I would like give a small perspective from where we’ve come from since the 16th century. The English Bible had it’s genesis in the writings of Oxford theologian John Wycliffe. He was remembered as the Morningstar of the Reformation and his translation from the 1380’s remained the only English Bible until the invention of moveable type in the 16th century. He held that the Bible was the exemplar of Christianity and the sole authority for faith and practice. So his writings were condemned as heresy. To put the Bible into the hands of the laity was an outrage against the authority of the church. In fact forty-four years after Wycliffe died Pope Martin V had his bones unearthed, incinerated, and then the ashes unceremoniously thrown to the wind.
Perhaps no single person made a greater contribution to the legacy of the English Bible than Oxford and Cambridge scholar William Tyndale. Like Wycliffe, Tyndale purposed to make the Bible available to the commoner so that a boy who drives the plough would be as familiar with the Bible as the Pope. After a lengthy imprisonment, Tyndale—like Wycliffe before him—was tried for translating the Bible into the English language and was martyred. In fact, October 6th, 1536, his was body ablaze and he cried out "Oh Lord, open the eyes of England's king!" His prayer found an answer, ironically enough, in King Henry VIII, who authorized an English translation of the greatest volume to be chained to every church pulpit in the land. The popularity was so great that parishioners gathered in parishes to experience formal readings from its pages. Thus was in 3 years of his death, the translation work of Tyndale became virtually ubiquitous.
This legacy of a common English Bible from Wycliffe to the New King James Version however, is just one part of the story. The even greater legacy, to my mind, is God's faithfulness in preserving His Word from the time of the original writings to the present. You can be absolutely certain that the Bible is a faithful representation of the original writings. It’s not a copy of copy, of a copy, with fresh errors cropping up in each stage of the process. It is divine as opposed to merely human in origin.
Think with me for just a moment. From the 16th century and the invention of moveable type to the twenty-first century, we have had the Bible, and today I fear that we have Bibles of every color, shape and size but few people are familiar with what’s encapsulated in it’s pages. The reason is that we have so many things that capture our attention: television, movies, sports, video games but the Word of God has been gathering dust.
In light of wanting to get you to get into the Word of God like never before, we are offering a new product that is unprecedented. This is a Bible for the 21st century. It’s audio theatre that could produce a surge of faith and Bible literacy. It’s the Word of Promise Complete Audio Bible that has over 500 actors and sound effects for each book of the Bible. I encourage you to check it out at our Website of www.equip.org
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20 comments:
Wycliffe set an excellent standard, when he said that man has no earthly overlord but Jesus. He was well ahead of Martin Luther. Its true, each of us has to read the Bible for ourselves. But it is not true that God's Word has been preserved inviolate in every Bible.
One reason the King James scholars had to go back to Greek, and even Hebrew when they could, was that the Latin Vulgate was so full of errors. Therefore, so was the literal content of Wycliffe's translation, although it was still much better than no English Bible at all. Unfortunately, the Greek was full of errors too -- giving rise to such unfortunate abominations as the notion that Jeptha could have offered his daughter as a burnt sacrifice hundreds of years after God told Abraham never to do such a thing.
What God said, to Moses, or conveyed, to the prophets, or manifested in the history of Israel and Judah, was given in Hebrew, and in later days sometimes in Royal Aramaic. These words do not translate perfectly into any other language. We still have all kinds of debates over the meaning of the Hebrew yom in Genesis. Some English-speakers have the pride and audacity to claim it means "day."
There was a governor of Texas, M.A. Ferguson, who refused to fund teaching of foreign languages on the ground that "if English was good enuf fer Jesus Christ, its good enuf fer Texas." I have an Ethiopian friend who got a good laugh out of that.
We have only to consider the small but significant differences between the KJV, the NIV, the RSV, and numerous other versions to know that God has not miraculously intervened to keep the Bible any one thing, much less perfectly true to His Word.
God knew we would get a lot wrong. We always have. The Bible is a history of human beings getting God's revelations wrong every time God intervened. Jesus had to tell his disciples over and over, don't you knuckleheads understand anything I've told you? God knows that's going to happen, every time. God expects us to continue struggling, using what we have to try to understand, knowing we will always get it imperfectly.
Wycliffe set an excellent standard, when he said that man has no earthly overlord but Jesus. He was well ahead of Martin Luther.
Boris says: Martin Luther was Adolph Hitler’s hero and his inspiration. The whole idea that there is a God who inspired this great reformer who in turn was responsible for the death of eleven million non-Christians simply because they were not Christians is just ludicrous.
Unfortunately, the Greek was full of errors too -- giving rise to such unfortunate abominations as the notion that Jeptha could have offered his daughter as a burnt sacrifice hundreds of years after God told Abraham never to do such a thing.
Boris says: Please provide the chapter and verse in which God told Abraham never to do such a thing.
We still have all kinds of debates over the meaning of the Hebrew yom in Genesis. Some English-speakers have the pride and audacity to claim it means "day."
Boris says: What does ‘yom’ mean then may I ask? Hebrew speakers claim it means day too. In Genesis each day has an evening and a morning so we know that ‘yom’ means day, a single day with a morning and an evening.
There was a governor of Texas, M.A. Ferguson, who refused to fund teaching of foreign languages on the ground that "if English was good enuf fer Jesus Christ, its good enuf fer Texas." I have an Ethiopian friend who got a good laugh out of that.
Boris says: You’d be surprised how many fundamentalists have said “If the King James Bible was good enough for Jeezus it’s good enough for me.”
We have only to consider the small but significant differences between the KJV, the NIV, the RSV, and numerous other versions to know that God has not miraculously intervened to keep the Bible any one thing, much less perfectly true to His Word.
Boris says: God didn’t even preserve his word because we have no original copies of the manuscripts or even anything within a couple centuries of them. So if God didn’t perform the miracle of preservation there’s no reason to think he performed the miracle of inspiration.
God knew we would get a lot wrong. We always have. The Bible is a history of human beings getting God's revelations wrong every time God intervened...
Boris says: And you can’t tell that’s theology and not history. Take the blinders off.
Its in Genesis 22 Boris. The meaning is no doubt amplified in the Oral Torah, but from that date, nobody in Israel offered human sacrifice, and pagans were roundly condemned for passing their first born through the fire -- as were those Jews who whored after Moloch and the baalim. Leonard Cohen amplified on this matter also.
Martin Luther had his faults. We all do. Hitler amplified one of these faults, in the same manner John D. Rockefeller used Darwin as an excuse for his own sins. Luther did not kill eleven million. His real significance is that he broke the power of Rome -- no matter what doctrine he used to do so. But the present strength of the Protestant variant of Christianity we owe to the unholy carnal lusts of King Henry VIII, a man far less lovable than Luther.
As to yom, one of the orthodox knuckleheads you love to despise informed me in some detail that it connotes a period of time, and what period of time that might be depends on the context. As I explained elsewhere, "there was evening and there was morning" is a mistranslation. The terms which can refer to evening and morning also have a meaning, there was order and there was chaos. Each period of time, God brought increasing order out of chaos, which is not a bad analogy for either stellar evolution or biological evolution.
You are awfully anxious to reduce Biblical meaning to the lowest Sunday school denominator, the most simplified story, just so you can write it off. Whether or not you or AIG can see it, there is considerable depth to the Torah. I know theology from history, and I don't expect them to be a perfect match. I just expect them to be congruent, and they are that.
Its in Genesis 22 Boris.
Boris says: I know where the story about Isaac is. I want the exact verse in which “God told Abraham never to do such a thing,” like you said he did. Also tell us all why there are rules for human sacrifice in the Bible: “Nothing, however, that someone vows unconditionally to Yahweh may be redeemed, nothing he possesses, being a human being or animal or field of his ancestral property. What is vowed unconditionally is especially holy and belongs to Yahweh. A human being vowed unconditionally cannot be redeemed but will be put to death” – (Leviticus 27:28-29). This is clearly a law governing how human sacrifices are to be offered to God and the reason Jepthah had to sacrifice his daughter.
Martin Luther had his faults. We all do. Hitler amplified one of these faults, in the same manner John D. Rockefeller used Darwin as an excuse for his own sins.
Boris says: The fact remains that Martin Luther was one of the most despicable people who ever existed and was indeed responsible for the ideology of Adolph Hitler who studied Luther for three years in a Protestant seminary. We’re all supposed to believe that the God of the universe is somehow involved with and behind this cultural disaster and human tragedy known as Christianity after all the problems it and its henchmen have caused in the world.
As to yom, one of the orthodox knuckleheads you love to despise informed me in some detail that it connotes a period of time, and what period of time that might be depends on the context. As I explained elsewhere, "there was evening and there was morning" is a mistranslation. The terms which can refer to evening and morning also have a meaning, there was order and there was chaos.
Boris says: Let’s see if I can get this straight. After I stop laughing. A yom can mean just about anything and must be taken in context. So we see it in context with a morning and an evening but we still can’t assume a yom is a day because a morning and an evening isn’t really a morning or an evening. Oh please, how desperate can you get? Every time a Bible defender, better known among we atheists as one the Great Pretenders, is presented with another Bible absurdity they just claim that the words we see don’t really mean what they say they mean but what the apologist or Great Pretender says they mean. The word “dragon” doesn’t really mean “dragon,” “cockatrice” couldn’t possibly mean “cockatrice,” they’ll say that “satyr” absolutely doesn’t mean “satyr,” that “fiery serpent” wasn’t intended to denote a real “fiery serpent,” that “witch” doesn’t actually mean “witch” and that unicorn most certainly doesn’t mean “unicorn.” The Great Pretenders like you simply dismiss all Bible absurdities as metaphors and pretend that nothing in the Bible really conflicts with science.
I’m a Jew. Let me inform you as to what is going on in this story. Have you noticed that Genesis describes a day as evening followed by morning, rather than morning followed by evening as we do today? The Hebrews adopted many customs and myths from the Babylonians. Among their plagiarized myths were the Creation story and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Among the adopted customs was the tradition that each day began, not at sunrise, but at sunset, and lasted until sunset the next day. Thus the Hebrews emulated the Babylonian custom that “the evening and the morning” were a day – a literal 24-hour day.
I know theology from history, and I don't expect them to be a perfect match. I just expect them to be congruent, and they are that.
Boris says: Sure they are. History knows absolutely nothing of any of the events or major figures described in the Bible. There isn’t one word in anything that could be considered a historical document, not one word in an inscription anywhere, no archaeological evidence has been found that could even hint that any of the events in the Bible actually occurred or that anyone from Adam to Jesus ever existed. As I said before no historical narratives contain dialog – people speaking in complete sentences. That is the hallmark of fiction. The Bible is fiction. All the contortions you have to go through to try to deny this is really ludicrous. Is it really worth sacrificing your reason at the altar of willful ignorance?
Boris, you may be ethnically Jewish, but you are not practicing Judaism, nor are you a Torah or a Talmudic scholar. You rely on crude translations into English -- a language that didn't even exist until millenia after the events which inspired the Bible took place, then argue that they make no sense, so they must be without foundation. You are familiar with Jewish holidays, but not with Hebrew. You know some Greek, but don't even go there -- what Greek philosophy did to Christianity as it emerged from the original Jewish context was an abomination. You remind me so much of the kind of Christians who truly do give Christianity a bad name. I might call you the Benny Hinn of atheism, but the comparison would be an insult to Benny Hinn, and I never thought any analogy would merit such a description. (Google "Good Night Benny Hinn" and my name, see what you turn up).
Boris, you may be ethnically Jewish, but you are not practicing Judaism, nor are you a Torah or a Talmudic scholar.
Boris says: The concept of ethnicity is a fiction, created by writers. It is a product of literature, of history writing. As it is commonly used today, it distorts the past far more than it informs. I have a degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, which makes me more qualified to speak on this subject than anyone else on this blog especially you. Plus I come from Jewish ancestors who were handed these traditions from the people who invented them. They didn’t receive these traditions after being distorted by Christian dogma the way you have. You don’t know the first thing about ancient Hebrew, Judaism, the Torah, the Talmud.
You rely on crude translations into English -- a language that didn't even exist until millenia after the events which inspired the Bible took place, then argue that they make no sense, so they must be without foundation.
Boris says: Oh and you don’t? You can’t speak or read a word of Hebrew or Greek. Yet you’re telling us all what these words in English really mean. ROFL! I paid my dues, did the work and learned these languages especially Greek. You haven’t and I bet if you tried you’d give up like most of my classmates did.
You are familiar with Jewish holidays, but not with Hebrew. You know some Greek, but don't even go there -- what Greek philosophy did to Christianity as it emerged from the original Jewish context was an abomination.
Boris says: You must be kidding! What about what Christianity did to Greek philosophy, to Greek and Egyptian science, what it did to religious freedom during its hey day known as the Dark Ages? Your evil and false religion all but destroyed these things. We could have cured cancer, heart disease and been on the moon about 1300 years ago if it weren’t for Christianity.
You remind me so much of the kind of Christians who truly do give Christianity a bad name. I might call you the Benny Hinn of atheism, but the comparison would be an insult to Benny Hinn, and I never thought any analogy would merit such a description. (Google "Good Night Benny Hinn" and my name, see what you turn up).
Boris says: I’m not offering to heal people when I can’t, not telling people the Bible is true when it isn’t, not collecting millions of dollars from stupid people or doing any of the things Benny Hinn or Hanky Panky Handmegraaft do. I tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help me science.
You can't have it both ways Boris. Ethnicity means nothing, but you being Jewish gives you insight? You know Greek and you quote English, so when I quote a Talmudic scholar with forty years of study behind him, your college degree makes you automatically right?
If what you are saying about 1300 years ago is correct, Muslims would have been the ones who got to the moon. At that time, they were the civilization preserving all the science you admire.
You are very passionate about what you believe, but not particularly persuasive.
You can't have it both ways Boris. Ethnicity means nothing, but you being Jewish gives you insight?
Boris says: Being Jewish has to do with tradition not ethnicity. If your mother is Jewish you’re a Jew even if your father isn’t. This is because no one knew for sure who was sleeping in whose tent when and with whom in the old days.
You know Greek and you quote English, so when I quote a Talmudic scholar with forty years of study behind him, your college degree makes you automatically right?
Boris says: It doesn’t matter how long someone has studied anything to do with religion if they are a member of the religion or cult they have supposedly studied. That disqualifies them as scholars because they cannot make any rational unbiased conclusions about a religion that they are a member of. For example, who knows Islam is a bunch of baloney that evolved from ancient Arabic moon worshipping cults and that Mohammed never even existed? I doubt many Muslim scholars know that. And if you don’t know that you don’t know anything worth knowing about Islam. The same goes for Scientology, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and any other religious cult. They’re all the same. They all evolved from other older more primitive religions.
If what you are saying about 1300 years ago is correct, Muslims would have been the ones who got to the moon. At that time, they were the civilization preserving all the science you admire.
Boris says: Christian holy men would not let scientists examine cadavers and this fact alone stymied medical progress for over 1000 years. It wasn’t until the scientists shoved the priests out of the way that any medical progress was made in the Western world. Even today Christians are fighting against medical progress. But when embryonic stem cell research leads to cures for cancers and other previously incurable diseases the Christians will forget all about their opposition to it and praise the results from it and claim they are gifts from God. This exactly what has happened time again right down through history. Painkillers evil, then painkillers gifts from God. Surgery evil, then surgery is a gift from God. Autopsies evil then the results from autopsies gifts from God. And of course we have the modern Christian who now gives God credit for coming up with the previously evil theory of evolution by natural selection as his preferred method of creation. How many times have Christians had to revise their stance on something because of advancing science only to move the goalposts back and go on as if nothing has happened?
You are very passionate about what you believe, but not particularly persuasive.
Boris says: Actually I’m a forceful writer because I force people to think. I don’t have any beliefs but you might say I’m very passionate about the stupid things other people believe.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers and Sisters, Friends and Enemies:
OK, let's deal with Leviticus. Boris claims expertise none of the rest of us can touch, because he was born Jewish (although he considers ethnicity a mythical category), and he has studied Greek. Hank says that God has preserved the integrity of his Holy Word undefiled through all translations. Pragmatic Soul is pretty sure there isn't much to any of this. You are all wrong, and, incidentally, Leviticus 27:27-29 has nothing to do with sanctioning human sacrifice. I don't know Hebrew, but I have enough sense to ask someone who does, who has devoted 40 years to studying its meaning. I then think for myself about how it applies to me, or the world in general, but I find out what the meaning was and is. Here it is:
I had no idea whatsoever what the English "translation" you quoted was trying to say; shades of the worst Japlish or Chinglish from the early days of imported consumer electronics.
To understand what is going on, you need to read the chapter as an organic whole (in this case, the chapter division largely makes sense), and learn some technical terms.
First, remember that land in ancient Israel was ultimately inalienable; a given holding (the Hebrew term is achuzza) belonged to the family to whom it was allotted by Yehoshua bin Nun in perpetuity. However, for an interval not to exceed 50 years, the usufruct could be sold to someone else, who could work it as his land until the next yovél. Such a field is called a sdeh miqneh ("purchased field").
The first part of your passage deals with nëdarim (singular, neder) which are vows to donate a specific value to sacrificial purpose. Since the main thing is the value to be donated, it could be expressed in terms of property, which would then be assessed by the kohanim, and the actual donation would be cash in the amount of the assessment plus 1/5.
Hence, the passage specifically permits one to donate the value of a sdeh miqneh, calculated in terms of its yield capacity times the number of years to the next yovél. If the householder so decides, for a variety of reasons, in the case of truly alienable property, he can simply donate the property. However, this was not the norm.
The passage then transitions to warn the householder that he cannot do this with a bëchor, a first-born animal. The bëchor is already sacred, and already must be redeemed or sacrificed, so it is not available for evaluation for a neder.
This serves as the transition to the next couple of verses, which concern a completely different category of donation, called a cherem or nëdava. In this case, the specific item is being donated. It is classed as qodesh qodashim, a "most holy" item, and cannot be redeemed.
Verse 28 deals with a personal cherem, in which one can designate some piece of one's own property, which will then belong permanently to the Beyth ha-Miqdash and be administered by the kohanim. That this is so can be demonstrated from the fact that the only land to be considered for donation in the verse is a portion of one's achuzza, which, having been donated, no longer belongs to the family to which it was originally allotted, unlike a sdeh miqneh. The mention of human beings in this verse refers to an 'eved Këna'ani, a non-Jewish slave who could also be so donated, and who would then work for the Béyth ha-Miqdash.
Verse 29 is talking about an entirely different category of cherem, which involves a person condemned in a capital case. In such a case, the condemned man has no "market value", since he is going to be executed. It is for that reason that he constitutes a cherem; he cannot be redeemed for money.
I'm posting separately a brief comment on the above, for those readers who don't have the time or attention span to peruse all the details. Both the Roman hierarchy and Galileo maintained, in their own ways, and for their own purposes, that the true meaning of Scripture was too complex for the average person to comprehend, unless it was explained to them by experts. They were half right. To really understand the depth and complexity of it, really does require a lifetime of study -- which is not the same as requiring good political connections and election by a college of cardinals.
However, Wycliffe was not wrong. Wycliffe recognized that any human institution was subject to abuse and corruption, and that the Roman church was a political animal. Therefore, every man and woman should study the Scriptures for themselves. Man has no earthly overlord in spiritual matters. In doing our own study, we should recognize that translations do NOT preserve inviolate and perfect the original text, so we really cannot parse this verse and that in Greek, Latin, English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, or Swahili, and think we know exactly what God had in mind. We can get the basic moral principles down, but that's about all. In any case, most orthodox Jews will freely state that the Torah applies only to the people of Israel, and were never meant for gentiles anyway. Christians should on this basis pay attention to about six or seven mitzvoth (most contained within what we call the Ten Commandments), and the Gospels, and not pretend to understand the Sefer Tanach.
It doesn't take a lifetime of studying the Bible to understand it. It takes a basic knowledge of literature. When we read dialog, people speaking in complete sentences we are reading fiction. There are no exceptions to this rule. If you don't know that simple fact then all the study in the world is a big waste of time.
Boris, I will take that irrelevant remark as a flag of surrender from an intellectually deficient loser.
You've lost every debate we've had and lost them badly. This last comment of yours, a personal attack instead of showing exactly why my comment is irrelevant or exactly why I am a loser illustrates perfectly that you've lost another debate with me. You have no answers and can't refute anything I post.
My, Boris, what a dittohead you are turning out to be. You flaunt your knowledge of Greek to claim expertise in the Bible, then you quote from badly botched English translations, and when someone offers a serious review of original Hebrew meaning, you fall back on a vague school of literary criticism. As an orthodox knucklehead pointed out, with respect to a verse at Isaiah 30:26 that you or Pragmatic Soul had an issue about, "people who have no poetry in their souls ought to refrain from reading poetic works, as they will only be upset." Neither Hank nor you can recognize the poetry in the Torah or the Nevi'im. You both offer unsustainable meaning, Hank to prove his faith, you to disprove it. I'm supposed to be impressed with your rational thought process?
Right there's poetry in the Bible. And songs too. When have poets and song writers ever been concerned with historical or scientific accuracy? You know less about ancient literature than a third grader. Dialog equals fiction. No exceptions to this rule. Ever. This includes your goofy talking animal, flat immovable earth holy book.
Who claimed scientific accuracy for the Bible? That would be absurd. Winning an argument, dear child, is not measured by your own narcissistic admiration for your own words and thoughts. Winning an argument is measured by:
a) convincing your opponent to accept your position as more valid than their own, or,
b) winning predominant acceptance from a nominally neutral audience that your position is more sensible than your opponent's.
You can claim neither, nor, for that matter can I, but my position has somewhat greater chance of being respectfully considered by those it is intended for. (You are merely a convenient foil).
Who claimed scientific accuracy for the Bible?
Boris says: Uh Christians.
giving rise to such unfortunate abominations as the notion that Jeptha could have offered his daughter as a burnt sacrifice hundreds of years after God told Abraham never to do such a thing.
Boris says: Chapter and verse where God did this please. Once again you've made this dishonest claim when it's plain as anything Jepthah burned his daughter alive according to the Bible.
WRONG-O!!!
Boris, an atheist should not put words in the mouth of God, and an ethnically Jewish commentator should not argue from a bad English translation in preference to the original Hebrew.
Even in English, is is evident that Jeptha's daughter is mourning her virginity, that she will never marry or have children, not any sense of imminent death. In Hebrew, it is unambiguous that she lived a life of celibate service to God, not exactly a traditional practice in Jewish culture, there is a command to be fruitful and multiply, and therefore in itself something of a tragedy, but promised, and therefore mandatory in this instance. The misunderstanding comes from an error in translation from Hebrew to Greek, substituting a Greek pagan term for burnt offering, in place of a Hebrew word for elevation to the service of God (which would result in sacrifice if the subject was an unblemished lamb).
Christians do not, in general, claim scientific accuracy for the Bible, nor do Jews or Muslims. There are a few useless idiots who have poured millions of dollars into a laughable "Creation Science" museum. On the whole I think that is a good thing, since the money might otherwise have been spent on high priced union busting law firms, or lobbying against the Employee Free Choice Act, or some purpose which could do some real damage to humanity. This tiny minority of Christians are showing a profound lack of faith, since Christians "walk by faith, not by sight." Christians accept the Bible as true with no scientific evidence at all, which is one of the things you criticize Christians for. You are entitled to consider us delusional, but don't libel us with the quaint notion that we claim scientific evidence for the Bible's accuracy.
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