Much of this sort of criticism is based on 50 to 100 year old scholarship on the Bible, which continually gets repeated as fact in populist texts despite discoveries superceeding them. No serious modern scholar would claim that the gospels are 3rd century or later inventions. Archaelogical evidence for very early dates to the New Testament keeps mounting, and though we've yet to find 1st century smoking guns its worth noting just how few 1st century texts exist period. Heck, there are only a few dozen 1st century books that have survived, much less 1st century copies of those books.

I find it interesting that the very skeptics that argued that the books of the New Testament shouldn't be considered authoritative two or three decades ago because of thier supposed late date of authorship, now are trying to offer up books with known late dates of authorship as authoritative. I don't even believe these critics are serious. Certainly there is no serious scholarship going on here. All that is really going on is trying to use shock value to stir up enough contriversy to sell some books. Hey, it worked for the DiVinci code, right?

The case of the Gospel of Judas is particularly annoying, because its known to be a text of the Cainite sect - which was a fringe group even the more mainstream Gnostics didn't approve up. Demanding that the Gospel of Judas be treated as 'gospel' because well its got 'gospel' in the title, is like demanding that the 'Satanic Bible' be treated as a bible because its got 'bible' in the title.

Why shouldn't some of the excluded early Christian writings be reexamined?

The men who chose the books of the bible had 1st millenia mores and cultural beliefs. They were no better than some of the imams today calling for women to cover themselves, stay home and raise babies.

We should do some serious scholarship and find the full teachings of Christ, not just the ones chosen for us by men 1000+ years ago.

Ditto what celebrim said, and I'd like to know what fool thinks this is "The most important archaeological find of the past 60 years." There ought to be a Piltdown Man Award.

Spurious gospels were as common as rocks in the early churches. In order to be truly bona fide, it was thought that each church had to be apostolic in origin - founded either by Paul or by one of Christ's eleven. It wasn't unusual for people to shop around documents "proving" that such-and-such church was founded by Thomas or Matthew during his journey to Yada-Yada. This was easy to do and hard to refute, because the lives and fates of most of the apostles are mysterious.

Bogus Gnostic gospels (like this one) are even more common. Even Gnostic sect, sub-sect, and splinter group had their own "gospels". The whole point of Gnosticism is to claim possession of esoteric secret knowledge, the more the better. This is directly opposite to Pauline Christianity, in which Christ is "the light to enlighten the Gentiles" whose word is intended for all nations.

And after all these centuries, the modern Gnostics are still impressing the ignorant with their amazing revelations (written in code, even!) and their super-secret conspiracies. This business of enlightening Gentiles isn't easy.

Well... lets not get to overboard here. You guys are generally correct about the Gnostic works (Judas certainly being one) but lets not oversell it by overstating the authority of the Canonical gospels. Scholars generally agree that Matthew and Luke were based on Mark (the Synoptics), and the ending of Mark was tacked on at some later point by someone else. If you look at the history of the Gnostic works, they are pretty reflective of how the eventual Canonic writings developed (but of course on a divergent path). Earlier writings get bigger and more elaborate as time goes on- either God is whispering in ears years later or somebody is adding tidbits as years go by. All the books of the New Testament have evolved considerably over the ages, pretty much with every copying or translation (accidently or purposefully).

The Judas we have is dated around 300 AD, give or take 50 years. Whats interesting is that this is concurrent or slightly before the 'modern' cannon was adopted late in the fourth century. The gospel of Judas originally must date back to sometime before 185 where we have Irenaeus denouncing it. The point is we have several sects of Christianity developing concurrently, each with their own (and assumedly many shared) texts, all evolving and developing often in reaction to each other. The Judas is fascinating not because it offers anything particularly useful in and of itself, but because scholars can compare and contrast the writing style, quotations, etc to what we know of the Apostolic texts of the era. Its basically forensics. By deconstructing this new text scholars can hopefully gain some clues to get closer to a more 'pure' gospel.

"In the case of the Judas document (but not only it), they were works of imaginative fiction, novels basically, which could not form the basis of preserving the teachings of the apostles who had known Christ personally."

Imaginitive fiction. Yes, I'd say that describes the Judas documents, all 4 Gospels, and a large portion of the rest of the Bible.
None of the 4 Gospels can be proven to have been written by their alleged authors, and their accuracy is highly questionable. Given this, I'd say the whole damn religion is shaky.
Paul never knew Christ personally, but I bet if you did a poll of Christians, a majority would say he was one of the 12.

"I find it interesting that the very skeptics that argued that the books of the New Testament shouldn't be considered authoritative two or three decades ago because of thier supposed late date of authorship, now are trying to offer up books with known late dates of authorship as authoritative."

Which skeptics? None of those I've read would take Judas seriously. Certainly not Callahan or Helms.

Rumor has it that Paul (then Saul) met Christ on a road to Damascus. But of course, you know better, right, jmz1?.

I'm with Mark, (#4). Let's not jump overboard here.

I think everybody agrees that the canonization of the Bible occurred hundreds of years after the actual events. In a time where written history was not very common. Some folks say that the canonization served a very practical value: it grouped together the texts necessary for the church to continue and grow. When every church had it's own bible, this was not possible.

Looking at some of these gospels with a fresh eye has value, if nothing more than forensic value. Some argue that the Gospel of Thomas should have been canonized instead of the Gospel of John. You can have all the fits about that you want, but the idea of opening the canon up makes people think about what is important in their belief system. I think that's a good thing.

"Well... lets not get to overboard here."

I could say the same to you.

My study bible is an annotated NKJV. In it and any decent modern translation of the bible, every ambiguity in the ancient text is recorded and is in footnote on the bottom of the page.

The way you make it sound, the majority of the page would be footnotes. That is not the case.

"Earlier writings get bigger and more elaborate as time goes on- either God is whispering in ears years later or somebody is adding tidbits as years go by."

A wonderful assertion, but in the case of cannonical books not one supported by the available archaelogical evidence. The case of Mark is a well known case, and was contriversial and documented even back in the 4th century. It's not like we modern folks suddenly discovered the issue. Compilers in the 3rd century were so uncertain about the issue, that even when they left the ending out of the text, they reserved space on the parchment to include it latter. We have a surviving Codex that does exactly that.

"The gospel of Judas originally must date back to sometime before 185 where we have Irenaeus denouncing it."

Yes, and my point is that an orthodox cannon must have developed sometime before 185, else you wouldn't have people like Irenaeus denouncing it. We have no surviving full text from that period, but we have peices of papyrus indicating that the gospels were in existance before 180. It's now widely accepted that a good portion of the New Testament cannon (Romans and Mark in particular) is authentic. If we only had Romans and Mark, we'd be well on the way to a historically existing Jesus and you can generate most of orthodox Christian theology from Romans alone. In my own lifetime, I've seen secular scholarship on the Gospel of Matthew go from it being a 3rd century invention that couldn't possibly have been written by the supposed author, to it being dated no latter than 100 AD and possibly as early as 80 AD. While this is certainly not proof that it was written by Matthew in the 1st century and passed on unedited, it does leave open that possibility. There is no reason to suppose that the bulk of the Bible is a latter invention than any of the gnostic texts, and as you say these must have existed before 180. There is no reason to suppose that the Marcion inspired texts have greater authority than the eventual cannon gospels, or even that they tell us much anything, especially since its obvious Marcion was reading from at least two of the eventual cannon gospels. Even if the rest were developing as you say, concurrently and in responce to each other, so what? That in no way proves that the orthodox cannon was in flux, or that the eventual cannonical works were not the ones written by those with the most authority, and "deconstructing this new text scholars can hopefully gain some clues to get closer to a more 'pure' gospel." would ammount to mere speculation.

The 2nd and 3rd century writers probably had a fuller understanding of the available texts and thier origins than we - or anyone else post about the 8th century when most of the ancient world's writing had disappeared - ever could. I'm not demanding anyone accept the Bible as an infalliable text or divinely inspired (or even as an inerrant text, which I don't). I would simply like it if people would realize or admit that most scholarship on the Bible treats it with a skepticism that it treats no other historical text in existence, and that the majority of revisionist histories are motivated not by the available scholarship but by a desire to make a quick buck stirring up a contriversy and the evidence they present ammounts to nothing other than wild and very thin speculation. They are in fact, typical of conspiracy theories.

I really don't have a dog in this fight.

I would, however, like to point out a couple phrases from Celebrim's post that caught my eye.

"...Yes, and my point is that an orthodox cannon must have developed sometime before 185, else you wouldn't have people like Irenaeus denouncing it..." -- this is muddle-headed at best, misleading at worst. Did Iraneus denounce a canon? Or just the use of various texts? My memory says Iraneus decided that all works should be apostolic. I'd really like to know more here, Celebrim. Your statement left me wondering.

"...The 2nd and 3rd century writers probably had a fuller understanding of the available texts and thier origins than we ..." -- this sounds like total BS. Educated people in a time with no phones, no email, no libraries or scientists, no common literacy -- these folks knew more than we do? Why? Because they lived a long time ago? In a time where it tooks months to send a letter, how would they even know where all the churches were, much less the texts?

"...The way you make it sound, the majority of the page would be footnotes. That is not the case..." -- I would think that if you consider that the canonization is in question, there would be a lot of questions, right? Like I said, I don't really have a dog in this fight. My personal opinion is that every story I've heard of the canonization leaves, let's say, open questions. The Gospel of John, for instance, is considered almost certainly a response to the Gospel Of Thomas, which is not included in the canon.

I guess my feeling is that we should keep an open mind about these things. I guess I could agree with Celebrim that historians treat the Bible differently than other texts, but that really hasn't been my experience. Of course, I haven't been that sensitive about it. If people have some facts, I'd like to hear them.

A Religious Studies professor of mine did a great deal of computer analysis of the text of the Gospels and Epistles, analyzing things like word use, phrases and word pairings, sentence structure, and sentence length. These things are very unique to an individual author, sufficient to form the basis for modern forensic analysis of things like the Unibomber Manifesto. I did the programming for most of the analysis (in FORTRAN II), even was listed as a coauthor on one of the papers, but I never even saw the text in other than hexadecimal form delivered on 9-track tapes.

My recollection of his results from 40 years later is that none of the Gospels was written by a single author, though one showed more cohesion than the others and another showed significantly less. I think these two were Mark and Luke, but can't for the life of me remember which was which. The Epistles, which were actually this professor's area of interest, showed even less cohesion, likely having been written and edited by many different individuals over many years.

I don't know if that kind of analysis is still being done. It should certainly have become more sophisticated over the years, though you can only wring so much out of a limited amount of text.

Isn't it conjectured that there were lots of reasons for excluding many of the hundreds of Christian texts that were floating around by the 2nd century from the canon? Some were two late, some were too Greek, some were too far out, some attacked (or at least failed to support) the organizational Church. And so on. For example, an old acquaintance of mine (and Biblical scholar) named Dominic Crossan believed that the Crucifixion narrative in the Gospel of Peter was in fact the oldest extant narrative. And I've also read speculations from legitimate scholars that the Gospel of Thomas was, in fact, 'Q' (the source material used in writing the Synoptic Gospels).

"My study bible is an annotated NKJV. In it and any decent modern translation of the bible, every ambiguity in the ancient text is recorded and is in footnote on the bottom of the page. "

Ah. Is that so? Does the New King James note all the thousands of places it draws from Desiderius Erasmus's translation of a faulty 12th century manuscript modern researchers consider one of the worst available? Check out God's Secretaries, making of the King James Bible. Thats a bare start.

"The way you make it sound, the majority of the page would be footnotes. That is not the case."

Then I made it sound correct. The NKJV should be footnoted every page considering its history. That isnt an indictment, that is the nature of a collection of texts thousands of years old that have been copied and translated dozens of times by all sorts of people with all sorts of agendas. If you think you have in your hands anything like an accurate account of the specific life and words of Jesus you are in for a shock if you go down this road much further.

"A wonderful assertion, but in the case of cannonical books not one supported by the available archaelogical evidence. The case of Mark is a well known case, and was contriversial and documented even back in the 4th century. It's not like we modern folks suddenly discovered the issue. Compilers in the 3rd century were so uncertain about the issue, that even when they left the ending out of the text, they reserved space on the parchment to include it latter. We have a surviving Codex that does exactly that."

Mark is thought to have been written around 70 AD. There is as much time passed between then and the 3rd Council of Carthage. More time passed between those two events than have passed us since the American Revolution, and considerably more mahem for Christians. Between then, direct sources are rife with complaints about how sources were altered for various agendas (Marcion the most famous). Two of the oldest translations we have dont have the last 12 versus of Mark. You are trying to tell me that at some point the authentic versus were somehow reintroduced? Rather than fabricated versus that just so happen to correspond much more amicably to Luke and Matthew but are utterly out of character with the rest of Mark? Scoff.

"'The gospel of Judas originally must date back to sometime before 185 where we have Irenaeus denouncing it.'

Yes, and my point is that an orthodox cannon must have developed sometime before 185, else you wouldn't have people like Irenaeus denouncing it."

Sure. We had Marcion of course (foe of Irenaeus) who was a disciple of Paul and rejected every gospel but Luke as well as the entire Old Testament. There were many attempts by vying figures and sects to produce a cannon. And that certainly involved altering the texts to make them harmonious- particularly in light of challenges by the Gnostics and others.

"We have no surviving full text from that period, but we have peices of papyrus indicating that the gospels were in existance before 180."

Some version of the Gospels, yes.

"It's now widely accepted that a good portion of the New Testament cannon (Romans and Mark in particular) is authentic."

Define authentic.

"If we only had Romans and Mark, we'd be well on the way to a historically existing Jesus and you can generate most of orthodox Christian theology from Romans alone."

Im not sure which straw man you are tilting with but i never claimed differntly.

"That in no way proves that the orthodox cannon was in flux, or that the eventual cannonical works were not the ones written by those with the most authority"

The fact that we have manuscripts from the era themselves that differ blows your conclusion up. What we have passed down to us depends entirely on what particular flavor was translated a dozen times- while being compared to other manuscripts still (many lost to us)- and eventually compared to what we have now.

I dont know why you are so desperate to put the stamp of absolute veracity on the Cannon but it simply doesnt hold up to the way the bible has passed down to us.

"The 2nd and 3rd century writers probably had a fuller understanding of the available texts and thier origins than we"

Why would you assume that? It was a couple hundred years later, spread out across half an empire via half a dozen languages, translated by dozens of different devout all with their own firm ideas about what it meant. If anything it was likely more confused, less concerned with accuracy for its own sake, and certainly with less tools and technology at hand.

" I would simply like it if people would realize or admit that most scholarship on the Bible treats it with a skepticism that it treats no other historical text in existence, and that the majority of revisionist histories are motivated not by the available scholarship but by a desire to make a quick buck stirring up a contriversy and the evidence they present ammounts to nothing other than wild and very thin speculation. They are in fact, typical of conspiracy theories."

Oh good lord. The Bible is subjected to the most scholarship of any book because it is the most important book ever written by an order of magnitude. Most of the scholars are and always have been devout Catholics themselves (as am I, if not devout at least a believer).
The only relation to conspiracy theory is the wild attacks you are launching against anyone infringing on your beliefs. Read a well documents book like Misquoting Jesus. The truth is the Bible is an amazing thing- but it has been through a history longer and wilder than we can imagine. It has changed in that time. Accept it for what it is and accept it for what it isnt.

This fear and anger at a Gnostic text is amazing and silly. The mere thought that studying them might indirectly lead us to a truer understanding of the true life and words of Christ is ridiculous. If what King James tells you is good enough for you- fine. But it is far from the best we can do.

That isnt an indictment, that is the nature of a collection of texts thousands of years old that have been copied and translated dozens of times by all sorts of people with all sorts of agendas. If you think you have in your hands anything like an accurate account of the specific life and words of Jesus you are in for a shock if you go down this road much further.

While the idea that the text must have changed significantly over time may be intuitively appealing, it is in fact not supported by the evidence

In museums in Europe, the Mid-East, and North America, there exists just over 250 partial or complete papyri and manuscripts of the Greek New Testament dating from 130 AD through 700 AD. The oldest virtually complete document is the Chester Beatty Papyri dated at 250 AD. Apart from these there are an additional 5000+ Greek manuscripts dating from 700 to the 1500s.

When all 5,250+ manuscripts are compared, a total of about 100,000 variants are found. At first glance 100,000 seems like a large number, but this includes misspellings, changes in word order of a sentence, the omission or inclusion of the Greek definite article with proper names, and other minor variants. When all the minor variants are eliminated that do not affect the sense of meaning of a passage, we are left with only 235 variants of any significance. Of these there are only 5 which bring into question the genuineness of a part of the text. Here is a list of the 5 passages in question: Mark 16:9-20, Luke 22:20, 22:43-44, 23:34, and John 7:53-8:11.

I don't believe in the Bible.

Don't have to.

I have actually seen one.

How is that for a definition of authentic?

I expect it depends on what you consider a 'significant' change to be. For those supposing they are reading the literal word of god, a comma here or there should be immensely significant. The 5 instances Greg sites are the extreme- places where scholars have good reason to believe versus were fabricated whole cloth at some later date because they are not found in earlier versions, nor do they match the rest of the test in tone or style. That, of course, is stunning in itself, but it is really the tip of the iceberg.

There are over 5700 hundred Greek manuscripts that have been studied in fact. Many are the most uniform and faithful reproductions, benefitting from the professional Byzantine scribes of the era, yet they are still thousands of variences. But what about the thousands of Latin Vulgate manuscripts? The Coptic, Syric, etc?

But beyond that, as stated above, the text most people consider authoritative (NYJ) is at odds with even these Greek manuscripts because its source relied on bad and incomplete later copies. For instance Erasmus' manuscript was missing Revelations completely! So he translated a Latin copy he had at hand back into Greek! Not the best way to produce a Greek New Testament, and needless to say it differs significantly from the older Greek sources.

But again, little variences can have big consequences for dogma, and there are hundreds of thousands of them. How significant they are depends entirely on circumstance.
The Johanneum Comma is probably the best example of this. One tiny clause is the source for the doctrine of the trinity, critical in Catholicism. Unfortuneately it doesnt appear in the vast majority of the Greek manuscripts, nor is it reference by any of the early church leaders. Somehow it made its way into a Latin Epistle at some point and was very occasion re-translated to Greek. Again this ties back in to our modern bibles being based on Erasmus who was pressured by Church Leaders to include it (the Latin Vulgate was considered authoritative to Western Europeans just as King James is now). Modern translations omit the comma but your King James still has it.

... a collection of texts thousands of years old that have been copied and translated dozens of times by all sorts of people with all sorts of agendas.

You make it sound as if the process were entirely arbitrary, and prejudicial as well, which would make all ancient literature effectively spurious. (Not just ancient texts, either, but all the published work of Shakespeare.) Which, in our sceptical and philistine age, means it is of curiosity value only.

But all those texts survive because they were copied, and they were copied because written materials rarely last two thousand years. Whatever you think of Dark Age scholarship, they were not so stupid as to think that there was no difference between working from an old Greek text and working from a copy that somebody made last Tuesday. Like us, they knew the difference and preferred the former.

Unlike us, they had enormous reverence for the materials they handled. Not just the gospels, but for the classical "pagan" texts which they believed represented the absolute height of human intellect. Believing that they were on the downward slope of history headed for armageddon, they thought that those works would never be surpassed or even equalled. So they treated them with respect, not with editorial license.

Finally, the integrity of a text that has been copied thousands of times is greater than a text that has been copied once.

You guys are assuming your conclusions and working backwards. Lets look at this logically.

"Does that collection include Herodotus, Aristotle, Hesiod, Ovid, and all the authors who predate the gospels by hundreds of years - most of which survive only because of industrious medieval copyists? "

Yes! Of course! Again, we are talking about what in your average text would be considered minor changes (with exception). But the bible is different, because we are discussing it as the word of God. If was mispelled here and there, and then that change copied, possibly changed back, translated slightly differently- all these changes add up over 2000 years. Maybe for Aristotle the jist of what he is saying is key so nobody worries if his phrasing changes. But for the WORD OF GOD, every syllable has potential consequences of the highest order.

"You make it sound as if the process were entirely arbitrary, and prejudicial as well, which would make all ancient literature effectively spurious"
If so that was not my intent. On the other hand it must be taken most seriously that there are myriad discrepencies, and readers should go in knowing that. My intent is to get the purest gospel we can manage- and i dont think its crazy to think you should know how accurate what you are starting with is in order to do that.

"Whatever you think of Dark Age scholarship, they were not so stupid as to think that there was no difference between working from an old Greek text and working from a copy that somebody made last Tuesday. "

They were also human, and when a printed version was coming out in a year and you had a few months to rush through an authoritative Greek Bible for the first time, you might be forced to cut corners. Which is what happened with Erasmus. Its well documented.

"So they treated them with respect, not with editorial license. "

Indeed. Most did. But that wasnt foolproof. There is a famous (infamous) page in the Codex Vaticanus at the beginning of Hebrews where there was controversy of which word to use in translation, 3 different scribes centuries apart cross each others words out and annotate each other. Finally a note is written in the margin,:
"Fool and knave! Leave the old reading, don't change it!"

So apparently its not so simple, and the scribes themselves understood this and squabbled. Did the actual intent and word of the Lord win out in this case? Is there such a thing?

"Finally, the integrity of a text that has been copied thousands of times is greater than a text that has been copied once. "

I dont think this is remotely true. Look at it like a genetic mutation. A late mutation when there are thousands of copies, you are correct, isnt that critical because the correct copy is easy to discern. But an early mutation is devastating. There is little or nothing to compare against, and hence everything that follows will bear that mutation and in fact reinforce it. Even if the truer original shows its face, the force that worked for you in the late case now works against you becuase the preponderence is the incorrect version. The truth is drowned out.

So there are 2 major issues at work here. The early church where all sorts of madness, politics, translations, were happening, and then coallesced into various manuscripts which were copied and passed on. The point is the manuscripts that were copied live on because they were copied. They are authoritative because they survived, not necessarilly because they are accurate. Even then generations of copies and further translations has altered them. Not the jist of them, of course, but as i have shown, small changes can have significant implications.

I'd like to say that this has been a great conversation to listen to. Already I've gotten a couple good books to take to the beach this summer!

I expect it depends on what you consider a 'significant' change to be.

For those supposing they are reading the literal word of god, a comma here or there should be immensely significant.

I would view that as an extreme position. Translations obviously cannot be �literal� due to language differences. In fact Mark, you would be hard pressed to find a scholar to support such a view. The phrase �inspired word of God� should sound familiar.

But what about the thousands of Latin Vulgate manuscripts? The Coptic, Syric, etc?

Those are not the basis of any translation I am familiar with and I have 6 different translations. In fact most of the New Testament is available in documents that predate the above.

2. Older Papyrii � Earlier still, fragments and papyrus copies of portions of the New Testament date from 100 to 200 years (180-225 A.D.) before Vaticanus and Sinaticus. The outstanding ones are the Chester Beatty Papyrus (P45, P46, P47) and the Bodmer Papyrus II, XIV, XV (P46, P75). From these five manuscripts alone, we can construct all of Luke, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, and portions of Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Revelation. Only the Pastoral Epistles (Titus, 1 and 2 Timothy) and the General Epistles (James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2, and 3 John) and Philemon are excluded.

"That was spelled out in the link I provided. If you would care to provide an example of what you consider a �significant change� I would be more then willing to address it. "

We'll just stick with the The Johanneum Comma which you notably fail to address. Thats if changing the ending of Mark isnt signficant enough for you.

"I would view that as an extreme position. Translations obviously cannot be �literal� due to language differences. In fact Mark, you would be hard pressed to find a scholar to support such a view. The phrase �inspired word of God� should sound familiar."

Well just brushing up on this concept seems to have fired up some people quickly enough. Regardless, even 'inspired word of god' is awfully significant, if the wrong words are left to us. Unless you want to make the argument that god has inspired all the changes down to what we have today, as some indeed have.

"But what about the thousands of Latin Vulgate manuscripts? The Coptic, Syric, etc?
Those are not the basis of any translation I am familiar with and I have 6 different translations. In fact most of the New Testament is available in documents that predate the above."

As mentioned above, Revelations from NKJV is translated from the Latin Vulgate as an example. But thats not my point. It is just good scholarship to compare and contrast different versions across different languages that were contemporary- particularly the 3rd and 4th century versions. And they all differ in interesting ways. Which gets us back to why Judas is interesting, which indeed is written in Coptic. How these documents relate to other manuscripts tells us a lot about all the manuscripts.

Unless, that is, it is your agenda to bury any discrepencies in the name of uniformity, for some particular agenda.

I have to say: what an interesting argument.

I am an absolute atheist.

That being said, I still find this fascinating. I didn't come to atheism simply by choosing ignorance, but by studying the bible (and other works) for a long time.

And since none of you asked me for my opinion, I'm going to give it to you:

The discovery is fascinating in of itself. I don't care if it changes the New Testament, the Old Testament, or anything else. I don't think it ever could. That's not the point. The point is the discovery and the sheer delight of piecing it back together and putting the words on paper which haven't been seen in around 1700 years.

Doesn't anyone find that fascinating?

I don't mean to burst your bubble, and I can see why the debate comes in so strongly on one side and the other, but I'm just amazed at the event and discovery itself. We've known this has existed, but we never could read it until now. Anyway, there are hints along the way that Judas perhaps was doing as Christ knew, or wanted him to do. Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter? It's a fascinating view of that story, told from a very different perspective.

Gnostics have always fascinated me. I don't believe a word in what they believe in, but then again I don't believe in anything supernatural. Still, they fascinate me just as any other early sect would fascinate me (Essenes anyone?). I'm not sure that anyone was claiming (and I saw the press video/conference) that this would change anything at all. In fact, I remember the priest there saying it wouldn't. I do think that the "greatest discovery in 60 years" line was probably touted to sell books, which is fine because that's the only way they are allowed to legally make money on this event (since they can't sell the physical document itself).

I'm not certain that they were referring to the discovery in a way that they think would change the fundamentals of Christianity. I think, however, they mean that it is a great archaeological moment. That is, in my opinion, very hard to deny. It is a huge discovery, scientifically speaking.

That's what interests me.

Well, that and reading a new version of the same story.

That doesn't interest anyone here? Put aside your religious sensibilities for a moment and tell me that it doesn't intrigue you in the slightest to see this thing, or to read it, or to think about it? After all, so many have written so much on the discovery itself as it is, and it has only been a few days.

Well, at least that's strictly atheistic take on the situation.

By the way, I realized just now that I used the word "Fascinating" about ten times. I apologize. It's very, very, late and if I lapse into more fascinating points, you'll simply have to stick some pointy ears on me and call me Spock or something.

In any regard, I thought the discovery and announcement was really different. If you want, it's a nice break from the regular "bombs go off, 3 killed in clashes on the border" kind of news. It's nice to get a big announcement in the scientific and archeological field every now and then that doesn't involve a dark cloud of war hanging over our heads.

Doncha think?

I do.

Put aside your religious sensibilities for a moment and tell me that it doesn't intrigue you in the slightest to see this thing, or to read it, or to think about it?

- Epistula Apostolorum
- The Martyrdom of Polycarp
- The Acts of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonice
- "Oxyrhynchus 1224"
- The Book of Thomas the Contender
- The Gospel of the Ebionites
- Trimorphic Protennoia

Read any stories about those in the New York Times lately?

No matter how many exciting adventures Carpus and Papylus had, people only seem to be interested in apocrypha that promises to explode Christianity and send it the way of Cold Fusion, Communism, and Logical Positivism.

Glen, in fairness, the story of Jesus and Judas is the most dramatic aspect of Christianity's Story of Definition, and one of the central stories of Western civilization.

The other stuff... isn't.

Piggybacking on that story or plugging into it in any way is like having a direct line to a nuclear reactor - it will borrow a ton of energy, no matter what its take.

Having said that, one of the wider chasms shown by Pew surveys and other studies of reporters is the much lower rate of religious belief (and hence understanding) among our media elites. Which may help to explain the less than stellar media coverage of this particular episode.

We'll just stick with the The Johanneum Comma which you notably fail to address.

Here is what you said and this is what I was responding to:

I expect it depends on what you consider a 'significant' change to be. For those supposing they are reading the literal word of god, a comma here or there should be immensely significant.

A �comma here or there� is not very specific. The Johanneum Comma has been addressed. Four of the 6 translations I have are modern and all of them note that the passage is not found in any Greek manuscripts prior to the 15th century. Sorry, I don�t find it �immensely significant� as the purpose of the Bible, as I perceive it, is not significantly effected by that passage. For me the Bible is a guide to living my life, i.e. �do on to others�. That some might find it significant for their faith reflects more on their priorities then it does on the Bible.

Regardless, even 'inspired word of god' is awfully significant, if the wrong words are left to us.

If? You do like to paint with broad strokes even though it has been pointed out that the documents spanning centuries remain essentially unchanged. I could give you 6 physics text books, all explaining essentially the same concepts. Those books would deviate considerably more from each other textually then do different translations of the Bible. What is important is the ideas the words are trying to convey, not the specific words.

As mentioned above, Revelations from NKJV is translated from the Latin Vulgate as an example. But thats not my point.

Point of fact, the Latin Vulgate only involves the last six verses of Revelation. The NKJ has footnotes to site the differences with the older Greek documents. So the concepts conveyed must be wrong but that isn�t really your point? Then what is the purpose of bringing it up?

It is just good scholarship to compare and contrast different versions across different languages that were contemporary- particularly the 3rd and 4th century versions. And they all differ in interesting ways.

You know Mark, I get the feeling you have spent more time reading what other people say the Bible says then you have spent actually going to the source. �They all differ in interesting ways� how? Care to provide an example of what you consider �interesting ways�?

Unless, that is, it is your agenda to bury any discrepencies in the name of uniformity, for some particular agenda.

This is a strawman. Mark, if you had any knowledge at all to the process of making a translation you would know that the translators try to reconcile discrepancies. There are of course people who will extrapolate from one passage a concept and then try to �bury� an apparent contradiction. Extreme examples would be the anti-evolution and young earth crowd. The Bible is not a biology or geology book. The only agenda I see here is your attempt to discredit the Bible with factually incorrect statements like:

Earlier writings get bigger and more elaborate as time goes on �

That isnt an indictment, that is the nature of a collection of texts thousands of years old that have been copied and translated dozens of times by all sorts of people with all sorts of agendas.

#25 from Joe Katzman on April 9, 2006 12:27 PM
"Glen, in fairness, the story of Jesus and Judas is the most dramatic aspect of Christianity's Story of Definition, and one of the central stories of Western civilization."

Hardly by a long shot, the resurrection is.

These spurious gnostic texts have been around for a long time, the only thing new is the hype.

If one doesn't understand the process why the four gospels are the core of Christianity, and how apostolic origins make them authentic then onr can easily og off into any direction and invest crediblity in bogus gospels like this one.

Since one can eaily show most of the themes and many of the stories in the in the Torah are highly derivative, of pre-exisitng religious movement and attached narratives, with interpretive ex post facto changes one could say that the Torah is one form, possible a highly prejudicial and incorrect interpretation of events? Christianity is not the only religon with bogus apocrypha.

"We should do some serious scholarship and find the full teachings of Christ, not just the ones chosen for us by men 1000+ years ago."

I have to agree with Naman. There is so much information about Christ and his teachings that are so one-sided. The Bible is nothing but a collection of stories that were chosen by men of power in Constantinople for the masses to believe in as "the truth".

History is invariably written by the victors.