filed01@abnjh.UUCP (07/20/83)
Much mention is made of "the" bible (or Bible). Which bible? There is a Christian bible or bibles (catholic and protestant versions), there is a Jewish bible, there is a Koran (Muslim bible), etc. All of these are claimed to be true by their faithful, but how is one to make a choice? Objective tests only, please. Perhaps in the future contributors to the net can be specific as to which bible is meant, so that followers of another bible don't have to worry. On the subject of sperm and ova, contraception can of course be viewed as pre-emtive abortion. If the net had existed 30 years ago, the abortion debate would have been a contraception debate, with much the same arguments.
david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris) (12/16/83)
Ignoring Larry West's sarcastic remarks... > The Bible is, after all, at best a record of events, and a record which > has suffered from heavy editing and errors in transcription, etc. (Or > do you feel that the mistakes and revisions were divinely inspired?) > And I don't see why you consider it a complete definition. It's more > like a journal than anything. A careful study of archeological evidence would indicate the opposite; the Dead Sea scrolls are of course the most popular example. They contained a complete copy of the book of Isaiah, with surprisingly few errors compared to modern texts. As far as the New Testament is concerned, a large number of manuscripts are available from the third and fourth centuries (enough to provide support for the entire New Testament a number of times over). Other sections of the New Testament have been found starting in ~150 A.D. Considering Jesus died around 32 A.D., and much of the Gospel and Pauline epistles were not written until some time later, we can reasonably assume that these manuscripts did not change significantly since the original writing. I consider the Bible to be a complete definition of Christianity just as I consider a language manual to be a complete definition of the language (irregardless of whether I happen to like the language or not); there are few other sources of information. I think the Bible is more than a record of events; it contains love songs, stories of kings and peasants, a system of moral values, predictions of future events, etc. -- David Norris -- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david