Hi MeDeFe,
How are you? Sorry to take so long to reply. I think we come off a lot closer than you think in opinion, which is why I waited to reply to you.
MeDeFe wrote:CrazyAnglican wrote:Based on nothing really more than (I’m paraphrasing) …but people actually believe the Bible. It’s an interesting point only the books you have an interest in refuting are admissible.
No, CA, no. But other books brought into the discussion should be comparable. Beowulf and the bible are not.
CrazyAnglican wrote:This is very convienient for you, isn't it? Never mind that a book is essentially a book, and the translation process is essentially the same with any of them. It was perhaps even more rigorous with the Bible.
That's what I said, isn't it? Ordinary (well, who could read and write) people who were given the task of copying it were likely to be more careful. Because they believed it was the word of god. It's hard to attack more importance than that to a book, most probably it's impossible, though I'm not speaking from personal experience here.
Someone striving to transfer his religious might into worldly might on the other hand... let's put it ironically: would be very careful in another way. I'm not saying that happened, but it's not impossible.
Okay fine, you don’t like Beowulf. I’ll drop Beowulf, in that it seems you did embrace my point that the Holy Bible wasn’t the only highly influential book that went through translations, and by contrast seems to have been treated with at least as much care, if not more.
CrazyAnglican wrote:I’m merely stating that you cannot refute the validity of the Bible based on supposed alterations that probably did not occur. If you, or Guiscard, would like to get back to the point and show me where these alterations occurred, I’m all ears.
I don't. But you cannot implicitly ascribe complete faith and fear of god to people you never met and who lived in a completely different society than you do by denying them what you called "atheistic motives". By doing that and bringing up that anecdote you evoke an image of old sages who believed in god and were guided by his hand.
Sometimes the important things are between the words.
I don’t ascribe piety to them. I had to conjure up my “old sages” to combat Guiscard’s “Greedy, misogynistic, paedophiles”. I don’t really like arguing from emotional appeal like that, but the Guiscard’s overall tone was demeaning to Christians in general and didn’t acknowledge the good that was most likely there as well. You, on the other hand ,attributed faith to the simple monk, and I appreciate your even handed approach.
I understand, fully that the canonization process was a tense time in the ecclesiastical history. Guiscard quoted Eusebius, and by no means, did he quote the worst things attributed to him. It is telling that a man, instrumental in the setting the canon, is not referred to as a saint. We do not look to him as a shining example of Christianity. It’s people, like him, a favorite of the emperor, given authority to handle establishing canon that makes me support the separation of church and state. Combining the two is never good for the Christian faith. I have said all along that I believe in each individuals right to choose Christianity or not. My responsibility is merely to let people see that it is a viable option.
That being said, I do not see how any of it takes away from the validity or reliability of scripture. Sure the Early Christian church decided which scripture was holy and which was not. Who better to do that? Who else would care? I mean really, do you care that the Gospel of Nicodemus was an account of the trial of Jesus, to which neither the author nor anyone he ever met was a witness? Of course, some of these books were canned. It seems like an internal matter to me.
I realize it led to persecution, and I abhor those persecutions as much as any other in history. As you said it was a different time, though. Whatever the motives (piety, greed, or plain fear of renewed presecutions), the decisions of these people can hardly be used to indict Christians today. Out of it we have a set of books that has, at the very least, stood the test of time to give us a glimpse at human nature over millenia and see that to be human is to be human. Whether you believe or not, is this a fair enough assessment?