Stan says that Paul used an errant Old Testament and used it errantly
Yesterday, Stan played pick-up sticks trying to preserve an inerrant Bible. He only found straw.
Wisely, Stan throws out translations in considering inerrancy. He throws out any copy that adds things not found in the original texts: things like punctuation and paragraphing. Presumable anything added to the original texts erases inerrancy. Say, like vowels for instance.
Stan claims that only the original documents, or absolutely faithful copies of them, in the Hebrew and Greek languages… are inerrant.
I have questions.
1. Aramaic? The Hebrew Bible uses Aramaic as well. Will Stan amend his inerrant imprimatur to include the Aramaic found in the Hebrew Bible?
By his own standards, I think he would.
2. However, the Old Testament that Christians like Stan and, in fact, almost every single Christian reads is a translation of a Hebrew Bible that Stan believes to be original and inerrant, but, by his standards, cannot be. The Hebrew Bible being used as the Ur-source - the original - is the Masoretic text. The Masoretic text is a copied, edited, and denoted text compiled by a group of Jews, the Masoretes, in the years 700 AD to 1000 AD. The oldest known complete edition is from 1009 AD.
This is the only known Hebrew Bible. Is this the Bible that Stan thinks is inerrant?
It can’t be. Older texts make clear that the oldest Hebrew Scriptures didn’t have vowels. The Masoretic text has diacritical marks denoting the vowels thought appropriate to the word. They were added. There are different choices to make. This falls under Stan’s exclusion of unoriginal marks. Especially given that they introduce the reality of variable interpretations.
Before the edited version of the Masoretic Hebrew Bible of 1009 AD, there was no common Hebrew Bible of the last few centuries before Christ and for the next thousand years. Various Jewish and Samaritan groups had various versions of the Hebrew Bible.
The Dead Sea Scrolls - the oldest of which are from around 400 BC - have multiple versions that don’t agree with the Masoretic text.
We do not and cannot know if there ever was an original whole Hebrew Bible before 1009 AD. We don’t have an Ur-Source.
It is fact that we don’t have any of the original texts of the canonical Hebrew Bible. And in the cases of the first five books and the histories and the psalms and the most of the prophets, existing texts come more than 500 years after there may have been an original text. Not even close! All of our New Testament sources are well within 500 years of any original. And the oldest is just a century after or a little more than.
(btw, Stan infers that we actually have originals and that only those are inerrant: “Don't let the parts that aren't in the originals throw you. Do your due diligence.” Hmmm. Maybe a little more due diligence on his part before certainty.)
So my question. Isn’t Stan, when referring to the Masoretic text of 1009 AD, our “Hebrew Bible”, by his own standards, pointing to an errant ghost?
3. The New Testament writers always quote the Hebrew Bible not from Hebrew texts but from a Greek translation of them. Therefore, according to Stan, they are using scriptures that are not inerrant. Usually they are using the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the existing Hebrew texts in the middle of the 3rd century BC.
The Greek Septuagint and Stan’s Hebrew Bible of 1009 AD don’t always agree.
It is true that sometimes, especially when Paul quotes from the Psalms, it clearly looks like he is quoting from Hebrew versions. But, sadly for Stan, he often paraphrases. In fact, most of the New Testament writers paraphrase from both the Septuagint mostly and Hebrew texts sometimes.
So, don’t we draw two conclusions?
a. The New Testament writers (God-breathed as Stan would say, as his sole basis for claiming inerrancy [didn’t prove insurmountable for Adam, though; a man, god-breathed, made a little lower than angels and far more glorified by God than a book, but, errant])… the New Testament writers, and therefore the New Testament, doesn’t take Stan’s desire for inerrancy very seriously.
b. By Stan’s own standards of inerrancy, we have to cut out any talk by the New Testament of the Old Testament because it’s based on texts that are not inerrant. And the “god-breathed” talk itself is carried out in free, interpretive paraphrase of a Greek translation of one among variable Hebrew interpretations of an unknown original
So my question. Isn’t Stan, when referring to the “New Testament”, by his own standards, really pointing to an errant ghost? With bad breath?
Regarding Stan’s crutch of god-breathed, I’ve addressed this before, titled, “Stan is godbreathed too. The record of godbreathed isn’t all that.”
ReplyDeleteStan has once again put all his eggs in the basket of “godbreathed” from Paul’s instructions to Timothy. Almost as often as Stan rejects Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 about the judgment, Stan defends upon this for his Bible idolatry:
“… how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired [Stan’s godbreathed] by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
This isn’t the heart of the encouragements and instructions Paul gives to Timothy. Actually it reads more as an afterthought. Most of what Paul urges Timothy to do is preach the word of Jesus and the good news of his resurrection and to follow Paul’s model in maintaining a life of courage by holding to the faith and love that is in Christ.
And, oh yeah, the ancient scriptures are inspirational and will help you for “teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”
No one disputes this. ALL scripture is vital to the Christian life.
But Stan uses it as talisman to magically deny all growth in human thinking under god. Despite Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit would continue to teach the fullness of god’s promises until everything was known: the end of human history as we are taken into eternal life with god where everything IS known, everything loved.
Stan cannot face a changing world or an intellectually and spiritually growing church as guided by the Holy Spirit.
Stan hides in between the leather covers of his fetishized book whatever god intended him to bless the world with.
Just a few problems with Stan’s absolute use of θεόπνευστος:
A. Paul is referring to the Torah and the Prophets and Writings which Timothy started reading in the synagogue as a boy. Paul is writing three centuries before there will be a Christian Bible.
B. God breathed into the nostrils of Adam. And we know what outcome radical protestants pin on Adam.
C. Jesus, after his resurrection in his first appearance to the disciples except Thomas, he breathed on the disciples - not just the Apostles but ALL the disciples - and said, “receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
Wow! Well, things have gone somewhat better with the church as Christ’s body than Israel as God’s chosen sign to the world. The promise of salvation is now offered to everyone.
But in the book of Acts, Even the “god-breathed-on” Peter resisted pretty hard, 3 times, the Spirit’s lesson about nobody being unclean just because they’re not you’re kind of people.
God breathing on someone isn’t a guarantee of perfection. Far from it. This side of heaven nothing is. And the promise of growing into perfection is only offered to human beings who call on the power of the Holy Spirit to increase in the faith and love of Jesus Christ.
Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to the church and delivered. The book helps. But he didn’t promise a book. The sacraments help, too, AND HE DID INSTITUTE SACRAMENTS.
But putting love of people first, just as Christ did, is the work. All of God’s creation is beautiful. All of it flawed.
The Bible tells us so even as it performs imperfection. Very inspiring in the quiet hours.
But it’s not an iron dome. And shouldn’t be.
Only fragile White men who think they’re oppressed fantasize about a paper-made iron dome.