In response to Richard Dawkins' site regarding Eve's Bite

Richard Dawkins' official website is taking a poke at an aspect of Eve's Bite, basically winding themselves into a lather over a paragraph in the book where I pointed out there are more than 5,600 manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts dating as far back as around 70 years after the death of Christ.

The Dawkins people are in a spin over the admittedly (in hindsight) ambiguous phrasing of the passage, which didn't make it clear whether I was suggesting there were 5,600 manuscripts dated from about 105 AD (which is a ridiculous suggestion) or merely that the list of manuscripts and fragments stretched that far back (which I was intending to suggest).

Dawkins (I use the word in reference to his site) realises that I'm probably basing  this on the Rylands fragment containing  a couple of verses from John, dated as early as 110 (although the general consensus appears to be 125AD).

I'm also basing it however not just on direct copies of the NT itself but on external letters and documents that quoted portions of the NT. One such is the letter from Clement of Rome, an early church leader, dated to 96AD and a copy of which dates to about fifty years later, which quotes Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Titus, 1 Cor, Hebrews, 1 Pet, and possibly Revelation.

Whilst we have no major copies of manuscripts prior to about AD200, we have sufficient documents from people like Clement and others that virtually the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from their writings between around 80 AD and 250 AD.

For the pedants, my reference to manuscripts includes uncials, lectionaries and codices (scholar-speak for 'books') as well as traditional manuscripts.

On the carbon-dating issue, I was generalising. Some less important documents have been carbon-dated. The major ones have not for two reasons - damage to the papyrus and also because paleography (studying handwriting styles, vocabulary etc) is regarded as more exact than carbon-dating for the period in question.

The reference to 99.5% accuracy is in comparisons between the texts of the manuscripts (accuracy compared to what is published as the New Testament. Contrary to the assertions over at Dawkins, the manuscripts do not differ on and key points of Christian doctrine. The Dawkins people raise the issue of the ending of Mark, which we know was a later addition to the gospel. However, the points expressed in the added ending of Mark are all expressed elsewhere in his and the other gospels in unchallenged portions of the manuscripts, therefore no issue of doctrine is affected, nor is the missing ending significant.

Once again, the point I made in Eve's Bite remains unanswered by Dawkins: the historical evidence in favour of Christianity far exceeds the historical evidence in favour of any other ancient historical figure or event.

Comments

[Danyl Mclauchlan]

Danyl...try Matt 28:18-20 for starters as an expression of the Trinity direct from Christ.

Matthew 28 is almost universally considered a subsequent addition to the text; but let's assume its genuine, since it proves my previous point so effectively.

Here's the relevant passage:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost

Does this endorse the doctrine of the Trinity? Let's imagine we find a passage from a pagan Greek temple reading:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of Zeus, and of Heracles and of Appollo

Would you then assume that the doctrine of the trinity was being invoked in regard to Greek theology and that it referred to one single God with three aspects?

[peasant]

Danyl,
I had no idea you were such a Bible scholar!

[MrTips]

Danyl
now you have given yourself away.

You are a Jehovah's Witness - that is EXACTLY the comparison that cult uses.

Well done Elder McLauchlan

[peter]

I see no justification for referring to a Trinity other than as a convenient list.

God - Jesus Christ - Holy Ghost .. simply a list of thingys that people are interested in.

[Rachel]

Danyl, I think the Trinity is clearly shown in Matthew3:15-17
3:15
Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented.

3:16
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.

3:17
And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

Mark1:10-11

1:10
As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

1:11
And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

John1:32-34

1:32
Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.

1:33
I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.'

1:34
I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God."

All these passages talk of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. Now I'm not the best at math but I can count to three and I see three beings at work here....
God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[peter]

Rachel

But surely the Bible argues for the primacy of one single God, not a triple headed monster!

Jesus is perceived to be a delegate for God.

The Holy Ghost is supposed to be a presence of God? But who would know?

You might as well say God, Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Andrew, Judas and all those other guys.

The trinity confuses, quite unnecessarily.

But I suppose in the world of superstition, 3 has always been an auspicious number so might as well use it somewhere.

[Ian]

Danyl...you wrote: "Matthew 28 is almost universally considered a subsequent addition to the text;"

Citation? I have done a fair bit of reading on textual criticism, and apart from the occasional fringe dweller I haven't come across an attack on Matt 28:19 that has gained any wider currency.

Should you look hard enough you will find it is in all the oldest manuscripts. It is missing from none.

[peasant]

hey peter, if you don't like the central tenets of christianity, just chuck them out and make up your own religion. forget about that commandment "thou shalt not make a graven idol"

[usabikes]

I hope you got something more substantial than Metzger to go on or you're up the creek Danyl.

Seeing as time itself is only part of the construct for this work of Creation and that eternity therefore is not an infinite extension of time but the lack of it (which position I personally came to via the route of reason rather than physics), we may rightly assume that anything else to do with those strictly "God" like attributes is also a little hard to grasp. But don't let that put you off, we have Revelation. Isn't that Good News? :)

If humans are made in the "image of God" then we might also expect the God in whose image we are made, to be like us only more so (although we have a sinful nature and God does not, which is another factor clouding our judgment) we might expect God to be at the same time One yet have dimensions of that personality that exceed our comprehension. Like: a Trinity; God is three persons in one, a "super personality". Three persons, One substance.

In fact "Word Christology" explains that God Word is like ours to a small degree in that we create good and bad with our words, yet GOd's Word is so much more seeing as "the Word became flesh". Early Rabbinical Judaism held to the belief that once spoken (as at the Creation) God's words carried within them all the power and life necessary to perform the work for which they were spoken completely unsupervised, as it were. In this belief they were exactly right. God's words (or Word) has completely everything of God and God alone within it and cannot do anything but represent God completely accurately. God cannot give in to the temptation to sin, Jesus could not give in to the temptation to sin (though tried in the fires more than we can imagine), and so on.

AS CS Lewis said (and I realise, as a kind of Ontological argument, that this may be open to the criticism of circular reasoning) the concept ot the Trinity is believably of divine origin because if people had made it up we would have a far better understanding of it. The Church's Creeds mostly deal with the Trinity in negatives (the Godhead is not like this... we don't mean its like that...) because people are trying to explain what shape yellow is.

There is no room for any adoptionist or modal monarchianism either, (no, one God in three forms) that has also been well thrashed through in Church history. John 1:1 does NOT say in the greek "the word was A god" it says "the word was God". The Biblical evidence for the Trinity is unfortunately (for Danyl and other Arians), incontestible.

Jesus permitted people to worship him, if he wasn't God then he was either quite mad or a an intolerably un-monotheistic blasphemer (shades of CS Lewis' familiar argument again).

HTH, its a chewy bit of epistemology I know, but isn't it fun...

[peter]

Explain someone , but I don't see how man could possibly be made in the image of God. A huge capabilty gap there.

In fact philosophers and pyschologists would be more likely to say it is the other way round. Man creates God to be what Man thinks God should be!

[peasant]

peter,
please stop, you're making me laugh too much!
"But who would know?"
"The trinity confuses"
"I don't see how"...

Gee whiz this religion stuff is too hard, they must be making it up!!

Advanced mathematics is pretty darn hard too, that doesn't mean it's false.

[robk]

Peter

"Made in the image of God" - made with similar capabilities, only limited, of course. Monkeys and apes can use a stick to get ants out of a nest, but mankind can build pyramids and skyscrapers and computers. More importantly man is a spiritual being that can communicate with God. If we choose to...