I have been summoned!
Posted on 06/25/2005 12:30:52 PM PDT by Alusch
No need to apologize --- you didn't do anything wrong!
I was just a little late in claiming the kill --- that's all...
Had something going on in the yard, and stepped away for a short time.
Semper Fi
Prior to the arrival of religious faith, justice was the good of the strong - by virtue of having, say, better skills with a club, you were entitled to take that which belonged to your neighbour.
Why did you have to bring the recent Supreme Court decision into this?
Al Gore, of course.
The Bible is even more than an anthology written over a millenium of time.
Working backwards ...
The major translations we have are written by committees of very learned and holy person, in open processes subject to, and frequently criticized by others. The tradition of translation goes back to the committee of writers assembled for the King James version, a truly beautiful work of the English language (even though I like some of the rendering in contemporary translations better).
To me, the most significant threat of corruption of the Bible is in the creeping in of error over the centuries, since the oldest manuscripts are written in dead languages from a time and place far removed from us. Accordingly, each generation plus of scholars must call upon the Holy Spirit to guide them in the work of preserving the Bible for us.
Prior to contemporary translations by committees of scholars, we had individuals such as St. Jerome and Martin Luther who were totally immersed into the Bible, who translated the Bible, meaning the definitive, accepted canon, into the languages of their time all by themselves ... St. Jerome translated the Bible into latin, and Luther into German. While there was a chance of error in their work, these individuals were awesome in their understanding of the Bible. St. Jerome has been designated a Doctor of the Church and, after several centuries of differences, the Pope has identified Luther as a great Christian and reformer.
Going futher back, within both the church and within Judaism, the cannon, or accepted books of the Bible, were decided by definitive councils of very learned and holy men. In the case of the church, the Bible was then written down onto velum (deer skin), three copies of which have been preserved for us, one by the Roman Catholic church, another by the Orthodox church and a third by the Coptic church. These books are, today, more than 1700 years old. While the languages in which these books are written are dead, they provide an unassailable link going back almost 2 mellinia.
The frail paper books and portions of books from which these Bibles were copied of course have long since disappeared from the scene. At the time, this was not even viewed as unfortunate, since the velum Bibles had been created to take their place.
The Jews, in the determination of the Messoritic text likewise identified and preserved the Jewish scriptures. Their work was done completely independently of the work of the church, and the work of each faith tradition reinforces the other.
As for the determination of the canon, the truth is, this was done by voting, and some books made it by a rather narrow margin, and other didn't make it by a narrow margin. A major rational for inclusion was the revelation of truths of the faith and - very important! - exclusion of heresy. In other words, the assembled scholars had an intuitive understanding of God's revealed truth and that, ultimately - along with prayer and meditation, and open discussion - decided their votes. The books that almost but didn't makes it, such as the Books of Maccabees, weren't heretical books. They simply didn't significantly add to the revealed truth of the books that were included.
Going back just a couple hundred years prior to the identification of the canon, Jesus was on earth, and he used a particular translation of the Jewish scriptures called the Septeguate (sp?) which, for Christians, settles the issue of what books of what we call the Old Testament should be in the canon. Well, maybe.
With regard to the books of the New Testament, we don't have such a definitive act prior to the Council of Nicea. And, in putting together the set of books that the council did, they included some books that cross-reference other books, including some that weren't included, and maybe don't exist in any form nowadays.
(A proof of the truthfulness of the Bible is that it has these loose ends. If the Bible was a concocted set of books, everything would fall into place. It's just like the failure to find WMD in Iraq. If the Administration knowingly lied about WMD, in order to get us into a war, they would have seen to it that some WMD was planted in that country.)
My final comment regarding the definitiveness of the Bible are the discovery of the Dead Sea Scolls (which include many fragments of the Jewish Scriptures) and other such discoveries. Given some very unusual conditions, parts of the Bible have been discovered afresh, after centuries of time. These provide a strong test of the extent to which our Bible has been preserved free of error.
I think we can say that the Bible has been preserved much, much more free of error than our liberal brethren within and without the church would prefer. They would probably like the Bible to be a "living document," much as they conceive of the U.S. Constitution. Let's see, which commandments don't we like any more? And, which commandments would we now like to have? The Bible has been remarkably constant, totally contradicting the criticism that it is an evolving work of fiction.
I thought it wuz Tuuuuhhhhhhrazeuuuuuuhhhh on a rasin bender again!
ABC CBS NBC CNN its all the SAME, Propaganda.
Might as well call them all AmeriJazerra.
Show them how much Gravitas Hugh Bris has. Vote with your remote! Shut down the Alphabet channels.
He's Got A Plan
Zippo Hero
Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes
What better proves it than the fact there is no evidence? That's what the Dems say.
I have been summoned!
?????
Aloysius was referring to Viking Kitties.
There - MUCH better!
Nope.
Al Gore.
It takes a fanatic, or a mental midget, to make such unqualified absolute statements.
And those societies which were based on aetheistic morals were such paridises for humanity... Soviet Union, Cambodia (under Khmer Rouge), Nazi Germany, and pretty much any communist "workers paradise."
Evil bastards will use any justification to carry out their evil.
Mark
Ohhh, RATS! I forgot Mao's purges! Thanks!
Mark
It's your right to deny His existence. Just be aware of the consequences...
You can whine over at LibertyForum about being zotted ALL YOU LIKE.
I will ENJOY hearing your whimpering.
Over there in your 'mirror thread' to this one yu said this: "- Questioning the origin of the Bible is banishable - not unlike in the Middle-Ages. - And yet, it seems so obvious. "
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=ll_chat&Number=293731928&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=0#Post293731928
Evidently, you FAILED to read this when you signed up:
"As a conservative site, Free Republic is pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, pro-Bill of Rights, pro-gun, pro-limited government, pro-private property rights, pro-limited taxes, pro-capitalism, pro-national defense, pro-freedom, and-pro America."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1103363/posts
Keep amusing me little troll!
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