It's a presupposition of perfection. You'll never catch the red dot. Not for lack of trying.
Yeah, Im not really concerned with the romantiscized notion of perfection from imperfect people. Im interested in how a biblical research ministry missed a gigantic controversy centered around the textus receptus and the critical greek texts. Wouldn't you think a biblical research ministry should know about such matters? But even taking it a step further, was this common knowledge in the research department? Im cool on the red dot...my pomeranian won't chase it...lol
Wouldn't you think a biblical research ministry should know about such matters? But even taking it a step further, was this common knowledge in the research department?
Well... afaik, the HEAD of the research department is still alive and March(ing) Four(th).
The one person from said research dept that occasionally visits GSC might be able to offer some insight. However, she's on the verge of finalizing publication of her second book (which is NOT about TWI).
In an email from Penworks just now, she said "No, haven't heard of that, but there's so much stuff out there on the history of the Bible."
So, my sense is that the youtube movie is about something that may or may not have been as remarkable as the producers of the movie claim. IOW, in the nearly three hour movie, do they present anything that supports the characterization of this particular hoax as "great?" Or do they at all note that in the nearly two millennia since the start of the Christian era, there may have been other hoaxes or attempted hoaxes that were more easily dismissed?
...how a biblical research ministry missed a gigantic controversy...
Perhaps some might fancy THIS take on the matter. (Yeah, it has a brief commercial. Pass through it if you so choose.) Also, his series of videos on "Who Wrote The Bible?" is fascinating, to put it mildly. Lots of other non-Bible stuff there, too.
You probably never heard this stuff because it's undocumented and looks like guff. No sources cited for his claims, and the "conclusion" is that the KJV is the best modern Bible. He's also skipped over WHY there's been differences between Bibles from the last 450 years and now. He insists it can only be because they were corrupted, but they have changed as 1st century fragments have been recovered.
I also noted he didn't know why I John 5's verse is in the KJV but not the others. Trinitarians have explained why decades ago. (It was 1 of 2 books but I forget which at the moment.) And he insists that the KJV has to be correct because the changes all point away from the Trinity- and he insists the Trinity MUST be true- so the only reason anyone can remove something that supports the Trinity is NOT because it was error, but because the person wants to INTRODUCE error. Thousands of Bible scholars out there. They've dedicated their lives to the Bible. They've studied history, languages, archeology, and traveled around the word= and according to him, it's ALL to introduce error and they're not REALLY dedicated or sincere.
This is known as "poisoning the well" and twi survivors should be familiar with it. "Everybody outside our group is walking in error- only WE know The Truth."
In short, a nut wrote a PDF and I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
The video you hotlinked is not accessible from every country. What was the title?
The Great Bible Hoax of 1881: Is the text mistranslated?
36 minutes ago, WordWolf said:
You probably never heard this stuff because it's undocumented and looks like guff. No sources cited for his claims, and the "conclusion" is that the KJV is the best modern Bible.
Thanks for injecting more critical analysis into this thread.
Since leaving TWI, I have reconsidered everything I believe and especially what I was taught by TWI. Some things have fallen off my radar as simply lies put out by VPW and others, whether they knew they were pushing lies or not - a lie is a lie. The law of believing comes to mind on this topic. However, I am Christian and I have been in the habit of taking my beliefs to scripture to see if those beliefs stand. During this process, I started digging into Church history and the history of how our modern day Bibles came to be. And what I found is shocking to say the least. With the way international supposedly being a biblical research ministry, wouldn't they know? Yah...I get it....VPW's schtik was biblical research and actual biblical research from TWI is questionable at best.
Please take a few minutes to peruse the book at the above link. Im not looking to get into a doctrinal discussion but rather Im reaching out to any former research heads, etc, as to why this information was never made public from a biblical reasearch ministry? Thanks for any feedback.
For those of you with more time, the following link is very informative and really hits the subject from all angles.
I started the You Tube of The Great Bible Hoax of 1881 – but seeing how it is over 2.5 hours long – I’ll check more of it out later. Thanks for posting the PDF and the You Tube.
feedback on The Two Parallel Streams of Bibles:
what I’ve read of the PDF you’ve provided – Duperron’s book seems to have a somewhat conspiratorial flavor - suggestive of a secret plan made by a group of people to change what the Bible says…I do think it’s interesting the way he compares the different translations and versions – but to me (and maybe I’m mistaken) it seems like Duperron has more of a theological agenda than a concern for ancient manuscripts textual research.
Also, it appears Duperron is a fundamentalist – but that’s not the only way to interpret the Bible. On the 2nd Wave of returning to PFAL I talked about the four major theories that various scholars have posited on how the Bible was inspired by God (you'll find my source listed in that post)...anyway,,,I lean toward a mix of
Neo-orthodoxy theory: conceived in the early 20th century, partly as a reaction to liberalism’s disregard for divine authority. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner are two of its leading proponents. Neo-orthodoxy holds that God is utterly transcendent – meaning God is absolutely different from us and far beyond our comprehension. Neo-orthodoxy differs from evangelicalism in that neo-orthodoxy asserts the Bible is a WITNESS to the Word of God or CONTAINS the Word of God – whereas evangelicalism holds that the Bible IS the Word of God. According to neo-orthodoxy the writers recorded their experiences with God the best they could – but being human, their writings sometimes contained paradoxes or errors.
and
Limited inspiration theory: holds that God inspired the thoughts of the biblical writers, but not necessarily the words they chose. God guided the thoughts of the writers, but he gave them freedom to express those thoughts in their own style. Having that freedom, some historical errors as well as ancient and often erroneous concepts of physical sciences, life sciences, and Earth sciences may be found.
Whereas I think Duperron like wierwille is either or perhaps a mix of
Dictation theory: suggests God simply dictated the Bible to human scribes – giving them the EXACT words God WANTED – writing ONLY what God dictated to them. This view generally doesn’t appear in print but has sometimes been suggested by some segments of Christianity – some conservative and fundamentalist groups.
and/or
Plenary verbal inspiration theory: like the other views plenary verbal inspiration asserts the Holy Spirit interacted with the writers to produce the Bible. “Plenary” means “full” or “complete”. “Plenary” inspiration asserts that God’s inspiration extends to ALL of Scripture – WHICH INCLUDES when the writers recorded any historical, physical science and life science details. “Verbal” refers to the WORDS of Scripture. “Verbal inspiration” means God’s inspiration extends to THE VERY WORDS the writers chose – but it is not the same as # 2 the dictation theory. The writers could have chosen other words, and God often allowed them the freedom to express their own personalities as they wrote – but the Holy Spirit still guided the process so that the finished product faithfully conveyed God’s message.
Fundamentalism is totally hostile to the notion of biblical criticism in any form and is committed to a literal interpretation of Scripture – if you’ll remember wierwille had a disdain for textual criticism…Theologically, fundamentalism is narrowly committed to a set of doctrines…dogma! There is an element of irrationalism often associated with fundamentalism that is lacking in evangelicalism which has produced significant writings in areas of the philosophy of religion and apologetics.
For some reason I’m reminded of a certain Grease Spotter who thinks PFAL is the gold standard of biblical research – and on a couple of threads - Is PLAF theopneustos? and 2nd wave of PFAL I referenced the book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by FF Bruce which states that even with the variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament – there is no impact to historic facts or to the BASIC TENETS of the Christian faith and practice… Duperron’s challenges to textual criticism seems to base his opinions on some “special knowledge”…that smacks of Gnosticism to me.
Reflecting on my way corps training I distinctly remember times on corps nights where either wierwille, Walter C or Craig would talk about doing research of ancient manuscripts looking for a certain text to support what wierwille said about something. That doesn’t sound like unbiased research to me. Sounds more like preparation…proof-texting in search of a text.
I skimmed over the PDF and checked out some of the other sections – that gets into the Nephilim and some other dubious and speculative stuff. I have a some books on the Nephilim – one by a former way corps guy – interesting stuff – not everyone’s cup of tea – but I’m a big X-Files fan so I like reading up on things like that.
One thing that I found rather unpalatable near the end of Duperron’s book pages 156 and 157: “Go to Google and type in: AV Publications Hazardous Materials by G. A. Riplinger “You will learn such things as the connection between new version editor and child molester C.J. Vaughan (whose all ‘boys’ school parades their lewd perversion in one, amongst the many never before published photos in this book) and tools such as Strong’s Concordance, Vine’s Expository Dictionary, the Unitarian J.H. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, Moulton’s Lexicon and Vincent and Wuest’s Word Studies. Heresy trials deposed editors of the popular Hebrew-English Lexicon by Brown, Driver, and Briggs and the New Testament Greek-English 157 Lexicon by Frederick Danker. All Greek-English New Testament lexicons plagiarize the first Greek-English lexicon written by Scott and Liddell, who harbored the pedophile author of Alice in Wonderland, who took improper photographs of Liddell’s child and remains a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murder case. The book demonstrates that Greek texts from UBS to TBS fail to reach the perfection of the Holy Bible, where God’s words shall not pass away.”
Yeah – I’m not sure what to make of that…this kind of stuff makes me think of why politics is banned on Grease Spot Café – when in politics - or religion a person gets into conspiracies and disparaging innuendoes to cut down their opponents - I think that's a cheap shot...instead of debating policies...articulated issues…laws…philosophy…citing easily accessible documents…fact-checking …so this portion of his book hit me the wrong way…I can argue all day long on why wierwille’s body of work can’t be trusted – from just on academic, doctrinal, logical, technical grounds and would not have to get into his sordid sexual predatory behavior which has been well documented and witnessed by individual victims as well as in group meetings, casual and formal teaching settings…nuff said…don’t know if you can sort through my ramblings – so I’ll make it easy - you can just chalk me up as giving mostly negative feedback on The Two Parallel Streams of Bibles
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feedback on the video The Great Bible Hoax:
If you watch the video on You Tube you’ll find a brief summary as follows: “In 1881, two scholars published a series of corrections to the new Testament of the Bible that sent immediate shockwaves through the academic world. Brooke Wescott and Fenton Hort produced The New Testament in the Original Greek, one of the earliest examples of modern textual criticism. Their goal was to remove changes, errors, and additions to the text in order to determine the original words. It was at once controversial but at the same time - began a new epoch in the history of textual criticism.”
An interesting point at about the 1-hour mark by Dr. Phil Stringer who was pro-critical text (and author of History of the English Bible) he was asked by someone how do you know the oldest text is the best? Stringer then pursued the question much deeper…Stringer said he was helped along the way by a book The Identity of the New Testament Text by Wilbur Pickering and Stringer says if you found a corrupt text of Romans that was produced the day after God inspired the book of Romans (we know these corrupt texts were being made almost immediately by statements of early church leaders ) - it would be the oldest text anyone ever found – and it would be corrupt.
Another passage the video gets into is I Timothy 3:16 I Timothy 3:16 - And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. KJV
I just wanted to pass this one on for all you Bible study-bugs out there - If you click on the above hyperlink of I Timothy 3:16 you’ll see some 26 different translations and versions of that verse – and down at the bottom left – click on Additional Translations and it will categorize the translations by modern, classic, and literal. Additional translations of I Timothy 3:16
The video gets into Gnosticism too – and suggests there was some Gnostic influences in passages that separates Jesus from Christ…“Jesus” referred to his humanity – material, corrupt…”Christ” referred to the spiritual, pure, perfect…
(T-Bone note: Gnostics were big fans of secret knowledge and believed there was a clear separation of the spiritual world, which was pure, perfect, good and the material world, which was corrupt, imperfect and evil – to the Gnostics “spirit is spirit - flesh is flesh and never the twain shall meet” …I’ve shared on the Logos in John 1:1 a few times on GSC from various scholars and would just like to say wierwille did not know what he was talking about) .
fascinating stuff in this video – I’ll have to watch it a few more times – thanks for posting the link OldSkool!
I see a contrast in philosophy between Duperron’s book and the ideas presented in the video…I think textual criticism is a good thing – and something necessary for the proper interpretation of Scripture. “The Academic Study of the Bible and its Textual Content: In the academic discipline of biblical criticism the word "criticism" is not to be taken in the negative sense of attempting to denigrate the Bible. Technically, biblical criticism simply refers to the scholarly approach of studying, evaluating and critically assessing the Bible as literature in order to better understand its origins and the original intentions of its authors.
It is the task of biblical criticism to collect and study various writings in which a text has been preserved, determine the changes that have occurred in the wording and arrangement of the text, assess the significance of such changes, and restore, if possible, the original wording, teachings or form of the text.”
from: The Nazarene Way of Essenic Studies
9 hours ago, Bolshevik said:
"The Bible became corrupted"
It's a presupposition of perfection. You'll never catch the red dot. Not for lack of trying.
8 hours ago, Rocky said:
Intriguing idiom... easily understood by people who have been owned by feline pets.
Never catch the red dot –
Our cat LOVES to chase the laser pointer – never seems to get tired of it…we had a lab/springer spaniel who got into it too – she would usually take over the game by her loping and darting about to catch the red dot would freak out the cat and he’d go hide.
6 hours ago, Stayed Too Long said:
Never fear. There are thousands of Christian religions and you can validate any belief you have from one or more of them.
true that!
1 hour ago, WordWolf said:
*reads the book over*
You probably never heard this stuff because it's undocumented and looks like guff. No sources cited for his claims, and the "conclusion" is that the KJV is the best modern Bible. He's also skipped over WHY there's been differences between Bibles from the last 450 years and now. He insists it can only be because they were corrupted, but they have changed as 1st century fragments have been recovered.
I also noted he didn't know why I John 5's verse is in the KJV but not the others. Trinitarians have explained why decades ago. (It was 1 of 2 books but I forget which at the moment.) And he insists that the KJV has to be correct because the changes all point away from the Trinity- and he insists the Trinity MUST be true- so the only reason anyone can remove something that supports the Trinity is NOT because it was error, but because the person wants to INTRODUCE error. Thousands of Bible scholars out there. They've dedicated their lives to the Bible. They've studied history, languages, archeology, and traveled around the word= and according to him, it's ALL to introduce error and they're not REALLY dedicated or sincere.
This is known as "poisoning the well" and twi survivors should be familiar with it. "Everybody outside our group is walking in error- only WE know The Truth."
In short, a nut wrote a PDF and I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
Seems to me there's no end to this rabbit hole. While I was in the research department at Way HQ (long ago and far away) there was an attempt by some members of it to study the history of the text in more depth. Walter C*mmins initiated this. When Geer showed up and challenged LCM, that project backfired. The endeavor raised too many uncomfortable questions that, to those who admitted it, revealed the fact that VPW's legacy of fundamentalism (he was already dead by this time) was incapable of allowing honest inquiry into textual or historical Scriptural research. I witnessed this situation and write it in the latter part of Undertow.
After I got out of TWI, I spent some time sorting out my evolving thoughts about the Bible and what it is. I came across lots of sources in the good old public library and college libraries. This was the late 1980s and 1990s when people actually browsed around in brick-and-mortar libraries to see what they might discover on the shelves. I later found scholarly works online.
For this thread, I'll just offer three sources that were helpful to me. But I realize my interests are unique, not for everyone. For those interested, here you go. I'm not promoting Amazon as THE place to buy these books, I only include links to Amazon to give information about the books.
Seems to me there's no end to this rabbit hole. While I was in the research department at Way HQ (long ago and far away) there was an attempt by some members of it to study the history of the text in more depth. Walter C*mmins initiated this. When Geer showed up and challenged LCM, that project backfired. The endeavor raised too many uncomfortable questions that, to those who admitted it, revealed the fact that VPW's legacy of fundamentalism (he was already dead by this time) was incapable of allowing honest inquiry into textual or historical Scriptural research. I witnessed this situation and write it in the latter part of Undertow.
Thanks!!! First off, the entire concept of biblical research is a sales schtik IMO. I dropped that entire endeavor a long time ago. Anymore, I am simply sorting out my beliefs and yes I remain Christian, so the Bible is my default standard for Christian doctrine. I happened across the video and book quite by accident. There are a lot of other sources out there. The book definately reeks of fundamentalism, but I included it because it has some decent side by side comparisons of altered verses. The video is a decent presentation and interviews scholars and such who seem to be in the know. Im not even sure what to do with the information yet. My thinking is that if me, being a layman can find this material, then surely those who man the helm of a so called "biblical research ministry" know it exists and either choose to ignore it for their own selfish gain and positions or are just plain ignorant that this controversy exists - either way - incompetance!
The critical greek text (Westcott and Hort) is highly suspect, heavily edited, and the codex vaticanus and codex sinaticus disagree with each other over and over again. The textus receptus has around 5200 manuscripts (for lack of a better word) and they are largely in agreement with one another, even though there are disagreements and errors as well. So, if you really do biblical research then this to me would be a major issue to resolve to make sure you are as accurate as possible.
My entire point with this post was answered by Penworks, and thanks!! They knew there was something there to study but shut it down for whatever reason. I think the reason they shut it down is because they didn't want to redact their co called research books.
Also, Penworks, thanks for the links! I will read all of them in depth.
what I’ve read of the PDF you’ve provided – Duperron’s book seems to have a somewhat conspiratorial flavor - suggestive of a secret plan made by a group of people to change what the Bible says…I do think it’s interesting the way he compares the different translations and versions – but to me (and maybe I’m mistaken) it seems like Duperron has more of a theological agenda than a concern for ancient manuscripts textual research.
Also, it appears Duperron is a fundamentalist – but that’s not the only way to interpret the Bible. On the 2nd Wave of returning to PFAL I talked about the four major theories that various scholars have posited on how the Bible was inspired by God (you'll find my source listed in that post)...anyway,,,I lean toward a mix of
Neo-orthodoxy theory: conceived in the early 20th century, partly as a reaction to liberalism’s disregard for divine authority. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner are two of its leading proponents. Neo-orthodoxy holds that God is utterly transcendent – meaning God is absolutely different from us and far beyond our comprehension. Neo-orthodoxy differs from evangelicalism in that neo-orthodoxy asserts the Bible is a WITNESS to the Word of God or CONTAINS the Word of God – whereas evangelicalism holds that the Bible IS the Word of God. According to neo-orthodoxy the writers recorded their experiences with God the best they could – but being human, their writings sometimes contained paradoxes or errors.
and
Limited inspiration theory: holds that God inspired the thoughts of the biblical writers, but not necessarily the words they chose. God guided the thoughts of the writers, but he gave them freedom to express those thoughts in their own style. Having that freedom, some historical errors as well as ancient and often erroneous concepts of physical sciences, life sciences, and Earth sciences may be found.
Whereas I think Duperron like wierwille is either or perhaps a mix of
Dictation theory: suggests God simply dictated the Bible to human scribes – giving them the EXACT words God WANTED – writing ONLY what God dictated to them. This view generally doesn’t appear in print but has sometimes been suggested by some segments of Christianity – some conservative and fundamentalist groups.
and/or
Plenary verbal inspiration theory: like the other views plenary verbal inspiration asserts the Holy Spirit interacted with the writers to produce the Bible. “Plenary” means “full” or “complete”. “Plenary” inspiration asserts that God’s inspiration extends to ALL of Scripture – WHICH INCLUDES when the writers recorded any historical, physical science and life science details. “Verbal” refers to the WORDS of Scripture. “Verbal inspiration” means God’s inspiration extends to THE VERY WORDS the writers chose – but it is not the same as # 2 the dictation theory. The writers could have chosen other words, and God often allowed them the freedom to express their own personalities as they wrote – but the Holy Spirit still guided the process so that the finished product faithfully conveyed God’s message.
Fundamentalism is totally hostile to the notion of biblical criticism in any form and is committed to a literal interpretation of Scripture – if you’ll remember wierwille had a disdain for textual criticism…Theologically, fundamentalism is narrowly committed to a set of doctrines…dogma! There is an element of irrationalism often associated with fundamentalism that is lacking in evangelicalism which has produced significant writings in areas of the philosophy of religion and apologetics.
For some reason I’m reminded of a certain Grease Spotter who thinks PFAL is the gold standard of biblical research – and on a couple of threads - Is PLAF theopneustos? and 2nd wave of PFAL I referenced the book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by FF Bruce which states that even with the variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament – there is no impact to historic facts or to the BASIC TENETS of the Christian faith and practice… Duperron’s challenges to textual criticism seems to base his opinions on some “special knowledge”…that smacks of Gnosticism to me.
Reflecting on my way corps training I distinctly remember times on corps nights where either wierwille, Walter C or Craig would talk about doing research of ancient manuscripts looking for a certain text to support what wierwille said about something. That doesn’t sound like unbiased research to me. Sounds more like preparation…proof-texting in search of a text.
I skimmed over the PDF and checked out some of the other sections – that gets into the Nephilim and some other dubious and speculative stuff. I have a some books on the Nephilim – one by a former way corps guy – interesting stuff – not everyone’s cup of tea – but I’m a big X-Files fan so I like reading up on things like that.
One thing that I found rather unpalatable near the end of Duperron’s book pages 156 and 157: “Go to Google and type in: AV Publications Hazardous Materials by G. A. Riplinger “You will learn such things as the connection between new version editor and child molester C.J. Vaughan (whose all ‘boys’ school parades their lewd perversion in one, amongst the many never before published photos in this book) and tools such as Strong’s Concordance, Vine’s Expository Dictionary, the Unitarian J.H. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, Moulton’s Lexicon and Vincent and Wuest’s Word Studies. Heresy trials deposed editors of the popular Hebrew-English Lexicon by Brown, Driver, and Briggs and the New Testament Greek-English 157 Lexicon by Frederick Danker. All Greek-English New Testament lexicons plagiarize the first Greek-English lexicon written by Scott and Liddell, who harbored the pedophile author of Alice in Wonderland, who took improper photographs of Liddell’s child and remains a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murder case. The book demonstrates that Greek texts from UBS to TBS fail to reach the perfection of the Holy Bible, where God’s words shall not pass away.”
Yeah – I’m not sure what to make of that…this kind of stuff makes me think of why politics is banned on Grease Spot Café – when in politics - or religion a person gets into conspiracies and disparaging innuendoes to cut down their opponents - I think that's a cheap shot...instead of debating policies...articulated issues…laws…philosophy…citing easily accessible documents…fact-checking …so this portion of his book hit me the wrong way…I can argue all day long on why wierwille’s body of work can’t be trusted – from just on academic, doctrinal, logical, technical grounds and would not have to get into his sordid sexual predatory behavior which has been well documented and witnessed by individual victims as well as in group meetings, casual and formal teaching settings…nuff said…don’t know if you can sort through my ramblings – so I’ll make it easy - you can just chalk me up as giving mostly negative feedback on The Two Parallel Streams of Bibles
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Awesome post! I will respond to the points on the video shortly. It would be easy to set up a straw man on this Duperron guy, I appreciate you guys not doing that. I know very little of him, do not endorse him, and couldn't find any information on him when I spent a few days trying to figure out who in the heck he is and who he is with. Fruitless search, but obviously from his writings he smacks of fundamentalism. He advocates only reading the king james version and not checking the underlying greek. There are many ponits wher I disagree with this guy. But such is Christendom and such is the way many of us used to be. With that said, the value of his book, to me at least, are the comparison tables he uses. As for conspiracies, the bible tells us that people will conspire to corrupt the truth.
Eph 4:14
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive
There are people who conspire to commit all kinds of unsavory actions all throughout history into the present day.
In an email from Penworks just now, she said "No, haven't heard of that, but there's so much stuff out there on the history of the Bible."
So, my sense is that the youtube movie is about something that may or may not have been as remarkable as the producers of the movie claim. IOW, in the nearly three hour movie, do they present anything that supports the characterization of this particular hoax as "great?" Or do they at all note that in the nearly two millennia since the start of the Christian era, there may have been other hoaxes or attempted hoaxes that were more easily dismissed?
According to Bart Ehrman, UNC Chapel Hill Greek NT scholar, the KJV is the worst version for any research (study). He says that at the end. In the video link below he will take you through how, even today, any KJV version, including New KJV, still only uses the original 8 to 10 texts from the first translation for revisions or updating. They ignore all the new ones; it's really a massaging of what was done over 400 years by updating words and the like and not much else. Also, the new translations use over 5000 more texts discovered since 1611. I am trying to cite him from the video and if I err so sorry.
The folks who have worked on KJV, including our beloved 1881 Version that vpw said was one of the best translations (how would he know? LOL how would he know???) did not reference any newly discovered texts.
Well, aren't all the Concordances and other research materials are keyed to KJV?! Hence, even more books of mine went out the door in disgust- some to the library and some to file 13.
A lot of this info is the book I posted in Doctrinal titled Making Sense of the Bible by Adam Hamilton a Methodist minister.
BTW, Ehrman was a Fundamentalist like I was in the Way (don't know what you considered yourself to be), lotsa' classes at Moody Bible, and Literalist all the way until he began doing textual work on his Masters at Princeton University in New Jersey and he started to question some things. Like him I did, too, and I've been learning a lot the last 4 years.
I was just reminded last week that we were discouraged from outside investigation. And, we (me) did not have the internet.
Was the author of the pdf living at Defcon3 or something? Gee whiz. Red dot.
According to Bart Ehrman, UNC Chapel Hill Greek NT scholar, the KJV is the worst version for any research (study). He says that at the end. In the video link below he will take you through how, even today, any KJV version, including New KJV, still only uses the original 7 to 9 or so texts from the first translation for revisions or updating. ....
Yes. Erasmus used 6 or so manuscripts out of thousands to arrive at the Textus Receptus, a phrase that was coined by contemparies...I guess that all fell flat with the release of the Stephanus Text in the 1500s. However, it is said of the majority texts that they are in agreement 99.9% of the time whereas W/H codex vaticanus and sinaticus have 3600 disagreements between then in the gospels alone. Ill check out the video you posted. Thanks!
Quote
BTW, Ehrman was a Fundamentalist like I was in the Way (don't know what you considered yourself to be),
A former fundamentalist who is undecided on what he is. Christian, but a searching one...not a researching one...lol...I'm sure a lot of labels fit but I am really just wanting to make some sense out of all of this. And I think more importantly, Penworks answered one of my burning questions: Yes TWI knew there was a history of our bible and decided not to pursue it or teach it for whatever reasons. I think questionable reasons at that. I think VPW cherrypicked what floated his fancy and claimed his cherries were from the first century and nobody had eaten them since until he plated them for our consumption.
One of the things that attracted me about TWI was its Biblical research aspect. I wanted to know about things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how they impacted the knowledge that we have now of the Bible and culture around the time the scrolls were written, or perhaps preserved. I'd never heard anything in any church, didn't know much about the scrolls, and hey! here's this great research ministry!
When I asked the question, I was (no surprise) fobbed off time and time again. Eventually (par for the course), I stopped asking, forgot I'd been interested because swamped with too many other twiggy demands, etc etc. No surprise, as they wouldn't know or understand any research if it hit them with a Dead Sea urn. Or a wooden cross.
Seems to me there's no end to this rabbit hole. While I was in the research department at Way HQ (long ago and far away) there was an attempt by some members of it to study the history of the text in more depth. Walter C*mmins initiated this. When Geer showed up and challenged LCM, that project backfired. The endeavor raised too many uncomfortable questions that, to those who admitted it, revealed the fact that VPW's legacy of fundamentalism (he was already dead by this time) was incapable of allowing honest inquiry into textual or historical Scriptural research. I witnessed this situation and write it in the latter part of Undertow.
After I got out of TWI, I spent some time sorting out my evolving thoughts about the Bible and what it is. I came across lots of sources in the good old public library and college libraries. This was the late 1980s and 1990s when people actually browsed around in brick-and-mortar libraries to see what they might discover on the shelves. I later found scholarly works online.
For this thread, I'll just offer three sources that were helpful to me. But I realize my interests are unique, not for everyone. For those interested, here you go. I'm not promoting Amazon as THE place to buy these books, I only include links to Amazon to give information about the books.
I have two of Ehrman’s books: Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities (which has a fascinating chapter on Gnosticism)…I’m adding the Ehrman, Avalos, and Bobrick books you mentioned to my wish list.
Bart Ehrman has an incredible body of work – some 30 books! see Wikipedia – Bart Ehrman …and after watching the You Tube of him - I’m interested in downloading some of his college-level video courses at The Great Courses
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Bolshevik
"The Bible became corrupted"
It's a presupposition of perfection. You'll never catch the red dot. Not for lack of trying.
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Rocky
Intriguing idiom... easily understood by people who have been owned by feline pets.
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OldSkool
Yeah, Im not really concerned with the romantiscized notion of perfection from imperfect people. Im interested in how a biblical research ministry missed a gigantic controversy centered around the textus receptus and the critical greek texts. Wouldn't you think a biblical research ministry should know about such matters? But even taking it a step further, was this common knowledge in the research department? Im cool on the red dot...my pomeranian won't chase it...lol
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Stayed Too Long
Never fear. There are thousands of Christian religions and you can validate any belief you have from one or more of them.
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Rocky
Well... afaik, the HEAD of the research department is still alive and March(ing) Four(th).
The one person from said research dept that occasionally visits GSC might be able to offer some insight. However, she's on the verge of finalizing publication of her second book (which is NOT about TWI).
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waysider
There are some who might take issue with the verb tense.
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Rocky
In an email from Penworks just now, she said "No, haven't heard of that, but there's so much stuff out there on the history of the Bible."
Edited by RockySo, my sense is that the youtube movie is about something that may or may not have been as remarkable as the producers of the movie claim. IOW, in the nearly three hour movie, do they present anything that supports the characterization of this particular hoax as "great?" Or do they at all note that in the nearly two millennia since the start of the Christian era, there may have been other hoaxes or attempted hoaxes that were more easily dismissed?
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Bolshevik
In the becaming was the verb. The verb was with tense. And the verb was tense.
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waysider
Perhaps some might fancy THIS take on the matter. (Yeah, it has a brief commercial. Pass through it if you so choose.) Also, his series of videos on "Who Wrote The Bible?" is fascinating, to put it mildly. Lots of other non-Bible stuff there, too.
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WordWolf
*reads the book over*
You probably never heard this stuff because it's undocumented and looks like guff. No sources cited for his claims, and the "conclusion" is that the KJV is the best modern Bible. He's also skipped over WHY there's been differences between Bibles from the last 450 years and now. He insists it can only be because they were corrupted, but they have changed as 1st century fragments have been recovered.
I also noted he didn't know why I John 5's verse is in the KJV but not the others. Trinitarians have explained why decades ago. (It was 1 of 2 books but I forget which at the moment.) And he insists that the KJV has to be correct because the changes all point away from the Trinity- and he insists the Trinity MUST be true- so the only reason anyone can remove something that supports the Trinity is NOT because it was error, but because the person wants to INTRODUCE error. Thousands of Bible scholars out there. They've dedicated their lives to the Bible. They've studied history, languages, archeology, and traveled around the word= and according to him, it's ALL to introduce error and they're not REALLY dedicated or sincere.
This is known as "poisoning the well" and twi survivors should be familiar with it. "Everybody outside our group is walking in error- only WE know The Truth."
In short, a nut wrote a PDF and I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
============================================================
The video you hotlinked is not accessible from every country. What was the title?
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Rocky
The Great Bible Hoax of 1881: Is the text mistranslated?
Thanks for injecting more critical analysis into this thread.
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T-Bone
I started the You Tube of The Great Bible Hoax of 1881 – but seeing how it is over 2.5 hours long – I’ll check more of it out later. Thanks for posting the PDF and the You Tube.
feedback on The Two Parallel Streams of Bibles:
what I’ve read of the PDF you’ve provided – Duperron’s book seems to have a somewhat conspiratorial flavor - suggestive of a secret plan made by a group of people to change what the Bible says…I do think it’s interesting the way he compares the different translations and versions – but to me (and maybe I’m mistaken) it seems like Duperron has more of a theological agenda than a concern for ancient manuscripts textual research.
Also, it appears Duperron is a fundamentalist – but that’s not the only way to interpret the Bible. On the 2nd Wave of returning to PFAL I talked about the four major theories that various scholars have posited on how the Bible was inspired by God (you'll find my source listed in that post)...anyway,,,I lean toward a mix of
Neo-orthodoxy theory: conceived in the early 20th century, partly as a reaction to liberalism’s disregard for divine authority. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner are two of its leading proponents. Neo-orthodoxy holds that God is utterly transcendent – meaning God is absolutely different from us and far beyond our comprehension. Neo-orthodoxy differs from evangelicalism in that neo-orthodoxy asserts the Bible is a WITNESS to the Word of God or CONTAINS the Word of God – whereas evangelicalism holds that the Bible IS the Word of God. According to neo-orthodoxy the writers recorded their experiences with God the best they could – but being human, their writings sometimes contained paradoxes or errors.
and
Limited inspiration theory: holds that God inspired the thoughts of the biblical writers, but not necessarily the words they chose. God guided the thoughts of the writers, but he gave them freedom to express those thoughts in their own style. Having that freedom, some historical errors as well as ancient and often erroneous concepts of physical sciences, life sciences, and Earth sciences may be found.
Whereas I think Duperron like wierwille is either or perhaps a mix of
Dictation theory: suggests God simply dictated the Bible to human scribes – giving them the EXACT words God WANTED – writing ONLY what God dictated to them. This view generally doesn’t appear in print but has sometimes been suggested by some segments of Christianity – some conservative and fundamentalist groups.
and/or
Plenary verbal inspiration theory: like the other views plenary verbal inspiration asserts the Holy Spirit interacted with the writers to produce the Bible. “Plenary” means “full” or “complete”. “Plenary” inspiration asserts that God’s inspiration extends to ALL of Scripture – WHICH INCLUDES when the writers recorded any historical, physical science and life science details. “Verbal” refers to the WORDS of Scripture. “Verbal inspiration” means God’s inspiration extends to THE VERY WORDS the writers chose – but it is not the same as # 2 the dictation theory. The writers could have chosen other words, and God often allowed them the freedom to express their own personalities as they wrote – but the Holy Spirit still guided the process so that the finished product faithfully conveyed God’s message.
Fundamentalism is totally hostile to the notion of biblical criticism in any form and is committed to a literal interpretation of Scripture – if you’ll remember wierwille had a disdain for textual criticism…Theologically, fundamentalism is narrowly committed to a set of doctrines…dogma! There is an element of irrationalism often associated with fundamentalism that is lacking in evangelicalism which has produced significant writings in areas of the philosophy of religion and apologetics.
For some reason I’m reminded of a certain Grease Spotter who thinks PFAL is the gold standard of biblical research – and on a couple of threads - Is PLAF theopneustos? and 2nd wave of PFAL I referenced the book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by FF Bruce which states that even with the variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament – there is no impact to historic facts or to the BASIC TENETS of the Christian faith and practice… Duperron’s challenges to textual criticism seems to base his opinions on some “special knowledge”…that smacks of Gnosticism to me.
Reflecting on my way corps training I distinctly remember times on corps nights where either wierwille, Walter C or Craig would talk about doing research of ancient manuscripts looking for a certain text to support what wierwille said about something. That doesn’t sound like unbiased research to me. Sounds more like preparation…proof-texting in search of a text.
I skimmed over the PDF and checked out some of the other sections – that gets into the Nephilim and some other dubious and speculative stuff. I have a some books on the Nephilim – one by a former way corps guy – interesting stuff – not everyone’s cup of tea – but I’m a big X-Files fan so I like reading up on things like that.
One thing that I found rather unpalatable near the end of Duperron’s book pages 156 and 157:
“Go to Google and type in: AV Publications Hazardous Materials by G. A. Riplinger “You will learn such things as the connection between new version editor and child molester C.J. Vaughan (whose all ‘boys’ school parades their lewd perversion in one, amongst the many never before published photos in this book) and tools such as Strong’s Concordance, Vine’s Expository Dictionary, the Unitarian J.H. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, Moulton’s Lexicon and Vincent and Wuest’s Word Studies. Heresy trials deposed editors of the popular Hebrew-English Lexicon by Brown, Driver, and Briggs and the New Testament Greek-English 157 Lexicon by Frederick Danker. All Greek-English New Testament lexicons plagiarize the first Greek-English lexicon written by Scott and Liddell, who harbored the pedophile author of Alice in Wonderland, who took improper photographs of Liddell’s child and remains a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murder case. The book demonstrates that Greek texts from UBS to TBS fail to reach the perfection of the Holy Bible, where God’s words shall not pass away.”
Yeah – I’m not sure what to make of that…this kind of stuff makes me think of why politics is banned on Grease Spot Café – when in politics - or religion a person gets into conspiracies and disparaging innuendoes to cut down their opponents - I think that's a cheap shot...instead of debating policies...articulated issues…laws…philosophy…citing easily accessible documents…fact-checking …so this portion of his book hit me the wrong way…I can argue all day long on why wierwille’s body of work can’t be trusted – from just on academic, doctrinal, logical, technical grounds and would not have to get into his sordid sexual predatory behavior which has been well documented and witnessed by individual victims as well as in group meetings, casual and formal teaching settings…nuff said…don’t know if you can sort through my ramblings – so I’ll make it easy - you can just chalk me up as giving mostly negative feedback on The Two Parallel Streams of Bibles
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
feedback on the video The Great Bible Hoax:
If you watch the video on You Tube you’ll find a brief summary as follows:
“In 1881, two scholars published a series of corrections to the new Testament of the Bible that sent immediate shockwaves through the academic world. Brooke Wescott and Fenton Hort produced The New Testament in the Original Greek, one of the earliest examples of modern textual criticism. Their goal was to remove changes, errors, and additions to the text in order to determine the original words. It was at once controversial but at the same time - began a new epoch in the history of textual criticism.”
An interesting point at about the 1-hour mark by Dr. Phil Stringer who was pro-critical text (and author of History of the English Bible) he was asked by someone how do you know the oldest text is the best? Stringer then pursued the question much deeper…Stringer said he was helped along the way by a book The Identity of the New Testament Text by Wilbur Pickering and Stringer says if you found a corrupt text of Romans that was produced the day after God inspired the book of Romans (we know these corrupt texts were being made almost immediately by statements of early church leaders ) - it would be the oldest text anyone ever found – and it would be corrupt.
Another passage the video gets into is I Timothy 3:16 I Timothy 3:16 -
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. KJV
I just wanted to pass this one on for all you Bible study-bugs out there - If you click on the above hyperlink of I Timothy 3:16 you’ll see some 26 different translations and versions of that verse – and down at the bottom left – click on Additional Translations and it will categorize the translations by modern, classic, and literal. Additional translations of I Timothy 3:16
The video gets into Gnosticism too – and suggests there was some Gnostic influences in passages that separates Jesus from Christ…“Jesus” referred to his humanity – material, corrupt…”Christ” referred to the spiritual, pure, perfect…
(T-Bone note: Gnostics were big fans of secret knowledge and believed there was a clear separation of the spiritual world, which was pure, perfect, good and the material world, which was corrupt, imperfect and evil – to the Gnostics “spirit is spirit - flesh is flesh and never the twain shall meet” …I’ve shared on the Logos in John 1:1 a few times on GSC from various scholars and would just like to say wierwille did not know what he was talking about) .
fascinating stuff in this video – I’ll have to watch it a few more times – thanks for posting the link OldSkool!
I see a contrast in philosophy between Duperron’s book and the ideas presented in the video…I think textual criticism is a good thing – and something necessary for the proper interpretation of Scripture.
“The Academic Study of the Bible and its Textual Content: In the academic discipline of biblical criticism the word "criticism" is not to be taken in the negative sense of attempting to denigrate the Bible. Technically, biblical criticism simply refers to the scholarly approach of studying, evaluating and critically assessing the Bible as literature in order to better understand its origins and the original intentions of its authors.
It is the task of biblical criticism to collect and study various writings in which a text has been preserved, determine the changes that have occurred in the wording and arrangement of the text, assess the significance of such changes, and restore, if possible, the original wording, teachings or form of the text.”
from: The Nazarene Way of Essenic Studies
Never catch the red dot –
Our cat LOVES to chase the laser pointer – never seems to get tired of it…we had a lab/springer spaniel who got into it too – she would usually take over the game by her loping and darting about to catch the red dot would freak out the cat and he’d go hide.
true that!
true that!
Edited by T-Bonewhy are the critical Greek texts so critical?
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penworks
Seems to me there's no end to this rabbit hole. While I was in the research department at Way HQ (long ago and far away) there was an attempt by some members of it to study the history of the text in more depth. Walter C*mmins initiated this. When Geer showed up and challenged LCM, that project backfired. The endeavor raised too many uncomfortable questions that, to those who admitted it, revealed the fact that VPW's legacy of fundamentalism (he was already dead by this time) was incapable of allowing honest inquiry into textual or historical Scriptural research. I witnessed this situation and write it in the latter part of Undertow.
After I got out of TWI, I spent some time sorting out my evolving thoughts about the Bible and what it is. I came across lots of sources in the good old public library and college libraries. This was the late 1980s and 1990s when people actually browsed around in brick-and-mortar libraries to see what they might discover on the shelves. I later found scholarly works online.
For this thread, I'll just offer three sources that were helpful to me. But I realize my interests are unique, not for everyone. For those interested, here you go. I'm not promoting Amazon as THE place to buy these books, I only include links to Amazon to give information about the books.
Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired by Benson Bobrick. 2001. Wide As the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution: Bobrick, Benson: 9781451613605: Amazon.com: Books.
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament by Bart. D. Ehrman. 1993.
I think Ehrman is the finest, most accessible scholar today working in historical research regarding texts.
Amazon.com: The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament: 0884915134810: Ehrman, Bart D.: Books
This last one was eye-opening to say the least.
The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos. 2007. The End of Biblical Studies - Kindle edition by Avalos, Hector. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
These days I'm happier out of the biblical research rabbit hole.
I read lots of fiction and poetry and even write some of it myself.
Peace,
Charlene
https://charleneedge.com
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waysider
"Seems to me there's no end to this rabbit hole"........Elmer Fudd
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penworks
The rabbits built themselves a new house as they were fed up with the hole thing.
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OldSkool
Thanks!!! First off, the entire concept of biblical research is a sales schtik IMO. I dropped that entire endeavor a long time ago. Anymore, I am simply sorting out my beliefs and yes I remain Christian, so the Bible is my default standard for Christian doctrine. I happened across the video and book quite by accident. There are a lot of other sources out there. The book definately reeks of fundamentalism, but I included it because it has some decent side by side comparisons of altered verses. The video is a decent presentation and interviews scholars and such who seem to be in the know. Im not even sure what to do with the information yet. My thinking is that if me, being a layman can find this material, then surely those who man the helm of a so called "biblical research ministry" know it exists and either choose to ignore it for their own selfish gain and positions or are just plain ignorant that this controversy exists - either way - incompetance!
The critical greek text (Westcott and Hort) is highly suspect, heavily edited, and the codex vaticanus and codex sinaticus disagree with each other over and over again. The textus receptus has around 5200 manuscripts (for lack of a better word) and they are largely in agreement with one another, even though there are disagreements and errors as well. So, if you really do biblical research then this to me would be a major issue to resolve to make sure you are as accurate as possible.
My entire point with this post was answered by Penworks, and thanks!! They knew there was something there to study but shut it down for whatever reason. I think the reason they shut it down is because they didn't want to redact their co called research books.
Also, Penworks, thanks for the links! I will read all of them in depth.
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OldSkool
Awesome post! I will respond to the points on the video shortly. It would be easy to set up a straw man on this Duperron guy, I appreciate you guys not doing that. I know very little of him, do not endorse him, and couldn't find any information on him when I spent a few days trying to figure out who in the heck he is and who he is with. Fruitless search, but obviously from his writings he smacks of fundamentalism. He advocates only reading the king james version and not checking the underlying greek. There are many ponits wher I disagree with this guy. But such is Christendom and such is the way many of us used to be. With that said, the value of his book, to me at least, are the comparison tables he uses. As for conspiracies, the bible tells us that people will conspire to corrupt the truth.
Eph 4:14
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive
There are people who conspire to commit all kinds of unsavory actions all throughout history into the present day.
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OldSkool
Yeah, I don't know why it's set up the way that it is. I had to disable my VPN to watch it on computer.
The Great Bible Hoax Of 1881: Is The Text Mistranslated? | Bridge To Babylon | Parable
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OldSkool
Thanks!!
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engine
According to Bart Ehrman, UNC Chapel Hill Greek NT scholar, the KJV is the worst version for any research (study). He says that at the end. In the video link below he will take you through how, even today, any KJV version, including New KJV, still only uses the original 8 to 10 texts from the first translation for revisions or updating. They ignore all the new ones; it's really a massaging of what was done over 400 years by updating words and the like and not much else. Also, the new translations use over 5000 more texts discovered since 1611. I am trying to cite him from the video and if I err so sorry.
The folks who have worked on KJV, including our beloved 1881 Version that vpw said was one of the best translations (how would he know? LOL how would he know???) did not reference any newly discovered texts.
Well, aren't all the Concordances and other research materials are keyed to KJV?! Hence, even more books of mine went out the door in disgust- some to the library and some to file 13.
A lot of this info is the book I posted in Doctrinal titled Making Sense of the Bible by Adam Hamilton a Methodist minister.
BTW, Ehrman was a Fundamentalist like I was in the Way (don't know what you considered yourself to be), lotsa' classes at Moody Bible, and Literalist all the way until he began doing textual work on his Masters at Princeton University in New Jersey and he started to question some things. Like him I did, too, and I've been learning a lot the last 4 years.
I was just reminded last week that we were discouraged from outside investigation. And, we (me) did not have the internet.
Was the author of the pdf living at Defcon3 or something? Gee whiz. Red dot.
Edited by engineclarifications
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penworks
Bart rocks.
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OldSkool
Yes. Erasmus used 6 or so manuscripts out of thousands to arrive at the Textus Receptus, a phrase that was coined by contemparies...I guess that all fell flat with the release of the Stephanus Text in the 1500s. However, it is said of the majority texts that they are in agreement 99.9% of the time whereas W/H codex vaticanus and sinaticus have 3600 disagreements between then in the gospels alone. Ill check out the video you posted. Thanks!
A former fundamentalist who is undecided on what he is. Christian, but a searching one...not a researching one...lol...I'm sure a lot of labels fit but I am really just wanting to make some sense out of all of this. And I think more importantly, Penworks answered one of my burning questions: Yes TWI knew there was a history of our bible and decided not to pursue it or teach it for whatever reasons. I think questionable reasons at that. I think VPW cherrypicked what floated his fancy and claimed his cherries were from the first century and nobody had eaten them since until he plated them for our consumption.
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Twinky
One of the things that attracted me about TWI was its Biblical research aspect. I wanted to know about things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how they impacted the knowledge that we have now of the Bible and culture around the time the scrolls were written, or perhaps preserved. I'd never heard anything in any church, didn't know much about the scrolls, and hey! here's this great research ministry!
When I asked the question, I was (no surprise) fobbed off time and time again. Eventually (par for the course), I stopped asking, forgot I'd been interested because swamped with too many other twiggy demands, etc etc. No surprise, as they wouldn't know or understand any research if it hit them with a Dead Sea urn. Or a wooden cross.
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T-Bone
Penworks, thanks for recommending those books!
I have two of Ehrman’s books: Misquoting Jesus and Lost Christianities (which has a fascinating chapter on Gnosticism)…I’m adding the Ehrman, Avalos, and Bobrick books you mentioned to my wish list.
Bart Ehrman has an incredible body of work – some 30 books! see Wikipedia – Bart Ehrman …and after watching the You Tube of him - I’m interested in downloading some of his college-level video courses at The Great Courses
Edited by T-BoneRevision
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