Bikewer said:
A poster on another forum has an interesting cop-out that I haven't heard expressed before.
He says he believes in a literal and inerrant bible. However, we don't know what it is.
Hehe....Apparently, all the readily-apparent contradictions and mistakes are the result of human mistranslation, errors, etc.
This seems a really bizzare rationalization to me. If we cannot know the actual "truth" of this document, why pay any attention to it?
Actually, it's not as bizarre as it seems on the surface, although the "literal and inerrant" aspect of his statement is wishful thinking.
First, there's fairly strong evidence that the Old Testament was written by up to 5 different authors at completely different intervals. In fact, there's a fair amount of evidence indicating that Geneisis was actually written later than some of the other OT books.
Then there's evidence that the OT was changed by the writers of the NT. For example, if you compare the Judaic 10 Commandments to the King James version, you'll find significant differences. (One such difference is "Thou shalt not kill" in the Christian version is slightly different than the Judaic version. The Judaic version - and Judaic law at the time - differentiated between "killing" and "murder". Given the supposed message of Christ, this differentation was problematic, so at some point, someone had the translation changed.
)
During the time of Christ, all accounts of his activities were verbal. Following his death, his cult persisted, and for the first 60 years or so, there's very little information about what actually transpired within the church. It's a pretty sure bet that most (if not all) of Jesus's disciples were illiterate; given their previous social status during a time when literacy was limited to only the most exalted, much of what transpired probably had to be passed along verbally.
Eventually, though, someone took the verbal anecdotes and compiled them into written "testaments". Considering the original verbal nature of the "history", how long it was "verbally" passed down - and the probable willingness of a scribe to "enhance" a story about the "Son of God" - there were almost certainly embellishments along the way, maybe even some outright editing of what was said. One would expect the number of actual written testaments to be small; writing materials were scarce and expensive, possibly even more of an obstacle than finding someone literate enough to scribe.
Shortly after the Church began it's expansion, it became persecuted. Written materials were destroyed and had to be re-written from memory; what few documents survived were well-hidden and not accessible to most. From this, verbal teachings of the text continued to be a major mechanism.
Eventually, however, the Church gained power and was no longer persecuted. Old documents were produced... but by that time, much of the contexual meaning of words had changed. (Think "gay" as in "happy" and "gay" as in "homosexual".) Worse - due to changes in temporal governments and cultures - the religious texts were eventually translated into languages other than Latin.
Further, due to the verbal "passing" of Christian beliefs, the early Church probably found at some point that some of the things they'd been preaching were in fact incorrect according to the "documents". This would have created a tremendous embarassment on the part of the Church, and cause an almost overwhelming requirement to become revisionist. There's evidence that a process of revisionist reconciliation of biblical texts took place between 400-1300 A.D. (Occasionally in reaction to "heresies" as they arose.)
During this process, more meaning was lost... sometimes intentionally, in fact. Some "books" were dropped out of the bible; some wording was changed; monks, friars and various religious authorities within the Church forced alterations to reduce some glaring inconsistencies and/or embarrassments... or to further the Church's political agenda at the time.
So the guys point about mistranslations, errors, etc. is actually valid as far as it goes... but inerrant? Nah.
