Biblical Authorship: Absence of the Authors

reply to post by Klassified

Even the oldest surviving manuscripts include slight variations, any of which would throw off computer test results.

This is misleading. The TV, TS, and TA manuscripts are "older surviving" yes, but that's smokescreen and mirrors for two reasons. There are fragments MUCH older than those MSS, they are just the "oldest" complete manuscripts. And finally, "oldest = better" is a fallacy, look at antiques, the ones that survive to this day in the best condition are the ones who were barely used, and in storage for numerous years out of sight out of use and abuse. The early church didn't use the Alexandrian manuscripts because they all knew they were corrupt.

reply to post by Hydroman

Speaking of Bible Codes, didn't they do the same thing with Moby Dick?

1. The ELS codes in the Bible are clustered around the plain-text verses.
2. The Isaiah 53 codes listing all the names of the people at the foot of the cross is just 12 verses long.

Originally posted by autowrench
No, I think it was "War and Peace" they Navy guys did it with. The coding is not an exact science by any means. Hydroman, I like your style, you should have been a psychologist, or a detective.

Or porn star.

I provided a link showing that they did it with Moby Dick.

Originally posted by autowrench
Yes, that is a good analogy, Klassified. "Self possessed". I like that. From a psychological point of view, it certainly fits too, doesn't it? And I agree with you that we all underestimate the Divine, and we always will, until we personally encounter it face to face. I do not think the "Collective Consciousness is God, it is rather an Magnetic Energy Field that surround Earth. Everyone is born with a default connection to it. some never do anything to enhance this connection. Some do make their connection larger, with more input, and some make new, and better connections to the collective. Too many connections may cause problems in some, such as information overload. I get this myself once in awhile.

Would that have anything to do with premonition? I don't understand that stuff myself, but yesterday we had our softball team practice sliding into home. I thought, "One of these girls will probably get hurt." One of our girls left the field early with a broken ankle.

Another time, and this will seem silly, I was sitting at work eating peanut M and Ms. I had a thought in my head that the next one I eat will NOT have a peanut in it. I picked a random M and M from the bag, bit into it, and NO peanut. I threw the rest of them away.

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
1. The ELS codes in the Bible are clustered around the plain-text verses.

Not sure what that means.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

I would agree with you on this. I don't know why he even bothered singling out older texts.There are variations in many texts, old and newer. I also agree that older is not better necessarily. I think we have enough external witnesses to show the majority text seems to have been the most widely accepted and used. Anything that varies too far from that body of manuscripts should be scrutinized heavily. Especially when it calls for the expunging of verses, and half of a chapters content.

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
reply to post by Klassified

 

Yep, and His "fingerprint" running through every book, every letter of the text, is the heptadic structure and ELS codes.

Yes, YES!! I was about to post the same thing. The OP's argument is invalid.

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
2. The Isaiah 53 codes listing all the names of the people at the foot of the cross is just 12 verses long.

Let's see who was at the foot of the cross according to the bible:

Matthew: 27: 55-56 "And many women were there beholding afar off, which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him: Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children." -Nobody at the foot of the cross?

Mark: 15: 40-41 "There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses, and Salome;
[41] (Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him) and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem." -Nobody at the foot of the cross?

Luke: 23: 49 "And all his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Galilee, stood afar off, beholding these things." -Nobody at the foot of the cross?

John: 19: 25-27 "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." --3 people at the cross?

Originally posted by Lazarus Short
Yes, YES!! I was about to post the same thing. The OP's argument is invalid.

My argument as to how the authors knew what was said when they weren't present at the conversations is invalid? How so?

Originally posted by Hydroman
My argument as to how the authors knew what was said when they weren't present at the conversations is invalid? How so?

edit on 11-5-2012 by Hydroman because: (no reason given)

First, let me say that the heptadic codes are not the same as the ELS codes. There are several levels/layers of coding in God's Word. The validity of the ELS codes is still debated, but the heptadic codes are beyond controversy, and everyone knows it, and that is why few in the mainstream will even mention them. The sheer complexity of the heptadic coding proves with mathematical certainty that the Bible is a single, unified document with a single Author. This being said, the absence of the human "author" from a scene depicted in the text is irrelevant. I believe in line-by-line, word-by-word, letter-by-letter inspiration by an Author who knows every detail of every event He has His human transcribers write about. Your argument is invalid.

Originally posted by Lazarus Short
First, let me say that the heptadic codes are not the same as the ELS codes. There are several levels/layers of coding in God's Word. The validity of the ELS codes is still debated, but the heptadic codes are beyond controversy, and everyone knows it, and that is why few in the mainstream will even mention them. The sheer complexity of the heptadic coding proves with mathematical certainty that the Bible is a single, unified document with a single Author. This being said, the absence of the human "author" from a scene depicted in the text is irrelevant. I believe in line-by-line, word-by-word, letter-by-letter inspiration by an Author who knows every detail of every event He has His human transcriber write about. Your argument is invalid.

Then why do his resurrection stories conflict, and why does he conflict himself with who was present at the cross? It doesn't matter as long as the heptadic codes work?

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Don't forget to factor a few things into the equation. The Jews are spending considerable money to paint the ELS codes in a bad light today who in year past were the ones who located the codes. It's because they found the Name "Yeshua" plastered all over the Torah and you could imaging their horror at that discovery. And also, that snippet that is trying to debunk the ELS codes is being dishonest, what is remarkable about the ELS codes is they are clustered around the plain-text verse, or in the case of the Isaiah 53 codes they are just 12 verses of text.

Well, admittedly, the codes didn't exactly work out for the Jews like they had hoped. So it wouldn't surprise me that now they want to discredit the whole thing because it didn't legitimize them, and their beliefs to the world.

I studied much on both sides of the codes when I was still a believer. I even talked and corresponded with a few key people on both sides. I'll just say I am convinced this is not legitimate. But I still try to keep an open mind, because as I said before. Both sides have a vested interest in nullifying the others claims.

Originally posted by Hydroman
Then why do his resurrection stories conflict, and why does he conflict himself with who was present at the cross? It doesn't matter as long as the heptadic codes work?

edit on 11-5-2012 by Hydroman because: (no reason given)

Why do you assume that the stories conflict? If you are speaking of your recent post about who was at the foot of the cross, all I can say is that we were not there to see it happen. Matthew and Mark were apparently standing afar off and so did not know who was near the cross, and Luke was never there at all, but John was at the foot of the cross, so he knew who was with him. All you have to do is think it through - the heptadic codes are more of a watermark.

So what's your beef with the resurrection stories?

Originally posted by Hydroman
For example: The Book of Job. God and Satan make a wager on Job's faithfulness.

In this instance I think the only conclusion that you could arrive at is that the author was given divine knowledge as to what happened behind the scenes in this instance. Clearly there's no other explanation for how the details would have been arrived at.

Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying. The disciples were asleep.

There's no real mystery here. Jesus obviously shared with them some of the details about which he had been praying about. If you drove your friend to Best Buy for a new game he could easily tell you what happened inside while you were waiting outside for him in the car. Sure you would have second hand information but the details of the event could be extremely accurate and totally reliable. Friend: "Some kid in there was hogging the XBox demo playing Guitar Hero. He got 100% on Thunder Horse on expert level." You: "Cool, that's a tough song."

So there are three types of stories in the Bible. First hand accounts, second hand accounts, and the obvious divine revelation on things that people could not have known.

There are many examples of this occurring in the bible. Christians say this is god's word, but is it only stories written by fallible man as the remember hearing them?

That's true for the most part. Personally I don't understand how things like the Bible Code would work out. I don't put much faith in that type of thing. There is a possibility that the first 5 books of the Bible which was purported to have been written by Moses could have been dictated by God. It's quite clear that Moses himself had direct conversations with God that transcended dream like visions.

Outside of those few books I think that the content is quite accurate but to pick out new stories in a word search fashion seems a bit of a stretch to me. I think the concept is novel and interesting but I wouldn't use that information as any sort of a basis for proclaiming what truth is.

reply to post by Lazarus Short

Why do you assume that the stories conflict? If you are speaking of your recent post about who was at the foot of the cross, all I can say is that we were not there to see it happen. Matthew and Mark were apparently standing afar off and so did not know who was near the cross, and Luke was never there at all, but John was at the foot of the cross, so he knew who was with him. All you have to do is think it through - the heptadic codes are more of a watermark.

It would seem to me, he has thought it through. If the Spirit of God was involved intimately with every nuance of scripture as it was written, then why is there disharmony between some events in the gospels? A very simple question. This could mean God wanted disharmony between the gospels. Either because he wanted each testimony to be from that particular author's perspective, or maybe because it needed to be there to fit the codes in properly.

Maybe we need to organize another ecumenical council to see about adding Moby Dick into the biblical canon. Obviously it is inspired by the Holy Spirit according to the logic of the bible code. The bible code is an embarrassment to Christianity in my opinion.

Originally posted by Lazarus Short
Why do you assume that the stories conflict? If you are speaking of your recent post about who was at the foot of the cross, all I can say is that we were not there to see it happen. Matthew and Mark were apparently standing afar off and so did not know who was near the cross, and Luke was never there at all, but John was at the foot of the cross, so he knew who was with him. All you have to do is think it through - the heptadic codes are more of a watermark.

So what's your beef with the resurrection stories?

Mark and Luke weren't eyewitnesses. The authorship of Matthew and John is still debated.

As far as the resurrection stories go, put them all together into one cohesive story and see if it works.

You guys might want to take a look at this chart here:

carm.org...

Originally posted by dbates
In this instance I think the only conclusion that you could arrive at is that the author was given divine knowledge as to what happened behind the scenes in this instance. Clearly there's no other explanation for how the details would have been arrived at.

So sometimes there is divine knowledge given and sometimes there isn't?

Originally posted by dbates
There's no real mystery here. Jesus obviously shared with them some of the details about which he had been praying about.

How do you imagine that conversation went? "Ok guys, while you were asleep, this is what I prayed to myself in heaven. Write it down." ?

Originally posted by dbates
So there are three types of stories in the Bible. First hand accounts, second hand accounts, and the obvious divine revelation on things that people could not have known.

The divine revelation would be god's word. The others would not. So, the entire book would not be "god's word". It would be partly god's word, partly man's word.

Originally posted by dbates
That's true for the most part. Personally I don't understand how things like the Bible Code would work out. I don't put much faith in that type of thing. There is a possibility that the first 5 books of the Bible which was purported to have been written by Moses could have been dictated by God. It's quite clear that Moses himself had direct conversations with God that transcended dream like visions.

It would be weird transcribing a story that god is dictating to you when he says, "Then I regretted making man and decided to wipe man off the face of the earth, that is until I found grace with Noah." or "Satan told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the fruit they would become like gods and have the knowledge of good and evil. And, when they ate the fruit, that's the exact same thing I said, 'They have become like us, knowing good and evil.'" But, maybe that's how it went down?

Originally posted by Hydroman
Mark and Luke weren't eyewitnesses. The authorship of Matthew and John is still debated.

As far as the resurrection stories go, put them all together into one cohesive story and see if it works.

Mark wasn't there? OK, fine, and I mentioned Luke. I accept Matthew and John at face value. As far as putting all the stories together, find a copy of The Gospel of History, by Charles A. L. Totten, which relates the Gospels as a single narrative. It's a good read.