Wikipedia and Inerrancy

[chris1000bc]

(04-15-2011 09:42 AM)Ricardo Wrote:  But what I am saying is that apparent adherence to Biblical Orthodoxy is highly overrated.

Thank you for the clarification.

[Shoes]

(04-14-2011 04:49 PM)Ricardo Wrote:  “But if we can’t believe in the Bible, then what can we believe in?

For years now I’ve been wondering if Romans 1-2, which has been hijacked by so many to attack homosexuality isn’t really describing the process of converting a specific book into an idol, about our Bibliolatry. “Lord, I thank you because I have YOUR WORD in my hands, and not like those “xyz” (Insert Catholics, Orthodox, Siriacs, Coptics, Ethiopians, etc) who have spurious versions of your inerrant 66-book bible.”

Your response to my question, "what can we believe in?" is no answer at all.

(04-14-2011 04:49 PM)Ricardo Wrote:  “Lord, I thank you because I have YOUR WORD in my hands, and not like those “xyz” (Insert Catholics, Orthodox, Siriacs, Coptics, Ethiopians, etc) who have spurious versions of your inerrant 66-book bible.”

Where the H did all that come from? I am asking about what to believe if we don’t believe the Bible, and you respond that I am hating on other religions that use a different translation?!?! Did I miss one of my own posts?! I never said any of that.

(04-14-2011 04:49 PM)Ricardo Wrote:  If we did not have the written word, we would have to depend exclusively on personal testimonies. I believe in God not because of what someone has told me, or what I have read, but because of what God has put in my own heart. The love I share is not mine, but comes from Him.

“Yeah, but then, how do we establish some quality control? Any Tom, Dick or Harry could believe just about anything, and we would only be able to judge them by their fruits…”

What a concept!

I can dig that. Personal testimony is the most powerful witness. What God has done in a persons life shows, and is much more of a testimony than reading someone words of paper.

We are quickly straying from your initial thread topic!

[chris1000bc]

(04-15-2011 09:42 AM)Ricardo Wrote:  Yes, you are probably right. Probably I can't claim either that Christianity grew the fastest when believers were being fed to the lions...

I am fine with your saying that "Christianity grew the fastest before the established canon of Scripture existed." It's when you say or imply that Christianity grew the fastest at that time because the canon of Scripture was not established that I have a problem. At that point, I would appreciate some really impressive reasoning along with some historical experts backing you up, and even then I am not sure you can establish causality.

Clearly, you can also claim that "Christianity grew the fastest when believers were being fed to the lions"...again, it just matters to me when you change the word when to because. I am more likely to buy persecution as a driver of church growth than the non-existence of the established canon.

[Ricardo]

Shoes says: “We are quickly straying from your initial thread topic!”
Not really. The topic in its essence is about what we base our Faith on.

The doubts about Wikipedia are, IMHO, related to the fact that we actually know that the writers are simple men, not necessarily Holy or even enlightened. It is much easier to imagine that the entries that survived the editorial process and made it to the pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica, by God, they must be true.

Same with the Bible.

I happen to know a couple of Bible translators. What they tell me rings absolutely true. They tell me that translator teams are a micro cosmos of humanity: you have the prima donnas, who absolutely have to have their fingers in everything, whether they now what they are doing or not and you have the translators who farm out great chunks of their work onto graduate students. The Hebrew translators band together and look down on the Greek translators and vice versa. The rule of thumb is, when in doubt, leave it the same as it was in the previous translation.

Factors that affect the translation projects must be considered, namely budgets and deadlines. Until recently, it was simply not possible to do exhaustive researches on every single word. If there is not enough interest, or budget, or time, it is perfectly possible for a questionable translation of a word to survive translation after translation unchanged; not because there is no doubt, but because there is no time, money or additional information regarding that word. See my comments above about MALAKOS. If I were translating 1Corinthians, and had a limited budget, I would blow it all on 1Cor13 rather than 1Cor6!!!

Check out http://www.tlg.uci.edu/:
The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG®) is a research center at the University of California, Irvine. Founded in 1972 the TLG has already collected and digitized most literary texts written in Greek from Homer to the fall of Byzantium in AD 1453. Its goal is to create a comprehensive digital library of Greek literature from antiquity to the present era.

Imagine! Available to the public in one CD! 3,700 authors and 12,000 works, approximately 91 million words. Its collection from Homer to AD 400 is just about complete. It is updated quarterly with new authors and works.

This level of scholarship was simply out of reach for just about all translators prior to 1970. Today anyone can do their own searches.

We are getting, slowly, to the same with manuscripts. Anyone can go to the CodexSinaiticus.org website and notice that the story of Jesus and the sinner woman is simply not there, that Mark ends when the women fled from the sepulcher and said nothing to anyone.

So all of a sudden, WE are the ones, not the team of experts, who have to make the leap of Faith, to say, “Well, uh, I’m going to add these passages back into the bible, because, uh, I like them, no that’s not it… because God is protecting HIS WORD, yeah that’s it.”

When I dropped my faith in the ManofGawd, ran out of the fundamentalist church and threw away my bible, a funny thing happened. My Faith in God grew. Go figure! It took me many years to find an approach to re-opening the bible.

[Ricardo]

(04-15-2011 01:00 PM)Shoes Wrote:  

(04-14-2011 04:49 PM)Ricardo Wrote:  “Lord, I thank you because I have YOUR WORD in my hands, and not like those “xyz” (Insert Catholics, Orthodox, Siriacs, Coptics, Ethiopians, etc) who have spurious versions of your inerrant 66-book bible.”

I am asking about what to believe if we don’t believe the Bible, and you respond that I am hating on other religions that use a different translation?!?!

I meant to not let you off the hook on this one. Those aren't other "Religions." They are all brothers in Christ. With as much right to claim THEIR version of the word of God is the correct one.