Talk:New Testament/2004

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Needs a section on Manuscripts and links to articles on specific manuscripts (Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus to start with).

Revertion

Cough, bias from the article and added some information. Someone then reverted it. Without getting into an edit war, could they explain what exactly is wrong with the information that the gospels were selected from a pool of hundreds around the second century CE? [- The Rev letter to Philemon, the second and third letters of John, the second letter of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude were all rejected by the early council and only became part of the book afterwards.

The fact of when the council was called together and selected the gospels that it felt were aunthentic for inclusion in the New Testament is not disputed byto be accurate). In older texts, many words are truncated or abbreviated, also, which leads to even greater ambiguity.
The order in which the gospels are placed is also possibly incorrect, and different from the order in which early church figures put them. (Matthew, Mark and Luke is the order that Irenaeus, Oregin and Augustine, amongst others, had them in.) The synoptic problem is well known and at least warrants a mention.
Its worth pointing out at this point that most Scholars of the Bible, even now but especially in earlier centuries, were committed Christians and, frankly, cannot be trusted to look at the issues with a NPOV or without ignoring thorny theological issues.
It is well known that from the beginning Christianity was sundered with strong, bitter disputes over ideology, with many competing sects and claims. The letters of Paul are full of references to opponents and how he struggled to maintain his own congregations.


There are hundreds of groups who have claimed the title 'Christian' over the years, and every edition of their bibles, including the New Testaments, are different. Edited and translated differently.
As far as I can see when presenting an article about strongly held beliefs, presenting those beliefs as if they were totally true, including the bias of all the scholars of that belief, without consulting the evidence and facts sans that particular belief (a Unitarian, an Agnostic, or one of another religion that doesnt have beliefs regarding Jesus/ the New Testament should be able to do so) - THAT is presenting a POV.
Reiteration: Presenting the beliefs of a particular sect (that the gospels were written concurrently with the events they describe, that they are the inerrant word of a god, that they have never been edited, etc - any of these if not all-) is extremely biased and not NPOV. - [The Rev of Bru]
I'm not saying that we should present only the beliefs of a particular sect. The additional books that you mention were debated, but the great majority of them are not Gospels (The Shepherd, The Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, etc.) and don't try to teach about the life of Christ. The Gospel of Thomas and the Infancy Gospel of James fall into a different category. These were rejected "gospels". All these works are discussed in New Testament Apocrypha. Since most of them don't talk about Jesus' life, they can't be presented as "hundreds of other Gospels". However, the New Testament Apocrypha should certainly be mentioned in the article. I will take a look to see why it is not. (Canon formation is discussed in Biblical canon and should be linked here as well -- is it not?).
However, I differ with you about the time of composition. I haven't seen any serious scholar suggest that any of the books accepted as part of the New Testament was originally written before about 45 AD (with most assuming a considerably later date) or later than about 120-130 AD (for 2 Peter). That's a range of one century, as the article says. There was obviously some editing thereafter, but most of the changes that we can document appear to be copyist errors or copying of material from one Gospel to the other to "harmonize" them. Thus "the documents were heavily edited over four to five centuries" is misleading, based on the information available to us. The fact is that we have far more early sources of the New Testament than for any other ancient work, and the copies are closer to being in agreement with each other than for almost any other ancient work.
Practically no one claims that the Gospels are in cronological order of composition. That is discussed in the page on the Synoptic problem. Mpolo 10:02, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)
See the section on "New Testament canonization" in this article, which should more or less address the issues you raise. Mpolo 10:09, Oct 28, 2004 (UTC)
So basically you are agreeing that only some books out of a pool of many more were selected as part of the New Testament, with some quibbling, and are trying to downplay the editing that has gone on. Compare the King James version to the original greek. If you can claim that that is not major editing, you are not being honest. I'm changing it to reflect NPOV. And the reason we have more copies of the early sources of the New Testament than other contemporary works is that the early christian church burned or destroyed works by pagan authors. Scholars also disagree as to the dates for the 'original' gospels, with estimates ranging to over a century between them- but of course, with the large changes and additions that were wrought to harmonise the stories around the second century, they can hardly be said to have been written entirely at one time. - [The Rev of Bru]
Translation is a different thing than editing. There is also a page on Bible translations that discusses this. Obviously NO translation can be perfect, as it always reflects a creative process of the translator (or else it is a computer translation and then worthless). I'm saying that the Greek text shows relatively few signs of editing compared to works of a similar age. Everything you want to add seems to already be in the article or its daughter articles, and with references, saying which scholar and which council, where you are saying "lots of people" and "a council in the 2nd century". If you notice, the article holds that the canon wasn't decided until the 4th century, citing the particular councils where it was decided. Mpolo
Translation is indeed a different thing than editing, which is why I used the word 'Editing' as opposed to the word 'translation.' Since the oldest greek manuscripts, which are not originals but old enough to be works that have been edited and had changes wrought, the bible unquestionably changes from version to version, with one of the largest changes being, as I have already said, the King James version, which completely changes the meaning of some parts (eg slaves becomes servants.) There is a difference between a translation and changing the meaning of words in the process of translation and, unbiased observers would agree, most revisions have been more than mere translations.The Rev of Bru 10:47, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Coming back to the left... The King James Version is a translation of the Greek text. That the translators chose "servants" to translate Greek "doulos" could be termed an "editorial" decision, I suppose, but since they didn't change the Greek text, it's hard to call that an "editing" of the original text, as you are claiming. It is a better or worse translation. (In general, I don't particularly like the KJV.) Looking into the specific word, in Greek, the word is first found in Homer (but only in feminine), then is widely used in Thucydides and Herodotus. It technically means a born slave (as opposed to a captive or servant), but Herodotus used it for both senses. The word was used as an adjective for "slavish, servile, subject" by Sophocles, so an argument that the word meant "servant" by the New Testament times is not altogether unreasonable. Certainly in Modern Greek it has both meanings. (This is from Liddel & Scott and a pocket Collins Modern Greek dictionary.) That said, I tend to translate the word with "slave", personally. Translation is an art, and a difficult one at that... There's no such thing as "the one true translation". We may quibble or even strongly differ on the choice of words that the translator used -- some "translations" would be better termed "paraphrases", but I think that you're going to confuse the reader calling these translations "edited versions" of the Scriptures. Mpolo 14:22, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

I've clarified the authorship section as best I know how, without spending too much time writing it. Feel free to clean up the prose. Rev, you should know that much of what you have said above would not be held by modern, critical scholars of the gospels. I'm currently doing biblical studies work at Oxford University, and some of the most highly regarded scholars in the world hold positions much closer to what Mpolo has said. Granted...I didn't read every post - all four of your hands must be tired by now after all of the above! BTW - the whole discussion about the KJV is a bit off topic...if you want to get into Greek-English translation stuff, it's best to refer to the NRSV, the version most scholars use. It's edited and overseen by Bruce Metzger, basically the world expert on New and Old Testament manuscripts and English translation (he's been at it for something like 60 years now!). His preface in the front of some versions might be helpful to what you two have been discussing.

Best,--Jcdavis 00:37, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mpolo; fair anough but I really don't see how you can claim that the bible has not been substantially edited over the years. The very existence of different versions of the bible is not just ascribable to translation differences. To both of you; I know the KJV is not taken seriously nowadays; that is exactly the POINT. Its not just a translation, its an editorialised version. That nowadays, with the opening of scholarship to more people and much more openness in general towards biblical study, there are more accurate translations (and less edited), yes. But that doesnt remove the fact that in the intervening centuries the bible was changed according to the whims of those doing the translation, of which paraphrasing may be unintentional editorial or even intentional.The Rev of Bru
Acts of the Apostles -- according to tradition, written by Luke

The author of the Acts of the Apostles identifies himself in the prologue as the same person who wrote the third gospel. If we accept Luke as the author of the latter, we must not shy away from attributing the Acts to him as well.

James, "the brother of Jesus"
Jude, counted among the "brothers of Jesus"

We should have a link to "brothers of Jesus", with an explanation of what degree of familiar relation (sibling or cousin) "brother" implied in the times and the culture of Jesus.

Is there any controversy regarding Jude ? I seem to recall Thaddeus (Jude) the apostle wrote it...

surely a better (and no less accurate) translation for 'synoptic' is "same view" (as in point of view) rather than "same eye"? And much as I love Austin Farrer (I regularly assign his book on Revelation), he's not the only critic to suggest that Q is an unnecessary construct. It's a whole school of thought, not restricted to pre-1960 English persons (my favorite critic of Biblical criticism is still Dorothy Sayers, whose take on the typical view of John is without equal - and entirely possible). --MichaelTinkler

Regarding the translation of "synoptic", remember that in Wikipedia, he who proposes, disposes.  :) Go ahead and change it.

soulpatch, please don't go through the entire 'pedia changing AD to CE, just because you like it better. This kind of thing needs to be discussed by the Wikipedia community. --Ed Poor

Per discussion on the list, isn't CE clearly the more NPOV? Why should we revert this change? Graft
I agree with Graft. CE is preferable to AD, why change it back? And CE exists in several articles in the Wikipedia, so are you going to go and change all those from CE to AD? soulpatch

If there was discussion on the list approving CE over AD, I must have missed it. I thought it was settled just the other way. I'll ask Mav, who pays closer attention to such things. --Ed Poor

No decision was made, as far as I can tell, other than lots of expression of opinion. Mav expresses the point of view that
BC is still comfortably the dominant usage and since there aren't any pressing POV issues with it we should stay with it.
which is fair enough, except that I don't think it implies we should prefer BC to BCE or AD to CE, just that we shouldn't be making especial efforts to change from one to the other. But, if soulpatch wants to change AD->CE, i think NPOV is definitely in his favor. Graft
AD is religion-neutral in the same sense that "he" is gender-neutral. It is so, unless someone objects for partisan reasons. In that case, as far as I'm concerned, the only cost of the change to "CE" (like the change to "they"), is the stigmatization and politicization of the past, when these "POV" conventions did not have the implications that they do now. In short, not worth objecting to either way, in my personal opinion, and therefore better to yield to those who feel strongly. Mkmcconn
Sorry? That, to be brutally honest,mkmcconn, is nonsense. AD stands for Anno Domini: In the Year of Our Lord. It does not stand for 'years since Jesus' or whatever you seem to think it does. Incidentally, AD is properly put BEFORE the date, not after it. AD is offensive to everyone who is not Christian, and is very much not NPOV. [-The Rev of Bru]
With respect to Graft, I maintain that is incorrect to say that AD is POV, but CE is NPOV. IMO, using CE instead of AD is like trying to take a white-out to history. Yes, the bulk of scholarship believes that Jesus was not born in the year A.D. 1, however, His birth IS the reason we set the year "1" to be what it is. All current, existing, up-to-date reasons for using that date are ultimately rooted in the year that scholarship initially thought was His birth. It was not because educated people woke up one day and thought, "hmmm... let's all agree on 2004 years ago as the starting point for a common dating mechanism." Should people not have that understanding? If you still disagree with me, ask yourselves these two questions: Can you fully understand the origin, meaning and use of "A.D." without understanding "C.E."? (I would say yes.) On the other hand, can you fully understand the origin, meaning and use of "C.E." without understanding "A.D."? (I would say no.) Therefore, I assert that CE is POV, but AD is NPOV. BeakerK44 00:57, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Because of the subject matter of this article, which didn't exist before Christ, all relevant dates are AD/CE, so I think we can lighten the prose by removing all of the noise abbreviations. I boldly made the change, if you think it is confusing, change it back. Stephen C. Carlson

Is there some documentation to support the blanket statements that

  • modern biblical scholarship, with the exception of Evangelicals, no longer believe that Jesus's immediate disciples wrote any of the books.

What is the definition of "modern", "scholarship" and "Evangelical" that makes the statement credible, that it is a distinctive of "Evangelicals" to believe that at least some, most, or even all of the books of the New Testament were written by their attributed author? Or, is the statement suggesting that such a finding is either not modern, or is not scholarship, if it occurs outside of Evangelicalism? In that case, is it an unproveable assumption?

  • Among the denominations which do not teach inerrancy include the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church

What is the definition of "inerrancy" that makes this statement credible? Especially in light of the statement later, that the Catholics and Orthodox consider Tradition infallible - do they consider Tradition to be a correction of errors in Scripture, or do they claim that Tradition infallibly interprets the Bible? If the latter and not the former then, it is irrational to conclude that they do not hold an infallible Scripture. I suspect that the statement means to imply an equivalence between "inerrant" and "literalistically infallible" (infallible if always interpreted in a literalistic sense where possible: "day" == "24 hours", "all the earth covered by a flood" == "every square inch of the face of the earth under water", 6,000 year old creation, etc.) Is that the case? Mkmcconn


  1. The 6 days of creation may be seen in the light of the verse, "With the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day" (quoting from memory, must look this up!).
  2. The story of a world-wide flood was written down before the idea of the earth as a sphere was well-known. Plainly, it would talk a lot of water to cover Mt. Everest; what is it, 5 miles high? We're talking enough rain to increase the ocean's depth by 5 miles. The "covered by a flood" thing may have been meant to refer to all land within a conceivable distance; either that, or maybe the Bible isn't meant to be taken literally in every detail.

--Ed Poor

The inerrancy discussion is a muddle, and that it is probably hard to avoid because of the many definitions of inerrancy floating out there. I'm looking to making it a bit more specific, e.g. with regard to the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy. Stephen C. Carlson

Literalistic interpretation should not be made to have anything to do with [should not be made identical to] inerrancy. There is a big difference between saying that "the Bible contains lies and gets the facts wrong", and "some classic interpretations of the Bible have been re-evaluated in light of later knowledge". The former is not compatible with inerrancy, but the latter certainly is. Mkmcconn
That's not for you or me to say. If theologians out there say that literalism and inerrancy are related, we have to report that. We're not trying to write an objective article but a neutral one. --Uncle Ed
Literalism (i.e. literalistic interpretation) and inerrancy are distinct issues, but related. The current N.T. article does address literalism, but does address inerrancy. It is my view that inerrancy is a largely evangelical view on the question of inspiration of the N.T., and other traditions have their own take on inspiration and so may not agree with the evangelical Chicago Statement on all particulars. Stephen C. Carlson
It is not objective or neutral to be counter-factual. Inerrancy is simply the doctrine that there are zero errors in the Bible. Some particular defense of inerrancy may be tied to some particular literal interpretation, and another defense may not be tied in such a way. They share the same assumptions about the Bible's trustworthiness, but differ concerning the reliability of a particular interpretation. These are very different things. Mkmcconn
In a particular group, their hermeneutic may require a literalistic interpretation of "God made a greater light to rule the day", and believe accordingly that the sun is the biggest light in the universe - but the fact that hardly anyone can be found who believes what used to be a common naive assumption about the relative size of the sun, is testimony to the fact that people gain insight into the Bible's intent by knowing more about the world that the Bible describes. It does not mean that people have discovered that the Bible was wrong about the size of the sun - they fixed their interpretation. If we report as though it were a fact that inerrancy is equivalent to literalistic interpretations, we will most definitely be misreporting the facts. However, I did over-state myself in saying they have nothing to do with one another. Literalism and inerrancy are not equivalent - they are very much distinct, is all I should have said. Mkmcconn
... history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry, hyperbole and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor, generalization and approximation as what they are, and so forth. Differences between literary conventions in Bible times and in ours must also be observed: Since, for instance, nonchronological narration and imprecise citation were conventional and acceptable and violated no expectations in those days, we must not regard these things as faults when we find them in Bible writers. When total precision of a particular kind was not expected nor aimed at, it is no error not to have achieved it. Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed. (from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy ) Mkmcconn
I'm not sure I entirely understand how to interpret that quote from the Chicago statement. The "poetry and poetry" and "hyperbole as hyperbole" part makes sense, and it suggests using common sense in interpreting biblical passages. Obviously, a poem that says "The Lord is my Shepherd" is not claiming that God is literally a shepherd. So poetry and poetic metaphors are obviously not to be taken literally. But I am not sure what to make about its statement about total precision not being expected or aimed at. Suppose (hypothetically speaking, of course) that the Bible gets a few historical facts wrong when it is making some grander theological claim, such as getting the name of a king wrong or otherwise making a historical error. Does the Chicago statement admit that this is possible but acceptable under its definition of "inerrancy" because the broader claim being made in the context of that historical inaccuracy is true and inerrant? Or is the Chicago statement saying that historical inaccuracies are impossible? soulpatch
This statement and similar ones, reject the presupposition that the Bible is only reliable when it's talking about things that are "non-factual". However, it cautions against imposing on Scripture an anachronistic measure of precision. There are many historical puzzles in the Bible - some caused by what we don't know, and others caused by what we do know. The Chicago statement advises religiously that these historical puzzles will be solved more reliably in the long run, by those who approach them in faith and reverence, than by cynicism and unbelief. Mkmcconn
I guess I still don't understand whether that means that the assumption is that the historical puzzles will always be resolved in favor of the Bible being correct. soulpatch
Yes, I'm sure that it is a religious presupposition that every historical puzzle will finally be resolved in favor of the Bible being correct - only, it does not prescribe what that resolution will be before it's found. Mkmcconn

OK. I'm generally pleased with the way it worked out. Thanks to everyone's comments and to Mkmcconn for the expansion of the new approach to the topic. -- Stephen C. Carlson 17:05 Dec 14, 2002 (UTC)

Moving discussion of the origin of the gospels to the Gospels page. Stephen C. Carlson

Contents

[edit] Recent reversions

Recently, an anonymous user (200.85.34.114) made a number of changes to this article, which I reverted. Most of these were to promote one set of beliefs regarding the original language. Many of the rest were simply misguided (e.g. referring to the Old Testament as "the Tanakh, which Christians call the Old Testament"; articles about Judaism should refer to it as the Tanakh, but articles on Christianity should refer to it as the Old Testament.) The changes were also poorly written, with strained grammar. So I reverted them.

I don't mean to offend you in this, 200.85.34.114. Perhaps your points could be made in an NPOV way? I'd advise you to get a login account, read the NPOV policy, and then make your changes. Quadell (talk) 16:31, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject

Based on a suggestion in Wikipedia:Pages needing attention, I have started the skeleton of a WikiProject to try to cut down on the overlap between the various presentations of the canon. I think that a lot of people working here will want input on this. Feel free! Mpolo 13:28, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Books of the New Testament

I've created a Template:Books of the New Testament. Does anybody have any objections to me adding it to all linked articles (just as has been done with Template:Books of Nevi'im)? -- Itai 01:25, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Seeing as there were no objections, I took care of the addition. -- Itai 18:14, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Authorship

"Since Strauss the authorship of every book in the New Testament has been debated, although it is significant that a substantial number have been shown to be written by their said author." Quite to the contrary, what is genuinely significant is that the conclusions of two centuries of scholarship on the question are still suppressed in this traditional fashion. Several letters of Paul that are agreed to have been written by Paul must supply the intentionally vague "substantial number." The statement is an "untruth," as the expression is. Wetman 22:41, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

As much as I wanted to disagree with you, I couldn't. So I made a bit of a change to make clear exactly what has "agreed upon" authorship. I hope that that meets with everyone's approval or near-approval. Mpolo 07:19, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Biblical Inerrancy

I think, after consideration, my last edit could be percieved as rather POV. Could someone render it more neutral please? 81.156.176.182 10:53, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)