The rival to the Bible

The rival to the Bible

news.bbc.co.uk

What is probably the oldest known bible is being digitised, reuniting its scattered parts for the first time since its discovery 160 years ago. It is markedly different from its modern equivalent. What's left out?

The world's oldest surviving Bible is in bits.

For 1,500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery, until it was found - or stolen, as the monks say - in 1844 and split between Egypt, Russia, Germany and Britain.

Now these different parts are to be united online and, from next July, anyone, anywhere in the world with internet access will be able to view the complete text and read a translation.

FIND OUT MORE
Roger Bolton presents the Oldest Bible is on Radio 4 on Monday, 6 October, at 1100 BST

For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today's bible.

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Hi all I find this fascinating. I was baptised and raised as a Roman Catholic, although I have embraced the overall spirit of this religion which is essentially be a decent human being, much the same as most religions, I have managed to retain an open mind and am happy to be educated and enlightened, I have my own private religion/relationship with the big man upstairs and don't particularly enjoy the hypocrites that you sometimes see spouting off at church etc.. So with that in mind I think it will be interesting to hear the reaction of Ms Palin and friends.

All thoughts welcome

Peace

Berth

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Hi there. Yes a very interesting topic.

For those who are interested, the BBC Radio 4 program is available on the BBC iplayer site.

www.bbc.co.uk...

As it's a radio show it is available world wide, from testing it appears that those outside the UK just need realplayer to here it, rather than the flash needed for UK visitors.

It seems interesting what they say about the later additions to Mark. To me that kind of ties in to the many theories that originally Jesus was portrayed as a Prophet rather than Messiah, and that later people (in particular Saul/Paul and the Romans) amplified or fabricated parts because it would make Jesus more Messianic.

reply to post by badBERTHA


This should turn out to be really fascinating. I'm also interested in finding out how they will get around the Greek manuscripts that pre-date this codex and do in fact mention the resurrection, the Bible stories this codex omits, etc.

this was in the comments at the bottom of the page.....
Didn't they also find the missing page that says 'All characters depicted in this book are purely ficticious and any resemblence to anyone alive or dead is purely co-incidental.'George, Maidenhead

reply to post by badBERTHA


Wait a minute, yet another bible you say ?

How many bible flavours does this jesusgod wnat to have ?

Does this mean alll the other bible will have to go in the bin?

Or will the christians decide that the Satangod went back in time and buried this book in order to deceive the Jesusgods flock of sheeple, like he did with the dinasours and such ?

If this is a real word of the jesusgod and not a dirty hoax perpertrated by the Satangod, and is the earliest copy, what should I do if it asks me to kill my son for being a naughty boy, or gay people for being ar em duh- human ?

Along with the recent finding of the vessel informing me that jesus was a magician, things are getting quite confusing.

I can't take it anymore this must be all the work of the enemy I better get up my pastors house to find out what to think of all this.

Originally posted by fatdad
this was in the comments at the bottom of the page.....
Didn't they also find the missing page that says 'All characters depicted in this book are purely ficticious and any resemblence to anyone alive or dead is purely co-incidental.'George, Maidenhead

Like it

I'm just back from a trip to Vegas and saw Lance Burton (mistake), I reckon if he'd been around 2000 years ago he would have done a one night only performance on Golgotha too!

Like anything that is communicated, be it word of mouth or written and handed down - once those with power get the chance to change it to suit their needs, and time does the rest. Give it a few 100 years and George Dubya and Tony Blair will be the heroes of Iraq.

I hope that this gets the attention it deserves as perhaps all Christian churches can take the opportunity to reflect and discuss with a fresh outlook rather than the weekly parroting that occurs at present (to half empty churches)

Awrabest

Berth

Originally posted by badBERTHA
I hope that this gets the attention it deserves as perhaps all Christian churches can take the opportunity to reflect and discuss with a fresh outlook rather than the weekly parroting that occurs at present (to half empty churches)

Hi Berth.

I hope you are correct and this "the oldest" known version of the bible gets to see the light of day. On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised if there were several covert attempts in shutting down this project, especially by the religious institutions. At some point they've had to figure out that the version they've been selling us might not be the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

What would the pope say if this version of the bible turned out to include a story about Jesus having brothers and sisters, or children. Sound silly, I know, but than again what if...


edit: I need to think and type at the same time. It's hard.

[edit on 6-10-2008 by Manawydan]

[edit on 6-10-2008 by Manawydan]

Many modern religions will likely say the same thing they say about fossils...
it was placed there to test your faith.

They will probably say "Oh, Satan made that bible to trick you, the real bible is the modern bible."

... or something to that effect.

One thing is for sure, organized religions will do whatever it takes to remain in control. If this older bible negates some of the modern bibles, they will refuse to recognize it as scripture of any kind... and tell you it's either fake, put there as a test, or made by "satan"... fill in whatever blanks you think they'll use on top of that.


This is why I'm a man of science... you don't have to be ashamed to say "We don't know yet... but I have a theory"... if you hold no faith, you don't have to make up excuses for fallibility.

Originally posted by johnsky
They will probably say "Oh, Satan made that bible to trick you, the real bible is the modern bible."

Well, most Christians already know there are differences between ancient manuscripts and modern copies. I can't see this being anything huge. There are many codices that differ from the Bible and they've been known about for centuries. Even look in some modern translations and it will tell you where the ancient manuscripts differ. So far it looks like the major difference between the modern Bible and the codex is the resurrection story or the detailed resurrection story. However, there are NT Greek manuscripts that predate the codex by centuries and indeed mention the resurrection.

So if this shakes someone's faith then they are either unaware of the earlier manuscripts that confirm modern beliefs or they don't realize that the differences in certain manuscripts have been known for a while.

I know many Christians claim modern English translation Bibles are inerrant but logic demands that this is not so.

I took a ride up to the American Scientific Surplus store the other day (this is a true story) to buy some lab coats for my daughter, who's studying biology at the University.

In the parking lot, I saw a bumper sticker that said "If it ain't King James, then it ain't Bible!"

So wrong on so many levels. And these people are allowed to vote!

Yes, I hope this "oldest Bible" becomes available faster than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Why do supposedly "pious" people fear the free exchange of information?

I notice it says this in the article;

Firstly, the Codex contains two extra books in the New Testament.

One is the little-known Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the 2nd Century - the other, the Epistle of Barnabas. This goes out of its way to claim that it was the Jews, not the Romans, who killed Jesus, and is full of anti-Semitic kindling ready to be lit. "His blood be upon us," Barnabas has the Jews cry.

These two books have been on line for years.
www.earlychristianwritings.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">web.archive.org...://www.earlychristianwritings.com/shepherd.html
www.ccel.org...

hi jakyll - good spot, I suspect the reason for this could be that writings relating to these 2 'new' testaments have been discovered before but not necessarily as part of a larger collection of writing.

Quote taken from the original article
"Some argue that another early Bible, the Codex Vaticanus, is in fact older. And there are other earlier texts of almost all the books in the bible, though none pulled together into a single volume."

As interested as I am in this subject my knowledge is pretty basic - it'd be excellent if any learned ATS members could enlighten us further..

Which group do you think this material could have the biggest effect on? The Catholics? Christians? Fundamentalists? If it was discovered that Jesus survived the cross and actually died an old man with a family - do you think this would really shake the foundations of the religious bodies or do you think the LALALA fingers in the ears approach would kick in on a global scale? Me personally - I feel I could handle it if Jesus were to have been an ordinary man who believed in what he was doing so passionately as to give up his life, to think that an 'ordinary' man could have such a profound effect on humanity for 1000s of years is quite something don't you think?

Get me - if someone was to come up to me now and start talking about religion I'd probably run a mile.. hey ho ... that's the the net for you

[edit on 6-10-2008 by badBERTHA]

Maybe they could market this Bible as "the original" or "classic", like Coca-Cola.

Or maybe just start putting a flag on the new Bibles that says: "world-wide bestseller, based on a true story" or something to that effect.

Dont forget the related links, on bbc webpage:


www.codexsinaiticus.org...

i am well aware that pragmatic atheism is the preferred mind set here on ats, but i have to comment on this subject from incorruptible-bible believers viewpoint.

People who make jokes of this matter saying how many bible flavours does "jesusgod" produce etc, are you fully aware that there are almost yearly new publications of "new" bibles? There are new translations coming all the time, all these differ from each other. There is no need look this far to see that there are alterations to King James Version.

And Codex Sinaiticus seems to be put together circa 350, we have Codex Vaticanus from the very same time also, you might want to check that out.

If there is a book that is lets say, from year AD 34 and it says umm, on the cover "This is how I did it, written by Jesus Christ", do you automatically consider it authentic?
Back then there was no censorship, it was possible to write under other authors names ("pseudo-").

You can think that "jesusgod" is a liar and that there are alot of dumb american-jesusters around, but please don't fool yourself that everybody is stupid.

Originally posted by badBERTHA
Which group do you think this material could have the biggest effect on? The Catholics? Christians? Fundamentalists?

It will have an effect on nobody as scholars have been aware of it since the 19th century. The author of this article has loaded it with weasel words to give the impression that it contains some sort of new and groundbreaking information.

I get the feeling I've said this before...

hi jakyll - good spot, I suspect the reason for this could be that writings relating to these 2 'new' testaments have been discovered before but not necessarily as part of a larger collection of writing.

I find these things never to be as sensational as they claim.

One of the other old bible's (think it was the Codex Vaticanus) was in the news a few months ago because some group were "finally making it available on line." Thing was,it was already on line and had been for years.


And i personally don't think it will effect anybody because if there are some controversies in it,it'll either be claimed to be a mistranslation,or deliberate manipulation and some will claim it all to be a hoax.

reply to post by poor Bucephalus horsie




Okeydokey , B, You were obviously refering to myself and I don't take offence and am quite able to handle a little correction.

However, forgive me for being a little thick here but I'm not getting your point.

Your obviously in agreement as to the variety of bibles in that as you say they're nocked out at a good rate.

You seem to have the impression that I may consider christians as in someway inferior or stupid, if I'm reading you right.

Well who am I to consider anyone else less smart than me, I personally know loads of people smarter than me (probably 90% of people) including believe it or not a few christians.

So if there was a book signed by JC would I believe it ? well that would depend on the evidence wouldn't it, as it is this is not the case and there is no evidence.

Don't forget dude, if you would like to live in a world of peace with no discrimination etc then we're on the same side, however if you believe the bible is the word of god and still want the same thing, I would question your ability to reason.