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To: JenB
Read Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story of Who Changed the Bible and Why. Excellent book, whihc examines the Bible froma textual analysis viewpoint. He shows that a lot of errors crept in accidentally (the scribe was transcribing what was being dictated to him and one word sounded like anotehr, for example, or he was working from a written text where either a word in the text looked like another word, which got transcribed instead, or they used continuous writing, as was sometimes done in the early days. For an example of how this could be interpreted a number of ways, he gives the example: What if in an English-language document we saw the phrase godisnowhere. To believers in God like you and me, that is obviously "God is now here." But to the atheist, it's equally obviously "God is nowhere." So the scribe tended to choose whichever way the continous writing seemed to make sense to him (which was inevitably covered by his worldview.)

Ehrman also covers deliberate alterations, and some of the things that you cite seem, based on the best principles of textual analysis, to be deliberate changes in the text. I think you'd find the book very interesting.

193 posted on 04/20/2006 9:43:24 PM PDT by TBP
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To: TBP

Well, since I believe the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant word of God I'd probably find the book to be an interesting but ultimately completely unbelievable discussion. Sure I suppose errors can creep in (mosty during translation) but I have faith that God prevented any major errors or rewrites like the Jesus Seminar people seem to think.

And that "Godisnowhere" example doesn't make much sense because the phrase "God is now here" isn't very good English. I mean, "God I snow here" would make almost as much sense.


194 posted on 04/20/2006 9:54:07 PM PDT by JenB (I'm heinous!)
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To: TBP

"godisnowhere"


That's funny, I'm Christian, and how I read it was "God is nowhere". I'm no atheist.


197 posted on 04/21/2006 6:37:16 AM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue.)
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