Where is your evidence for this claim? It is the first I have heard of it. Give me a book or a website or something so I can look for myself.

In Mark 9: 44-48 Jesus tells us to cut off our hands and feet, and pluck out our eyes to avoid going to hell.

There are 24,633 of these MSS and translations. This makes the NT the hands down winner regarding the vast amount of copies. Just to show how incredible this number is, the second place finisher is Homer's Iliad with 643 ancient copies. If you were to take away the early and ancient translations of the NT and only count the very oldest Greek manuscripts, the NT still ends up knocking out the competition with 5686 copies.

Regarding the earliest writings, I am, of course, referring to Thiede --- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135738,00.html

Plenty has been written for and against fragment evidence but -- c'mon... some of you guys have Socrates and Plato in your signatures... and we have fewer than 50 copies that are dated to more than 1000 years AFTER those guys wrote... you gotta give credit where credit is due!

"The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and quotations from it in the oldest writers of the church is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world." (Kenyon)

I respect that Vessel.  Thank you for the great discussion.  I appreciate the time you took and wish you the best -  You've been more than gracious.

WHAT?!

That is *not* how logic works. Goodness... the Burden of Proof rests upon the naysayer. The Bible is "innocent" until PROVEN guilty. (innocent meaning "perfectly true in every way and way totally awesome&quot {that may be a loose definition}

yes.

Murder is the unauthorized or unjustified killing of another person . God cannot "murder" God is the creator, sustainer and withdrawer of life at His righteous (read: perfect) discretion. Killing is not wrong per se.

um.... ok. Thanks. Context? I'm kinda lost on that one.

Hey.. thanks. I'm flattered actually.. you have a huge reputation on this site. I read and considered. But I got this "mind disorder" thing going.

This is supposed to mean what? All it means is that Christians copied their texts more and preserved them. This is not an argument for authenticity.

You said that Matthew was dated to around 33-34 AD. This article gives the dating to around 80. Read it again.

Once again the sheer volume of copies is not evidence for accuracy or truth. Christians were not copying Socrates they were copying scripture.

No one has ever argued against the abilities of Christians to copy their texts.

NOTE- All these copies of the NT that we have and no two are exactly the same. This does mean Christians were not very good at copying or were intentionally changing the text. A very good book on this is Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. You should read it.

What are you arguing for? That in all these copies of the NT, of which are all different, somewhere the real passages have been copied? How do you know you are reading the right ones now? You would have done better to have left that last quote out.

I got this far before I couldn't stop laughing anymore. It IS his choice. He CAN choose what rules he wants to follow. Isn't that the whole point of this free will concept?

Your genetic code doesn't belong to you? If you can't own yourself, then it would follow that you can't own anything. Which means every church to ever exist has been in direct violation of the rules. Our whole society would appear to be based on a lie! I should take your house. It doesn't belong to you anyway. And I can find a better use for it than yourself. In fact, I should clone you without your consent. After all, god said I can.

I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way my friend. You're trying to make me believe in something that doesn't exist, therefore the burden of proof is on you.

I'm going to have to stop here or be at risk of falling off my chair laughing.

What kind of hyperbole is that?

 "He was as tall as a mountain" is a hyperbole.

But Jesus is telling us to cut off our hands. Why?

SHIFTING THE BURDEN OF PROOF The burden of proof is always on the person asserting something apart from the fallback position. Shifting the burden of proof, a special case of Argumentum ad Ignorantiam, is the fallacy of putting the burden of proof on the person who denies or questions the assertion. The source of the fallacy is the assumption that something is true unless proven otherwise. This is not the case. You can't assume the truth of a proposition without proof. If we could assume truth until disproven, we would be stuck with the ridiculous conclusion that anything we said to be true, must be true, and would only become false when proven false. Reread the ignorantiam law if you are still confused.

This error, above nearly all others, indicates a lack of knowledge of the tenets of logic. Those who commit it require remedial learning.

Actually, this is not only how logic 'works', it's what logic *IS*.

Logic is the study of arguments. It examines when a claim (the conclusion) is justified by the premises.

So logic IS about justifying claims. Logic IS about justifying claims that depart from the fallback.

Goodness you don't know what logic is. But if you like, I can help. Let's begin with the very foundation of logic itself: The very concept of logic is based on the fact that the burden of proof is on the claimant. That's precisely what logic is.

By the way: I'm a writer on logic. Here's my site:

http://candleinthedark.com/logic.html

I've written on various forms of logic, as well as an examination of logical fallacies.

This misapplication of jurisprudence is a common error found on internet chat sites. The bible is a set of claims. Are you aware of the burden of proof on claimants in a court of law? Claimants, in a court of law must support their claims. If they fail, their claim is thrown out of court.

You missed the point actually given to you. These quotes involve god ordering the wholesale slaughter of others. So in these instances, "murder is ok" because 'god says so'.

So this seems to put a damper on any claim for objective morality from 'god'. In fact, it seems to make moral claims arbitrary, based on whim.

I'm betting you don't have any idea about the problems contained in Divine command ethics, do you? If you'd like to learn, just ask.

Here's a newflash for you: you're lost on every response. But kudos to working out your problem this time.

If you want to argue that your god provides you with objective morality, then these objective morals must always be true. If they change due to context, then they become subjective.

Thanks for writing.

No. Because there is no evidence of any contemporary accounts that the works could draw on. So this late date presents a serious provenance concern.

But they make reference to contemporary documents.

Because we have contemporary accounts.

I'm betting you don't follow this.

You're completely missing the actual point before you. If the section does not appear in earlier accounts, then it must be a later creation, without any provenance.

I'm telling you that no serious scholar believes that the names attached to the gospels are the 'actual' writers of those works.

Circular logic fallacy.

Sure. Right. Let's try your way of viewing it.

Just five minutes ago, I put my car keys on the table. And there they are, to this very day. 

 Hmm...

It only works 'good' if you can demonstrate your point. 

Interview: Carsten Peter Thiede
When Was the New Testament Written?

by John Ross Schroeder

Biblical scholarship has taken note of fairly recent claims made on behalf of 2,000-year-old papyrus fragments in the Magdalen College Library at Oxford, England. Perhaps the most ancient fragments of the New Testament in existence, to some observers this papyrus supports the contention that Matthew's Gospel is an eyewitness account.

Named Magdalen GR 17, this discovery may change the way the New Testament itself is viewed by some scholars. Because the handwriting reflects a style current in the first century before Christ, but which may have died out during the middle of the first century after Christ, some scholars say they have good reason to believe that parts of the New Testament were written much earlier than liberal modern scholarship had supposed. If this dating is accurate, the inescapable conclusion is that the four Gospels were composed by authors who remembered Jesus Christ from personal experience or knew eyewitnesses who remembered Him.

German papyrologist Carsten Peter Thiede made this important discovery in 1994. Professor Thiede is director of the Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, Germany. He is a lecturer at the University of Geneva, Switzerland (since 1978), and a life member of the Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London.

GN: Your book, The Jesus Papyrus, concerns itself with the reliability and authenticity of the very origins of Christianity. Do you believe that your discoveries have helped prove that the book of Matthew was written as soon as 20 or 30 years after the crucifixion?  (unixrab notes:  if Jesus was born in 4-6 BC as is usually the date ascribed with historical date/calendar correction and died @ 33 years of age (appx AD 29) 20 years more is AD 49(or so)  )

CPT: Yes. In fact, the redating of those papyrus fragments would show that the Gospel of Matthew must have been written some time before the mid-60s of the first century. You see, those fragments are copies; they are from a codex [an early manuscript book], which means that there must have been scrolls before the codex was written. And one of those scrolls must have been the original Gospel of Matthew. So we definitely reach a period before the mid-60s for the original Gospel of Matthew.

GN:Do you believe that the New Testament is essentially an eyewitness account and not a second-century version of an oral tradition?

CPT: The Gospels are accounts that go back to the time of the eyewitnesses. I don't think there can be any historical doubt about this, irrespective of papyri. There are numerous reasons-historical, textual, critical, literary, historical reasons-for a dating of the Gospels to the period of the eyewitnesses.

Now, no historian would say that all four Gospels were written by eyewitnesses. Not even the earliest Church historians claimed as much. For example, Mark's Gospel was written-according to a reliable very early tradition-by a companion, a disciple of the apostle Peter, who was an eyewitness. So you have a secondhand eyewitness account. Luke says in his Gospel and in Acts that he wrote on the basis of eyewitness accounts. He interviewed eyewitnesses and collected written material on the basis of eyewitness accounts, and from this he wrote his own historical Gospel.

The only two Gospels that may be in the strict sense of the term eyewitness Gospels are Matthew-because he, according to a reliable tradition, was in fact the disciple Levi Matthew-and the Gospel of John, where the author himself and his epilogue at the end of the Gospel both say quite clearly that this was an eyewitness who wrote that Gospel.

So we can say that all four Gospels and the book of Acts were written during the eyewitness period-during the time when eyewitnesses were there, could comment on the text, could correct what was written, could refute it or accept it.

GN:How important is the science of papyrology in determining the authenticity and age of biblical texts?

CPT: Papyrology is a very important science as far as establishing the safe-keeping of the oldest records is concerned. There is nothing older as far as the New Testament is concerned, or indeed classical literature, than the oldest papyri. Establishing them, rediscovering them, analyzing them, translating them, making them available to textual critics-to New Testament scholars in our case-is absolutely vital.

In that sense, papyrology is a determining factor in the analysis of the origins and dating of the New Testament, but one should always admit at the same time that you could study the historicity of the New Testament studies without papyrology. It's one of many elements, but it's not as though without papyri you couldn't analyze the New Testament.

GN:Do you think that The Jesus Papyrus strikes quite a blow for the trustworthiness of the Gospel accounts and the traditions surrounding them?

CPT: Yes, indeed. It's an important supplement to the archaeological and historical material which we already have. The reason some people call that papyrus "The Jesus Papyrus" is in fact because those tiny scraps, three of them, contain no fewer than four different sayings of Jesus. Seven times Jesus plays a role on these three tiny scraps, and they correct in a very decisive manner the majority assumption of modern New Testament scholarship as to the origins of the Gospels as historical texts.

GN: How can a few verses in Greek from the book of Matthew really prove that the whole book was written during the lifetime of eyewitnesses?

CPT: Such an assessment depends on the date of the script and on what is actually on the fragments. People would usually talk mainly about the date, but perhaps more important in order to understand what it really all means is what's on the fragments. Those three fragments contain passages from chapter 26 of Matthew's Gospel. There are two other fragments which belonged at one stage to the same codex-to the same original book-and they are now in Barcelona, Spain, with passages from chapters 3 and 5. At one time in Egypt [where all the fragments were discovered] they were part of the same book; now the fragments are split between Barcelona and Oxford.

Those Barcelona fragments are not quite as important as those in Oxford, because there is less textual information in them, but the important thing is that they belong to chapters 3 and 5 of Matthew's Gospel. So, with fragments from chapters 3, 5 and 26, you can show that these fragments originally did not belong to an early source of the Gospels, but to a complete, full, finished Gospel.

And, if you can date a codex copy of a finished Gospel to the mid-60s, that of course means that the complete Gospel must have been earlier still. In other words, we do date back to the eyewitness period with those particular fragments.

GN: Based on some of your discoveries, would you say, then, that there is no real gap between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith-that the four Gospel accounts are reliable historical documents?

CPT: Contrary to popular opinion, the Gospels do claim to be historical documents and were expected to be understood as historical documents. Luke says so in quite unmistakable terms, and the others say it less directly.

What the Gospels are about is, first of all, telling the story of the historical Jesus. In fact, Luke says, to paraphrase his prologue, "Theophilus, you are already a believer, you are beginning the first steps on your way of faith, and now I'm writing this Gospel, dedicating it to you, so that you have the historical groundwork and basis for your faith." This means that faith is an element of the Gospels, but the historical aspect of who Jesus was and what He did is of equal importance.

What a Gospel says, particularly Luke in his prologue, is a statement made by a historian who wants his work to be understood as part of classical historical writing. It's the same technique and attitude that was displayed by any Roman or Greek historian of the time: the combination of a message with its historical basis. They commonly employed this technique, and Luke was no exception.

Tacitus, for example, is a Roman historian who mentions Jesus and Pontius Pilate. He wrote the history of the Romans in Britain, a work called Agricola. But, first of all, Agricola is a work about the achievements and the greatness of his own father-in-law, Agricola; hence the title of that book. No historian today would say because he praises the achievements of Agricola, who was the procurator of Roman Britain at the time, that it cannot be reliable history.

This combination of a message, like Tacitus praising the glory of the achievements of a father-in-law with sober historical writing, was no contradiction in terms at the time, and this is the attitude displayed by the Gospels.

GN: Aside from papyrology, what other arguments are there to show that the Gospel of Matthew was written before A.D. 70, the date of the fall of Jerusalem?

CPT: The fall of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple, in A.D. 70 is a watershed event. But by that time, probably already in A.D. 66, the first Christian community had left Jerusalem. And indeed the leader of that community, James the brother of the Lord, had been stoned to death in 62.

Any historian would accept that Luke's Acts of the Apostles was written before the year 62. I for one don't understand why some theologians can't accept this; this dating is pure and straightforward historical logic:

One of the threads running through that book of Acts is martyrdom and telling the story of people who were ready to suffer for the Lord, beginning with Jesus and continuing with Stephen being executed in 35.

One of the other most disruptive events in the history of the first Christian community was the stoning of the brother of the Lord, James, in 62. We know this because a reliable historian-reliable in the sense that he wasn't someone who wanted to prove Christianity right at all costs-the Jewish historian Josephus, mentions this stoning and gives us the year.

A few years later, about 64-65 and at the latest in 67, Peter and Paul were executed, martyred after the fire of Rome. None of these events is mentioned in the book of Acts: the death of James, Peter or Paul.

The only sensible explanation is obvious to historians: The book of Acts was written before 62. This, of course, means that the Gospel of Luke must be earlier still, and the Gospels which he used, Mark and Matthew, must be even earlier. So that's a historical and chronological assessment derived from the text itself.

Let me give you one other example from the Gospel usually regarded as the latest, John. Most people would say this dates to the late first century. Now, consider the archaeological facts we have these days. For example, in John 5:1 he [John] describes the healing of the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda.

John tells the story in the past tense. But then he tells readers where it happened as if saying: "If you want to see where Jesus did this miracle, then go to the Pool of Bethesda; it's still there," and he describes it.

The pool was rediscovered-exactly the way he described it-earlier this century, but it had been destroyed in A.D. 70 by the Romans. So this account must have been written and was never changed before the year 70. No one after 70 could have written that there still is a pool in Jerusalem called Bethesda. So we have, for the Gospel of John, a historical, archaeological yardstick that indicates it was written before the year 70. And this is only one example of many.

You could go on through the Gospels without any papyrus; you would find argument after argument, pointer after pointer-archaeological, historical, literary, cultural, linguistic-for a date of all the Gospels and Acts before A.D. 70 and indeed much earlier.

GN:You mention in your book that Matthew Levi was an important customs official. Is there any doubt in your mind that he wrote the Gospel of Matthew?

CPT: From papyrology you can't prove or disprove that Levi Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew. Even if everyone accepts that the redating of the papyrus at Oxford is correct, and all the consequences do point to a date of Matthew's Gospel in the late 50s at the latest, then we still couldn't prove via this avenue that Matthew was the author.

However, there are those indications in early history about the authorship of that Gospel, and they all, without any exception, agree that Levi Matthew was the author of the Gospel.

If you accept this, then of course you will find additional information. For example, there are a number of very long speeches in Matthew's Gospel. You may wonder where they come from. Modern critical theologians would say they were all put together decades after the event, basically invented from scraps of information here and there.

Anyone taking classical history seriously would ask why anyone should make that assumption. If we believe that there was an individual, Matthew Levi, who also was a disciple and who was a tax official in Galilee, we know that such a person would be capable of writing shorthand. This was part of his professional skills. People like him at this time in Galilee, Palestine, Egypt, Rome and Greece knew shorthand.

The most probable scenario is that Matthew was there, an eyewitness who made shorthand notes of what Jesus said. The first complete Gospel-and I think that's one of the very few areas where there is almost unanimous agreement-is Mark. When Matthew got it, he could use his own shorthand notes of the sayings and incorporate them into his improved, enlarged, augmented version of Mark's Gospel. Thus we have the Gospel of Matthew, which includes all those long speeches missing from Mark.

So the simple answer, the historical answer-and most historical answers are simple and straightforward-is that Matthew could very well have been the author of that Gospel. There are many more arguments in favor of Matthew's authorship than there are against it.

The word "insect" is not in the authorized bible.

it does not say that.

These were Jesus Last words: He cried out (loudly) "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit .......(then bowed his head and said more softly) "... .it is finished." What's hard about that?

I see no disparity in any of these... !! Each passage mentions some info about the situations or summarizes, but none say "this is the end-all-be-all of information, there is no other information to be had...

In "one day" or total?

Because it the Gospel that was written to emphasize the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and no one in the enemy camp wants that fact published.

He most likely did. We only have COPIES dated to around AD34 - 44 (perhaps 49 or 50) or so - the originals (no longer extant) were earlier.  Read the CPT interview above.  They are eyewitness documents (or the time of eye-witnesses)

Paul is setting out pure doctrine, James is describing a specific situation when a person claims to be a Christian and has no visible evidence of it. You can't just skip over the over-arching disclaimer:

James 2:14 (unixrab version) "Let's say you are in a situation where a guy says he's saved and has no works to back up his mouth...here's how you deal with that." [[ Jas 2:14 ¶ What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? ]]

This works for you because you are allowed to define the fallback position!!! And it is biased. Here is the fundamental flaw in you logic: You do not start with the unbiased position: "I do not know if God exists.. He may or He may not. I will seek to know the truth of His existence" At the very ** least **you will come to an Agnostic position (I admire agnostics)

Your bias is that "There is no God. Prove me wrong." That's illogical and biased. That is a departure from the initial fallback position of Adam, conversing with God and telling his children about those conversations in the Garden of Eden. Everyone conceded that God existed until someone didn't. Because you decided the fallback position is Godlessness - you stack the deck (logically). And you know it.

In other words...there is no ASSUMPTION OF INNOCENCE. -- We are not talking about a civil trial here, but a trial where one party is claiming the other party is guilty of fraud. We must be given the benefit of the assumption of innocence. If you are prosecuting the fact that I am a liar (purgery) - The court starts out ***assuming**** I am not, and sets you about to prove that I am guilty.

You missed the point... I said "unjustified." God never ordered his agents to kill without cause. In every instance, the people or peoples that met with God's judgement fought against Him or disobeyed His command.

Far from it. Everywhere God issues judgement on a person or persons in the Bible, it is clear as to why that person deserved it and God's authority to do it (or have it done).

Who gets to define "ethics" Morality and Ethics without an absolute standard of Truth (capitalized on purpose) are folly - nailing jello to a .... chainlink fence.

Thanks

Oh. In that case: God's objective morality is always true. It is always wrong to take the life of a human being without just cause.

I'm not feeling very killed with kindness, Brian.   Nevertheless,  as a point of education:  Why do prosecutors and police forces, let some crimes (think drug deals or similar) happen - why does it take them SO LONG to "build a case"   Your "1000 Year" argument is moot when you realize that it could be 500 or 10,000 years, the point *IS* There's a reason for all this "time" between Eternity past and the coming Eternity future, and somethings require time.   This space in-between has a purpose.   Just because you can't see the reason for the time spent building His case - doesn't mean it's not happening.

No. The fallback position is non belief in a positive assertion.

That's basic logic. It's called the burden of proof.

Violating that is a fallacy, 'shifting the burden of proof'

I think you think that the fallback is that the bible is false. Untrue. That's not the fallback. The fallback is that the bible is unproven. Non belief is the fallback. Not rejection.

Get it?

So the bible is not guilty without a trial. It is 'innocent' in the sense that it gets a fair trial, and is either found 'true' or false' depending on the evidence.

Get it? 

No, it's not biased, it's basic logic. It's foundational to reason itself. If we reject that, we're forced to accept the ridiculous conclusion that any assertion is true, until disproven.

Here is the fundamental flaw in your assumption. I do not start out saying "god does not exist." The  allback is non belief.

At the very ** least ** you should first learn what my position actually is before asserting what my position actually is!

At the very ** least ** , you should learn what an 'agnostic' actually means:

http://www.rationalresponder.com/am_I_agnostic_or_atheist

Agnostics are weak atheists. They hold that there is no reason to believe in a god. They disbelieve. Non belief. The fallback.

Ain't that funny, considering what you just said?

You admire them... and they are the ones who hold to the fallback position. 

Wrong again. You're the one assuming truth without any grounds!

The fallback posisiotn is merely this:  "You have the burden of proof, because you are making a claim."

That's basic logic.

It's foundational to reason itself. If we reject that, we're forced to accept the ridiculous conclusion that any assertion is true, until disproven.

Simply not believing is the fallback. 

Do you see?

This is not a fallback position, this is a claim. The onus on you is prove it.

That's how logic works.

In other words, you're not following what was just told you. You can't just assume the bible is true! It's not a matter of innocence or guilt in the sense that you use the terms!

 Stop misusing concepts of jurisprudence.

Here is your confusion.

If a person holds that the bible is a fraud, the onus is on them to prove it true. Yes.

But the fallback is simply non belief... not outright rejection. That's your mistake.

So to use your terms, the bible is 'innocent until proven guilty' in the sense that we cannot simply reject it outright.

So if you claim that the bible is true, then the onus is on you to prove that. If you claim it is false, then the onus is on you to prove that.

The fallback position is non belief in it's claims.

Do you get it now?

In other words, "murder is ok, because god says so"!

Look up Divine command ethics.