I'm planning a talk/Bible study for sunday, here are my thoughts so far:
The Passage:
17 One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law
were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and
from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to
heal the sick. 18 Some men came carrying a paralysed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. 19 When
they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up
on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the
middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
21 The
Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves,
“Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God
alone?”
22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralysed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”
Context!
Two weeks ago we looked at how the book that Luke wrote about the life, death and life of Jesus Christ on earth was all based on eyewitness accounts that he tirelessly sought out, so that he could make the most accurate account of Jesus that was possible, so that we can trust it. (Luke 1:1-4)
Last week we looked at John the Baptist, who warns people of their sin, and that the Son of God was going to come.
My thoughts
I'm thinking of doing something roughly along these lines:
- What does Jesus claim to do? - Forgive sins (verse 20)
- What does this mean about who Jesus is? - Either God, or a liar and blasphemer (verse 21)
- Who is he really? (verse 24, proves he is indeed God)
- How can we trust this to be true? (Luke 1:1-4, plus verse 17 (Pharisees and teachers of the law wouldn't rock up from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem for nothing, and people at the time would easily have been able to confirm or deny what Luke was saying)
- What're the implications of this? - The Son of God came to earth! We need our sins forgiving, we need to find out what he came to say/do, we need to tell other people!
Then discussion points basically on that.
It's rough and early days, but there we go (:
29 Jan 2014
17 Jan 2014
From another blog... How can we trust the Bible when there's so many different opinions, interpretations and translations of it? #1
I have another blog which is shared with friends. I wrote this post for that blog, leading me to write it in a certain style aimed more at my friends, but I don't think that that has come out too much, and it should be just as readable (or unreadable :P) as the rest of my posts. Here it is, part one of two:
There are loads of different opinions, interpretations and translations of the Bible. Not only that, there are also tonnes of denominations, belief systems, factions and so on that have arisen from it, and not just Christian ones!
Even if I was interested in exploring Christianity, how would I know what to look into? How could I divide the "worth looking into stuff" from the "definitely without a doubt load of rubbish stuff"?
I don't know if that's something you've ever thought about. I certainly have. If you're at all interested, I'm planning on doing some posts on the matter. The first (the rest of this one), is on which Bible translations are worth reading (if any)? The second will probably be on why on earth are there so many different denominations, and what on earth we're meant to do if we just want to find out what the Bible has to say without bothering with all the nonsense. I may or may not do some more after that (hopefully much shorter posts!), based on the reception of these ones :P
But in case you just can't be bothered to read two massive posts (I probably wouldn't be), the short answer:
- The most common translations tend to be pretty good, so if you have a Bible then I wouldn't worry too much about it, what you've got is probably reliable and true. If you're interested in getting one, I'd recommend the NIV and ESV translations of the Bible, as they are very close to the original texts while remaining readable and without the thees and thous of the King James Bible. These are also the Bibles that you tend to find in hotels, they're the little red ones the Gideons gave out in a school assembly once, you probably have one somewhere, or the ability to get one for free if you want.
- Don't bother with denominations. Read the Bible, find out for yourself what it's all about. Anyone can understand it, don't let people convince you that you don't have what it takes. If there is anything you don't understand or want to ask someone about, go for it, ask someone! Just don't listen to people who make stuff up (like purgatory).
So, on with the post.
The Bible - Which One!?!?
There's the KJV, NIV, ESV, the Message, the New World Translation, the RSV, the DRB, the CCD, the NABRE, to name but a few. Most of which sound like the names of special forces and government agencies. And surely this throws up the question of reliability? How can any of it be true if so many different translations exist?
[WARNING - Lots of history stuff, might not be that interesting for you, feel free to skip to the ANYWAY below :P] First of all, we still have many Koine Greek, Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew manuscripts (the languages that the collection of books and letters we call the Bible was written in). Many of these are on display in museums - if you can read the language then you can go and read these manuscripts for yourselves. It's the accuracy of these manuscripts that really matter in trying to work out whether or not the Bible is historically reliable, rather than the accuracy of the English translations people have made of these manuscripts (of course the accuracy of the translations we read does matter to us, but I'll get to that later). Just to justify my last point:
Imagine I heard a lecture from a Professor Higgs. I then went and told you all about what he said. Except what I told you was a load of rubbish, it wasn't what he was trying to say. That wouldn't make what he said untrue or unreliable, it would just make me false and unreliable. So it is with the Bible and people's translations of it.
Can we trust that these early (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD) Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents are indeed based on the original books and letters? And if so, can we trust that through paleography, textual criticism, and hundreds of thousands of hours of study, discussion and work that an accurate representation of the original books and letters can indeed be made through these? Yes. And if you use the same methods and critique as you use to determine the reliability of other historical documents, then overwhelmingly yes.
Take many of the Classical works for example:
"In evaluating the significance of these statistics...one should consider, by way of contrast, the number of manuscripts which preserve the text of the ancient classics. Homer's Iliad...is preserved by 457 papyri, 2 uncial manuscripts, and 188 minuscule manuscripts. Among the tragedians the witnesses to Euripides are the most abundant; his extant works are preserved in 54 papyri and 276 parchment manuscripts, almost all of the later dating from the Byzantine period...the time between the composition of the books of the New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief. Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament are extant which were copies within a century or so after the composition of the original documents." Bruce M. Metzger - Pulled straight from Wikipedia.
What that's saying is that the time span between the earliest surviving copies of part of a widely accepted classical (ancient Greek) writing are from roughly a millennium or more after the originals were written, whereas the earliest surviving copies of the New Testament scriptures is less than a century. In fact, in those terms, the New Testament Scriptures are actually pretty top notch for ancient documents. Anyway, this is a lengthy discussion, but well worth looking into (I'm certainly going to be reading up much more on it. [Be warned, though, it's very easy to get the wrong idea when you read this stuff - it's a lot more complicated than you would think (or than I thought, at least). Later manuscripts are less reliable than earlier manuscripts, but people often refer to them in one category, so beware people talking about difficult to qualify statistics like, "There's x number of conflicting words between y manuscript and z manuscript", when really they've decided to dump something written by a monk 500 years later which no one uses for translation with a manuscript written less than 100 years later that everyone uses.]
There's loads more that I would love to say. I'm no expert, but I'm aware of archaeological evidence, non-Christian historians (Tacitus being my main example), historical standards and so on which would all suggest that the early manuscripts we have can indeed be used to come up with a highly accurate Bible. By that I mean a Bible which contains historically really accurate copies of the letters and books it does indeed claim to consist of. Whether or not what these original letters and books had to say is true is a different argument. But I don't want to consume the whole blog page in one post, so...
ANYWAY
I got carried away, my apologies.
Safe in the knowledge that there's a good chance the Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents we get our English translations from are reliable and accurate, we're now left trying to work out what English stuff is accurate and what isn't.
First of all, stay away from anything Gnostic, Mormon, Catholic, Coptic, Jehovah's Witness' (New World Translation) or similar. Their scriptures often include stuff varying from inaccurate and unreliable to just plain made up. [WARNING AGAIN] I feel I ought to justify this, but I'm aware this is a pretty long post as it is. So I'll be as brief as possible...
The Book of Mormon - meant to have been written by someone writing down what someone else was reading off of a plate that no one else could read or see (in 1830 by an American). Enough said. [Edit - I am perhaps being a bit harsh here, I am by no means calling believers of the Book of Mormon fools or anything like that, I'll consider writing a fuller and more loving post on this at some point, my apologies if there's any offence!]
Gnostic Works - Gnosticism is a cult predating Christianity (some argue not) that adopted and mutated Christian beliefs, it does not align theologically with the major themes of the Scriptures and their additional texts are likely made up (e.g. the "Gospel of Mary") ("The Gospel of Mary is an apocryphal book discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex." and, "Hollis Professor of Divinity Karen King at Harvard Divinity School suggests that the original gospel was written in Greek sometime during the time of Christ. Most scholars disagree with her conclusion..." Again, it's all on Wikipedia so you can see for yourself what I'm saying.)
Additional Catholic Old Testament Documents - this one is more ambiguous. There are 7 books present in the Catholic Old Testament which are not present in the Protestant Old Testament. These books are present in the Septuagint Greek Old Testament, but not in the more reliable Hebrew Old Testament, and hence they are not included in the protestant Bible (the standard of what could be considered part of the Bible had been increased since the formation of the Catholic Bible). They remain in the Catholic and some Orthodox Bibles mostly due to tradition, though you could attempt to make some standpoint on their reliability (this is without considering whether or not they even make sense historically and theologically - the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures do). No reference to these books is made in the entire Old or New Testament, and though this definitely does not mean that they are false documents, it's hardly in their favour.
ANYWAY
So we know what to stay away from, but what's good?
Well, the RSV (Revised Standard Version), the ESV (English Standard Version) and the NIV (New International Version) are all pretty reliable. They've had some of the most care and time taken (by countless highly trained and qualified translators, linguists, historians and scholars) out of all the English Bible translations. They also tend to show you wherever the translators are unsure of their translation - footnotes on the page tell you if they're unsure of a word, or if a verse is in some later manuscripts but not the original and most reliable ones. Such footnotes are comfortingly rare, too. The RSV and ESV go as much as possible towards as word for word a translation of the Bible as possible while still maintaining English grammar and "readability". The NIV also adheres to this, but with a slightly greater focus on conveying the meaning of the original manuscripts, as this can occasionally be lost in translation.
A lot of people have King James Bibles, these are ok, but they're not the nicest read (subjective, of course) and not as accurate as more modern translations.
The Message Bible is not really a translation of the Bible at all. The author has decided to convey the meaning of the Bible, without using most of the original Bible words. This can be really helpful, some bits of the Bible aren't the easiest read without patience, time and effort, and this could help make more sense of these. But I'd be very hesitant on calling it a Bible. It begs accuracy questions, and undoubtedly some of the great depth of meaning and authority that the actual Bible has will have been lost. Not saying it's a bad read, though.
So there you go. Sorry for a REALLY long post, but hope it was interesting enough for you to have got this far :P
All the best! Hope you're doing well (:
Matt(hew)
There are loads of different opinions, interpretations and translations of the Bible. Not only that, there are also tonnes of denominations, belief systems, factions and so on that have arisen from it, and not just Christian ones!
Even if I was interested in exploring Christianity, how would I know what to look into? How could I divide the "worth looking into stuff" from the "definitely without a doubt load of rubbish stuff"?
I don't know if that's something you've ever thought about. I certainly have. If you're at all interested, I'm planning on doing some posts on the matter. The first (the rest of this one), is on which Bible translations are worth reading (if any)? The second will probably be on why on earth are there so many different denominations, and what on earth we're meant to do if we just want to find out what the Bible has to say without bothering with all the nonsense. I may or may not do some more after that (hopefully much shorter posts!), based on the reception of these ones :P
But in case you just can't be bothered to read two massive posts (I probably wouldn't be), the short answer:
- The most common translations tend to be pretty good, so if you have a Bible then I wouldn't worry too much about it, what you've got is probably reliable and true. If you're interested in getting one, I'd recommend the NIV and ESV translations of the Bible, as they are very close to the original texts while remaining readable and without the thees and thous of the King James Bible. These are also the Bibles that you tend to find in hotels, they're the little red ones the Gideons gave out in a school assembly once, you probably have one somewhere, or the ability to get one for free if you want.
- Don't bother with denominations. Read the Bible, find out for yourself what it's all about. Anyone can understand it, don't let people convince you that you don't have what it takes. If there is anything you don't understand or want to ask someone about, go for it, ask someone! Just don't listen to people who make stuff up (like purgatory).
So, on with the post.
The Bible - Which One!?!?
There's the KJV, NIV, ESV, the Message, the New World Translation, the RSV, the DRB, the CCD, the NABRE, to name but a few. Most of which sound like the names of special forces and government agencies. And surely this throws up the question of reliability? How can any of it be true if so many different translations exist?
[WARNING - Lots of history stuff, might not be that interesting for you, feel free to skip to the ANYWAY below :P] First of all, we still have many Koine Greek, Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew manuscripts (the languages that the collection of books and letters we call the Bible was written in). Many of these are on display in museums - if you can read the language then you can go and read these manuscripts for yourselves. It's the accuracy of these manuscripts that really matter in trying to work out whether or not the Bible is historically reliable, rather than the accuracy of the English translations people have made of these manuscripts (of course the accuracy of the translations we read does matter to us, but I'll get to that later). Just to justify my last point:
Imagine I heard a lecture from a Professor Higgs. I then went and told you all about what he said. Except what I told you was a load of rubbish, it wasn't what he was trying to say. That wouldn't make what he said untrue or unreliable, it would just make me false and unreliable. So it is with the Bible and people's translations of it.
Can we trust that these early (2nd century BC to 3rd century AD) Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents are indeed based on the original books and letters? And if so, can we trust that through paleography, textual criticism, and hundreds of thousands of hours of study, discussion and work that an accurate representation of the original books and letters can indeed be made through these? Yes. And if you use the same methods and critique as you use to determine the reliability of other historical documents, then overwhelmingly yes.
Take many of the Classical works for example:
"In evaluating the significance of these statistics...one should consider, by way of contrast, the number of manuscripts which preserve the text of the ancient classics. Homer's Iliad...is preserved by 457 papyri, 2 uncial manuscripts, and 188 minuscule manuscripts. Among the tragedians the witnesses to Euripides are the most abundant; his extant works are preserved in 54 papyri and 276 parchment manuscripts, almost all of the later dating from the Byzantine period...the time between the composition of the books of the New Testament and the earliest extant copies is relatively brief. Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament are extant which were copies within a century or so after the composition of the original documents." Bruce M. Metzger - Pulled straight from Wikipedia.
What that's saying is that the time span between the earliest surviving copies of part of a widely accepted classical (ancient Greek) writing are from roughly a millennium or more after the originals were written, whereas the earliest surviving copies of the New Testament scriptures is less than a century. In fact, in those terms, the New Testament Scriptures are actually pretty top notch for ancient documents. Anyway, this is a lengthy discussion, but well worth looking into (I'm certainly going to be reading up much more on it. [Be warned, though, it's very easy to get the wrong idea when you read this stuff - it's a lot more complicated than you would think (or than I thought, at least). Later manuscripts are less reliable than earlier manuscripts, but people often refer to them in one category, so beware people talking about difficult to qualify statistics like, "There's x number of conflicting words between y manuscript and z manuscript", when really they've decided to dump something written by a monk 500 years later which no one uses for translation with a manuscript written less than 100 years later that everyone uses.]
There's loads more that I would love to say. I'm no expert, but I'm aware of archaeological evidence, non-Christian historians (Tacitus being my main example), historical standards and so on which would all suggest that the early manuscripts we have can indeed be used to come up with a highly accurate Bible. By that I mean a Bible which contains historically really accurate copies of the letters and books it does indeed claim to consist of. Whether or not what these original letters and books had to say is true is a different argument. But I don't want to consume the whole blog page in one post, so...
ANYWAY
I got carried away, my apologies.
Safe in the knowledge that there's a good chance the Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew documents we get our English translations from are reliable and accurate, we're now left trying to work out what English stuff is accurate and what isn't.
First of all, stay away from anything Gnostic, Mormon, Catholic, Coptic, Jehovah's Witness' (New World Translation) or similar. Their scriptures often include stuff varying from inaccurate and unreliable to just plain made up. [WARNING AGAIN] I feel I ought to justify this, but I'm aware this is a pretty long post as it is. So I'll be as brief as possible...
The Book of Mormon - meant to have been written by someone writing down what someone else was reading off of a plate that no one else could read or see (in 1830 by an American). Enough said. [Edit - I am perhaps being a bit harsh here, I am by no means calling believers of the Book of Mormon fools or anything like that, I'll consider writing a fuller and more loving post on this at some point, my apologies if there's any offence!]
Gnostic Works - Gnosticism is a cult predating Christianity (some argue not) that adopted and mutated Christian beliefs, it does not align theologically with the major themes of the Scriptures and their additional texts are likely made up (e.g. the "Gospel of Mary") ("The Gospel of Mary is an apocryphal book discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex." and, "Hollis Professor of Divinity Karen King at Harvard Divinity School suggests that the original gospel was written in Greek sometime during the time of Christ. Most scholars disagree with her conclusion..." Again, it's all on Wikipedia so you can see for yourself what I'm saying.)
Additional Catholic Old Testament Documents - this one is more ambiguous. There are 7 books present in the Catholic Old Testament which are not present in the Protestant Old Testament. These books are present in the Septuagint Greek Old Testament, but not in the more reliable Hebrew Old Testament, and hence they are not included in the protestant Bible (the standard of what could be considered part of the Bible had been increased since the formation of the Catholic Bible). They remain in the Catholic and some Orthodox Bibles mostly due to tradition, though you could attempt to make some standpoint on their reliability (this is without considering whether or not they even make sense historically and theologically - the rest of the Old Testament Scriptures do). No reference to these books is made in the entire Old or New Testament, and though this definitely does not mean that they are false documents, it's hardly in their favour.
ANYWAY
So we know what to stay away from, but what's good?
Well, the RSV (Revised Standard Version), the ESV (English Standard Version) and the NIV (New International Version) are all pretty reliable. They've had some of the most care and time taken (by countless highly trained and qualified translators, linguists, historians and scholars) out of all the English Bible translations. They also tend to show you wherever the translators are unsure of their translation - footnotes on the page tell you if they're unsure of a word, or if a verse is in some later manuscripts but not the original and most reliable ones. Such footnotes are comfortingly rare, too. The RSV and ESV go as much as possible towards as word for word a translation of the Bible as possible while still maintaining English grammar and "readability". The NIV also adheres to this, but with a slightly greater focus on conveying the meaning of the original manuscripts, as this can occasionally be lost in translation.
A lot of people have King James Bibles, these are ok, but they're not the nicest read (subjective, of course) and not as accurate as more modern translations.
The Message Bible is not really a translation of the Bible at all. The author has decided to convey the meaning of the Bible, without using most of the original Bible words. This can be really helpful, some bits of the Bible aren't the easiest read without patience, time and effort, and this could help make more sense of these. But I'd be very hesitant on calling it a Bible. It begs accuracy questions, and undoubtedly some of the great depth of meaning and authority that the actual Bible has will have been lost. Not saying it's a bad read, though.
So there you go. Sorry for a REALLY long post, but hope it was interesting enough for you to have got this far :P
All the best! Hope you're doing well (:
Matt(hew)
15 Jan 2014
Aside
A Short Aside
I found these quite funny:http://adam4d.com/sleepy/
http://adam4d.com/prayer-fairy/
http://adam4d.com/barber-spectrum/
http://adam4d.com/wabbit-trail/
And these just generally good:
http://adam4d.com/bad/
http://adam4d.com/angels/
http://adam4d.com/surely-he-has-borne-our-griefs/
5 Jan 2014
God is SO MUCH Better
God is so much better
It's true, he really really is. He is so much better than anyone or anything else.Check out Ephesians 2:1-3, it's a letter in the Bible from a guy called Paul to a bunch of Christians in a city called Ephesus but it's applicable to anyone who's a Christian, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air [Paul was referring to Satan here], the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of used also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature [or flesh more literally] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath."
What Paul's doing here is explaining the concept that all people are, whether we realise it or not, born at war with God, destined for eternity without God in Hell. Which is bad. But you see the great thing here? Everything he writes to these Christians about this seems pretty past tense. Let's keep reading...
Verses 4-5, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved."
This is really cool. Let me take a moment to explain mercy and grace in the Bible sense. Mercy tends to be sparing someone from something they deserve, while grace tends to be giving someone something (good) they don't deserve. What's God's mercy here? To spare us from Hell and death. What's His grace? To save us! Why? Because he loves us! Does that fit with the character of God that you're used to? This is part of the character of the God of the Bible. And His grace doesn't stop there.
Verse 6 reads, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus," this is awesome! To be seated with Christ means to be seated with the King! He's the King of Kings! Isn't that amazing!? And notice the comma! We've already been given way more good then we deserve and yet...
Verse 7 says, "in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus." It's not for payment that He's saves us, He saves us so He can keep giving us good things, revealing all His goodness and love to us throughout eternity.
But do you have all this? Are you saved? Are you seated with the King? Are you eagerly awaiting the all God and His goodness face to face? Verse 8 explains how we get all this, "For is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" It's through grace. Remember what the definition of grace was before? "Grace tends to be giving someone something (good) they don't deserve." And you see, this says the same, it's a gift from God.
If you haven't already, ask for faith, ask to be saved.
In truth, the post was originally going to be about something else to do with God being so good, but I got carried away. I think the above stuff is more important though, so I'm going to leave that as the focus. As for what I was going to focus on, I was going to talk about how God is so much more wholesome, lovely, fulfilling, trustworthy, reliable, exciting, deep and so on than anyone or anything else you can find, and how He is well worth getting to know more and more. Perhaps I'll write a post on that soon.
All the best. (And really, if you haven't responded to God, make sure you do!)
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