/lit/ - Literature

>>11350442
>at what point do you, personally, divert from the word
bad premise. you can't stand apart from God. there ARE many parts that are not meant to be taken literally, even in the NT. it's told in parables for goodness sake.

>i'm aware the text is to be the infallible word of god, but i can't shake the notion that strictly interpreting the text, or even deviating from the written, direct quotations of christ himself would only lend itself to misinterpretation.

This is the great problem with the book. Another is that it is being read by the religious directly instead of these mystical teachings being administered by a priest who spent many years as a seminarian and remains a student of theology. It's a lack of understanding that creates these questions, and hubris that answers them with a hand wave (as in the case of brainlet atheists who throw the baby jesus out with the bath water). That you have spotted this problem says you've got a brain on you. Congratulations.

Best advice I can give you to fix this problem in your own self is study philosophy and ancient mysticism. The New Testament and idea of the Trinity was powerfully influenced by Greek ideas during the apostolic age. Get to know the religious traditions and terms used by Jews and Greeks from 300 BC to 400 AD, the influence of the Chaldeans (Semites, migrated to the levant from Babylon), and the ancient traditions of the Jews going back to 1000 AD, which can be found in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament, minus some books they don't consider canon). It's a fucking lot to study. Here's the rough order of thinkers and works: Old Testament, Chaldean Oracles, Plato (Timaeus), Plotinus' Enneads (4c CE iirc), New Testament. Saint Augustine borrowed heavily from Plato and Plotinus in forming the theology of the Church.

Can't type more gotta go.

go away cuck, with your roman slave religion

Okay just to sum up: learning about the origins of the New Testament and understanding the terms as they were used them and how they informed later thinkers like Saint Thomas Aquinas (PBUH) will greatly help you understand the New Testament as literature, as religious foundation, and as a mystical work.

Okay be back later.

>>11350492
thanks for the response, anon, i've read some plato but i'll definitely read into those other works. while not religious, christianity and abrahamic faith as a whole intrigues me greatly.

i do think i worded my premise poorly though; i'm not quite sure how to articulate that initial question, though i might have a better idea as i read more.

either way, thank you!

>>11350442
>New Testament
Jesus was a false Messiah. He did not fulfill the prophecies.
Embrace Judaism, anon.

bump

>>11350442
>is it not inherent that through centuries of translations and manipulations, the book could now contain errors innumerable
Fancy.
But from what I read, there are barely any errors in it. In between all the greek, hebrew, latin and whatever translation, only a few similar words are written differently with similar meanings and a few misspellings here and there. I think there were two big translation "errors" in the book, but scholars supposedly figured them out as well. And we're talking about, like, hundreds and thousands of rewrites in different languages.
Or in other words, the NT held up remarkably well throughout the thousands of years.

>>11350442
>at what point do you, personally, divert from the word of the bible (new testament, specifically)? it seems to me that a strict interpretation of the bible only lends itself to a misconstrued faith

Correct. There was no universally accepted canon of scripture until the 5th century so we should interpret the scriptures the same way Christians did in the first 5 centuries: through the traditions andteaching of the church. Christ didn't give us a bible, he gave us the church with its hierarchy, its sacraments and its traditions. The great error of protestantism is the arrogance of believing that every individual is capable of independantly interprating the scriptures which as you have noted lends itself to misconstrued faith. Do what >>11350492 said. Learn about philosophy and religion of the area and the times and read the church fathers.

>>11350442
>jesus chose the disciples himself as the couriers of his message
None of the New Testament is written by Jesus's disciples.

>>11351071
Enjoy slavishly following the rules laid down for a primitive desert people thousands of years ago instead of being set free through God's grace

>>11351550

Christians: wars, reformation, killing of neighbours

Judaism: there's 70 faces to the Torah anon just be nice that's the whole Torah :^)

>>11351568
Also judaism

>>11351562
It's likely none of the 12 disciples were literate, much less able to write Greek.

>>11350442
Perhaps you would find value in the writings of Quakers. Though Christian they don't believe in the inerrancy of scripture over personal revelation.

>>11350442
The bible began life as a collection of stories by those close to Christ and his followers. But until the modern era, it was regarded as a suspect source that needed the hand of tradition to read correctly. That is, it was not put on earth so every man could judge it for himself. I personally think it was the dawn of the scientific era and the insecurity that brought that caused protestants to elevate it to an inarguable truth. A religious law to match scientific law. But having read it, that need creates an offense against its essence. It's not a textbook, it's not the infallible word of anyone. If god wanted to give his infallible word in print, why not just write it down rather than suffer life as the christ? Why not just become a muslim?

So definitely read it, but don't demand those kinds of truths from it.

>>11351071
>Embrace Judaism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments

>>11350442
Interpretations of the text ultimately do create disagreements in the Church. It's like a movie; everyone watches it but people come away with different interpretations. However, pretty much everyone gets the main plot.

In Christianity the main thing is the plot, which is that God sacrificed himself to save man from his sin, and that any man who believes in Christ has eternal life. If you believe that you'll be fine.

All that being said, I believe that the Bible has been faithfully translated for a long time, mainly because the people doing the translation considered it the most important things they would ever do in their life. The disagreements don't really come from differences in translation; although there is some of that. They mainly come from certain verses that are vaguely worded even in the original. You just have to do your best, sorry. When you die you'll get the right version and it'll all be clear.

>>11350492
wrong, almost everything you wrote is just contrived bullshit

>>11352041
>matthew

>>11353739
>wrong, almost everything you wrote is just contrived bullshit
t. ignorant laity, maybe even a Protestant

Prove your claim. Prove how I am incorrect.

>>11353753
>epistles
He's memeing, or a dumbass. Correspondence is how individuals kept in touch over long distances, even then.

>>11350492
Nice. I would also add that during the 3rd century Alexander led conquests into Asia minor and subsequent cultural exchanges brought Buddhist concepts from india into Hellenistic culture.
This is an interesting article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
There are many parallels between Christs ideas and methods and those of early Buddhism and I would say it went both ways with Christ enhancing a lot of what he found and that being brought back to India creating the impetus for Mahayana buddhism. I am going to try and research all this more thoroughly. There were Greek buddhist monks. There were ancient buddhist texts written in Aramaic. The Hellenes were aware of Buddhist ideas a few centuries before Christ. It is interesting certainly. Also Bodhidharma who brought Buddhism to the east was supposedly heavily bearded and blue eyed.

>>11353795
3rd century b.c.*

>>11350442
>is it not inherent that through centuries of translations and manipulations, the book could now contain errors innumerable, thus making the direct word flawed?
No it isn't. It's one of the dumbest arguments atheists make because the implication is each translation was taken from another translation in a game of telephone that distorts meaning like running a sentence through google translate 5 or 6 times.

The NT was written in Greek. The OT was written in Hebrew. We still have very old copies of all books. And the books of the Bible were some of the most widely copied works in that era so we have plenty of copies to cross reference.

There is really no concern with the integrity of the documents, we know that they're accurate to what was originally written to a high degree of confidence

>>11350492
>study philosophy and ancient mysticism
Excellent advice

>>11351550
We have letters written by Peter and James, dumbass.

>>11350442
From a practictioner's standpoint, I'd ask a local priest or pastor. High-church denominations tend to have ministers with more formal training in theology, but that's a generalisation.

>>11351527
Pope Damascus established he canon in the 300s, and the same list first crops up in the 3rd century. Fuck of orthocuck.

>>11353795
Indeed even some of the sayings of Jesus appear suspiciously like paraphrases of the sayings of Buddha.

>>11353909
What? That image is so crazy. Probably the worst is James did not write Revelations. That's ridiculous. Not in the least because the author of Revelations says in the book his name is John!

>>11354267
>the same list first crops up in the 3rd century
In the early 4th century, Eusebius still lists James, 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude, and Revelation as of disputed canonicity (Church History 3.25.1-7)

>>11353892
That chart is misleading. There is not a copy of the New Testament written 40-70 years after composition, there are some tiny fragments that are that close. Also, this chart is about *textual* reliability, not any other kind of reliability, more copies doesn't make Luke's census more historically reliable, for example. Additionally, the abundance of textual witnesses has shown where the transmission was unreliable, notably John 7:53-8:11 (the woman caught in adultery) which was shown to be a later addition despite being accepted as genuine by the church.

>>11354687
I think it's saying John is the author, but it's terribly laid out so the arrows cross over.

>>11354756
Ah, I see it. Still, I didn't realize anyone thought Revelations was written by John the Apostle. Yes they have the same name but they write quite differently. Also he'd have been like a hundred.

>>11353753
>Gospel of Matthew being by Matthew
>implying you had to be literate to be a tax collector

>>11353909
>Peter and James writing
>in Greek

>>11353764
>Correspondence is how individuals kept in touch over long distances
Literate ones, yes. Lower class people were not literate.
http://evidenceforchristianity.org/were-people-literate-in-the-time-of-jesus-r/
This is from evidenceforchristianity.org! And it says
>My personal speculation is that with the emphasis of the rabbis on Hebrew
study, the literacy rate among the Jews may have been slightly higher than
the 1.5% estimate by the author above. For well-to-do Jewish males, it
may have been quite high, but certainly the overall rate was very low by
modern standards.
Jesus' followers were hardly well-to-do, not to mention that those who were literate would mainly be literate in Hebrew, the Jews' native language, not Greek, the language of the New Testament. Again I say, the odds that any of the 12 disciples could write Greek are very low.

>>11355780
you're a fucking moron. sorry. but you are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle

>Thirteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul.[13] Seven of the epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic

>inb4 that's Paul and not one of the twelve like i said

Let me remind you what you said:

>None of the New Testament is written by Jesus's disciples.

>>11353763
Not him, but you're still talking out of your ass.

On what grounds can you, a mere human, claim full understanding of God's word? Many years in a Catholic seminary (a place where you'd likely spend less time studying the Bible than the Catechism and Thomism, and even then, in an inferior translation altered to fit the doctrines of Rome), studying the work of virtuous pagans won't do much to shed light on God's truth either.

Obviously open interpretation of the Bible will lead to differing understandings, but that ultimately says nothing about whether scripture alone can suffice for theology. You can misuse anything good, including the word. You can interpret many passages different ways, but so long as you acknowledge the total sovereignty of God as the ultimate authority, the imperative of constant reform (Augustine's semper reformanda est), and your inability as a flawed, depraved creature to ever grasp the whole of God's truth on this earth, then any doctrinal differences mean relatively little.

It seems far more Biblically and rationally sound to submit wholly to God and His law than to the spiritual successor to the Roman Empire, a hierarchy of proud men whose claim to be the sole benefactors of providence is only buttressed by an anachronistic view of a meandering historical line which has gotten more and more debauched with each decade.

Fuck off papist.

>>11350442

The question is moot for most Christians- only radical Protestants rely that much on the Bible alone. Tradition and reasoned theology have just as much weighting in the Anglican and Catholic churches.

>>11350442
If you had even a passing level of knowledge about the authorship of the New Testament, you would realize your question simply makes no sense.

The NT is the surviving writings from the faction of early Christians who won the argument about the faith. There were numerous other groups that had their writings erased. Deep divisions in meaning and interpretation exist in the NT text today.

Only a mindless Evangelical would think it bears any resemblance to the "word of God'.

>>11355799
>>11355811
>Paul
>A disciple of Jesus
inb4 "muh road to damascus". In common parlance, a disciple of Jesus is one of the 12.

>the word of a Jew on a stick

>>11355882
You don't deserve a (You), but here you go. I read your post, it was shit. Do better.

bump

>>11353763
Plato did not influence the Bible, including the New Testament, itself. He influenced later Christian thinkers, such as Augustine. The Chaldean Oracles, that occult work, had no influence on the Bible, but did influence some Church Fathers. Plotinus follows this same pattern.

The New Testament is not influenced by these thinkers, though some "early" (4th century) Christians were. The doctrine of the Trinity did not come out of neoplatonism, it came out of people trying to reconcile the fact that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Father were all God at the same time.

The truth is that none of those texts influenced the actual writings in the New Testament themselves, and that when they did become influences a variety of heresies sprung out of them, like Arianism. Some of those texts did influence Augustine, who sifted the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

>>11355347
Seriously? You thought no one thought it was John the Apostle? They don't write differently, the Gospel of John and Revelations both have the same theological/mystical bent. This is why the early Christians hated Gnostics so much.

>>11355983
>doesn't use the apostle/disciple distinction everyone uses
>gets upset when he gets shown he's wrong
>come on everyone knew what I meant when I used the wrong word!
In common parlance, an apostle is one of the 12.

Fact: Paul hijacked Christianity and took a dump into the New Testament with his useless letters.
Fact: Christianity was standardised through councils, the same way you standardise and simplify an idea or a product.

>>11357005
I mean I guess people still believe the earth is flat too.

>>11357017
You're right, I should have used the word apostle to exclude Paul. Oh wait, he's literally called Paul the Apostle.

>>11356000
>antisemitism mostly began due to resentment by Christians over the rejection and eventual killing of Jesus by the Jews
>thousands of years later antisemites bash Jesus on the basis that he was Jewish

There is less reason to believe in the existence of a Christian God and that the Bible is the direct word of it that there is to believe in the Tooth Fairy or the Boogeyman. You all have wasted your lives studying and analyzing this material and belong in asylums.

>>11355780
>implying you had to be literate to be a tax collector
I dunno why people use the literacy of the apostles as an argument for why they couldn't have written the letters attributed to them. They would've had large congregations and there would've been some people who would've been able to act as scribes to write down whatever they dictated. In fact 1 Peter says exactly this

>With the help of Silas, whom I regard as a faithful brother, I have written to you briefly, encouraging you and testifying that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.

So Silas was Peters scribe

>>11357680
Antisemitism didn't start with Jesus. It's like you've never read the Torah.

>>11356034
face it boys, this is what sexy looks like.

>>11357746
Jesus is still the reason 99.9% of antisemites hate Jews and no, I did not read the Jew book.

>>11357823
>tfw muslims
>tfw antichristian Hitler