In many of the recent discussions here, Orthodox has made undocumented assertions about what is and isn't Tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy. If some belief that he disagrees with was popular at some point in church history, he'll tell us that such popularity doesn't prove that the belief in question should be accepted. He tells us that even something like a majority or 90% could be wrong. But if something he agrees with became popular at some point in church history, he'll claim that such popularity proves that we must accept such a widespread belief as Divinely guided.
In a recent discussion, he claimed that the popularity of ending the gospel of Mark at 16:8 in the earliest manuscripts is to be rejected. He suggested that a "prolific copier" might have gotten a bad copy of Mark, one that didn't include the right ending, and thereby distorted the early manuscript record by placing a lot of errant copies into circulation. But when the longer ending to Mark that Orthodox prefers is popular in the later manuscript record, he tells us that we must therefore accept that longer ending.
If Orthodox is correct in his assertion that his longer ending of Mark (as distinguished from other longer endings that circulated in ancient times) is Eastern Orthodox Tradition, then we would expect other Eastern Orthodox to be aware of that fact. That would especially be true of Eastern Orthodox scholars. And Orthodox has repeatedly told us that Eastern Orthodox don't have the sort of disunity we see among Protestants. Orthodox hasn't just criticized organizational disunity among Protestants (the fact that they belong to different churches or denominations). Rather, he's also criticized their differences in belief as unacceptable. Supposedly, then, there are no such disagreements among Eastern Orthodox.
In past discussions, Orthodox has even said that we can know the position of the Eastern Orthodox faith on an issue by asking any individual Eastern Orthodox about it. When I suggested to him that some Eastern Orthodox might be misrepresenting the Eastern Orthodox faith, he dismissed that objection as unreasonable and claimed that I should believe whatever he tells me about Eastern Orthodoxy, since he's Eastern Orthodox. He also told me, repeatedly, that it would be sufficient for me to consult a single Eastern Orthodox priest to get answers to any questions I have about what Eastern Orthodox believe.
In the recent discussion about Mark 16 linked above, I appealed to the work of Bruce Metzger, one of the foremost New Testament textual scholars of modern times. Orthodox tried to undermine my citations of Metzger by posting some quotes contained in a Reader's Digest Bible that Metzger was associated with. He apparently got the quotes from a King James Only web site. (See here.) According to Orthodox, it's unacceptable for Metzger to be associated with a Bible that even mentions the fact that a majority of modern scholars question the traditional authorship attribution of a Biblical book, for example. Even if Metzger doesn't support that scholarly opinion, he's to be faulted for even being associated with a Bible that mentions the existence of such scholarly opinion. As I explained to Orthodox, I don't accept all of the claims made in the quotes he provided from the Reader's Digest Bible, but I can disagree with Metzger or the people who worked with him on that Bible on some issues without accepting all of Orthodox's conclusions. But if Orthodox wants to hold Metzger and Protestants in general to the standard that he's suggested, then let's apply that same standard to Eastern Orthodoxy.
Since we keep getting undocumented assertions from Orthodox regarding what Eastern Orthodox believe, I thought it would be useful to quote the comments of some Eastern Orthodox scholars regarding issues like the ending of Mark's gospel and Biblical authorship. The examples below are representative of a much larger number of examples that could be cited.
In a work composed by some of the leading Eastern Orthodox scholars of our day, the Eastern Orthodox New Testament scholar Veselin Kesich wrote:
"The Gospel of Mark ends with the women fleeing from the tomb. They are in awe. There is no specific list of Christ's post-resurrection appearances in this gospel. The so-called 'longer ending' of Mark (16:9-20) is most probably a later composition, and our important ancient codices, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, do not contain it." (in John Meyendorff, ed., The Primacy Of Peter [Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1992], p. 37)
The Eastern Orthodox New Testament scholar and priest John Breck:
"St. Mark's Gospel seems originally to have ended with 16:8." (Longing For God [Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2006], p. 48)
The Eastern Orthodox scholar and priest Paul Nadim Tarazi writes the following about the structure of the gospel of Mark. Notice where he ends:
"The literary structure of Mark can best be discerned precisely by paying attention to the way Paul and the issues facing his Gentile churches show through in the story of Jesus. The story is built around a framework that begins with a preamble (1:1-15) followed by three cycles of calling/invitation (1:16-3:12; 3:13-6:6a; 6:6b-8:21) and three cycles of teaching (8:27-9:29; 9:30-10:31; 10:32-45). Then there is a pivotal pericope [38] where Timothy's leadership as Paul's successor is introduced (10:46-52), and that is followed by two long sections, one offering the gospel for the last time to the Jerusalemite Christian leadership (chs.11-13) and one recounting their refusal of it (chs.14-15). Finally there is a short text indicating the door is still open for Peter and his following (16:1-8) to accept Paul's gospel." (source here)
Regarding the pericope involving the woman caught in adultery in John's gospel, a passage that Orthodox has also claimed we must accept, Tarazi writes:
"This pericope does not seem to have been part of the original text of John; it is omitted from many of the earliest and most reliable manuscripts." (The New Testament: Introduction, Volume 3: Johannine Writings [Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004], p. 181)
Below are some comments on other subjects from various Eastern Orthodox scholars. Some of these comments are on subjects I've discussed with Orthodox in the past.
"evidence that there was a single bishop leading the Roman church is lacking for that period [the first century]; indeed what evidence there is suggests a rather different picture. When Clement wrote to the Corinthian Church, he wrote not as bishop in the later sense but as one of the presbyters of the Roman Church entrusted with the task of writing on behalf of the whole Church to the erring Church of Corinth; similarly, Ignatius, writing perhaps a decade later to the Roman Church, does not seem to envisage a 'bishop of Rome', despite his enthusiasm for monepiscopacy." (Andrew Louth, ed., Eusebius, The History Of The Church From Christ To Constantine [New York, New York: Penguin Classics, 1989], pp. xxii-xxiii)
"Whether there were bishops, in the later sense of the word, as heads of local churches, is a question for which we have no evidence in the third period. But the role that James played at Jerusalem, after Peter had gone, was surely very comparable to the role bishops were to play later on: a lifelong and continuous place as leader of a local church, with a group of presbyters in support. James may not have been called a bishop, but he was in fact the first monarchical bishop of a local church." (Nicholas Koulomzine, in John Meyendorff, ed., The Primacy Of Peter [Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1992], p. 28)
"This pattern, with the threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, was already established in some places by the end of the first century." (Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church [New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1997], p. 13)
"Nevertheless, it might be pointed out, there was only one bishop of Constantinople. However, even this idea of 'one city—one bishop' is not the only way the Church has existed over the centuries. Despite the rosy and romantic picture given by early Christian historians such as Eusebius, of the apostles appointing single bishops in each geographical area (thereby enshrining a vision of Church history articulated in terms of the succession of bishops), historical reality is more complicated. Already the Apostle Paul, writing to the Roman Christians, indicates the existence of over half-a-dozen different Christian groups or house-churches, each with its own leader (see Romans 16), and this before any apostle had visited Rome. Several decades later, St. Ignatius of Antioch also knew of no single 'bishop' of Rome, although he was the earliest and most forceful advocate of monoepiscopacy (the claim that the Christian community in each place must gather around a single bishop). Likewise St. Justin in the mid-second century. And when St. Irenaeus described the succession of the presbyters or bishops (he uses the term interchangeably) of the Christian community in Rome, it was the succession of but one of the communities, albeit the one that gradually assumed leadership over the others. All this is to say, there was no single bishop of Rome until the end of the second century, or perhaps even as late as the third decade of the third century. Instead, there were a number of churches, each led by its own bishop/presbyter." (John Behr, here)
"To make literal inerrancy a necessary component of the gift of inspiration is, after all, foreign to the New Testament message itself. The gospels bear witness to the Truth and to the power of God, not to their own freedom from error. They are free from falsehood or deception, but not from natural human errors. The evangelist Mark, for example, maintains that Abiathar was high priest during the reign of David (Mk 2:23-28), but according to I Sam 21:1-6, Ahimelech, not Abiathar, was high priest. This 'error' had no effect on the meaning of the passage. The concept of inerrancy conflicts with the incarnational approach to the Bible, and with the New Testament concept of the synergetic activity of the Holy Spirit. The charisma of inspiration does not imply a new revelation which transports its recipient into a sphere entirely different from his own. The concept of inerrancy reveals more about our desire for absolute certainty than it does about the inspiration of a biblical book." (Veselin Kesich, The Gospel Image Of Christ [Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1992], p. 69)
"The most likely conclusion is that Daniel was written at a relatively late date, not just accepted into the canon late....Typically an apocalypse's author attempts to make it sound as though it was written in a previous age, forecasting as if they were future events things actually happening in the present for the book's author." (Paul Nadim Tarazi, The Old Testament: Introduction, Volume 2: Prophetic Traditions [Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1991], p. 207, n. 3 on p. 208)
"the books of Daniel and Baruch may have been composed as late as the second century B.C....From the standpoint of the Orthodox Church, 'the entire Bible is inspired by God,' and this means that it 'contains no formal errors or inner contradictions concerning the relationship between God and the world.' The overall message of the Bible, that mankind has fallen under satanic bondage and that God has graciously acted in and through Christ to save us from that bondage, is infallibly true. According to the Orthodox doctrine of infallibility, the Church as a whole is the guardian of 'the eternal spiritual and doctrinal message of God' and is protected from error by the Holy Spirit. The Bible, therefore, as a testimony and proclamation of the Church concerning God's revealed plan of salvation, is without error in its central theological themes and affirmations. It is not necessary, however, for the Orthodox Christian to insist upon the literal truth of every statement contained in Holy Scripture. Many Orthodox scholars believe that the Bible may contain 'incidental inaccuracies of a non-essential character.'...But these kinds of historical and scientific inaccuracies do not undermine the coherence and validity of the essential theological message of Holy Scripture. The Orthodox Church, in affirming the divine inspiration and infallibility of the Holy Bible, does not exclude the possibility that the Bible might contain some minor errors of fact, but she insists upon the absolute truth of scripture's overall message of salvation." (George Cronk, The Message Of The Bible [Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982], pp. 18, 21-22)
"As Fr. Georges Florovsky commented (in his article 'The Boundaries of the Church'), St. Cyprian was right to affirm that salvation resides only within the Church, but 'he defined this in too hastily and too narrowly.' The designation of such people as 'schismatics' clearly indicates that this situation is not considered normal, and that their reunion with the bishop is desired; but that St. Basil can affirm that they are 'of the Church' is an important reminder that the Church is broader than those united with the bishop, and includes all those baptized in the right faith (even if schismatic)." (John Behr, here)
Jason:
ReplyDeleteYou demonstrate the Triablogue'ers rather deep ignorance of Orthodoxy by thinking you can determine what is Orthodox by way of reference textbooks. Typical Protestantism, so you come by it naturally I suppose.
You also demonstrate the non sequitur leap by assuming that textual criticism settles the question of the canon. This, too, is a pretty typical Protestant move.
In point of fact, Orthodox are united in ascribing canonicity to the longer ending of Mark.
You will find evidence of this going going to any Orthodox parish's Matins/Orthros service on the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (or 17 June) wherein will be read, as part of the liturgy, the longer ending of Mark. This pericope is read in cycle every 12 weeks (unless other feasts change the readings), and has been so read all around the world since the earliest centuries.
You will one day be able to comment on Orthodoxy when you understand it's life--which you can't get by sitting on your fanny in a library prooftexting from reference books.
Happy Pentecost to you.
You demonstrate the Triablogue'ers rather deep ignorance of Orthodoxy by thinking you can determine what is Orthodox by way of reference textbooks.
ReplyDeleteA. We're told that we have to consult Orthodoxy's own scholarship.
B. We do.
C. When we present what we've found, you then tell us that it cannot be used to determine what Orthodoxy believes.
D. If these sources, which come from your own domain, are not representative of Orthodoxy, then the onus is on you to tell us why.
But when you, we're told we have to be Orthodox. We ask why, and you repeat the claim. So, all we have from you is an undocumented assertion about the church being a living entity. That's just mysticism. That's subjectivity. What is the objective standard, what is the non-arbitrary epistemic warrant for your claims?
In point of fact, Orthodox are united in ascribing canonicity to the longer ending of Mark.
Ok, so where is the infallible list of canonical books and their content to be found?
If the Orthodox are united in ascribing canonicity to the longer ending of Mark then:
A. Please account for these differences among Orthodoxy's own priesthood and scholarship. Benedict Seraphim, like Orthodox, did not bother to interact with anything that these sources stated. Interact with your own scholarship. Are these just "personal opinions?" If so, where is the infallible criterion by which one can know that to be the case, and why don't these folks abide by that criterion themselves?
B. Apropos A, where is the infallible list of standards by which you get to determine what is correct and what is not when Orthodoxy undergoes an internal disagreement about anything? All you've given us so far is a bare fideistic claim that the Holy Spirit leads the church into all truth and to understand Orthodoxy we must be Orthodox.
C. And since I know what your church has stated about the doctrine of election in the past, I'd like to see you justify election based on foreseen faith from Scripture. It can't be done, so the Holy Spirit has apparently led you in a direction contrary to Scripture. So, which am I to believe? What am I to do when I encounter disagreements between the Russian Orthodox and the rest of Orthodoxy or Genevan Orthodoxy and the rest of Orthodoxy? If you say that "majority rules," then where is that given as an infallible standard, and why does Orthodox hold a different standard, as Jason has stated, "he'll tell us that such popularity doesn't prove that the belief in question should be accepted. He tells us that even something like a majority of 90% could be wrong."
You will find evidence of this going going to any Orthodox parish's Matins/Orthros service on the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (or 17 June) wherein will be read, as part of the liturgy, the longer ending of Mark. This pericope is read in cycle every 12 weeks (unless other feasts change the readings), and has been so read all around the world since the earliest centuries.
Please document this claim. Which centuries? How long exactly has it been read in your churches? And where can I find the liturgies from the oldest churches to check your claim that the long ending was used in all of them from the beginning.
Reading the long ending does not evidence the canonicity of the ending. These are two separate matters. All you can prove here is that the long ending is read, not that the long ending is canonical.
Why aren't you drinking poison and handling snakes?
Gene:
ReplyDeleteI gave you evidence--hardcore, testable, irrefutable evidence--that Orthodox ascribe canonicty to the longer ending of Mark: they read it as a Gospel pericope on par with Mt 28:16-20, Lk 24, and John 20, as well as Mark 16:1-8.
Your diversionary tactics about the interpretation of the context of the longer ending has nothing whatsoever to do with the hardcore fact that the longer ending is universally ascribed canonicity by the Orthodox.
QED.
BENEDICT SERAPHIM SAID:
ReplyDelete"You demonstrate the Triablogue'ers rather deep ignorance of Orthodoxy by thinking you can determine what is Orthodox by way of reference textbooks."
Jason is quoting from Orthodox reference works. By our fallen seraph's logic, you also can't learn anything about Orthodoxy by attending an Orthodox seminary like St. Vladimir's. Can't learn anything about Orthodoxy by reading the Greek Fathers or ecumenical councils.
That's just book larnin'.
BTW, what makes our fallen seraph any sort of authority on the subject. He is a nothing but a layman and novice to the Orthodox faith.
And if we can't learn anything about Orthodoxy from Orthodox reference works, then we surely can't learn anything about Orthodoxy from a nobody like "Benedict Seraphim," who holds no institutional position in the Orthodox church. Why should anyone consider him to be a reliable or representative spokesman if he dismisses Orthodox reference works?
And some of Jason's quotes raise another issue. If Orthodoxy denies the inerrancy of Scripture, then why should we believe in inerrancy of Orthodox Tradition? Why is the Bible fallible, but Orthodox Tradition is infallible?
Benedict Seraphim says:
ReplyDelete"You demonstrate the Triablogue'ers rather deep ignorance of Orthodoxy by thinking you can determine what is Orthodox by way of reference textbooks. Typical Protestantism, so you come by it naturally I suppose.
You also demonstrate the non sequitur leap by assuming that textual criticism settles the question of the canon. This, too, is a pretty typical Protestant move."
Typical arrogance of the Eastern Orthodox defender. Simply claim the opponent does not understand your beliefs and dismiss their arguments without actually addressing them.
It's this kind of dismissive (and seemingly pervasive) attitude that created some significant emotional barriers when I was considering conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy a number of years ago.
Benedict Seraphim writes:
ReplyDelete"You also demonstrate the non sequitur leap by assuming that textual criticism settles the question of the canon. This, too, is a pretty typical Protestant move. In point of fact, Orthodox are united in ascribing canonicity to the longer ending of Mark....This pericope is read in cycle every 12 weeks (unless other feasts change the readings), and has been so read all around the world since the earliest centuries."
You're raising objections that I've already addressed, at length, in my discussion with Orthodox in the thread I linked to in my post above:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/05/fallen-seraph.html
As I document there, sources such as Eusebius and Jerome tell us that the earlier manuscript evidence is against the longer ending to Mark. That's why Orthodox is now arguing that there may have been a "prolific copier" of Mark early on who made a large number of errant copies of Mark, thus explaining why the ante-Nicene manuscripts supported the short ending for Mark. The reason why Orthodox has to use such an (unreasonable) argument is because the longer ending of Mark was widely absent early on. The longer ending was circulating in the ante-Nicene era, but it wasn't included with Mark by most sources. Thus, your claim that the longer ending was used as part of Mark "since the earliest centuries" is dubious.
Well, I'll say this for you all, you use the diversionary fallacy with great facility.
ReplyDeleteThe question posed was whether or not Orthodoxy had a united witness as to the canonicity of the longer ending of Mark.
Since you know your Eusebius and your Irenaeus, you will know that one of the primary qualifications for canonicity was the reading of the text in the Liturgy.
All Orthodox everywhere for centuries upon centuries have always read the longer ending as a specific part of the twelve-week cycle of Gospel readings dealing with the Ascension. That longer ending is introduced the same way as all the other canonical texts: "The Holy Gospel according to _____."
There is no question whatsoever that the universal Orthodox Church considers the longer ending canonical.
This is not the same thing as saying that the longer ending is original to Mark--which is an equivocation fallacy you all play one like Johnny One-note--which is a text critical question, not a canonical one.
The truth must sting a bit, I know. But if ya'll are big boys, you'll take it and make the necessary corrections.
Whether ya'll are big boys, though, is the question.
Sorry, when I typed "Ascension," I meant, of course, "Resurrection."
ReplyDeleteBenedict Seraphim said:
ReplyDelete"Well, I'll say this for you all, you use the diversionary fallacy with great facility. The question posed was whether or not Orthodoxy had a united witness as to the canonicity of the longer ending of Mark."
I think I know the subject of this thread I started better than you do. My comments regarding the ending of Mark weren't limited to "whether or not Orthodoxy had a united witness as to the canonicity of the longer ending of Mark". As I explained to Orthodox in the other thread, whether the longer ending was part of the original gospel of Mark is relevant even if Eastern Orthodox were to argue that we should accept the longer ending on the basis of Eastern Orthodox authority. If the evidence suggests that the original Mark didn't include the longer ending in question, as is the case, then we would need some other reason for accepting that longer ending. If that other reason is the alleged authority of Eastern Orthodoxy, for example, then those appealing to such authority would need to make a case for it. Even if an Eastern Orthodox scholar who thinks that the longer ending wasn't included in the original gospel of Mark accepts the ending as scripture anyway, his admission that the original Mark didn't include it would be significant. And Orthodox has been arguing that the original Mark did include the longer ending. I was responding to him. I'm not the one who doesn't understand the subject of this thread that I started. You are.
You write:
"All Orthodox everywhere for centuries upon centuries have always read the longer ending as a specific part of the twelve-week cycle of Gospel readings dealing with the Ascension."
And the evidence suggests that the Christians of the earliest centuries didn't include the longer ending of Mark in the gospel. Why should we think that a later popular acceptance of that longer ending is to be followed?
You write:
"That longer ending is introduced the same way as all the other canonical texts: 'The Holy Gospel according to _____.' There is no question whatsoever that the universal Orthodox Church considers the longer ending canonical."
How do you know that everybody is interpreting those readings of Mark the same way you are? What if some Eastern Orthodox interpret the reference to "the Holy Gospel" as only requiring that the book in question is canonical, not the text of the book used at a given time? Are you suggesting that every text read, including every word, is infallible, that it must be accepted by all Eastern Orthodox? Why should we believe that?
I gave you evidence--hardcore, testable, irrefutable evidence--that Orthodox ascribe canonicty to the longer ending of Mark: they read it as a Gospel pericope on par with Mt 28:16-20, Lk 24, and John 20, as well as Mark 16:1-8.
ReplyDeleteNo, all you did was repeat the assertion. What is unclear about this? I asked you to document that claim and explain why your own scholarship disagrees with you. If the longer ending is a later interpolation, as the scholars and priests referenced very clearly stated, then where did the longer ending come from? What is the criterion for canonicity? Where is the infallible list of criterion by which we can know that criterion? How do we know that it being read in the liturgy is a valid test of canonicity? All you proved was that it is read and has been for a long time, but I asked:
A. How long has it been read?
B. In which churches?
C. From the beginning?
I'll make this simple for you. How do you know how far back the liturgy of the EO goes? Document the claim you make that all Orthodox everywhere have done this from the beginning.
Where can I find "being read in the liturgy" as a test for canoncity that is a sufficient condition for canoncity? There were many books read in the early church, not all made it into the canon. Being read may be a necessary condition for canoncity, but it isn't a sufficient condition. You've been told this before. One would hope a student of theology would be able to tell the difference. In fact,you later acknowledge that being read is one of the conditions for canoncity. But the problem here is how do you know this is an infallible criterion. How do you know that what you claim is true? We've been told your rule of faith is superior to ours, but where it cashes out doesn't put you in a superior position at all.
Your diversionary tactics about the interpretation of the context of the longer ending has nothing whatsoever to do with the hardcore fact that the longer ending is universally ascribed canonicity by the Orthodox.
A. I asked you to demonstrate two things: election based on foreseen faith, which is in one of the canons of a particular council to which we've been pointed and told faithfully represented Orthodoxy. Election by foreseen faith is unexegetable from Scripture. So, the Holy Spirit has led Orthodoxy into a doctrine that contravenes Scripture. Please exegete that view of election from Scripture.
B. I asked you that last question, because if it's true, you shouldn't have a problem with snake handlers in church. So, why don't you do that in your churches and why be critical of Protestants who handle snakes?
C. Further, if the long ending has not always been there, then why does the Orthodox Church canonize text variants that are not in the oldest manuscripts? How do you know that the other tests for canoncity make it a valid addition? Does Orthodoxy feel free to alter the manuscripts and then declare them canonical?
D. If you are correct, then please explain how these EO sources came to a different conclusion.
What we're left with is, "The long ending is canonical, because the Church says it is." How is this a superior rule of faith? You have to begin with the assumption that EO is the one true church in order to arrive at the conclusion. This is just question begging.
This is not the same thing as saying that the longer ending is original to Mark--which is an equivocation fallacy you all play one like Johnny One-note--which is a text critical question, not a canonical one.
A. If it is not original to Mark, when did it enter the liturgy of the Church and the canon?
B. If it is not original, then where does the EO get the authority to declare that which is likely not in the original autograph canonical and thus inspired? As has been pointed out to you before, text criticism and canonicity do intersect. How do you know a particular text variant is canonical?
C. Which gets us to the question of inerrancy. Apparently, the EO feels free to add to Scripture and thereby denies its inerrancy in the original autographs.
"You demonstrate the Triablogue'ers rather deep ignorance of Orthodoxy by thinking you can determine what is Orthodox by way of reference textbooks."
ReplyDeleteI'll file this away for future reference.
And Steve is quite right. The little gem above undercuts your own statements about Eastern Orthodoxy. How are you superior to the Eastern Orthodox priests that Jason quoted? You have successfully undermined any claims you have to speak for Orthodoxy. You may as well close your blog, and Orthodoxy should close its seminaries.
Greetings Jason and friends,
ReplyDeleteI don't know Orthodox from Adam, but I think I can see why the mere quotation of textbooks doesn't sway him from the view that Mark 16:9-20 is universally unheld as canonical in the Orthodox Church.
In Orthodoxy, canonicity is not seen as something present in the text at its inception. Practically all Old Testament scholars would say that the books of Moses are not 100% authored by Moses. Some such scholars concede that only a few snippets here and there are non-Mosaic; others would argue that very large chunks of text are non-Mosaic. And yet none of them recommend to their churches that those non-Mosaic portions ought to be excised from the Bible.
Why not? Basically, it's because the canonicity of the books of Moses was granted to a text at a point after the text had undergone an editorial process (or processes). Discovering details about that process is interesting, and even exegetically helpful. But it won't and can't make a discovery that a particular piece of the books of Moses is "unoriginal" imply that that particular piece of the books of Moses is, or ought to be, uncanonical. Figuring that God oversaw not only the initial composition of the text, but also the editorial process up to the point when the text was adopted by the church, scholars are free to investigate and comment upon that process without drawing into question the adopted, official (i.e., canonical) text.
Just apply that line of reasoning to the New Testament text, and I think you may see where Orthodox is coming from.
On a related point: while the two earliest manuscripts of Mark 16 end at the end of 16:8, that is not our earliest *evidence* for the end of Mark. Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus support the inclusion of 16:9-20 in the second-century, and Hippolytus, Vincentius of Thibaris, and Porphyry/Hierocles support it in the third century. So, while an appeal to the "earliest manuscripts" is significant, it is, in a way, just another way of referring to the two manuscripts that happened to be situated in a climate friendly to manuscript-preservation.
Jason, you referred to "other longer endings that circulated in ancient times," but I think that if you look carefully at the evidence, you will find that 16:9-20 is the only "longer ending" of Mark that has ever existed, since the "Shorter Ending" is, well, not appropriately described as another longer ending, and since the Long Ending with the Freer Logion (extant in Codex W) is still the same Long Ending with an interpolation between v. 14 and v. 15. There are different formats of this passage, but it's not as if it has rivals besides that abrupt ending (at the end of 16:8) and the "Shorter Ending."
If you're interested in learning more about Mark 16:9-20, I welcome you to visit
www.curtisvillechristian.org/MarkOne.html .
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
Minister, Curtisville Christian Church
Tipton, Indiana (USA)
Even though I don't agree with the conclusions of James Snapp, Jr. above, I do have to say that his post was about ten million times more worthwhile to read than anything Benedict Seraphim or Orthodox have ever said. Snapp at least included an argument!
ReplyDeleteNo, I never said that you can know the EO position on "any issue" by asking "any individual" about it. Please back up this claim.
ReplyDeleteNext, I havn't said a whole lot about what Metzger should or shouldn't have done. I may well have opinions on that, but I haven't stated them. What I have done it shown where textual scholarship leads you as a rule of faith.
Regarding EO scholar's opinion on Mark 16 and John 8, firstly I havn't even claimed it is original to John. As far as I know it wasn't. But again, it is not the point. And while I have argued that the evidence for the ending of Mark being original is not as cut and dried as Jason is trying to make out, that doesn't mean an orthodox scholar can't believe differently. None of this affects its canonicity in the Church. As I've stated before, if I had to prove authorship of every bit of scripture before accepting it, I would have very little scripture left.
Re inerrancy, the question has never been something the church has pondered much. Like all the traditions handed down, we believe the important things of the faith as authoritative. Where the fuzzy edges might be is not always clear. And given the textual corruption that has happened over the centuries, nobody can actually say that every word is still inerrant in the way a KJVO tries to make out. Inerrancy simply isn't an issue Orthodoxy has much incentive to either approve or deny. What we have is the true faith, arguing details is for scholars to play with. What we hear from Evangelicals is that the original autograph was inerrant. Since the autograph doesn't exist, it' strikes me as an odd thing for protestants to list in their doctrinal beliefs. If someone has a problem with this, I've got some questions I'd like to ask about which textual variant is correct.
Funnily, people like Metzger and the NA27 text always chooses textual variants that seem to be in error because supposedly they are the most likely to be original.
And with other quotes, history of the church is not the Orthodox faith. Within reason, people can believe what they want about history.
James Snapp, Jr. said:
ReplyDelete"I don't know Orthodox from Adam...Figuring that God oversaw not only the initial composition of the text, but also the editorial process up to the point when the text was adopted by the church, scholars are free to investigate and comment upon that process without drawing into question the adopted, official (i.e., canonical) text. Just apply that line of reasoning to the New Testament text, and I think you may see where Orthodox is coming from."
The fact that you "don't know Orthodox from Adam" may be a problem for your understanding of the context of this thread. I was responding to Orthodox and to claims he had made in other discussions.
I understand that an authority, whether a denomination or some other entity, can be viewed as having canonized a text after it's gone through some editing. I have no objection to that concept. But Orthodox has argued that the original Mark included the longer ending. And if he wanted to appeal to an authority, such as his Eastern Orthodox system of authority, to support the canonizing of an edited Mark, then he'd have to give us a case for that alleged authority. But he's repeatedly refused to make such a case. He acknowledges that he hasn't done it. He recently said, in a post responding to me, that he plans to debate a Roman Catholic in the coming weeks, and that he could link me to that debate if I want to see him make a case for Eastern Orthodox authority. But in the months he's been posting here, he hasn't made such a case. He's been asked to, but has refused.
You write:
"On a related point: while the two earliest manuscripts of Mark 16 end at the end of 16:8, that is not our earliest *evidence* for the end of Mark. Justin Martyr, Tatian, and Irenaeus support the inclusion of 16:9-20 in the second-century, and Hippolytus, Vincentius of Thibaris, and Porphyry/Hierocles support it in the third century. So, while an appeal to the 'earliest manuscripts' is significant, it is, in a way, just another way of referring to the two manuscripts that happened to be situated in a climate friendly to manuscript-preservation."
I've already discussed this sort of data with Orthodox in the other thread I linked to at the beginning of this one. See, for example, James Kelhoffer's discussion of the comments of Eusebius and other sources regarding the earlier manuscripts:
http://www.degruyter.de/journals/znw/2001/pdf/92_078.pdf
And the sources you've cited vary in their significance. A source can use a longer ending of Mark or something similar to it without having believed that it was part of the original Mark or canonical. (Again, keep in mind that Orthodox has argued that the longer ending in question was part of the original gospel.)
You write:
"Jason, you referred to 'other longer endings that circulated in ancient times,' but I think that if you look carefully at the evidence, you will find that 16:9-20 is the only 'longer ending' of Mark that has ever existed, since the 'Shorter Ending' is, well, not appropriately described as another longer ending, and since the Long Ending with the Freer Logion (extant in Codex W) is still the same Long Ending with an interpolation between v. 14 and v. 15."
I was referring to "longer endings" relative to Mark's ending at 16:8. If you want to call one of those alternative endings a "Shorter Ending" (relative to the longer one in dispute) rather than a "longer ending" (relative to the original ending at 16:8), then your disagreement with me on this point is one of terminology, which isn't of much significance. Much the same can be said of your dismissal of what you call "the Long Ending with the Freer Logion". If it's "with" additional material, then I don't consider it the same thing. Bruce Metzger refers to "four different endings" that are "current among the manuscripts" (The Text Of The New Testament [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992], p. 226). But I don't think that these disagreements in terminology or classification represent a disagreement about the material involved.
Orthodox writes:
ReplyDelete"No, I never said that you can know the EO position on 'any issue' by asking 'any individual' about it. Please back up this claim."
I've given you documentation repeatedly. Again, go to our earlier discussion about prayers to the deceased:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-another-thread-orthodox-wrote.html
In that thread, you claimed that Eastern Orthodox define terms in a prayer to Mary in a particular way. I asked you for documentation. You told me that such a request is unreasonable, since I should believe what an Eastern Orthodox tells me about Eastern Orthodoxy. In that thread, you wrote:
"I find it a little odd that no-one seems to want to believe what I tell them Orthodox believe. It's not likely I'm going to go to a protestant and challenge them on what their denomination believes....It's kind of like if I went into an independent baptist church that eschews any creeds and confessions, hearing the mention of the 'trinity' in the prayers, and then bugging and pestering the members to 'prove' that their definition of the trinity is the official baptist version. It's pure sillyness."
You said that it would be "silliness" to seek documentation for what you had claimed about what Eastern Orthodox believe. Later in that thread, you told me to "go ask a priest" what Eastern Orthodox believe, which is something you've said repeatedly. This is how you put it:
"Again, you're approaching this with your own presuppositions about what ought to be documented, and how. If you don't believe me, go ask an orthodox priest."
You thought that I should believe you without documentation. But if I didn't believe you, then I could "go ask an Orthodox priest". Multiple people in this forum have asked you for documentation of your claims about what Eastern Orthodox believe, and you've repeatedly given us answers like the ones above. You refuse to give documentation, and you tell us to speak with an individual Eastern Orthodox instead. But when we quote a priest or some other individual Eastern Orthodox who disagrees with you, you tell us that he doesn't speak for Eastern Orthodoxy. You're trying to have it both ways.
You write:
"What I have done it shown where textual scholarship leads you as a rule of faith."
You've been corrected on this point many times. I've never argued that textual scholarship is my "rule of faith".
You write:
"Regarding EO scholar's opinion on Mark 16 and John 8, firstly I havn't even claimed it is original to John. As far as I know it wasn't."
Then, as I've explained repeatedly, you need to make a case for some other basis on which we should accept the passage. So far, you've refused to do so.
You write:
"And while I have argued that the evidence for the ending of Mark being original is not as cut and dried as Jason is trying to make out, that doesn't mean an orthodox scholar can't believe differently."
You haven't just argued that the evidence isn't as good as I've suggested. Rather, you've argued for the passage's inclusion in the original Mark, even to the point of proposing a scenario in which a "prolific copier" put a large number of bad copies into early circulation. You also argued, earlier on, that sources like Eusebius may have only been addressing a local situation when they commented on the passage's absence in manuscripts. Though you argued that a later addition to the original Mark could be canonical, you also made comments like the following, suggesting that you wanted to argue for the originality of the passage. All of these quotes are from that original thread (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/05/fallen-seraph.html):
"Dean Burgon demonstrated that what Eusebius said 'is palpably untrue'"
"It seems funny to me that I am supposed to be on the backfoot if I want to defend pretty much the entire Greek and Latin manuscript tradition against something from Eusebius."
"I know of no other case in the NT where he [Jerome] included something [in the Vulgate] that he likely considered not original. Jerome himself said that there was another verse of the traditional ending circulating (as preserved in codex Washingtoniansus), but he chose not to include that."
And you made the following comment in response to something I said about whether patristic sources cited your longer ending as part of the original gospel:
"So ECFs are quoting something they DIDN'T think was part of Mark? Puhlease. This careless accusation is getting old."
You also wrote:
"Some people have the theory that Mark died while actually writing the gospel. I find that unlikely but I don't find it unlikely that he died in between writing it and the time when recipients had the opportunity to compare notes."
You spent days and many posts putting forward such arguments. You were defending the view that the longer ending is original. But if you now want to say that the evidence doesn't lean in either direction, or that the ending in question wasn't part of the original Mark, then you're left with the same situation I described above with regard to the passage in John's gospel. If we're to accept the longer ending of Mark on the basis of alleged Eastern Orthodox authority, then where's your case for that alleged authority?
You write:
"None of this affects its canonicity in the Church."
Prove that Eastern Orthodoxy is "the church". Prove that your longer ending of Mark is Divinely inspired scripture for Eastern Orthodoxy.
You write:
"Re inerrancy, the question has never been something the church has pondered much. Like all the traditions handed down, we believe the important things of the faith as authoritative. Where the fuzzy edges might be is not always clear. And given the textual corruption that has happened over the centuries, nobody can actually say that every word is still inerrant in the way a KJVO tries to make out."
First of all, believing in Biblical inerrancy isn't the same as believing in the inerrancy of the text of one translation. The fallibility of modern translations doesn't justify a rejection of Biblical inerrancy or a failure to take a stance on the issue of Biblical inerrancy or a claim that the issue is of only minor significance.
Secondly, the Eastern Orthodox sources I cited don't limit themselves to minor issues. That's an assumption you're making without justification. If the historical accuracy of scripture is as insignificant as you suggest, then why did you criticize Bruce Metzger for being associated with a Bible that refers to some doubts about traditional authorship attributions, for example? If historical and scientific issues like the ones these Eastern Orthodox sources are addressing are minor, then why are we supposed to think that a historical issue like who wrote a Biblical book isn't minor? As Steve Hays has said, you're more double-tongued than a snake. You keep trying to have it both ways, on such a large number of issues.
Third, the sources I quoted don't just say that the issue of Biblical inerrancy is unsettled or of only minor importance. Veselin Kesich, for example, claims that inerrancy "conflicts with the incarnational approach to the Bible, and with the New Testament concept of the synergetic activity of the Holy Spirit". Comments like those of Kesich and Cronk, which I cited at the beginning of this thread, are the sort of comments you've been condemning in modern scholarship. You criticize Bruce Metzger for even acknowledging the existence of scholarly doubts about a traditional authorship attribution of a Biblical book, yet you act as if it's acceptable for Eastern Orthodox like Kesich and Cronk to deny Biblical inerrancy and even argue for the presence of errors in scripture, in addition to questioning the traditional authorship attribution of a book like Daniel. You seem to be more committed to modern Eastern Orthodoxy than you are to the Eastern Orthodoxy of previous generations or the Bible.
When Porphyry argued for a late date for the book of Daniel, the early Christians didn't go along with it or dismiss it as a minor issue. To the contrary:
"What Porphyry wrote about Daniel was so revolutionary, and so disturbing to Christian interpreters, that his critics sought to refute him in detail and at length." (Robert Wilken, The Christians As The Romans Saw Them [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984], p. 138)
Men like Methodius and Jerome wrote at length against Porphyry's claims about Daniel. But when Eastern Orthodox question the dating and authorship of the book, you dismiss it as a minor issue.
And since you've cited the synod of Jerusalem of 1672 in the past, here's what that synod said about the reliability of scripture, which it compared to the reliability of the church:
"We believe the Divine and Sacred Scriptures to be God-taught; and, therefore, we ought to believe the same without doubting; yet not otherwise than as the Catholic Church hath interpreted and delivered the same. For every foul heresy receiveth, indeed, the Divine Scriptures, but perversely interpreteth the same, using metaphors, and homonymies, and sophistries of man's wisdom, confounding what ought to be distinguished, and trifling with what ought not to be trifled with. For if [we were to receive the same] otherwise, each man holding every day a different sense concerning the same, the Catholic Church would not [as she doth] by the grace of Christ continue to be the Church until this day, holding the same <113> doctrine of faith, and always identically and steadfastly believing, but would be rent into innumerable parties, and subject to heresies; neither would the Church be holy, the pillar and ground of the truth, {1 Timothy 3:15} without spot or wrinkle; {Ephesians 5:27} but would be the Church of the malignant {Psalm 25:5} as it is manifest that of the heretics undoubtedly is, and especially that of Calvin, who are not ashamed to learn from the Church, and then to wickedly repudiate her. Wherefore, the witness also of the Catholic Church is, we believe, not of inferior authority to that of the Divine Scriptures. For one and the same Holy Spirit being the author of both, it is quite the same to be taught by the Scriptures and by the Catholic Church. Moreover, when any man speaketh from himself he is liable to err, and to deceive, and be deceived; but the Catholic Church, as never having spoken, or speaking from herself, but from the Spirit of God — who being her teacher, she is ever unfailingly rich — it is impossible for her to in any wise err, or to at all deceive, or be deceived; but like the Divine Scriptures, is infallible, and hath perpetual authority....For as all Scripture is, and is called, the word of the Holy Spirit; not that it was spoken immediately by Him, but that it was spoken by Him through the Apostles and Prophets; so also the Church is taught indeed by the Life-giving Spirit, but through the medium of the holy Fathers and Doctors (whose rule is acknowledged to be the Holy and Œcumenical Synods; for we shall not cease to say this ten thousand times); and, therefore, not only are we persuaded, but do profess as true and undoubtedly certain, that it is impossible for the Catholic Church to err, or at all be deceived, or ever to choose falsehood instead of truth. For the All-holy Spirit continually operating through the holy Fathers and Leaders faithfully ministering, delivereth the Church from error of every kind." (http://users.stargate.net/~elcore/ConfessionOfDositheus.htm, Decree II, Decree XII)
Notice what the synod tells us about the similar authority of scripture and the church:
"For one and the same Holy Spirit being the author of both, it is quite the same to be taught by the Scriptures and by the Catholic Church."
The same synod repeatedly says that the Holy Spirit "delivereth the Church from error of every kind", implying that the same is true of scripture. The synod also distinguishes between error and deceit, between being deceived and deceiving. The synod claims that scripture and the church can't be guilty of either. The Eastern Orthodox I quoted at the beginning of this thread, in contrast, have argued that the Biblical authors could err in what they wrote. Supposedly, they couldn't write deceitfully, but they could write errantly. The distinction these Eastern Orthodox men are making seems to contradict the synod of Jerusalem.
Another source you've recommended is orthodoxinfo.com. At that web site, in an article by John Whiteford, we read:
"Epistles [in the New Testament] were written primarily to answer specific problems that arose in various Churches; thus, things that were assumed and understood by all, and not considered problems were not generally touched upon in any detail. Doctrinal issues that were addressed were generally disputed or misunderstood doctrines...For example, there is no place [in scripture] where the question of the inerrancy of the Scriptures is dealt with in detail, precisely because this was not an issue of dispute. In our present day, with the rise of religious skepticism, this is very much an issue, and if the epistles were being written today, this would certainly be dealt with at some point. It would thus be foolish to conclude that since this issue is not dealt with specifically, that the early Christians did not think it was important or did not believe in it." (http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/tca_solascriptura.aspx)
Notice that Whiteford suggests that the denial of inerrancy is something modern and something the Biblical authors would have condemned and would have considered important if it had arisen in their day. You, in contrast, are arguing that it's a minor issue and are defending other Eastern Orthodox who reject and publicly argue against inerrancy.
In another article at that same web site, Gregory Mathewes-Greene argues against a minimalistic view of the church:
"Besides this problem of deciding what the minimum set of beliefs are, minimalism suffers from three other problems: it results in contradictory and mutually exclusive beliefs, there is no authoritative judge to decide the minimum of beliefs, and it is contrary to the Bible. Minimalism, clearly the dominant American understanding of the Church, results in accepting a variety of beliefs which are contradictory and mutually exclusive. Once you have the minimum, then a variety of additions are all accepted—you may believe in papal infallibility or you may not, you may believe Communion is the Body and Blood of Christ or you may not, you may accept apostolic succession or you may not, you may accept sola scriptura and biblical inerrancy or you may not, etc. Because many of these beliefs contradict one another and are mutually exclusive (you can't both believe in papal infallibility and reject papal infallibility, and you can't both believe the Bible is with out any error and believe the Bible may have some errors), the only option is to say that beyond the minimum of beliefs, whatever additional beliefs you choose to hold are not essential—believe whatever you like. In other words, beyond the minimum there is no absolute, identifiable Truth. Thus, for example, whether or not Communion is the Body and Blood of Christ or whether the pope is infallible is, arguably, irrelevant and, at least from looking at the Christian landscape, can't be determined with certainty. Such a view is not satisfying and leads to disunity in the faith." (http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/aop24.aspx)
Yet, you're arguing that such minimalism on the issue of inerrancy is acceptable.
You write:
"And with other quotes, history of the church is not the Orthodox faith. Within reason, people can believe what they want about history."
But what these Eastern Orthodox sources I've quoted argue about history contradicts what you've argued about it. And in some cases, you've claimed that the historical belief in question is a necessary belief for all Eastern Orthodox. For example, you argued earlier that Eastern Orthodox Tradition teaches that the apostles required every church to have a monarchical episcopate. The Eastern Orthodox I quoted at the beginning of this thread either don't think that every apostolic church had a monarchical episcopate or refer to some churches as still not having one after the time of the apostles.
My citation of John Behr refers to disagreements among Cyprian, Basil of Caesarea, Georges Florovsky, etc. regarding who is in unity with the church and who isn't. You've told us that Protestants don't have unity with each other if they disagree with each other concerning who else they're in unity with. But John Behr's comments demonstrate that Eastern Orthodox (and people you falsely identify as Eastern Orthodox, such as Cyprian) have disagreed with each other about who they are and aren't in unity with.
These quotes I've provided from Eastern Orthodox sources are highly problematic for what you've argued in various discussions at this blog. You often change your arguments in the middle of a discussion, but contradicting yourself is the only way that you can reconcile what these Eastern Orthodox have said with the position you're arguing for. In other words, agreeing with these Eastern Orthodox sources would require you to abandon what you argued previously.
>You said that it would be "silliness" to seek
ReplyDelete>documentation for what you had claimed about
>what Eastern Orthodox believe.
No, I said it was sillyness to come from the starting point of assuming I am wrong until I prove otherwise, instead of assuming I know what Orthodoxy is until you prove otherwise.
>You've been corrected on this point many times.
>I've never argued that textual scholarship is my
>"rule of faith".
You sure do a good imitation of it, appealing to what "most scholars" say as if that is enough reason for your views.
>Then, as I've explained repeatedly, you need to
>make a case for some other basis on which we
>should accept the passage. So far, you've refused
>to do so.
You must be deaf then.
You should accept it for the exact same reason you accept Esther: a consensus from the people of God to have it in their bible.
>You haven't just argued that the evidence isn't as
>good as I've suggested. Rather, you've argued for
>the passage's inclusion in the original Mark, even
>to the point of proposing a scenario in which a
>"prolific copier" put a large number of bad copies
>into early circulation.
That's called taking the counter view to show the weakness of your dogmatic stance.
>You spent days and many posts putting forward
>such arguments. You were defending the view
>that the longer ending is original. But if you now
>want to say that the evidence doesn't lean in
>either direction, or that the ending in question
>wasn't part of the original Mark, then you're left
>with the same situation I described above with
>regard to the passage in John's gospel.
What I'm saying, is what I've said on a lot of issues. If you want to run with the scholars on these issues as your rule of faith, you could go either way on a lot of issues: the ending of Mark, the authorship of Peter, how to interpret Paul, and so on and on. But it won't lead you to any certainty, all it will lead you to scholarly opinion after scholarly opinion, schism after schism.
>Prove that Eastern Orthodoxy is "the church".
>Prove that your longer ending of Mark is Divinely
>inspired scripture for Eastern Orthodoxy.
Prove that the church which the 2nd and 3rd century "ECFs" wrote about was "the church". Maybe the real church was in the catecombs somewhere with a different canon. Maybe the true church was the predecessors of the Oriental Orthodox who have a different canon. Come on, prove, prove, prove. Trot out some more scholars.
>First of all, believing in Biblical inerrancy isn't the
>same as believing in the inerrancy of the text of
>one translation.
I didn't even know we were talking about translations.
>The fallibility of modern translations doesn't >justify a rejection of Biblical inerrancy or a failure
>to take a stance on the issue of Biblical inerrancy
>or a claim that the issue is of only minor
>significance.
I realise why it is such a big issue for protestantism, but your problems are not our problems.
Furthermore, as I pointed out, if you are contrasting it to the orthodox you quoted, the difference is functionally irrelevant, being as it is that you do not possess the autographs.
>If the historical accuracy of scripture is as
>insignificant as you suggest, then why did you
>criticize Bruce Metzger for being associated with
>a Bible that refers to some doubts about
>traditional authorship attributions, for example?
There's a bit of a difference between saying that a name here and there could be wrong (which is a simple fact, given the textual variants. Arguing the "why" about what is already agreed upon), and saying that "some" things in Genesis go back to Moses or "2 Peter was drawn up in Peter's name".
In the former case, the question is merely between whether God made the autograph correct but couldn't be bothered preserving it, or whether he didn't bother to make correct minor details about what is not part of the faith to begin with. You've got to pick one, and neither is intrinsically more pius than the other. Maybe you do think one is more pius. That's fine, but it is still functionally the same in the here and now.
>As Steve Hays has said, you're more double-
>tongued than a snake. You keep trying to have it
>both ways, on such a large number of issues.
LOL, as if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. You've been telling us we can know the canon from a consensus of God's people, but you can't tell us how to identify those people and you won't accept the consensus that exists, and when I point out a consensus you say "but you can't prove that, we don't know that" blah blah.
>Third, the sources I quoted don't just say that
>the issue of Biblical inerrancy is unsettled or of
>only minor importance. Veselin Kesich, for
>example, claims that inerrancy "conflicts with the
>incarnational approach to the Bible, and with the
>New Testament concept of the synergetic activity
>of the Holy Spirit".
That someone claims that a particular view on an question conflicts with an important principle, does not prove that the question in itself is important. Not everything that is impacted by important principles is in itself important.
>yet you act as if it's acceptable for Eastern
>Orthodox like Kesich and Cronk to deny Biblical
>inerrancy and even argue for the presence of
>errors in scripture, in addition to questioning the
>traditional authorship attribution of a book like
>Daniel.
Pick up the bible in front of you. Are there any errors in it? Yes or No? I don't intend to expend a lot of words when there is hypocrisy at work.
And I don't need to defend everything every scholar says who is orthodox. What makes you think I need to do that?
>The synod also distinguishes between error and
>deceit, between being deceived and deceiving.
>The synod claims that scripture and the church
>can't be guilty of either. The Eastern Orthodox I
>quoted at the beginning of this thread, in
>contrast, have argued that the Biblical authors
>could err in what they wrote. Supposedly, they
>couldn't write deceitfully, but they could write
>errantly. The distinction these Eastern Orthodox
>men are making seems to contradict the synod
>of Jerusalem.
"Scriptures" always means "scriptures", not "the autograph". Jerusalem does not address questions of the autograph. Neither did Jesus quote the scriptures saying "subject to possible textual corruption, God tells us....".
What Jerusalem means is that the scriptures do not err concerning the faith, neither does the catholic church. Had they meant that the scriptures never have error, they would be clearly wrong since copies contradict each other. But what you are doing is overlaying your "autograph only" theology onto Orthodoxy. The Church, whether from Jesus onwards, has never restricted infallibility to only the autograph. This is a modern protestant distinction.
>Another source you've recommended is
>orthodoxinfo.com. At that web site, in an article
>by John Whiteford, we read: It would thus be >foolish to conclude that since this issue is not
>dealt with specifically, that the early Christians
>did not think it was important or did not believe
>in it.
Obviously, what he means is that the scripture is inerrant concerning The Faith. Clearly the early Christians knew the scriptures were errant concerning minor details, because they were aware of the textual variants just like we are. Nobody in the early church made a distinction between the scriptures and the autograph regarding inerrancy. Again, doctines regarding the autograph are merely time wasting naval gazing since we do not possess it. The issue is, and has always been its infallibility regarding the faith.
>But what these Eastern Orthodox sources I've
>quoted argue about history contradicts what
>you've argued about it. And in some cases,
>you've claimed that the historical belief in
>question is a necessary belief for all Eastern
>Orthodox. For example, you argued earlier that
>Eastern Orthodox Tradition teaches that the
>apostles required every church to have a
>monarchical episcopate.
Are you deaf? What did I just say? "history of the church is not the Orthodox faith. Within reason, people can believe what they want about history."
That I argued a particular view does not mean that everyone else is compelled to do so.
>but contradicting yourself is the only way that
>you can reconcile what these Eastern Orthodox
>have said with the position you're arguing for. In
>other words, agreeing with these Eastern
>Orthodox sources would require you to abandon
>what you argued previously.
Nonsense. Your problem is that you interpret everything I say through your protestant world view, not to mention your polemical world view about what Orthodoxy is and what it should be.
Orthodox wrote:
ReplyDelete"No, I said it was sillyness to come from the starting point of assuming I am wrong until I prove otherwise, instead of assuming I know what Orthodoxy is until you prove otherwise."
No, you didn't say that earlier. You're contradicting yourself again. You told us that it was unreasonable for us to even ask you for documentation. Here, again, is what you wrote in that other thread (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/03/in-another-thread-orthodox-wrote.html):
"I find it a little odd that no-one seems to want to believe what I tell them Orthodox believe. It's not likely I'm going to go to a protestant and challenge them on what their denomination believes....It's kind of like if I went into an independent baptist church that eschews any creeds and confessions, hearing the mention of the 'trinity' in the prayers, and then bugging and pestering the members to 'prove' that their definition of the trinity is the official baptist version. It's pure sillyness."
"Again, you're approaching this with your own presuppositions about what ought to be documented, and how. If you don't believe me, go ask an orthodox priest."
If you said that it's "silliness" to ask people to prove something they claim about their denomination's beliefs, and you said that it's a false "presupposition" to think that their claims about their denomination's beliefs "ought to be documented", then you weren't just claiming that it's unreasonable to assume that people are wrong in such claims. Rather, you were saying that it's unreasonable to ask for documentation. People don't have to assume that you're wrong in order to want documentation for your claims. You didn't want to give documentation. You said that the request was unreasonable.
You write:
"You sure do a good imitation of it, appealing to what 'most scholars' say as if that is enough reason for your views."
Prove it.
You write:
"You should accept it for the exact same reason you accept Esther: a consensus from the people of God to have it in their bible."
As I've explained to you repeatedly, text and canon aren't the same issue. We have Old Testament precedent for trusting a canonical consensus. We have no such precedent for trusting a textual consensus. And the consensus you're appealing to is a later consensus that contradicts an earlier one. Why should we follow the later consensus instead of the one that occurred earlier?
The people who accepted the longer ending of Mark in later centuries included it with the gospel of Mark. And the minority who refer to it positively in some sense in the earlier centuries include it with the gospel of Mark. Irenaeus refers to it as part of the gospel. Thus, you need to explain why most of the earlier manuscripts don't include your longer ending within the gospel, as sources like Eusebius and Jerome explain. You keep telling us that the earliest Christians might have accepted the longer ending as scripture without including it in their copies of Mark, but that wasn't the practice of the minority of sources who refer positively to the passage in the earliest centuries (Irenaeus, for example), and it wasn't the practice of the people who accepted the passage later. Your suggestion that people were accepting the longer ending as scripture early on, but were leaving it out of their copies of Mark, is dubious. As I explained to you earlier, the passage was discussed in early church history in the context of the ending of Mark's gospel. It would be unlikely that people would accept the passage as scripture, yet place it somewhere other than at the end of Mark.
Since you've told us that a later consensus can't overturn an earlier one, you can't ignore the exclusion of your longer ending of Mark from the earliest manuscripts. Speculating that people might have considered that ending scripture anyway, despite leaving it out of their copies of Mark, isn't enough. Such a scenario is unlikely, given the factors mentioned above and given what sources like Eusebius and Jerome tell us about the nature of the passage. As I explained to you earlier, Eusebius and Jerome comment that it's acceptable for Christians to reject the longer ending as not being scripture. The reason they cite for that acceptable rejection of the passage is its absence in the early manuscripts. If the early Christians weren't suggesting any position on this issue by leaving the passage out of their manuscripts, as you're now claiming, and the passage had been established as scripture by a consensus acceptance even without being included in their copies of Mark, then why would men like Eusebius and Jerome think that Christians were free to reject the scriptural status of the passage, and why would they cite the passage's absence from early manuscripts as a justification?
Furthermore, I don't see much consistency between your assumptions about church infallibility and your position on Biblical inerrancy. On the one hand, you tell us that scripture can err on some matters, and you defend Eastern Orthodox sources who claim that scripture needs to be correct only on some issues of a more significant nature. On the other hand, you tell us that the church must be correct even on a textual issue like the inclusion of several verses in one of the gospels. On the one hand, you tell us that when Eastern Orthodox disagree about the canonicity of an entire book of the Apocrypha, that's just a minor disagreement. On the other hand, you want us to believe that the scriptural status of several verses in Mark (not an entire book) is so significant that it must be covered by the church's alleged infallibility. Why don't you explain why we're supposed to believe all of these arbitrary and inconsistent assertions you've been making?
You write:
"That's called taking the counter view to show the weakness of your dogmatic stance."
How is taking the position that the passage probably wasn't part of the original gospel of Mark, a position the large majority of textual scholars take, a "dogmatic stance"? And, as I've documented, you didn't just say that you were "taking the counter view to show the weakness" of my position. You repeatedly said that it would be unreasonable to read the evidence as people who reject the originality of Mark 16:9-20 read it.
If you supposedly weren't arguing against my position, but were only arguing against the "dogmatism" of it, then why don't you tell us what position you do take? I don't believe your claim that you weren't arguing for the originality of the passage. But, assuming that you weren't arguing for it, then what position do you take? That the evidence doesn't lean in either direction? That my position is correct, even though I allegedly express it too "dogmatically"? If you take one of those two positions, then why has it taken you so long to tell us so? Why are you so duplicitous?
You write:
"What I'm saying, is what I've said on a lot of issues. If you want to run with the scholars on these issues as your rule of faith, you could go either way on a lot of issues: the ending of Mark, the authorship of Peter, how to interpret Paul, and so on and on. But it won't lead you to any certainty, all it will lead you to scholarly opinion after scholarly opinion, schism after schism."
As I've told you repeatedly, the fact that I cite scholarly sources in the process of making my arguments doesn't prove that I believe what I believe on the basis of scholarly opinion alone. Why can you cite or rely on the Catholic Encyclopedia, John Burgon, patristic documents translated by scholars, etc. without being guilty of what you describe above, yet I'm guilty of what you describe above when I cite scholars or rely on them in some other manner?
You write:
"Prove that the church which the 2nd and 3rd century 'ECFs' wrote about was 'the church'. Maybe the real church was in the catecombs somewhere with a different canon."
I'm asking you to prove your claim that the church in the historical record is Eastern Orthodoxy, as you've repeatedly claimed. Your arguments in this forum have frequently depended on that claim, which you've refused to justify. And now you're comparing your failure to justify your claim about the historical church with my failure to prove that "the real church" wasn't in the catacombs with a different canon of scripture. Since this is the first time you've asked me to prove such a thing, the two requests for evidence aren't comparable. If some "real church" followed a canon without leaving any traces in the historical record that would lead us to identify and accept that canon, then we can't identify and accept such a canon in the historical record. Are you suggesting that the situation with Eastern Orthodoxy is comparable?
If you're too ignorant and undiscerning to know the answer to your question about the "real church" you refer to, then let me explain to you why people generally don't assume the existence of large groups of people who leave no trace in the historical record. First of all, the absence of evidence for this "real church" you refer to gives us no reason to believe in it. Secondly, the early Christian sources acknowledge the existence of many groups they disagree with, including groups they viewed in a highly negative manner, so I see no reason to think that they would be silent about some "real church" in the catacombs with a different canon. Third, the extant Christian sources wouldn't have all had sufficient motive or opportunity to oppose this "real church" or to suppress all mention of this "real church" or evidence of its existence. The early Christians generally had high moral standards, some of them suffered and died for what they believed, and they often acknowledged their canonical disagreements with people rather than suppressing evidence of such disagreements. Fourth, the early non-Christian sources wouldn't have the motives needed to remain silent about such people. Fifth, if these people existed in the catacombs (Didn't they ever come out and interact with the rest of the world?), they didn't leave any traces of their existence (as you define them above) in the catacomb records we have. I could say more, but I doubt that it's necessary.
You write:
"Come on, prove, prove, prove."
What do you think discussions like these are for? Expressing our emotions? Expressing our fideism? If you don't want to make an objective case for the system of authority you keep appealing to, then you shouldn't be participating in discussions like the ones you keep participating in here. And you ought to apologize to the readers for wasting their time. If you aren't interested in making an objective case for your brand of Eastern Orthodoxy, then taking up so much of our time with unargued assertions is unreasonable.
You write:
"Furthermore, as I pointed out, if you are contrasting it to the orthodox you quoted, the difference is functionally irrelevant, being as it is that you do not possess the autographs."
We can reach conclusions regarding what the autographs probably (high probability in most cases) said without possessing the autographs. A rejection of Biblical inerrancy means that what the Bible is telling us could be wrong even if we have the inspired text. The Eastern Orthodox sources I cited didn't just say that we might not have the original text of the Bible. Rather, they said that the original text can be in error. That's not a "functionally irrelevant" difference. If it was "functionally irrelevant", then Eastern Orthodox scholars like Veselin Kesich wouldn't be arguing against inerrancy in the manner I documented.
You write:
"There's a bit of a difference between saying that a name here and there could be wrong (which is a simple fact, given the textual variants. Arguing the 'why' about what is already agreed upon), and saying that 'some' things in Genesis go back to Moses or '2 Peter was drawn up in Peter's name'."
If scripture can be wrong about historical matters, then why should we think it's unacceptable to question a historical authorship attribution? And why are you ignoring what I documented regarding the questioning of the authorship of the book of Daniel by Eastern Orthodox sources?
You write:
"In the former case, the question is merely between whether God made the autograph correct but couldn't be bothered preserving it, or whether he didn't bother to make correct minor details about what is not part of the faith to begin with. You've got to pick one, and neither is intrinsically more pius than the other."
The Biblical authors teach that all of scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:15-17). Jesus refers to every portion of scripture as reliable (Matthew 5:17-18, Luke 24:25-27), and Jesus and the Biblical authors repeatedly refer to the historical accounts of scripture as if they're describing actual events. They don't express a view of scripture comparable to the one we see in modern opponents of Biblical inerrancy, like the Eastern Orthodox sources I cited. If both the later copies of scripture and the original revelation are errant, then how do you justify such a high view of scripture on the part of Jesus and the Biblical authors? Viewing the original revelation as inerrant, whereas later copies of scripture aren't, makes sense of the high view of scripture reflected in the Bible itself. Rejecting the inerrancy of both doesn't.
Not all people in ancient times held the sort of high view of scripture that we find in the Bible itself, but it was the prominent view of the earliest Christians. Clement of Rome, writing around the time of the apostles, comments:
"Look carefully into the Scriptures, which are the true utterances of the Holy Spirit. Observe that nothing of an unjust or counterfeit character is written in them." (First Clement, 45)
Justin Martyr wrote:
"if you have done so because you imagined that you could throw doubt on the passage [of scripture], in order that I might say the Scriptures contradicted each other, you have erred. But I shall not venture to suppose or to say such a thing; and if a Scripture which appears to be of such a kind be brought forward, and if there be a pretext for saying that it is contrary to some other, since I am entirely convinced that no Scripture contradicts another, I shall admit rather that I do not understand what is recorded, and shall strive to persuade those who imagine that the Scriptures are contradictory, to be rather of the same opinion as myself." (Dialogue With Trypho, 65)
Irenaeus wrote:
"the Scriptures are indeed perfect, since they were spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit...If, therefore, even with respect to creation, there are some things the knowledge of which belongs only to God, and others which come within the range of our own knowledge, what ground is there for complaint, if, in regard to those things which we investigate in the Scriptures (which are throughout spiritual), we are able by the grace of God to explain some of them, while we must leave others in the hands of God, and that not only in the present world, but also in that which is to come, so that God should for ever teach, and man should for ever learn the things taught him by God?...If, therefore, according to the rule which I have stated, we leave some questions in the hands of God, we shall both preserve our faith uninjured, and shall continue without danger; and all Scripture, which has been given to us by God, shall be found by us perfectly consistent; and the parables shall harmonize with those passages which are perfectly plain; and those statements the meaning of which is clear, shall serve to explain the parables; and through the many diversified utterances of Scripture there shall be heard one harmonious melody in us, praising in hymns that God who created all things." (Against Heresies, 2:28:2-3)
Tertullian:
"The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be discordant with truth." (A Treatise On The Soul, 21)
Methodius:
"there is no contradiction nor absurdity in the Holy Scriptures" (From The Discourse On The Resurrection, 1:9)
Gregory Nazianzen comments:
"We however, who extend the accuracy of the Spirit to the merest stroke and tittle [Matthew 5:18], will never admit the impious assertion that even the smallest matters were dealt with haphazard by those who have recorded them, and have thus been borne in mind down to the present day: on the contrary, their purpose has been to supply memorials and instructions for our consideration under similar circumstances, should such befall us, and that the examples of the past might serve as rules and models, for our warning and imitation." (Oration 2:105)
Augustine wrote:
"For I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it. As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason. I believe, my brother, that this is your own opinion as well as mine. I do not need to say that I do not suppose you to wish your books to be read like those of prophets or of apostles, concerning which it would be wrong to doubt that they are free from error." (Letter 82:1:3)
Augustine doesn't limit inerrancy to some subjects while allowing error elsewhere. Augustine places belief in a Biblical account of Elijah's life in the same category as belief in concepts such as the virgin birth:
"To give you in a word, without argument, the true reason of our faith, as regards Elias having been caught up to heaven from the earth, though only a man, and as regards Christ being truly born of a virgin, and truly dying on the cross, our belief in both cases is grounded on the declaration of Holy Scripture, which it is piety to believe, and impiety to disbelieve." (Reply To Faustus The Manichaean, 26:6)
And elsewhere Augustine contrasts the possibility of errors on "obscure and recondite matters" in common human writings with the lack of such errors in scripture:
"As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises. For we are of those of whom the apostle says: 'And if you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.' Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. In order to leave room for such profitable discussions of difficult questions, there is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The authority of these books has come down to us from the apostles through the successions of bishops and the extension of the Church, and, from a position of lofty supremacy, claims the submission of every faithful and pious mind. If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood. In the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as in Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself. In other books the reader may form his own opinion, and perhaps, from not understanding the writer, may differ from him, and may pronounce in favor of what pleases him, or against what he dislikes. In such cases, a man is at liberty to withhold his belief, unless there is some clear demonstration or some canonical authority to show that the doctrine or statement either must or may be true. But in consequence of the distinctive peculiarity of the sacred writings, we are bound to receive as true whatever the canon shows to have been said by even one prophet, or apostle, or evangelist." (Reply To Faustus The Manichaean, 11:5)
Many more examples could be cited. The patristic scholar J.N.D. Kelly comments that "This attitude was fairly widespread, and although some of the fathers elaborated it more than others, their general view was that Scripture was not only exempt from error but contained nothing that was superfluous." (Early Christian Doctrines [New York: Continuum, 2003], p. 61) As I said before, you seem more interested in defending modern Eastern Orthodoxy than in defending the Bible or ancient Christianity.
You write:
"That someone claims that a particular view on an question conflicts with an important principle, does not prove that the question in itself is important. Not everything that is impacted by important principles is in itself important."
Your second sentence above is addressing a different issue than the first. Something can be "impacted" without "conflicting".
If you want to dismiss Biblical inerrancy as unimportant, then you're disagreeing with the Eastern Orthodox sources I cited who refer to it as an important issue. And you've criticized Protestants for disagreeing about what's important and what isn't. Why, then, is it acceptable for Eastern Orthodox to disagree in such a manner?
You write:
"And I don't need to defend everything every scholar says who is orthodox."
You've already decided to defend the acceptability of what these scholars wrote about inerrancy. You should be ashamed of yourself.
If you want to know why I quoted these scholars, then go read my first post in this thread again. I explained the relevance of the quotes there.
You write:
"What Jerusalem means is that the scriptures do not err concerning the faith, neither does the catholic church. Had they meant that the scriptures never have error, they would be clearly wrong since copies contradict each other."
I documented that the synod of Jerusalem said that scripture doesn't err in any way. Your interpretation is that what the synod meant is that scripture doesn't err in some ways. That's an unreasonable interpretation.
And your assumption that "scripture" must include copies of scripture doesn't make sense. People who believe in Biblical inerrancy, like me, regularly speak in the same manner that the synod of Jerusalem did. That's why we refer to "Biblical inerrancy" without intending to include all copies of the Bible in the term "Biblical".
Furthermore, just as copies of scripture can contain errors on lesser matters, they can contain errors on more significant matters. A copy of scripture can leave out "not" in "you shall not commit adultery". Such mistakes of a major nature have occurred in some copies of scripture. Thus, if you're going to argue that the synod of Jerusalem was including copies of scripture when it referred to scripture, then the synod was mistaken. Some copies of scripture not only contain mistakes regarding minor issues, but contain mistakes regarding major issues as well. Your proposed interpretation of the synod of Jerusalem is ridiculous.
You write:
"Obviously, what he means is that the scripture is inerrant concerning The Faith."
No, that's not "obvious". Prove your assertion. The common definition of "Biblical inerrancy" is that it excludes all errors in the original, not just some. To interpret "inerrant" as meaning "incapable of error on some issues, but capable of error on others" is less natural. When Gregory Mathewes-Greene refers to "inerrancy" in the sense that the Bible is "without any error", it makes no sense to assume that he means "without any error on some subjects". You're giving us no reason to agree with your interpretation of the two Eastern Orthodox sources I cited.
You write:
"Nobody in the early church made a distinction between the scriptures and the autograph regarding inerrancy."
You're mistaken. To begin with, people who believe in inerrancy don't distinguish between "scripture" and "the autograph", so I don't know what you're referring to. They do distinguish between fallible copies of scripture and the original revelation. Augustine does the same in my citation of him above. Similarly, Jerome approves of correcting the copies of scripture while acknowledging that the original is without error:
"I am not, I repeat, so ignorant as to suppose that any of the Lord's words is either in need of correction or is not divinely inspired; but the Latin manuscripts of the Scriptures are proved to be faulty by the variations which all of them exhibit, and my object has been to restore them to the form of the Greek original, from which my detractors do not deny that they have been translated. If they dislike water drawn from the clear spring, let them drink of the muddy streamlet, and when they come to read the Scriptures, let them lay aside the keen eye which they turn on woods frequented by game-birds and waters abounding in shellfish." (Letter 27:1)
Ahem,
ReplyDeleteThe synod of Jerusalem was in 1672. If the synod meant that Scripture was inerrant in some things and not all, and the inerrant things = "the Faith." Then, what is "The Faith."
Also, this was 1672. Was that view of inerrancy common anywhere in Christendom? Why would that view of inerrancy be at such variance with other views of that era? They would be buying into burgeoning Enlightenment rationalism, but that's simply too early, and the Orthodox typically point to the apostasy due to the Enlightenment as a major problem in the Western churches of that period. But, if Orthodox is correct, then Orthodoxy was "ahead of the curve" and shared common cause with those who would later lead the great apostasy of Western Europe. That simply doesn't make sense.
It makes more sense to place the Synod's declaration on Scripture in the context of that which it was called to refute and with whom it was declared to share common cause, since, in the disputes between Protestants and Catholics, both sides frequently appealed to the testimony of the Eastern arm of the Church. Thus, while refuting an internal group within Orthodoxy, the synod also states some common cause with the West, and, I might add, this synod is often accused of being cozy with Rome. Was the definition of inerrancy common to Rome of that era?
>People don't have to assume that you're wrong in
ReplyDelete>order to want documentation for your claims. You
>didn't want to give documentation. You said that
>the request was unreasonable.
I didn't say it was silly to want documentation, I said it was silly to demand documentation, as if you could assume I was wrong about what my own church believed until it was documented.
>>"You sure do a good imitation of it, appealing to >what 'most scholars' say as if that is enough
>>reason for your views."
>
>Prove it.
Your appeals to the number of scholars who promote a viewpoint as an argument is here for all to see.
>We have Old Testament precedent for trusting a
>canonical consensus. We have no such precedent
>for trusting a textual consensus.
Again, there is no mention in scripture of a canonical consensus. If you want to make leaps of logic, one might just as well say that the Septuagint was a canonical consensus since it is almost always the version quoted.
>And the consensus you're appealing to is a later
>consensus that contradicts an earlier one. Why
>should we follow the later consensus instead of
>the one that occurred earlier?
But you have not proven your thesis that there was EVER a consensus of Mark not having ch 16. You've put forward some evidence that it may have been a minority, but that is not consensus.
>You keep telling us that the earliest Christians
>might have accepted the longer ending as
>scripture without including it in their copies of
>Mark
I never said such a thing.
>Your suggestion that people were accepting the
>longer ending as scripture early on, but were
>leaving it out of their copies of Mark, is dubious
I never said that either.
>Since you've told us that a later consensus can't
>overturn an earlier one, you can't ignore the
>exclusion of your longer ending of Mark from
>the earliest manuscripts.
Two manuscripts, as far as I have direct evidence of.
>As I explained to you earlier, Eusebius and
>Jerome comment that it's acceptable for
>Christians to reject the longer ending as not
>being scripture.
You won't tell us if you are equally happy for people to omit 2 Peter because some ECFs said it was acceptable.
>If the early Christians weren't suggesting any
>position on this issue by leaving the passage out
>of their manuscripts, as you're now claiming, and
>the passage had been established as scripture by
>a consensus acceptance even without being
>included in their copies of Mark, then why would
>men like Eusebius and Jerome think that
>Christians were free to reject the scriptural
>status of the passage, and why would they cite
>the passage's absence from early manuscripts as
>a justification?
I never said it must have been a consensus by Jerome's time.
>Furthermore, I don't see much consistency
>between your assumptions about church
>infallibility and your position on Biblical
>inerrancy. On the one hand, you tell us that
>scripture can err on some matters, and you
>defend Eastern Orthodox sources who claim that
>scripture needs to be correct only on some
>issues of a more significant nature. On the other
>hand, you tell us that the church must be correct
>even on a textual issue like the inclusion of
>several verses in one of the gospels. On the one
>hand, you tell us that when Eastern Orthodox
>disagree about the canonicity of an entire book
>of the Apocrypha, that's just a minor
>disagreement. On the other hand, you want us to
>believe that the scriptural status of several
>verses in Mark (not an entire book) is so
>significant that it must be covered by the
>church's alleged infallibility. Why don't you
>explain why we're supposed to believe all of
>these arbitrary and inconsistent assertions
>you've been making?
There is a very simple test. If the Church has agreed on something concerning the Faith, it is part of the Tradition, and it is true.
>How is taking the position that the passage
>probably wasn't part of the original gospel of
>Mark, a position the large majority of textual
>scholars take, a "dogmatic stance"?
So now it's only "probably" not part of the original? This is the first time I've seen you say "problably". Before you were telling us point blank it wasn't original.
>You repeatedly said that it would be
>unreasonable to read the evidence as people who
>reject the originality of Mark 16:9-20 read it.
No I didn't say that. What I may have said is that it is unreasonable to rely on your own historical insight to determine its canonicity.
>what position do you take?
My position is that it is not up to me to decide its canonicity, and I argued the opposing view to you to show up the weakness of relying on your historical theory of proving the canon.
>Why can you cite or rely on the Catholic
>Encyclopedia, John Burgon, patristic documents
>translated by scholars, etc. without being guilty
>of what you describe above, yet I'm guilty of
>what you describe above when I cite scholars or
>rely on them in some other manner?
Because I quote these scholars to show you how they all disagree, and thus relying on scholars is fraught with danger.
>If you're too ignorant and undiscerning to know
>the answer to your question about the "real
>church" you refer to, then let me explain to you
>why people generally don't assume the existence
>of large groups of people who leave no trace in
>the historical record. First of all, the absence of
>evidence for this "real church" you refer to gives
>us no reason to believe in it. Secondly, the early
>Christian sources acknowledge the existence of
>many groups they disagree with, including
>groups they viewed in a highly negative manner,
>so I see no reason to think that they would be
>silent about some "real church" in the catacombs
>with a different canon. Third, the extant
>Christian sources wouldn't have all had sufficient
>motive or opportunity to oppose this "real
>church" or to suppress all mention of this "real
>church" or evidence of its existence. The early
>Christians generally had high moral standards,
>some of them suffered and died for what they
>believed, and they often acknowledged their
>canonical disagreements with people rather than
>suppressing evidence of such disagreements.
>Fourth, the early non-Christian sources wouldn't
>have the motives needed to remain silent about
>such people. Fifth, if these people existed in the
>catacombs (Didn't they ever come out and
>interact with the rest of the world?), they didn't
>leave any traces of their existence (as you define
>them above) in the catacomb records we have.
AH HUH! EXACTLY!
BUT YOU CLAIM THAT THE TRUE CHURCH DID NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH, BUT YOU CAN'T TELL US WHERE IT WAS ALL THOSE CENTURIES.
This tells us something about the bankruptcy of your position.
>>"Come on, prove, prove, prove."
>
>What do you think discussions like these are for?
>Expressing our emotions? Expressing our
>fideism? If you don't want to make an objective
>case for the system of authority you keep
>appealing to, then you shouldn't be participating
>in discussions like the ones you keep
>participating in here.
LOL. The point is that having a separate system of authority of every tiny bit of your rule of faith is a losing proposition. One minute your rule of faith is proven by Jerome. On the next point, it is contradicted by Jerome but approved by Josephus. On the next point he contradicts you, but Metzger makes a good argument.
My whole point is that I can't prove everything. I can't prove every book of scripture historically. I can't always prove that my interpretation of paedo-baptism in the bible is better or worse than another. There is much I can't prove. Sometimes I can ascribe a slight probability one way or the other, which leans me in a certain direction, but by trying to prove everything, the only thing I can know for sure is that I am wrong about many things. At least that would be the case if I was reliant on my own fallible self for what I believe.
>We can reach conclusions regarding what the
>autographs probably (high probability in most
>cases) said without possessing the autographs.
Firstly, you overestimate your ability to know what the autographs said, especially for the old testament.
Secondly, the whole point of infallibility and inerrancy is not about "probability", it is about 100% certainty. What is the difference between believing 99.99% was correct originally, but now we are only certain of 90% of the text, compared to saying it was all originally 100% correctt, and now we are certain of 90% of the text?
Thirdly, since you seem to be in the Metzger school of textual criticism which assumes that the variant most obviously in error is original, how much consistency is there really in your position?
Fourthly, it doesn't matter what I think on these matters, since we are referencing the opinions of these scholars you chose to cite, so to prove a functional difference, you'd have to know more about what they believe.
>A rejection of Biblical inerrancy means that what
>the Bible is telling us could be wrong even if we
>have the inspired text.
You don't have the autographical text, so the point is moot.
>The Eastern Orthodox sources I cited didn't just
>say that we might not have the original text of
>the Bible. Rather, they said that the original text
>can be in error. That's not a "functionally
>irrelevant" difference.
Explain to us how it is not functionally the same. While you are at it, tell us infallibly tell us whether in Acts 12:25, did they go out of Jerusalem, did they go into Jerusalem, or did they go into Antioch?
>If scripture can be wrong about historical
>matters, then why should we think it's
>unacceptable to question a historical authorship
>attribution?
It's the difference between Paul turning up at your 1st century church and making a mistake about a minor detail in his recounting a story of his travels, and someone turning up at your church and fraudulently ascribing a set of teachings as coming from Peter. The difference is like night and day.
>And why are you ignoring what I documented
>regarding the questioning of the authorship of
>the book of Daniel by Eastern Orthodox sources?
Why did you ignore my answer? I don't feel the need to defend everything that everybody who is orthodox ever said.
>If both the later copies of scripture and the
>original revelation are errant, then how do you
>justify such a high view of scripture on the part
>of Jesus and the Biblical authors?
Good question. Since errors of the kind cited above in Acts 12:25 exist, where we know that clearly that the scriptures have errors, we are faced with the following possibilities:
a) Jesus and the apostles were ignorant.
b) Scribes were infallible until Jesus' time, then it all fell apart.
c) Jason doesn't understand the stance of Jesus and the apostles.
(a) is intenable. (b) is contradicted by everything we know. Looks like (c) is it.
[snip a lot of quotatins from ECFs about scripture]
Uh huh, you've got some quotations from the early church stating a high view of scripture. But there's another source about what the early Christians thought, and that is the scribes themselves. Judging by all the variants, it looks like a lot of scribes were taking a shot at fixing "errors" in the text. Of course we might say they were making it worse, but obviously the people who brought you the text you have today were also believing in correcting the text. An unpalatable situation perhaps, but undeniably true.
>I documented that the synod of Jerusalem said
>that scripture doesn't err in any way. Your
>interpretation is that what the synod meant is
>that scripture doesn't err in some ways. That's an
>unreasonable interpretation.
So we are faced with a few possibilities:
(a) Jerusalem was ignorant of errors in the scriptures like Acts 12:25.
(b) Jason doesn't understand the context and position of Jerusalem.
I know which one I'm going with.
>People who believe in Biblical inerrancy, like me,
>regularly speak in the same manner that the
>synod of Jerusalem did.
People like you come from a long line of protestants who have spoken in terms of the autograph being inerrant. This is the lens of tradition through which you see inerrancy.
>Furthermore, just as copies of scripture can
>contain errors on lesser matters, they can
>contain errors on more significant matters. A
>copy of scripture can leave out "not" in "you shall
>not commit adultery". Such mistakes of a major
>nature have occurred in some copies of
>scripture. Thus, if you're going to argue that the
>synod of Jerusalem was including copies of
>scripture when it referred to scripture, then the
>synod was mistaken.
I doubt they had in mind anything like a 1631 edition of the KJV. They were thinking of the normative case, not pathalogical situations.
Remember, this is before anybody had much interest in textual criticism to recover the "original text". Some people knew about variants and contradictions, but didn't generally worry about them much.
>To begin with, people who believe in inerrancy
>don't distinguish between "scripture" and "the
>autograph", so I don't know what you're referring
>to. They do distinguish between fallible copies of
>scripture and the original revelation.
So you don't have the scriptures, all you have is fallible copies of the scriptures. I wonder why Jesus didn't stand up in the synogogue and say "my fallible copy of the scriptures say".....
What is more pius, to believe you have scriptures that are now infallible concerning the faith, or to believe you have copies of scriptures which were infallible, but now we may have copies that may be teaching heresy?
orthodox said...
ReplyDeleteSo you don't have the scriptures, all you have is fallible copies of the scriptures. I wonder why Jesus didn't stand up in the synogogue and say "my fallible copy of the scriptures say".....
What is more pius, to believe you have scriptures that are now infallible concerning the faith, or to believe you have copies of scriptures which were infallible, but now we may have copies that may be teaching heresy?
*****************
So point us to the infallible edition of the Bible in the Orthodox church.
Debating "Orthodox" is just like debating a member of the Jesus Seminar. The only difference between "Orthodox" and Dominic Crossan is that Orthodox crosses himself from right to left while Crossan does so from left to right.
ReplyDeleteMy position is that it is not up to me to decide its canonicity, and I argued the opposing view to you to show up the weakness of relying on your historical theory of proving the canon.
ReplyDeleteThis is obviously fallacious, because in deciding that the EO is the one true church, you had to exercise private judgment and you also decided that the EO was correct on the canon, even though you have yet to demonstrate either proposition.
BUT YOU CLAIM THAT THE TRUE CHURCH DID NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH, BUT YOU CAN'T TELL US WHERE IT WAS ALL THOSE CENTURIES.
Protestants have no such burden of proof to discharge. Scripture does not say that there is one true, visible entity called the Eastern Orthodox Church and none of our confessions make the claim that there is one true visible church that has existed indefectibly for all ages, except the universal or "invisible" church. Nor does Scripture say that there is one true visible entity called "the Church." Rather, the OT depicts a faithful remnant amidst an unfaithful covenant community. This is analogous to the dogmatic construct called the "universal opr invisible church." Likewise, the NT does not depict a lone monolithic visible institution called "the Church." The NT depicts a collection of individual local churches that may or may not have been organized into something close to presbyterys in modern "churchspeak." We are only obligated to point out that "the 'one true church' is composed of all those persons justified by faith alone in Christ alone who persevered to the end in each subsequent generation," who may or may not have been organized into visible, local churches. You, on the other hand, have the burden of proof to prove that the NT depicts a church that is EO and no other. Don't pawn off your burden of proof on us, since we don't make the claim you say we must prove in the above statement.
My whole point is that I can't prove everything. I can't prove every book of scripture historically. I can't always prove that my interpretation of paedo-baptism in the bible is better or worse than another. There is much I can't prove. Sometimes I can ascribe a slight probability one way or the other, which leans me in a certain direction, but by trying to prove everything, the only thing I can know for sure is that I am wrong about many things. At least that would be the case if I was reliant on my own fallible self for what I believe.
Thank you for this frank admission, for it is tantamount to agreeing to your rule of faith not being superior to ours.
Secondly, the whole point of infallibility and inerrancy is not about "probability", it is about 100% certainty. What is the difference between believing 99.99% was correct originally, but now we are only certain of 90% of the text, compared to saying it was all originally 100% correct, and now we are certain of 90% of the text?
You're conflating a number of things here. "Infallibility" and "inerrancy" are related but they are not the same. For "inerrancy" see the Chicago Statement. "Infallibility" strictly speaks to faith and practice. "Inerrancy" applies to the autograph. "Infallibility" applies more specifically to the apograph.
Also, you're mixing up a dogmatic construct (inerrancy/infallibility) with what is possible to know by way of text criticism. We don't have the autographs, but we know the autographs are Theopneustos, per Scripture's own statements. The dogmatic logic is "If theopneustos, then inerrancy and infallibility." Inerrancy does not extend to copies, but we can reconstruct the autographa by way of text criticism to arrive at extremely accurate apographs and then translate from there. Even on the lowest end of the scale, no major doctrine is affectrd by the text variants.
You, however, are arguing that the longer ending of Mark is canonical, against (a) the best manuscripts and (b) w/o evidence that your communion has always considered it canonical. If it was not in the autographs and entered at a later time, but close to the time of the autograph, and it was canonized then (a) is it inerrant/infallible? (b) why did it enter the mss? (c) doesn't that make your communion guilty of adding to Scripture?, and (d) if it entered later and was canonized, then what is to stop your communion from writing new Scripture today? You see, in arguing your rule of faith, you are effectively arguing for continuing revelation.
Explain to us how it is not functionally the same.
Because, on the view that the autographa are not inerrant, God Himself is inspiring error. The human author is not the sole author of the original. The Holy Spirit is the author through the human author. Does He inspire error? Will you seriously make that argument?
In the latter view, where the autographa alone are inerrant, the copies may be in error and the autographa can be constructed with a high degree of accuracy without affecting any doctrine or the faith and practice of the churches. Ergo, your question about Jerusalem and Antioch is not germaine to the issue, since the where they went does not affect the doctrine or practice of the churches.
People like you come from a long line of protestants who have spoken in terms of the autograph being inerrant. This is the lens of tradition through which you see inerrancy.
You have a nasty habit of pretending the Middle Ages never happened. Protestantism inherited much from the pre-Reformation scholastics on this issue.
However, I will say its nice to see you throw your hat in with liberals, neo-orthodox, and other apostates on your view of the Bible.
Since errors of the kind cited above in Acts 12:25 exist, where we know that clearly that the scriptures have errors, we are faced with the following possibilities:
No, all you know is that 2 of the existing mss vary. You don't know the autograph has an error, and you don't know the original apograph in the original tongue had an error. All you know is that the Complutensian edition and the Syriac version, add, "unto Antioch." A good Bible will note this. What major doctrine is affected by this? Which text variants affect the faith and practice of the churches?
I doubt they had in mind anything like a 1631 edition of the KJV. They were thinking of the normative case, not pathalogical situations.
Remember, this is before anybody had much interest in textual criticism to recover the "original text". Some people knew about variants and contradictions, but didn't generally worry about them much.
So much here. The Synod was held in 1672, what was the state of text criticism at that time? The East was not utterly oblivous to Renaissance humanism, and neither was Rome. The issue then was that on the one hand the EO and Rome held that the Scriptures were truly the Word of God, but could they could not stand as authoritative outside the Churchs' magisteria. They did not hold that the apographs were inerrant, and neither did the Protestants. It is the latter propostion that Protestants disputed, not the former. The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice and the separate arguments for a received text free from major (ie. non-scribal) errors at the time the synod you cited was held, rests on an examination of apographa, not autographa, and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographs, which all parties were willing to stipulate were inerrant, as a prop for infallibility. The reason that a particular reading would be preferred over another then, as in the exact example from Acts you gave would turn was the difference between an apograph in the original language (in this case Greek, or for the OT Hebrew), over a receptor language, like the Syraic. When making statements about Scripture they had in mind something quite specific, namely not particular versions - on this you are correct- but the Hebrew and Greek sources, not "normative cases" (whatever that means - you have a habit of using undefined terms like that). You really should bone up on the polemics of that age. I would suggest Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2, by Richard Muller. It is simply a historical study of the doctrine of Scripture among Protestants, Catholics, Socinians, and others at the time in question. It was later Arminian and Socinian polemicists that held the view of Scripture you are ascribing to the Synod, not the Synod itself.
In that respect, you're mirror-reading. You're reading your view of Scripture into the synod. In fact, apart from the synod, your view of Scripture is remarkably similar to that of many a theological liberal. You should be at home in the WCC and NCC. "Uneasy alliance" indeed.
Debating "Steve" is just like debating a member of the Jesus Seminar. The only difference between "Steve" and Dominic Crossan is that Steve doesn't cross himself while Crossan does.
ReplyDelete>Protestants have no such burden of proof to
ReplyDelete>discharge.
Jason took on that burdon when he claimed that the church didn't perish, and when he claimed we can know where the church of the first few centuries was.
>the NT does not depict a lone monolithic visible
>institution called "the Church."
1) It does speak of Church in its universal sense.
2) It is never spoken of invisibly.
>Thank you for this frank admission, for it is
>tantamount to agreeing to your rule of faith not
>being superior to ours.
You are confused. My rule of faith is superior for the very reason I don't have to prove each micro element of the faith.
>We don't have the autographs, but we know the
>autographs are Theopneustos, per Scripture's
>own statements.
Scripture never mentions the autographs. Scripture says that scripture is God-breathed WITH all the textual problems and errors. Paul doesn't say to Timothy "the autographs are God breathed and able to make you wise". Had he said that Timothy would be in a big problem since he didn't possess the autographs. No, scripture is God breathed - the scriptures that Timothy possesses, complete with textual errors.
>Even on the lowest end of the scale, no major
>doctrine is affected by the text variants.
Let's see what the scholars tell us then. What does the Ehrman, the big man of textual criticism say about whether variants affect doctrine? Triablogue is the land of the scholars right?
>You, however, are arguing that the longer ending
>of Mark is canonical, against (a) the best
>manuscripts
How many "best manuscripts" are there? Pray tell list all the A class manuscripts of Mark so we can check this claim.
>w/o evidence that your communion has always
>considered it canonical.
???? Where did I say that? No book in the bible has "always" been considered canonical.
>If it was not in the autographs and entered at a
>later time, but close to the time of the
>autograph, and it was canonized then (a) is it
>inerrant/infallible?
Yes.
>(b) why did it enter the mss?
Assuming the hypothetical?? Don't know, don't care.
>(c) doesn't that make your communion guilty of
>adding to Scripture?, and
Was Paul guilty of adding to scripture?
>(d) if it entered later and was canonized, then
>what is to stop your communion from writing
>new Scripture today? You see, in arguing your >rule of faith, you are effectively arguing for
>continuing revelation.
Continuing beyond what??
>Because, on the view that the autographa are not
>inerrant, God Himself is inspiring error.
Assuming what you have yet to prove that God inspiring something means he inspired the errors. Does God "inspire" ALL of the Paulness out of Pauling writings, or does it retain the foibles of Paul? Was Paul inspired when he preached to the Churches? Did he preach inerrantly in the sense you ascribe scripture, with no error of detail?
>In the latter view, where the autographa alone
>are inerrant, the copies may be in error and the
>autographa can be constructed with a high
>degree of accuracy without affecting any doctrine
>or the faith and practice of the churches.
a) You can only reconstruct them to some extent.
b) The people who have attempted to reconstruct still differ on about 10% of the text.
c) This is a 19th century phenomena. How does that help the other 18 centuries?
d) Without an infallibly inspired Church, it certainly CAN affect doctrine and faith.
>Ergo, your question about Jerusalem and Antioch
>is not germaine to the issue, since the where
>they went does not affect the doctrine or practice
>of the churches.
AH HUH!! That is the real point. It is what you believe about The Faith that matters. If some scholars think there are minor errors in things not relevant to the faith, it is secondary. Thankyou for conceeding the main point.
>However, I will say its nice to see you throw your
>hat in with liberals, neo-orthodox, and other
>apostates on your view of the Bible.
a) I didn't throw my hat in, I'm just explaining the view of those who take a different view.
b) From our point of view it is you that has your hat in with liberals and apostates on many issues.
>You don't know the autograph has an error, and
>you don't know the original apograph in the
>original tongue had an error.
Since the scripture never mentions the autograph, you are speaking to an issue that can't be addressed by sola scriptura.
>Which text variants affect the faith and practice
>of the churches?
Adoptionists find support in Jn 1:34 as found in the TNIV. Arians find support in the "only begotten God" of Jn 1:18. Read Ehrman, that's what you folks do around here all day right? Read liberal scholars?
>It is simply a historical study of the doctrine of
>Scripture among Protestants, Catholics,
>Socinians, and others at the time in question. It
>was later Arminian and Socinian polemicists that
>held the view of Scripture you are ascribing to
>the Synod, not the Synod itself.
Please document that the Synod thought their scriptures to be in errant. A lot of claims here, not much proof.
Orthodox wrote:
ReplyDelete"I didn't say it was silly to want documentation, I said it was silly to demand documentation, as if you could assume I was wrong about what my own church believed until it was documented."
No, that's not what you said. Unlike you, I've documented what you said in the original context. All you're doing is giving us unsupported assertions about what I allegedly said and what you allegedly said in response.
You write:
"Your appeals to the number of scholars who promote a viewpoint as an argument is here for all to see."
My citations of scholarly opinion have been accompanied by discussions of the relevant evidence supporting the opinion in question. You still haven't proven that I've misused scholarship in the manner you claimed I have. Telling us that the evidence is "here for all to see" doesn't document your claim.
You write:
"Again, there is no mention in scripture of a canonical consensus."
As I've told you before, the concept doesn't have to be mentioned explicitly by scripture in order to be implied by scripture. I've already explained why I believe that there was a canonical consensus for the Old Testament that was accepted by Jesus and the apostles.
You write:
"But you have not proven your thesis that there was EVER a consensus of Mark not having ch 16. You've put forward some evidence that it may have been a minority, but that is not consensus."
You keep misrepresenting the issues under discussion, even after being corrected repeatedly. Again, text and canon are different issues. We have an Old Testament precedent for following a canonical consensus. We don't have such a precedent for following a textual consensus. The passage in Mark that we're discussing involves several verses within a book. It's a textual issue.
And I've already documented what men like Eusebius and Jerome said about the early manuscripts. If you don't think that what they described is "consensus", then you need to explain why. You need to explain why a consensus is needed and why the manuscripts in question allegedly don't qualify.
You also need to document that all of the manuscripts you're relying on to make your case came from Eastern Orthodox sources. In the thread where this discussion about Mark's ending began, you said that only Eastern Orthodox sources qualify. But you haven't documented that the manuscripts you've been citing came from Eastern Orthodox sources.
You write:
"Two manuscripts, as far as I have direct evidence of."
Again, the issue isn't just extant copies of Mark. We also have reports about earlier copies from people like Eusebius and Jerome. And there are more than two copies without your ending in the later manuscript record. I repeatedly explained these things to you in the other thread. You keep ignoring what you've been told.
You write:
"You won't tell us if you are equally happy for people to omit 2 Peter because some ECFs said it was acceptable."
I explained why your comparison is fallacious in the other thread, and you left that discussion.
You write:
"I never said it must have been a consensus by Jerome's time."
People either accepted the longer ending of Mark or they didn't. By not including the longer ending in the earliest copies of Mark, people were taking a position on the issue. They were choosing not to include the passage. The longer ending was known. It was circulating. A minority of sources accepted it, such as Irenaeus. But the manuscript record, as sources like Eusebius describe it, suggests that the large majority of the earliest Christians didn't accept the longer ending. Why, then, doesn't that widespread decision to not include the passage in the gospel qualify as a consensus?
You write:
"If the Church has agreed on something concerning the Faith, it is part of the Tradition, and it is true."
You give us no reason to believe that. You just assert it.
You write:
"So now it's only 'probably' not part of the original? This is the first time I've seen you say 'problably'."
I've repeatedly said that historical judgments are matters of probability. The fact that you haven't noticed it tells us something about how well you read what people write in response to you. Here are some examples of my use of terms like "probable" in our earlier discussion about the ending of Mark's gospel (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/05/fallen-seraph.html):
"Why are we supposed to believe that the longer ending of Mark you're advocating was lost in some later copies rather than having been added in some later copies (as other longer endings were added to Mark)? Telling us that it's possible doesn't give us any reason to think that it's probable."
"I didn't refer to what 'can happen'. To the contrary, I specifically made a distinction between what's possible and what's probable. The fact that something generally unlikely sometimes happens doesn't justify an assumption that the unlikely did occur. A probability isn't a certainty, but it's better than a possibility. You're rejecting the probable reading of the manuscript record for Mark in favor of a highly unlikely possibility."
I don't know what your problem is. Maybe you have a bad memory. Maybe you're careless. Maybe you're just dishonest. I don't know. But you need to change your behavior.
You write:
"BUT YOU CLAIM THAT THE TRUE CHURCH DID NOT PERISH FROM THE EARTH, BUT YOU CAN'T TELL US WHERE IT WAS ALL THOSE CENTURIES."
First of all, you're changing the subject. You asked about a "real church" in the catacombs that held a different canon of scripture than I do. Now that I've explained why such a scenario is unlikely, you've changed the subject to whether my concept of the church can be shown to have existed in "all those centuries".
This discussion began by my asking you to prove your claims about Eastern Orthodox authority. You didn't want to do that, so you tried to direct our attention to the issue of how we know whether there was a "real church" in the catacombs that held a different canon of scripture. Now that I've explained why such a scenario is unlikely (something you ought to have known), you're trying to direct our attention to yet another subject. Readers should ask themselves why it is that you keep trying to avoid making a case for your assertions about Eastern Orthodoxy.
And I've already addressed the issue of my concept of the church in the historical record. You've repeatedly left the discussions. As I've explained to you many times, there's no need for me to identify one denomination as the one true denomination. I define the church as an entity that crosses denominational borders. There are foundational doctrines, such as the ones I told you about in 1 Corinthians 15, that would identify who is Christian and who isn't. If you're actually interested in issues like this one, why do you keep ignoring so much of what you're told and keep leaving discussions?
You write:
"Secondly, the whole point of infallibility and inerrancy is not about "probability", it is about 100% certainty. What is the difference between believing 99.99% was correct originally, but now we are only certain of 90% of the text, compared to saying it was all originally 100% correctt, and now we are certain of 90% of the text?"
I've explained the difference already. Go reread my earlier post.
And why should we accept your 99.99% figure? People who reject Biblical inerrancy commonly reject more than .01% of what the Bible tells us. If the Bible can be wrong about matters pertaining to history and science, for example, then such passages constitute more than .01% of scripture.
You write:
"You don't have the autographical text, so the point is moot."
You keep missing the point. The point is that if we have a high degree of confidence that a modern edition of the Bible reads the same way as the original in a particular passage, then the issue of Biblical inerrancy is relevant to whether we can trust what the original said.
You write:
"While you are at it, tell us infallibly tell us whether in Acts 12:25, did they go out of Jerusalem, did they go into Jerusalem, or did they go into Antioch?"
Why would any textual judgment have to be made "infallibly"?
You write:
"I don't feel the need to defend everything that everybody who is orthodox ever said."
You condemned the "modernism" of scholars who hold such views when you were discussing non-Eastern-Orthodox scholars. Will you now condemn these Eastern Orthodox sources as "modernists" who are advocating significant error? You keep telling us about the unity of your denomination and how it allegedly doesn't involve the sort of significant disagreement we see among Protestants. What has your denomination done to discipline these Eastern Orthodox scholars who question the dating of the book of Daniel, for example? Why are they part of your denomination's leadership, teaching at Eastern Orthodox universities, publishing books with Eastern Orthodox publishers, etc.?
You write:
"Judging by all the variants, it looks like a lot of scribes were taking a shot at fixing 'errors' in the text. Of course we might say they were making it worse, but obviously the people who brought you the text you have today were also believing in correcting the text. An unpalatable situation perhaps, but undeniably true."
You're ignoring what I cited from Jesus and the apostles themselves regarding the status of scripture. You're ignoring what I cited from the church fathers. And you're appealing to textual variants as evidence that scribes thought there were errors in scripture to correct. You need to explain what percentage of the scribes you think did this, why we should think that they considered scripture as originally given to be errant, and why we should accept their view over the views expressed by the other sources I cited.
You write:
"What is more pius, to believe you have scriptures that are now infallible concerning the faith, or to believe you have copies of scriptures which were infallible, but now we may have copies that may be teaching heresy?"
We can compare manuscripts in order to be highly confident that modern Bibles are teaching what was originally taught. Your concept of limited infallibility in modern copies of scripture, with both the original and later copies being fallible on other matters, contradicts what the Bible itself teaches, contradicts what early Christians like the ones I cited believed, and is a position you've asserted without proving.
Orthodox keeps making false and misleading claims about the textual record. For those readers who are interested, we've addressed textual issues and Bart Ehrman at this blog in the past. For example:
ReplyDeletehttp://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/05/heterodox-corruption-of-bart-ehrman.html
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/09/jon-currys-false-and-misleading-claims.html
What we clearly have here is an opponent (Orthodox) who has been thoroughly defeated. I mean, hung out to dry. And yet, he insists on holding T-bloggers to a standard of proof he doesn't apply to himself. Truly pathetic. Personally I would catalog this guy under "time-waster" and move on. More productive things could be done, like sanding and refinishing your hardwood floors...
ReplyDelete-A Concerned Bystander
Orthodox continues to trade in poor argumentation.
ReplyDelete>>Jason took on that burdon when he claimed that the church didn't perish, and when he claimed we can know where the church of the first few centuries was.
What he claimed was that there was a covenant community that didn't perish. He did not claim that there was one institution monolithic in outlook and utterly visible to all ages, and the only reason he even entered that was to chase yet another of your red herrings through the pond.
>>
1) It does speak of Church in its universal sense.
2) It is never spoken of invisibly.
The universal or invisible church are dogmatic constructs. When Paul writes that Christ gave his life for the church in Ephesians 5, is he talking about a visible institution like the Eastern Orthodox Church or only those who are redeemed by Christ and known to God at any given moment in history? There is a sense in which the invisible church is visible, but there is a sense in which it isn't. J.L. Dagg argued that for Baptistery, and I agree, but we're talking about generic dogmatic terms here, not specifics to specific Baptist theologians.
You are confused. My rule of faith is superior for the very reason I don't have to prove each micro element of the faith.
But how is that superior? All you do is assert it. Your argument is that you have abdicated reason to a bare fideistic claim that the EO is the one true holy catholic church, but you have not demonstrated that claim. If you don't have to "prove each element of the faith," then how do you know the EO is the one true church? You don't seem to be able to recognize the fallacy of regression when it stares you in the face.
>>Scripture never mentions the autographs. Scripture says that scripture is God-breathed WITH all the textual problems and errors. Paul doesn't say to Timothy "the autographs are God breathed and able to make you wise". Had he said that Timothy would be in a big problem since he didn't possess the autographs. No, scripture is God breathed - the scriptures that Timothy possesses, complete with textual errors.
Where does the text mention the textual errors? You're making arguments that your exegesis can't cash and your rule of faith can't cash, because you've already admitted that any exegesis of Scriptures is private judgment and not to be trusted.
>>Let's see what the scholars tell us then. What does the Ehrman, the big man of textual criticism say about whether variants affect doctrine? Triablogue is the land of the scholars right?
A. Notice how Orthodox argues like a Muslim. He'll use liberal scholars like Ehrman to his advantage without applying the same standards to his own views.
B. We've dealt with Ehrman before. See Jason's links.
>>How many "best manuscripts" are there? Pray tell list all the A class manuscripts of Mark so we can check this claim.
Pick up a textual apparatus. Have n't you told us to look at an NA27 before? You're arguing against the mss evidence. Where is your supporting argument for the long ending? I also told you which mss supported the long ending. I named them. Look again.
>>
???? Where did I say that? No book in the bible has "always" been considered canonical.
Oh, so there was a time when the OT was not considered canonical in the churches? There was a time in the life of the EO Church in which the gospels were not canonical? If you're going to argue that the long ending of Mark is canonical then you need to show us when it became canonical and which version, since we know there are at least two. If the churches used it prior to the addition of the long ending, then how, when, where, and why was the long ending canonized? Does your communion feel free to add to Scripture when it sees fit? Is your canon open or closed?
>>Yes.
Sorry, but you have forfeited this claim, because you have already denied inerrancy. Now you're changing your argument...Again.
>>Was Paul guilty of adding to scripture?
Notice how Orthodox doesn't understand the Protestant rule of faith. Sola Scriptura applies only to the normative state of the church after the time of inscripturation. So, to answer him, Yes, but Paul was inspired directly by the Holy Spirit and Scripture affirms Paul's work as Scripture. Is the EO also inspired by the Holy Spirit? If so, where is the argument showing it? In Scripture, where have whole groups or communities been inspired to write Scripture?
>>Continuing beyond what??
The time of inscripturation. You're obviously out of your element and ignorant of the material, or you wouldn't ask this question.
>>Assuming what you have yet to prove that God inspiring something means he inspired the errors.
This is truly confused. Did I say that God inspires error? I asked if you were seriously going to argue that. If you deny this, you're saying that God inspires error. That's a theological argument. You're claiming to be an orthodox (small o) Christian as well as Eastern Orthodox. I assume on that basis that you accept the basic doctrines about God that we both share, regardless of our denominational separation. If not, then you're no better than Touchstone.
>>Does God "inspire" ALL of the Paulness out of Pauling writings, or does it retain the foibles of Paul? Was Paul inspired when he preached to the Churches? Did he preach inerrantly in the sense you ascribe scripture, with no error of detail?
Orthodox has been told where he can find a summary of the doctrine of inerrancy. He has yet to look at it,or he would not ask this question. What does the Chicago Statement state? If you'd like to talk about the Chicago Statement, then by all means we can, but that's another discussion. This is about your views on Scripture and your rule of faith.
>>a) You can only reconstruct them to some extent.
b) The people who have attempted to reconstruct still differ on about 10% of the text.
c) This is a 19th century phenomena. How does that help the other 18 centuries?
d) Without an infallibly inspired Church, it certainly CAN affect doctrine and faith.
A. Which ten percent affects the doctrine and practice of the church? No, it ISN'T a 19th century phenomenon. You've been told this before. Text criticism did not begin then. Again, you've been pointed to resources, and you continue to ignore them.
B. If the text of Scripture is fallible, then how do you know that the EO is the one true church, that it is infallibly inspired, etc, and how do you know what Holy Tradition is correct and what isn't. You've already admitted there is disagreement in your church and history proves it too, so how do you know who is right and wrong? How does an inspired Church keep error in the churches out if inspired Scripture doesn't? Did Arianism just never happen in the Orthodox church? All you've done is move these questions back one step,and in denying inerrancy you're further undermining your epistemological case, because w/o it you have no biblical support for your ecclesiology.
>>AH HUH!! That is the real point. It is what you believe about The Faith that matters. If some scholars think there are minor errors in things not relevant to the faith, it is secondary. Thankyou for conceeding the main point.
A. How do you know what "the faith" is if the text is errant?
B. There was nothing to concede. You really are a second rate adversary.
>>a) I didn't throw my hat in, I'm just explaining the view of those who take a different view.
b) From our point of view it is you that has your hat in with liberals and apostates on many issues.
No, you took a positive position against inerrancy. Now, you're changing your argument...again.
>>
Adoptionists find support in Jn 1:34 as found in the TNIV. Arians find support in the "only begotten God" of Jn 1:18. Read Ehrman, that's what you folks do around here all day right? Read liberal scholars?
A. A particular translation is not the issue. The issue is the underlying text.
B. How does the one true, holy infallible catholic rule of faith in the Orthodox church keep Arianism from arising. What happened after Nicea? Did Monophysitism and Nestorianism not arise in the Eastern Church too? Why was the Synod of Jerusalem convened if not to combat what they believed was error in the church. Your rule of faith is not superior, since it doesn't cash out at a place differently from ours.
>>lease document that the Synod thought their scriptures to be in errant. A lot of claims here, not much proof.
Jason has done so already, and I've pointed you to a large and magisterial tome on these issues which is a standard work, and you have proven impervious to the desire to actually look at it. When you start actually interacting with the sources to which I, Jason, and others point you, and when you start documenting YOUR claims, I'll be happy to go further.
>No, that's not what you said. Unlike you, I've
ReplyDelete>documented what you said in the original context.
And as usual, it wasn't what you claimed I said.
>>"Your appeals to the number of scholars who
>>promote a viewpoint as an argument is here for
>>all to see."
>
>My citations of scholarly opinion have been
>accompanied by discussions of the relevant
>evidence supporting the opinion in question.
And apparently the arguments can't stand on their own merit without you trying to bolster them with appeals to authority.
>We have an Old Testament precedent for
>following a canonical consensus. We don't have
>such a precedent for following a textual
>consensus.
You've continually ignored my pointing out textual consensus like use of the LXX in Greek among the apostles.
>And I've already documented what men like
>Eusebius and Jerome said about the early
>manuscripts. If you don't think that what they
>described is "consensus", then you need to
>explain why.
How many times must I explain before you get it into your head? The experience of two ECFs at a certain time at a certain place doesn't overturn the fact of its use by other ECFs at other places at earlier times and later times.
>And there are more than two copies without your
>ending in the later manuscript record. I
>repeatedly explained these things to you in the
>other thread. You keep ignoring what you've
>been told.
No you didn't. There may be one other mss, you didn't tell us about any others.
>I explained why your comparison is fallacious in
>the other thread, and you left that discussion.
I havn't left that discussion.
>By not including the longer ending in the earliest
>copies of Mark, people were taking a position on
>the issue. They were choosing not to include the
>passage. The longer ending was known. It was
>circulating.
You keep contradicting yourself. First you say there was an early consensus to reject it. In the next breath you say that the other ending was known and circulating. You can't have it both ways.
>>"If the Church has agreed on something
>>concerning the Faith, it is part of the Tradition,
>>and it is true."
>
>You give us no reason to believe that. You just >assert it.
You've told us that we can see the canon in the consensus of God's people. Can you prove it?
And I have given you reasons to believe it. I've given you scriptures about the Church and the truth but you've simply ignored them.
>Here are some examples of my use of terms like
>"probable" in our earlier discussion about the
>ending of Mark's gospel
In which you contrasted your "probable" interpretation against my "highly unlikely" interpretation. So you're really still in your dogmatic "Only my interpretation can really be correct" mode.
>I don't know what your problem is. Maybe you
>have a bad memory. Maybe you're careless.
>Maybe you're just dishonest. I don't know. But
>you need to change your behavior.
I don't know what your problem is. Maybe you have a bad memory. Maybe you're careless. Maybe you're just dishonest. I don't know. But you need to change your behavior.
>First of all, you're changing the subject. You
>asked about a "real church" in the catacombs
>that held a different canon of scripture than I do.
>Now that I've explained why such a scenario is
>unlikely, you've changed the subject to whether
>my concept of the church can be shown to have
>existed in "all those centuries".
There's no change of subject. You made a claim about what we can know about where the real church was at any particular time, and now confronted with your words to apply it consistently you have to obfuscate your way out of it. You're a slippery eel.
>As I've explained to you many times, there's no
>need for me to identify one denomination as the
>one true denomination.
I didn't ask you to identify one true denomination. I asked you to IDENTIFY WHERE THE TRUE CHURCH WAS. Whether you do or don't choose to identify whatever you understand by a denomination is entirely up to you. You've chosen to make claims about where the church was in the first few centuries, presumably it can only get easier as you get more recent in history, but like a slippery eel you keep ignoring the question.
>And why should we accept your 99.99% figure?
>People who reject Biblical inerrancy commonly
>reject more than .01% of what the Bible tells us.
>If the Bible can be wrong about matters
>pertaining to history and science, for example,
>then such passages constitute more than .01% of
>scripture.
The issue is not typical protestant liberals. Don't compare us by the fallen standards of your own back yard.
The minimum standard of belief is just as if an apostle were standing right here in front of us. Paul said to hold to what was passed down whether written or by word of mouth with just the same level of obedience. How inerrant do you think an apostle would be by word of mouth? That is the minimal standard of belief. It doesn't mean everything is up for grabs.
>The point is that if we have a high degree of
>confidence that a modern edition of the Bible
>reads the same way as the original in a particular
>passage
Again, like a slippery eel you won't answer the questions:
1) What about the pre-modern era? Tough luck for them?
2) Tell us your level of probability about Acts 12:25. Just what level of "probability" are you claiming here?
3) How sure can you be about OT books when they come down to us through Hebrew in only one textual stream, and the Greek stream differs considerably? Bibles like the NRSV are adding new verses and paragraphs that weren't known for 2000 years because of scraps of parchment that have been found. What does that say about things?
4) How useful is your theory about recoverability of the text, when your text critical method is to always pick the reading that seems to be in error, like Metzger et al? Some of the errors in NA27 are breathtaking, such as the geneology in Luke.
>You condemned the "modernism" of scholars
>who hold such views when you were discussing
>non-Eastern-Orthodox scholars.
No I didn't. Another lie. What I did was, I pointed to modern scholars and where your rule of faith would be if you followed the logical consequences of a purely historical approach to your rule of faith.
>Will you now condemn these Eastern Orthodox
>sources as "modernists" who are advocating
>significant error?
Not on the basis of some snippet from you.
>You need to explain what percentage of the
>scribes you think did this, why we should think
>that they considered scripture as originally given
>to be errant,
Do I need to state the obvious? If a document is inerrant, would you correct it?
What percentage of scribes did it? Enough so that the manuscripts of the 3rd century would have differed in more than 50% of the text.
>and why we should accept their view over the
>views expressed by the other sources I cited.
I'm not suggesting you should accept their view. I'm just pointing out the history of the situation.
>Your concept of limited infallibility in modern
>copies of scripture, with both the original and
>later copies being fallible on other matters,
>contradicts what the Bible itself teaches,
>contradicts what early Christians like the ones I
>cited believed, and is a position you've asserted
>without proving.
It's not my concept of limited fallibility, it is the idea of someone you chose to quote, and I'm just explaining to you how it differs from liberal protestants you are used to dealing with. I have no particular desire to prove it to you, I'm just pointing out the problem with you condemning him as if it is equivilent to protestant liberal scholarship.
Orthodox writes:
ReplyDelete"How many times must I explain before you get it into your head? The experience of two ECFs at a certain time at a certain place doesn't overturn the fact of its use by other ECFs at other places at earlier times and later times."
I didn't just cite two patristic sources. I also cited other sources who agreed with them, including manuscript evidence, and I explained why the two sources you're referring to are credible.
You write:
"No you didn't. There may be one other mss, you didn't tell us about any others."
I cited James Kelhoffer's article, which gives multiple examples, and I repeatedly cited Bruce Metzger doing the same. There are multiple longer endings to Mark in the manuscript record, not just your longer ending, and some of the manuscripts that contain your longer ending do so with marks or comments that either question the passage or mention that other people questioned it. Sources who defended your ending, such as Victor of Antioch, acknowledged that some people still disputed the passage and mentioned that there's significant manuscript support for ending the gospel at 16:8.
You write:
"You keep contradicting yourself. First you say there was an early consensus to reject it. In the next breath you say that the other ending was known and circulating. You can't have it both ways."
No, the problem is that you're seeing a contradiction where there isn't one. A minority of early sources, such as Irenaeus, accepted your longer ending or something similar to it as part of Mark's gospel. But Eusebius, Jerome, and other sources tell us that the earlier manuscripts don't include the passage. A majority can leave the passage out at the same time that a minority includes it.
You write:
"You've told us that we can see the canon in the consensus of God's people. Can you prove it?"
Prove that there is such a consensus? By my standards of probability and my standards of who does and doesn't seem to be a Christian, yes.
You write:
"And I have given you reasons to believe it. I've given you scriptures about the Church and the truth but you've simply ignored them."
Ignored them? I repeatedly discussed passages like Matthew 16 and John 16 with you, and you repeatedly left the discussions. You've acknowledged that you haven't yet made a case for Eastern Orthodoxy, which you define as the church. Your vague appeals to passages like Matthew 16 and John 16 don't even establish the general principle that a consensus of God's people is assured of being correct, much less do such vague appeals to such passages prove that we should follow a consensus of Eastern Orthodoxy in particular.
You write:
"In which you contrasted your 'probable' interpretation against my 'highly unlikely' interpretation. So you're really still in your dogmatic 'Only my interpretation can really be correct' mode."
Here's what you said earlier in this thread:
"This is the first time I've seen you say 'problably'."
I then documented some examples of my use of the language of probability in that other discussion we had. Now that you've been proven wrong, you're accusing me of being "dogmatic" for using the language that you claimed I didn't use.
You write:
"I don't know what your problem is. Maybe you have a bad memory. Maybe you're careless. Maybe you're just dishonest. I don't know. But you need to change your behavior."
The difference between your making such comments and my making them in response to you is that I made those comments after documenting that you were wrong. You, in contrast, haven't documented that I was wrong, much less wrong in a comparable manner. I repeatedly told you, in our previous discussions, that I was relying on probability judgments. I repeatedly used terms like "probably" and "probable". You then accused me, in this thread, of the following:
"This is the first time I've seen you say 'problably'."
Not only were you wrong, but you were wrong about something I said many times, something I explained to you repeatedly, in many discussions, including more than once in the thread we were discussing. How could you have missed something that I explicitly stated so many times?
You write:
"I didn't ask you to identify one true denomination. I asked you to IDENTIFY WHERE THE TRUE CHURCH WAS. Whether you do or don't choose to identify whatever you understand by a denomination is entirely up to you. You've chosen to make claims about where the church was in the first few centuries, presumably it can only get easier as you get more recent in history, but like a slippery eel you keep ignoring the question."
I asked you to document your claims about Eastern Orthodoxy. You tried to change the subject to whether there was a "real church" in the catacombs with a different canon. After I explained why such a scenario is unlikely, you tried to change the subject again by asking me to identify my church in history. Why should I address your second attempt at changing the subject when you haven't yet addressed the original subject?
You write:
"Again, like a slippery eel you won't answer the questions"
Considering how many discussions with me you've left since you came here, without answering my questions, you're not in a place to be expecting me to answer your questions.
You write:
"Tell us your level of probability about Acts 12:25. Just what level of 'probability' are you claiming here?"
Why would that matter? A probability is sufficient whether it's 55% or 95%. Why should I spend time discussing such details with you?
You write:
"What percentage of scribes did it? Enough so that the manuscripts of the 3rd century would have differed in more than 50% of the text."
How is anybody supposed to interact with so vague and undocumented an assertion?
Your posts are frequently characterized by such careless, vague, undocumented claims.
>I didn't just cite two patristic sources. I also cited
ReplyDelete>other sources who agreed with them, including
>manuscript evidence, and I explained why the two
>sources you're referring to are credible.
Even if we assume they are credible, which is itself a disputed point, it still only serves to document the situation in certain places at certain times. The widespread use of the passage elsewhere at earlier times can't be ignored.
>"No you didn't. There may be one other mss, you
>didn't tell us about any others."
>
>I cited James Kelhoffer's article, which gives
>multiple examples
Oh, you mean the article that says: "“It is true that the longer ending
of Mark 16:9220 is found in 99 percent of the Greek manuscripts as well as the rest of
the tradition, enjoying over a period of centuries practically an official ecclesiastical
sanction as a genuine part of the gospel of Mark”
That you found a couple more manuscripts still leaves my original 99% figure intact.
>Sources who defended your ending, such as
>Victor of Antioch, acknowledged that some
>people still disputed the passage and mentioned >that there's significant manuscript support for >ending the gospel at 16:8.
Which doesn't tell us anything that we don't already know.
>A minority of early sources, such as Irenaeus,
>accepted your longer ending or something
>similar to it as part of Mark's gospel.
Is being fast and loose with the truth something that comes naturally, or do you have to work at it?
To claim that a "majority" of early sources rejected something you would either have to cite sources saying "I reject it", or at the very least attempt to make a case for church fathers who quoted so extensively from Mark, and yet didn't quote these verses that it would be difficult to believe they weren't missing it. Even then it wouldn't indicate rejection so much as doubt. You have documented no such "majority" of sources.
>But Eusebius, Jerome, and other sources tell us
>that the earlier manuscripts don't include the
>passage
Another careless lie. They do not refer to "earliest" manuscripts at all. You're on a roll of disinformation today.
>By my standards of probability and my standards
>of who does and doesn't seem to be a Christian, >yes.
Which you refuse to tell us. A careless slippery eel.
>I repeatedly discussed passages like Matthew 16
>and John 16 with you, and you repeatedly left the
>discussions.
And I've repeatedly challenged you to discuss these things in a neutral forum. It's not my fault you are too chicken and gutless to do anything but post in your nice cosy forum. I for one don't believe you've given any proper answers to these verses.
>You've acknowledged that you haven't yet made
>a case for Eastern Orthodoxy, which you define
>as the church.
Again, where the church is that the verse apples to is a secondary question to what the verse teaches.
>"This is the first time I've seen you say
>'problably'."
>
>I then documented some examples of my use of
>the language of probability in that other
>discussion we had.
More misleading nonsense. When one simply says that something is "probably" true, it sounds like you might think it is maybe 55% likely. But that's not what you did earlier, you contrasted probably against highly unlikely. You're a slippery eel of probabilistic theology.
>After I explained why such a scenario is unlikely,
>you tried to change the subject again by asking
>me to identify my church in history. Why should I
>address your second attempt at changing the
>subject when you haven't yet addressed the
>original subject?
I have no idea what you now believe is "the original subject". The fact is, you're a chicken eel.
>Tell us your level of probability about Acts
>12:25. Just what level of 'probability' are you
>claiming here?"
>
>Why would that matter? A probability is sufficient
>whether it's 55% or 95%. Why should I spend
>time discussing such details with you?
Because you made a very specific claim that you could reconstruct the text with a "high" degree of probability. 55% isn't "high" in my book. And why would I assume it is even greater than 55%? There are at least three viable options here, not to mention a number of proposed conjectures. For all I know your "highly probable" is 25% or something.
And if you have 55% probability for 10 variants, you will be 99.5% certain that you have NOT reconstructed the text correctly.
>"What percentage of scribes did it? Enough so
>that the manuscripts of the 3rd century would
>have differed in more than 50% of the text."
>
>How is anybody supposed to interact with so >vague and undocumented an assertion?
>
>Your posts are frequently characterized by such
>careless, vague, undocumented claims.
I can't predict your level of ignorance about the text of the bible in advance.
A comparison of well known texts:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/stats.html
There's about 7950 verses in the NT. These analyse 4165 translatable variants between some _critical_ texts and the TR. And that doesn't include a lot of widespread variants that didn't make a critical text, and it probably ignores most of the specifically western text variants which are not favoured by text critics.
Orthodox writes:
ReplyDelete"That you found a couple more manuscripts still leaves my original 99% figure intact."
I didn't dispute the 99% figure. I disputed your false claim about the number of manuscripts belonging to specific categories, and I mentioned other factors involved that make the 99% figure far less significant than you've been suggesting it is. James Kelhoffer, in the article I linked to, cites five sources who refer to a majority of manuscripts as not having the longer ending prior to the centuries when your longer ending attains the 99% majority you're referencing, and he discusses other sources who corroborate those five. None of those sources say that they're only referring to one region of the world, and some of them are known to have traveled widely, to have been in contact with many other Christians around the world, and to have been involved in working with Biblical manuscripts in the process of compiling new editions of the Bible. For you to assume that these men were only referring to a local situation each time, even though none of them limit their comments in that manner and such a limitation would give their argument little relevance in the context in which they wrote, is ridiculous. Are we to believe that each of these men just happened to live in a location where the version of Mark that was popular elsewhere was unpopular, just happened to fail to mention that they were only addressing a local situation, etc.? You keep assuming unnatural interpretations of sources who report something you don't like.
You write:
"To claim that a 'majority' of early sources rejected something you would either have to cite sources saying 'I reject it', or at the very least attempt to make a case for church fathers who quoted so extensively from Mark, and yet didn't quote these verses that it would be difficult to believe they weren't missing it."
I've cited Eusebius, Jerome, and other sources referring to the majority of manuscripts as not having your ending. The manuscripts they discuss are meant to be copies of the gospel of Mark, so they don't need to "quote" Mark in order to be relevant.
You write:
"Another careless lie. They do not refer to 'earliest' manuscripts at all. You're on a roll of disinformation today."
Here's what I wrote:
"But Eusebius, Jerome, and other sources tell us that the earlier manuscripts don't include the passage"
I said "earlier", not "earliest". And even "earliest" would have to be judged by the context. We can refer to the earliest manuscripts whose content we have information about, for example, and such a use of "earliest" would be accurate. Is your misrepresentation of what I said a "careless lie"?
You write:
"And I've repeatedly challenged you to discuss these things in a neutral forum. It's not my fault you are too chicken and gutless to do anything but post in your nice cosy forum."
Where did you ask me to discuss Matthew 16 and John 16 "in a neutral forum"? And why would a different forum be needed? You attempted to argue for your denomination from Matthew 16 and John 16. Your attempts failed, and you left the discussions.
You write:
"I have no idea what you now believe is 'the original subject'."
Even though I just told you what it was. You seem to have a short attention span. Maybe that's why you keep forgetting things and contradicting yourself.
You write:
"Because you made a very specific claim that you could reconstruct the text with a 'high' degree of probability."
I didn't say that about Acts 12:25. You're the one who's been focusing on that passage. If you're thinking of something I said about the text in general, then you'll need to tell me specifically what you have in mind.
You write:
"And if you have 55% probability for 10 variants, you will be 99.5% certain that you have NOT reconstructed the text correctly."
I've already addressed your fallacious use of probabilities in previous discussions.
And if you're going to keep arguing for such erroneous figures, then you're undermining your own historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. You have to rely on historical documents to make a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy, and those documents have textual variants. Why do you keep using self-defeating arguments?
You write:
"There's about 7950 verses in the NT. These analyse 4165 translatable variants between some _critical_ texts and the TR."
You originally said:
"Judging by all the variants, it looks like a lot of scribes were taking a shot at fixing 'errors' in the text. Of course we might say they were making it worse, but obviously the people who brought you the text you have today were also believing in correcting the text."
When I asked how many scribes allegedly did these things, you responded:
"Do I need to state the obvious? If a document is inerrant, would you correct it? What percentage of scribes did it? Enough so that the manuscripts of the 3rd century would have differed in more than 50% of the text."
The fact that there are differences among the third century manuscripts doesn't prove that the differences came about as you suggested. And while you originally referred to "manuscripts of the 3rd century", your latest post refers to "variants between some _critical_ texts and the TR". You've changed your argument. And why should we think that the Textus Receptus is a standard we should be using in this context? And how is a "place" in the text equivalent to a whole verse? If one word is accidentally left out of a verse, it makes no sense to count the entire verse as having been changed. How do you get from "4165 translatable variants" to your "more than 50% of the text" figure? Furthermore, you aren't addressing the nature of the differences in question. As the article you linked to explains:
"These 'translatable differences' include even the most trivial differences, many of which would show up only in an extremely literal translation. In fact most of the differences are of this nature." (note 2)
And, as I said above, you have to rely on historical documents in order to make a historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. Your appeals to passages like Matthew 16 and John 16, as well as your appeals to patristic documents, for example, depend on textual transmission. Not only are you wrong about the facts, but you also repeatedly fail to consider how your arguments would affect your own belief system.
Rather than supporting your argument, your inconsistencies and poor reasoning on this issue illustrate what I and others have been saying about your carelessness.
> James Kelhoffer, in the article I linked to, cites five
ReplyDelete>sources who refer to a majority of manuscripts as
>not having the longer ending
The same Kelhoffer who said that it is misleading to classify patristic sources as "for" or "against". In point of fact some of those sources claim that the accurate copies are the ones that contain the ending and/or make use of the ending in their homilies.
And again, majority doesn't have to equal correctness, and even he comments (like Burgon) that some at least of these sources seem to be echoing each other rather than speaking purely independantly.
>For you to assume that these men were only
>referring to a local situation each time
I don't necessarily have to assume they are all referring to a local situation. But if they something like "almost all", and it conflicts with knowledge we have of its widespread distribution, then we need to harmonise that with other known facts.
>I've cited Eusebius, Jerome, and other sources
>referring to the majority of manuscripts as not
>having your ending.
Not even they can be said to "reject" the passage, especially Jerome who includes it in his text. And again, you've failed to document your claim that a consensus of early sources reject it. You've sidestepped your earlier claim without having the humility to withdraw it.
>I said "earlier", not "earliest". And even "earliest"
>would have to be judged by the context. We can
>refer to the earliest manuscripts whose content
>we have information about, for example, and
>such a use of "earliest" would be accurate. Is
>your misrepresentation of what I said a "careless
>lie"?
What pray tell is the distinction in this context between earlier and earliest? Either one is a lie.
>And why would a different forum be needed?
Because this forum is junk and its lines of topic is controlled by you. If I had the opportunity to bring up brand new lines, you'd be squashed.
>"Because you made a very specific claim that you
>could reconstruct the text with a 'high' degree of
>probability."
>
>I didn't say that about Acts 12:25.
Is not Acts 12 part of the text? Or are you backing off your claim to "some of the text" ??
>If you're thinking of something I said about the
>text in general, then you'll need to tell me
>specifically what you have in mind.
Hello? You said "we have a high degree of confidence that a modern edition of the Bible reads the same way as the original"
>I've already addressed your fallacious use of
>probabilities in previous discussions.
Simple math is not fallacious. Continually referring back to your blathering in earlier discussions about other topics is not a response.
>And if you're going to keep arguing for such
>erroneous figures, then you're undermining your
>own historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy. You
>have to rely on historical documents to make a
>historical case for Eastern Orthodoxy, and those
>documents have textual variants. Why do you
>keep using self-defeating arguments?
Ground control to Jason. I'm not the one who made it a heresy for one to suggest there are errors in miniscule points of history in the text. If you want to admit that miniscule points are not seeing the forest for the trees, we can move on, ok?
>And while you originally referred to "manuscripts
>of the 3rd century", your latest post refers to
>"variants between some _critical_ texts and the
>TR". You've changed your argument. And why
>should we think that the Textus Receptus is a
>standard we should be using in this context?
(a) The TR is almost all Byzantine text.
(b) Almost all Byzantine text readings show evidence of existing in other textual streams.
(c) Everyone agrees that the Byzantine text existed arount the tail end of the 3rd, early 4th century.
So comparing the TR (Byzantine) against a critical (Alexandrian) text, is a reasonable approximation of a portion of the 3rd century differences. If we added in a western text, the list could only get bigger.
>And how is a "place" in the text equivalent to a
>whole verse?
A sentence is the smallest normal unit of conveying a thought, and a verse is an approximation of a sentence. If a verse has a translatable error, then there is a change in that thought.
>How do you get from "4165 translatable
>variants" to your "more than 50% of the text"
>figure?
4165/7950 > 50%
>"These 'translatable differences' include even the
>most trivial differences, many of which would
>show up only in an extremely literal translation.
Which is not the point. I didn't claim all changes were important, only that the lack of interest in maintaining the text exactly, and even making "corrections" did not point in the direction of their having a very fixed idea of inerrancy the way modern day protestants would.
Orthodox writes:
ReplyDelete"And again, majority doesn't have to equal correctness, and even he comments (like Burgon) that some at least of these sources seem to be echoing each other rather than speaking purely independantly."
They don't have to be speaking "purely independently" in order to be giving credible testimony. As Kelhoffer explains, somebody like Jerome could repeat much of what Eusebius said, yet have significant knowledge of the manuscript record himself. I've already given some examples of the reasons we have to expect these people to have had significant knowledge of the manuscript record. I've cited five sources affirming the manuscript majority I referred to, and you haven't cited any comparable source arguing the opposite. What you've appealed to is a later situation in which 99% of the manuscripts contain a longer ending, though some of those manuscripts include markings or notes of some kind. A later majority of manuscripts that include your text (sometimes with markings or notes) doesn't justify dismissing or applying a highly unnatural interpretation to sources who tell us that the majority supported my text earlier.
You tell us that "majority doesn't have to equal correctness", but you've suggested at times that the majority I've referred to might not have existed. It's therefore relevant for me to discuss the evidence for it. And a majority doesn't have to reflect correctness in order to suggest it. The issue is probability. As I said before, if you want us to believe that the early majority was wrong, then you'll need to give us a justification for that conclusion. So far, you've failed to do so. Your unsupported assertion that a later church consensus must be correct isn't a justification for your suggestion that the early majority was wrong.
You write:
"I don't necessarily have to assume they are all referring to a local situation."
Why don't you tell us what your position is instead of referring to how you "don't necessarily have to assume" something? I've already explained why it would be unreasonable to think that these sources were only referring to a local situation. None of them include such a qualifier. Such a limitation wouldn't make sense in the context in which they were writing. Jerome was writing to a woman in Gaul. Etc.
You write:
"But if they something like 'almost all', and it conflicts with knowledge we have of its widespread distribution, then we need to harmonise that with other known facts."
What does Eusebius' assessment "conflict with"? Nothing in Justin Martyr, for example, requires that he was referring to the passage in question as part of scripture. When you discuss these early sources, you often include people, like Justin, who don't suggest the conclusions you're drawing from them. Eusebius allows for a minority of differing manuscripts, and even if we were to conclude that the passage was more widely accepted than Eusebius thought, it's doubtful that he would have been so wrong as to have mistaken a minority for a large majority. In other words, if Eusebius thought that something like 90% of the manuscripts lacked your longer ending, but it was something like 80% instead, then the evidence would still support my conclusion. You've given us no reason to think that Eusebius and the sources who corroborate him were so wrong that your text may have been equal or ahead in the manuscript record at the time.
You write:
"Not even they can be said to 'reject' the passage, especially Jerome who includes it in his text. And again, you've failed to document your claim that a consensus of early sources reject it."
I've already addressed those issues. If your longer ending was absent from the earlier manuscripts, and you want us to believe that people would have included that ending if they knew about it or knew more about it, then you'll need to give us evidence to that effect and explain why we should agree with what those people supposedly would have believed under different circumstances.
You write:
"What pray tell is the distinction in this context between earlier and earliest? Either one is a lie."
You misquoted me. I didn't say "earliest". And how would "earlier", which is the word I used, be "a lie"? You aren't giving any explanation. You're just making an assertion.
You write:
"Because this forum is junk and its lines of topic is controlled by you."
I don't know what "this forum is junk" is specifically referring to, and the fact that only moderators begin new threads hasn't stopped you from raising a large number of off-topic discussions within the threads.
You write:
"You said 'we have a high degree of confidence that a modern edition of the Bible reads the same way as the original'"
Here we have another example of your carelessness, if not dishonesty. Here's what I originally said, but with some additional words that you left out:
"The point is that if we have a high degree of confidence that a modern edition of the Bible reads the same way as the original in a particular passage, then the issue of Biblical inerrancy is relevant to whether we can trust what the original said."
You left out the phrase "in a particular passage", even though I was asking you to tell me where I said what you claimed I said about the text in general. You quoted what I said about particular passages, not the text in general, but you left out the phrase in which I specified that I was referring to "a particular passage". Were you being careless again? Or did you dishonestly take the quote out of context, knowing that I didn't actually say what you implied that I had said?
You write:
"The TR is almost all Byzantine text."
Aside from your failure to give us any relevant documentation or numbers, how would "almost all" be sufficient when the issue in question is a specific number and percentages?
You write:
"A sentence is the smallest normal unit of conveying a thought, and a verse is an approximation of a sentence. If a verse has a translatable error, then there is a change in that thought."
Whether the thought of an entire sentence is changed would vary from case to case. Your assumption that more than 50% of the text is involved is unwarranted. You don't even know that each variant occurred in a different verse, much less that each variant represents a change in the thought of an entire verse. And you originally referred to text, not thought.
You made a series of bad judgments in analyzing this information. You can't change that fact, and your attempts to avoid admitting that you erred are giving us more reason to distrust you.
You write:
"I didn't claim all changes were important, only that the lack of interest in maintaining the text exactly, and even making 'corrections' did not point in the direction of their having a very fixed idea of inerrancy the way modern day protestants would."
You originally referred to scribes changing the text in an attempt to correct it. Now you're referring to "lack of interest in maintaining the text", which isn't the same. Humans err, even when they're attempting to be careful, especially when they're doing something as difficult as copying large amounts of text. The presence of variants among the manuscripts doesn't indicate a lack of belief in Biblical inerrancy. Even people who reject inerrancy are copying something because they want it duplicated, regardless of whether they think that the original edition of the document was inerrant.