Scribes generally do a good job of checking that they didn't make an error in transcription . It like likely that what we have is what was written down around ad40-ad90. (Years approximate). Things were written mostly by eyewitness or those who interviewed eye witnesses. The whole reads like it.
Of course things were translated to Greek, it is unlikely that the words were spoken in that language.
Things were written mostly by eyewitness or those who interviewed eye witnesses.
The scholarly consensus is that this is not the case. The earliest written Gospel (Mark) couldn't have been written any earlier than the occupation of the Temple during the First Jewish Revolt in 66-67, and all indications are that he was writing down traditions that came from his community and others, with no immediate connection to any "eyewitnesses."
If I remember right, the reason why Mark has scholarly consensus as being written before John is that Mark is least theologically developed, which only really makes sense as evidence for that if you’re starting from the position that the theological bits are later additions. I remember Q and M as evidence for Mark before Matthew or Luke, but is there any evidence that Mark was written before John that doesn’t start with the position that more-developed theology is a later addition?
Why am I being downvoted for asking someone with a PhD in this topic a question about their expertise?
I’m not the person you were responding to, but found your question interesting.
I re-read most of the Wikipedia article on Markan Priority. Imo These parts of the article sum up the argument nicely.
While Marcan priority easily sees Matthew and Luke building upon Mark by adding new material, Marcan posteriority must explain some surprising omissions. Mark has no infancy narrative nor any version of the Lord’s Prayer, for example.
…
Nor does Mark have more than a handful of unique pericopes. This is expected under Marcan priority, where Matthew has reused nearly everything he found in Mark, but if Mark was written last, it is harder to explain why so little new material was added.
…
There are very few passages in Mark with no parallel in either Matthew or Luke, which makes them all the more significant […] If Mark is drawn from Matthew and Luke, it is hard to see why so little material would be added, if anything were going to added at all, and the choice of additions is also rather strange. On the other hand, if Mark was written first, it is easier to see why Matthew and Luke would omit these passages.
Ooooooh - what’s your opinion on the Secret Gospel of Mark? I’m an ex-xtian that copes with the indignity of being indoctrinated into fundamentalism at a young age by devoting way too much of my time into secular lay research into varieties of early Christianity.
Fun story! They came to that conclusion because they discovered a text which had what they believed was another very similar word ("epiousi") that, in context, meant "necessary" or "enough for now." That text was a shopping list.
Then the text got lost for a long time, and when they found it again, new eyes on it realized that they'd misread the word, so it was back to square one.
Everyone arguing dumb things here because of a dumb title. Pronounce = how it phonetically sounds, Nickname = alternative or shortened name. They are not synonyms :)
Catholics go one step further. Both the translation and the tradition of interpreting the translation is divinely inspired. Protestants sometimes vaguely point to something like that but most realize that if they follow the logic train of sacred tradition they should be Catholic or Orthodox.
The book was produced by the tradition. If the tradition is junk, then why would the book not be junk too?
This is one thing that atheists often get wrong about Catholicism. Catholics don’t believe sola scriptura, the Protestant principle that all Christian tradition is to be rooted in the text of the Bible. Thus, “Bible contradictions” and the like are not rebuttals to Catholic views the way they are to “fundamentalist” Protestant views.
I'm an atheist ex protestant, but I generally agree with that theological view. I think Protestantism is very inconsistent in that regard and most arguments amount to hand waving. In the end, though, all denominations pick and choose when councils had sufficient authority to be binding tradition. Unless they're gnostics or some other type of anti-pauIine Christian guess.
Unless they realize that each new interpretation is Divinely inspired. In which case the most recent one is the truest, Tradition is dead, and also the Divine changes Her mind a lot.
Evangelicals are all about that inspired, literal, complete, and inerrant word of God stuff. 99% of all evangelical churches have that as a mission statement on their website.
It's a two-thousand-year-long multilingual game of Telephone. How much is it even possible is left from what was originally written? (And none of it contemporary to when it supposedly happened.)
Textual critics are fairly confident that a fair amount of the texts of the New Testament were reliably copied until we get to the first extant manuscripts, and for the stuff that is very obviously messed up, they have a decent set of analytical tools that help them retroject the likeliest original wording. Not perfect, but decent.
And now we have even better scientific tools that allow us to retroject all the miracles, incorrect dates, absurdly inaccurate numbers/measurements, and the authenticity (very foundation) of it’s stories. Proving that it is all fiction.
Reminder: Until the 1800s no Christian believed that the world was older than about 6000. If you went back in time and spoke to literally any Christian at that time and said you were both Christian and believed that the earth was billions of years old they would definitely say that you’re a liar: You’re not a Christian. You would be declared a heretic.
There is a difference between saying that one translation is more or less accurate than another and saying that the story that is written is true or not. Don’t let your feelings about the subject impact your assessment of the literary work around it.
You’re right: As a literary work is absolute garbage. The chapters are all over the place and it constantly repeats itself, telling the same stories in a slightly different way with no added information or useful insights.
It even makes it incredibly difficult to suspend your disbelief by stating impossible things as simple facts with no explanation whatsoever like someone being swallowed by a whale, fitting two of every animal on earth into a single boat, etc.
This gives me the odd realization that, were a method to travel through time ever discovered, there’s a chance one use-case for it might be a religious group traveling back to the origin point of their religious texts to correct errors that have made their way in since the original versions were written or spoken.
It’s been written. I can’t remember the name or author, but the crucifixion was very popular, and in the story may have accounted for the large crowds that day.
But then you could just go back and witness the events that the book tries to describe, so the book itself becomes irrelevant outside of just archaeology phd work.
Imagining the idea of a deeply religious person going back in time over and over again, going further and further back looking for Adam and Eve and finding very modern-looking humans going all the way back 200,000 years…
Nah, they’d probably give up after going back around 50,000 years and accidentally infecting the entire human population with the common cold, nearly killing off the species.
First of all, if you are going to accuse me of being fake, at least get my name right, that’s esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie to you.
In Canadian English “yeah, no”, “yeah, no, yeah”, “no, yeah”, and “yeah, no, for sure” are just sayings (here’s a random reference I found). I just meant “yeah, like you suggest, no, other countries might not use the term”
Nah, we don’t use hard r’s at the end of our words like in American English. For instance, our way of pronouncing ‘car’ is more like ‘cah’ or just ‘ca’. The way you’ve written it is basically Pirate English.
Seconded. I’ll still habitually call it Maccas and my Canadian friends slowly adopt the term. I actually had a moment of doubt that it was an Australian thing for a while because of that.
There’s no real known origin as far as I’m aware. There’s nothing called a Donk either, but the -en specifies that it’s the Donk we’re talking about and not “a Donk” (en Donk). Honestly it’s probably just something like “McDonalds>McDonken>Donken”. It’s shorter and gives it a personality.
Mate, I worked at Bunnings for seven years and I can tell you for a fact, there are plenty of people out there who actually talk like that. I’d put it on when I was working the trade yard so that tradies/handymen would (ironically) take me more seriously.
Not an apt comparison considering McDonalds for a while signed some restaurants as Maccas, and the McDonalds rewards app in Australia is literally called MyMaccas.
Yeah, but those names came after the local usage. But to the point, I’d wager the majority of Aussies who know AC/DC and McDonalds would understand Acca Dacca and Maccas.
In this case, they literally had to. The name “maccas” is so ubiquitous in Australia they needed to trademark it and start using it. Otherwise, some genius could have opened a burger joint called “Maccas” and been completely fine.
I think we were the ones who bullied them into it, to be quite honest. I’m not sure I’m even physically capable of pronouncing the entirety of the name ‘McDonald’s’.
Bullfrog was my all time favorite game company, they made:
Syndicate
Magic Carpet
Theme Park
Theme Hospital
Dungeon Keeper
After EA bought Bullfrog he moved to Lionhead and did the games people are criticizing on this thread. They are probably younger, and didn’t see his games when he was at his peak
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