phil try the sausages as well. Its funny well in my opinion how certain countries can do some meats very well and other meats horribly, france has amazing red meat but their pork and chicken is not that good, and now i will leave this thread alone

a lot of seminary classes use mounce, but we are using Croy. Apparently it's a more traditional approach to Greek. Any way you slice it it's still easier than Hebrew! =)

trim - as in bangers and mash? I like that a lot - at least the "English Pub" version of it that I can find here. But honestly, I wouldn't even have to remember that reccomendation as I would most likely try a sausage dish wherever I went. But Germany is also on my top 5 and apparently they truly do them the best.

Aww, I missed an argument. Eh, I'll go ahead and say what I wanted to. Maybe I'll revive it.

The Bible is not infallible. Compare God's approval of genocide to "Thou shall not kill" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." It was said that inconsistencies were a result of mistranslation and error from the story passed down, but even so, it means that the Bible we have is not infallible.

Sort of off topic, but the statement "Truth does not exist" is contradictory. If there is no truth, that statement is false. Therefore, there is truth.

On the early mention of 'consistency' of the Bible, you seem to forget that those who were offering differing views were simply killed and their works burned. The Nician Conference around 313AD (I think) set down the official story and started a basis in Post Jesus period of purging all those who had different views from the official bible. This pretty much carried on till the Reformation where there were some rather stunning difference in bibles as printed with the Calvinist and Lutheran versions at the time being quite different especially in their treatment of icons and the like.

Though as an aside I remember one conversation with an Evangelical gamer who was determined that such and such was exactly as spoken as the word of God. When I asked if he thought that God spoke English to Moses he sort of looked stunned. Then I asked if he thought that God possessed everyone who translated the bible to the modern languages and he simply quit the game we were playing.

@bart - I'm in my second semester of Greek using Mounce's "Basics of Biblical Greek". It's pretty neat and I'm definitely enjoying learning it (though I'm behind on my homework right now...).
(PS, I'm also Jacob's brother) :)

Edi your information is a bit off.

The canonization of the New Testament, as we now have it, was pretty much set by the middle of the 2nd century. It wasn't made official until the council of Nicea, you are correct, but it was hardly privileged information which letters and books were the accepted ones. We already had which letters and books were the legit ones 150 years prior to the official canonization.

And books and letters were cast aside as invalid not because they had views differing from the "Bible", they were cast aside because everyone of the time realized they were not-true or valid!

There was no big bad church that everyone seems to like to blame before the council of Nicea. No, Dan Brown, the winners did not write history, because when these letters and books were collected the Christians were by far the losers.

And obviously the "works" of these false letters were not burned, or we definitely would have no recollection of them.

zuzak - The Bible teaches that God is love, but it also teaches that he is light, in the sense that he is pure, holy, and just.

The justice factor is what determined the proclamations of genocide. The people who were to be destroyed had practices that were abominable even by today's standards - they engaged in child sacrifice and the method of killing was barbaric.

So - the order to the Israelites was a just judgment against them.

thank you bart - saved me another long post there.

One other point, you have to remember that we have way more access to texts to use today that have been found/restored etc that Luther and Calvin did not have.

Textual criticism was basically non-existant at that time and they had to make do with what they had. Our translations today are much better and are still improving.

They engaged in child sacrifice according to the Bible. I'd be interested to hear of a secular and independent source to verify that these practices existed. I assume we're discussing the Canaanites here? If we are, then as far as I recall from my reading of the Old Testament every single one of them was to be killed, including women and children. I don't care how 'just' you think God is, it is never just to slaughter women and children. There is simply no justification for it.

jpwalters: nice! Where are you going to seminary?

Well, I take a contextual interpretation of the Bible, and I think that makes the most sense. By this, I believe that Noah was really really old, as opposed to actually being 950 years old.

The stories of the Bible were generally TOLD rather than read, and they were told to mostly rural people.

are you saying rural people are dumb???!!!!!!


jk lol

bart- I'm actually not at seminary, I just finished my second year of Bible college and I'm taking online classes through Liberty University but I'm working for the Bible college I just finished at (complicated story, sorry), and as an elective, I'm taking Greek.

nice. Aiming to be a pastor?

I've seen first-hand how oral traditions work... my wife is a good story teller... and each time she tells a story it gets "better".

dexter - you haven't seen first hand how oral tradition works. It's nothing like your wife embelishing a story or like 'the telephone gane'. We have nothing analagous to it in our modern culture.

Also, I would say that the majority of the Bible is not from oral tradition anyway. Certainly most or even all of the New Testament can be dated within the first century. That's not oral tradition - it's eyewitness accounts.

Jacob, the fact that much of the new testament was written within 100 years of Christ's death (example: Gospel of John: 90 - 120 AD) does nothing in the way of proving that these were eyewitness accounts. (Nor does it prove that they were not embellished - eyewitness or not). UFO sightings - collaborated often by scores of witnesses - are documented usually within hours of their reported occurrence... the reporting that makes it into the public record is usually second-hand by reporters, and the eyewitness accounts are suspect... unless you are willing to believe that we are regularly visited by a variety of alien species and space craft... but almost exclusively in the last 60 years... Joseph Smith recorded an eyewitness account of visitation by an angel and appearance of gold tablets... do you discount that eyewitness account? Why?

The other day I watched a basketball game with some friends... we were all watching not only the same game, but the same broadcast in the same room. Strangely enough our accounts of certain plays were completely different. The magician half-time show was particularly vexing... I am convinced that he worked a miracle... I saw it with my own eyes. Then there was the faith healer I saw on TV a few years back... he got someone to walk who hadn't walked in years. Amazing. And there were literally thousands of witnesses.

I love how a culture killing some of its own people justifies killing ALL of its people. Anyway, that was clearly not the justification used. The justification is "God wants us to have this land, those guys are on this land, therefore, they need to be killed so we can take it." Do you really see Jesus killing people because they're evil?

Joshua 11:30
"For it was the design of the Lord to encourage them to wage war with the Israelites, that they might be doomed to destruction and thus receive no mercy, but be exterminated, as the Lord had commanded Moses."

MT 5:43-44
"You have heard it said 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy' but I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you"

Lk 23:49-51
"His disciples realized what was about to happen, and they asked, 'Lord, shall we strike with a sword?' And one of them struck the high priest's servant's ear and healed him.

Should I go on about the guy who kept some of the stuff that was supposed to be destroyed after the Isrealites sacked a city, causing his entire family to be stoned, with God's approval?

Gah, that was a bad misquote, that should say:

Lk 23:49-51
"His disciples realized what was about to happen, and they asked, 'Lord, shall we strike with a sword?' And one of them struck the high priest's servant's right ear. But Jesus said in reply 'Stop, no more of this!" Then he touched the servant's ear and healed him.

Regarding the basketball game... I took great comfort in the fact that all of the fans of my favorite team agreed with my accounts of the plays in question. These accounts are obviously the valid/reliable ones. The conflicting accounts were summarily tossed out as inaccurate.

Dexter your basketball game analogy fails to recognize that all you Laker fans (for example sake) that have reported the game in the same way (since you've won) will be stoned in town, cut up by lions, burned alive or worse.

The early Christians were not the winners, they were not the power, they were not the big bad church that many pre-suppose they were due to their own experiences with the church. The early Christians were normally people whose lives were drastically changed by an encounter with a man. They wrote about this man and his followers because either they were eyewitness accounts, or close friends of people who had been. They wrote these books and letters knowing they were sealing their own doom. This is quite different.

If a great number of losing fans of your basketball game wrote books and letter, free of inconsistency, at the pain of certain death, than I would definitely raise an eyebrow as to their report, rather than mock it as sophistry,

Joseph Smith's personal testimony of having witnessed an angel is thus thrown into the garbage because he had a great deal to gain by coming forward about what he'd seen. The difference between the early Jesus-followers and Joseph Smith is the difference between black and white.

I think you are exaggerating the level of threat to Christians in the first century. While there was persecution on a large scale (persecution is really the wrong word, the Romans were by modern standards incapable of systemic state persecution), there wasn't a Roman soldier breathing down the neck of every Christian who was recounting what he saw.

As I recall early Mormons suffered persecution.

You are correct Hereward! The roman persecution (I think it is the right word, regardless of the scale) of early Christians was often sporadic. But, it was most definitely focused of the leaders of this emerging "sect". Who better to target than the authors of their sacred writings?

Nonetheless, my point was that this Dan Brown popularized theology that says, "of course Christians kept which books were their own, and they are relatively free from error because the winners write history" is totally missing the realities that Roman Christians faced. They did not have a Roman soldier breathing down their neck, but surely they knew the danger of standing up for their faith, and preserving their texts. This was no report of a basketball game.

Zuzak: (is that a name by the way, nickname, meaning?)

One things we must understand when discussing God's justice is our state of depravity. Yes, the Canaanites were particularly wicked, but sin is not a matter of degrees, it is a state of being. All the world is stained in sin, and according to the Bible, are under the wrath of God.

God would be just and good and holy and pure in sending every single one of us to the gallows, or worse. We have sinned, there is not one good, not even one. A good judge leaves no bad deed unpunished or unpayed for. God would be wicked should he allow travesty and debauchery and sin to run rampant across the world unpaid for.

The mercy Jesus proclaims is from His provision. He has paid for the sins of the Canaanites, the rapists, the prostitutes, the businessmen, the phpdip players, you and me. He has done this for free, you nor I have earned this, and he offers this sacrifice to any that would embrace Him and this news as good news.

The Jesus of the New Testament will again return and will crush women and children and people that think they are good and people that think they are not, because they are still under the wrath of God. They are still stuck in sin. They have not embraced His offer of forgiveness, which was himself. My family is still on this side of the equation and it breaks my heart to even write of it. God's wrath is a terrible thing, but it is just.

I was wondering why a greek translation thread is keeping on top of the forum. Religion again...nothing good ever comes from these discussions...I know I should just move on but the devil in me (I'm a sinner, not my fault) tells me I should join in :)

So, do you religious folk backstab? And would you turn the other cheek if I stabbed you?

If your answers to the above questions are YES and NO respectively, would you mind dropping me a line - I'd really like to play some games with you :)

bartdogg, I wasn't saying that the winners make their own history... I was saying that people make their own history... There were competing sects with their own version of Jesus' story as well as the Romans and others who denied his existence or his importance. Of course, as we know, the Catholic view won out over several hundred years over its local competition - but that speaks to it's attractiveness to potential converts (as well as the good fortune of becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire), not to it's veracity. And yes, the existence of martyrs increases it's attractiveness, not decreases. You might feel that its success proves its truth... well, what then do you say to Islam and to Mormonism - two of the fastest growing religions in the world today (far faster growing than mainstream Christianity) - does their success prove anything about how true they are? I would say not.

The fact that the Christians could agree on a single basic story after a couple hundred years of disagreement certainly proves nothing... their agreement was still only within their religion. Hindus and Muslims are similarly in agreement with themselves... it proves nothing. How about the disagreements and splits in the Church during the Reformation? Did that prove that anyone was incorrect? The point is, that it is belief - not truth. There is a truth out there somewhere... but believing something does not make it true... and a large mass of people believing something does not make it more likely to be true. That is known as argumentum ad populum.