only "worthy" gospel, while putting aside Matthew, Mark, and John.[citation needed] Marcion's canon and theology were rejected as heretical by the early church; however, he forced other Christians to consider which texts were canonical and why. He spread his beliefs widely; they became known as Marcionism. Henry Wace in his introduction [6] of 1911 stated: "A modern divine. . .could not refuse to discuss the question raised by Marcion, whether there is such opposition between different parts of what he regards as the word of God, that all cannot come from the same author." The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 stated: "they were perhaps the most dangerous foe Christianity has ever known." Adolf von Harnack in Origin of the New Testament [7], 1914, argued that Marcion viewed the church at this time as largely an Old Testament church (one that "follows the Testament of the Creator-God") without a firmly established New Testament canon, and that it gradually formulated its New Testament canon in response to the challenge posed by Marcion.
