Yeah, that's the Dan Browne Hypothesis. I did once read a Master's Thesis by a divinity student published online positing Magdalene as author of the Gospel of John and the true "Beloved Disciple."

What you say about the Romans-centered Church under Constantine suppressing the role of women is quite correct, of course. Someplace I have a reference to a statue of an early Bishop where the last letter of the name has been hacked out of the stone, as it was a feminine ending clearly proving at least one "Church Father" was actually a mother.

They are not the positions of the site. They are presenting the views of more liberal scholars. As I noted in another thread, well before I ever heard of this website, a Rabbi told me about how they (that is, whomever taught him his scriptural studies) interpreted Leviticus and was telling me how the Christians got it all wrong. And note- he studied it in Hebrew and told me essentially what was represented in this site.

Not to appeal to authority but I'd be curious on what grounds you think your opinion usurps a Jewish Rabbi who has dedicated his life to studying the text in Hebrew and is given the position by the Jewish church to administer their Faith?

Again... its not the site you're taking issue with, its other religious scholars.

Book publishers have sold translations of translations for decades without going back to the original documents for quite a while. If you think publishers are doing this each time I have a bridge to sell you. Also, the whole point is that any translation leaves room for error. (and people have debated for centuries what is the correct translation) You cannot read an English version of the Bible without reading the interpretation of the people who translated it. Any translation requires some judgement calls and the possibility of error.

Any reader who wants to read a correct version would have to first, get his hands on documents a few centuries old, learn ancient Greek and Hebrew (Aramaic as well?) and study the culture of the people's who wrote it. Since that's impossible for most people, they rely on the Bible they bought at their local store or used by their church and assume its accurate.

Somehow I doubt that. You'll interpret your version of the scripture which has already been pre-interpreted for you. Your welcome very much.

Please cite your source.

Please include a picture of the bridge.

Any Christian who looks into any textual studies will know that he has already failed in this respect since the word has been altered many times and good Christians have constantly battled over what is 'the correct' word.

I can't recommend "Misquoting Jesus" enough to you.

God never fails, and believe it or not it is posible to uncover all the stupid **** people have done to the word.....How? Because God has taught men and women how to rightly divide His word and how to get back to the original God breathed word.

I know that the majority of people on this forum do not believe and that my claims are ludacris from their point of view, but nevertheless they are true and it is possible to have a understanding and knowledge of the original god breathed word.

I'll keep refering to Bart Ehrman since its the only one I can draw from memory.

I know his work was heavily influence by another whose name I forgot (so that's not helpful). And... I should note that I've read several critiques of Bart's work... most compliment on his sections on analysis of the many changes of the bible and how textual analysis is done. His critics mainly debate the relevence of certain changes. In other words, he describes (1) the lack of original documents (2) how the text has been changed through the centuries and how easily errors are transmited (3) how changes have been made intentionally. These parts are NOT in contention by his critics.

So I feel pretty solid that there are more issues with original source material and consistancy in the texts then some in this thread seem to think.

The name of the site might be considered what detectives call a "clue" as to the site's positions. If asked, exactly 100% of respondents would conclude that "Religioustolerance.org" is most likely a site advocating for a relaxation of stances against homosexuality, abortion, et.al. And that is exactly what it does. Coincidence? And while I haven't searched the entire site, I doubt I'll find conservative positions represented in equal proportions. They are only represented for the purpose of undermining them to the extent I've found them. So let's drop the impartiality act, please,

You appeal to one authority in the person of a Jewish rabbi and expect to accomplish what? Am I going to have any difficulty matching you rabbi for rabbi? Is it worth our time? If you think you can make a case for your rabbi's position being the predominant one in Jewish theology over time, that would be more interesting.

Stating that translations and interpretations often drift from originalism over time is not a case for the merit of doing so. One revisionist marring becomes the pretext for the next, and voila, we have a lovely little movement we can call our own. While translations are imperfect, these difficulties should be regarded as challenges to be overcome and not opportunities to affect the minds of the readers. For the record, my Bible of choice is the Interlinear Bible which pretty well satisfies the criteria of a direct and unbiased translation.

What's impossible? Interlinear Bible, good concordance and lexicon, and some background research as we go along. Welcome to the information age. It's never been easier, so there's never been less need for our wonderful academics to make these decisions for us. And I suspect strongly that if we had access to the purchase records for all lexicons and concordances we would find they were purchased disproportionately by people who would be considered conservative, fundamentalist or traditional. If anyone is taking interpretations at face value without further scrutiny it would be the readers of religioustolerance.org.

See above. I get my scripture straight out of the Greek and Hebrew and have no trouble making sense of it. The next time you come across one of these difficult passages just drop me a pm and I'll sort it out for you. You can thank me when you see me, Mr. Josey Wales.

I'll make an assumption (which is inherently dangerous so I could be way off).

I think many people follow this reasoning:
1) The Bible is old and has been translated many times and there are some other areas of doubt around authenticity.
2) Therefore, when Bible passage says to do X, you can ignore it. It might be mistranslated, etc.

What I see as the main problem with that is the following:
1) If it's true that there are all these errors from gross mistranslations, then the Bible should be full of MASSIVE inconsistencies. The Bible is incredibly lucid given the vast amount of material it covers, etc.
2) I don't think a person should read scripture and draw their own conclusion solely from what they read. I think its important to understand what scripture says about scripture. What are the surrounding passages leading up to? Are they developing a story or theme? What are other books in the Bible saying about what's going on in this passage? I think when you start to use the Bible to cross reference itself, you'll find it has an amazing amount of continuity which would be inconsistent if it had a myriad of translation errors.

CLIFF NOTES: Don't just look at one Bible passage in an effort to understand its meaning.

FlopYourDead,

Do you use an online concordance? If so would you share the link? Anyone else?

i just love arrogant Christians. they do more to hurt Christianity then anything any atheist could ever post.

I don't care if the site is called "we love gays"... certainly you realize the error in drawing your conclusions from the title. You keep saying what it most likely is the site for but I assume you haven't looked to deeply since, if you want your conservative stance reinforced it is listed there as well.

Also- the arguments for why there is some discrepancy are laid out pretty clearly.

And your doubts about the representation of conservative views isn't really that meaningful since you haven't looked into it. I'm pretty clear on the conservative position of different christians churches from reading it but it means nothing if you want to assume otherwise.

Whether or not you agree with the arguments is irrelevent... there is an entire field of textual analysis which goes on endlessly about all these variations in text. And you really didn't address any of their arguments other to say you found them ridiculous. The things you say 'were reduced to' are simply translations. The whole point is that changing, for instance, a passage condemning the rape of a man to "all homosexuality is wrong" is ridiculous.

It accomplishes that this site isn't creating ridiculous interpretations to fit their beliefs... the Rabbi provided independent corroboration that the interperpretation of the passage in Leviticus is debateable and that the English translations took great liberties.

Its great that your accessing technology to look closer then, I suspect, 99% of believers. That being said, anyone versed in textual studies will tell you that the vastly different interpretations have been there for centuries and how to translate the text is debateable... not to mention, even the earliest copies are not the original text.

The only thing you have to get out of religioustolerance.org is that there are reasonable alternative interpretations and that ANY interpretation is suspect and likely reflects the biases of the interpretor (which is true of nearly any translated text)

No, but I've never looked, either.

@Kurto

You linked the site and I went there. I went through a few articles and read what they had on a couple of issues. I gave it a chance and I gave you my reaction. You aren't speaking to someone who has not read the site nor to someone who went there to criticize or debunk. To the extent that what I read is representative the site merely states a conservative position and then goes to lengths to show why that interpretation is flat out wrong, and tells us what the correct position is.

In deference to the fact that I had not read most of the articles there I phrased my reactions as conditional. Yet the articles I did read were the opposite of impartial and rather advocating strongly for a given interpretation, which is enough to contradict your characterizations of the site.

If you would care to defend the site as objective and unbiased, or if you would care to defend their use of scripture in advocating for the positions they have taken, I would be happy to engage you. But this is not the thread as it would be a highjack.

I don't disagree with any of this. However, this criticism says nothing about the original statement about "translations of translations."

If someone wrote a book, and it contained the line "Bob was a nice guy" that then went on to talk about how nice of a guy Bob was, and then I transcribed the book and wrote "Bob was a very nice guy" nobody would call this a new translation of the book. Furthermore, such a corruption can be found by comparing my copy to other copies of the book.

So I will ask you again to cite a source that discusses "translations of translations."

Free bible software including Strong's here:
http://www.e-sword.net/index.html

Also several commentaries at christnotes.org's site.

Massive inconsistencies like the four completely different accounts of who was at the tomb on Sunday morning? Or how about the two competing accounts of when Jesus was born that differ by about ten years?

but I'm saying my source is his book. I don't have a quote because I haven't read it for a few years and I'm not certain that I still have it. But the post above is relevent because many of the original english books were translations of translations. (Hebrew to Greek... Greek to English) and the like. I recall that there were significant periods before people went back to the original documents. Many new editions simply went back to earlier editions that were themselves based on other versions. There are of course editions at different times that have been made relying on older materials, but its not true across the board and has not been true throughout history.

OP its very interesting that they plan on changing the gender in the newer bible versions.

I have been starting to see God as more of a male/female entity. Some bible experts say that the figure of wisdom which is depicted as a female figure in the book of Proverbs is actually Jesus.

Since both men and women are made in the image of God maybe God is closer to a composite image of man and woman rather than a father figure. (Eve was taken out of Adam...she was incorporated in him before separation....this incorporation also seems to be allegorical about our own relationship with God: incorporated yet individually separated which also parallels human conception and birth. Babies are incorporated until they are separated from their mothers at birth.)

We need the idea (representation of God) as a father figure so that we can establish a relationship with him because in our world humans are either one gender or the other and so God assumes the male role so we can relate better and because we need to recognize him in a leadership role and as our protector.

God is neither Male nor Female, the reason He is reffered to as He is because of the way He set life up, the Male is to be head of the household. This does not mean that they are to be the typical male that is a jerk to his wife and that he is the control freak and ect.... All that stuff has been designed to tear down the concept of family and marriage, they are doig a good job aren't they...?

If you like, please be specific where you see the inconsistency. I'm not aware of a specific ten year gap although I am aware of different accounts of who was at the tomb.

However, I think we are crossing some arguments here because:
1) These are not really MASSIVE inconsistencies. A massive inconsistency would be one gospel account claiming there was no tomb where another did, etc. These would be small inconsistencies (2 angels vs 1 angel at tomb, etc.). We don't really expect all the gospels to be exactly the same, and if they were, we'd suspect collusion.

2) What I think you are talking about is CONTRADICTIONS. Now that's an entirely different argument and I'm happy to discuss any you have.

T

+1

your point #1 doesnt really make sense. If its the *inspired* word of God, that means it should be consistent, especially about the facts surround key events like the resurrection. If his argument was one like "Matthew has this parable, but Mark and Luke don't", then your point would stand.

For a book dubbed the "inspired word of God", you don't need MASSIVE inconsistencies to raise concern, any level of inconsistency should be of concern.

I'm confused, I think contradiction is just a stronger word for inconsistencies.

If there is a traffic accident and the authorities interview two innocent observers it is quite common for their two accounts to have some inconsistencies between them even though both are telling the truth. They have different points of view, they feel some details are more important than others (so they omit different parts) ,etc.

What you cannot have is two totally different stories that contradict each other at their core.

It doesn't make them liars to be sure. It does make it rather unlikely that they are both relating a story inspired by God with an express guarantee that the story will remain the same for eternity.