Many of them actually know that, but literally believe God guided the hand of the people doing it.
Which isn't exactly a large leap if you're a believer. If you believe God can do all the other stuff, divine inspiration isn't exactly near the top of "well that's just hard to believe"
The Vulgate Bible was the first to unify the old and new testsments under a single language and was, by and large, the basis for the King James Bible.
Example, the Latin in the Vulgate is pretty easy to follow:
1 In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebrae erant super faciem abyssi: et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3 Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona: et divisit lucem a tenebris.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
I recommend the NRSV or the NRSVue.
New Jerusalem is my personal favorite. ;)
You haven't read the bible until you have read it in the original Klingon:
1:1 1:2 DaH the tera' ghaHta' formless je empty. HurghtaHghach ghaHta' Daq the surface vo' the deep. joH'a' qa' ghaHta' hovering Dung the surface vo' the bIQmey. 1:3 1:4 joH'a' leghta' the wov, je leghta' vetlh 'oH ghaHta' QaQ. joH'a' divided the wov vo' the HurghtaHghach.
Then there's also in a sibling desert religion how "40 figs" became "40 virgins" and nobody remembers when or how it happened... or even that the switch happened, at all.
I thought it was grapes, not figs?
If it was olives, we might have an explanation...
While we're here, should also point out the fruit Adam and Eve ate in the garden was likely a fig. They do after all immediately after pick up fig leaves to cover themselves. Somehow it turned into an apple in the popular imagination..
God is all powerful, but not powerful enough to preserve his own inspired writings... or talk to anyone plainly because, ugh, why would they create language then stoop so low to use it... I mean they are so busy with those cosmological constants and quantum fields and all. How could they possibly have the time to act like sane reasonable people, or write down any of those ontological and undisputable fundamental building blocks of the universe.
God waited 14 billion years until humans appeared. And then he waited another 200,000 years until finally revealing the one and only true religion to them. And he gets really upset if you play with your wiener. Makes perfect sense.
Well technically that's not quite right, there was no definitive (christian) compiled source material before King James bible and the translators translated directly from latin using the oldest texts they had available. Collecting all of the manuscripts and scrolls they studied before compilation was an incredible effort that I actually commend them for.
But yes, Faith at its core is a belief without evidence. By mere definition it is ignorance in the modern world. It's what turned me away from the church from a young age despite my catholic upbringing.
Perhaps you meant "as well as" instead of "despite", though.
What was it again, the new testament was written in the 3rd century after christ, while the old testament has lore from the Gilgamesh/Atrahasis epos?
How do the Jewish Torah and Talmud fare? Are there much more authoritative texts for those and the Quran?
The first Qur'an was written within two years of Muhammads death. The Qur'an was standardized under caliph Uthman several years later, and all other copies were ordered to be burned or buried, or however one would respectfully retire a holy book. The closest English word for Qur'an is generally regarded to be 'recitations', as it was not originally meant to be a text. So, to maintain the integrity of the Suras (chapters, sort of), each one was required to be verified by multiple independent witnesses. Written Arabic was even elaborated to include information about how it was to be read (literally read aloud, not interpreted).
The relative speed with which this all occurred meant that some of these sources were indeed very close to Muhammad during his life. His wife A'i'sha, for example. Still, you can raise doubts by pointing out that the Suras may not have survived oral transmission fully in-tact, or that changes may have occurred over the 20+ year gap between Muhammads death and it's final transcription, and indeed many scholars do. I believe there is some degree of variation in manuscripts and sources.
But the general view among believers is that the Qur'an is the literal, unadulterated word of God, and we know that great care was taken to preserve it.
Not an expert, just took an Intro to the Qur'an course.
I recently started listening to a podcast called Data Over Dogma. They talk about some various similarities and differences in various scriptures/manuscripts. It's pretty neat.
From a historical lens, it is obviously not the same teachings Jesus taught or even James his successor or Paul who created the first layer of orthodoxy that won out eventually (eg, Christians don't have to be Jews).
But you can't argue that it isn't correct because it's not historically the same, they're just arguing that it is religiously true. That's like arguing that a 3-sided shape isn't a square because it's blue, you're right but not making the right argument.
The pattern I notice in fundamentalism is that you start with the assumption that your beliefs are "religiously true", then you interpret your scripture in a way that supports those beliefs. Whether the scripture is historically accurate seems to be incidental.
they’re just arguing that it is religiously true.
So completely made up but appeased a King and didn’t get the scribes killed.
The game of telephone has been played long before telephones were invented.
Faith is insanity.
Actually that is 100% faith since faith requires the absence of evidence. No stronger faith that when you fully believe in some bullshit some assholes vomited up.
Nah just gullibility. Plenty of seemingly intelligent people also believe it
But it's really well written!
Except that it really isn't.
Wooosh
Bring back the Septuagint! It has a cool name.
I think the KJV-only movement is largely an American insanity. Elsewhere I see the NIV or NASB being used more. And they're translated from earliest Greek texts wherever they're found. Earliest complete texts are about 325ad with fragments earlier
The "10s of thousands of variations" line is disingenuous. Manuscripts overwhelmingly only differ on grammatical and typos type differences. A bit like if everyone was asked to tell the story of Goldilocks. You'd get 1000 variations, but the essentials of the story would be apparent clear as day.
Maybe, but the essentials are still pretty nuts. The NIV doesn't change things like Jesus saying anyone who doesn't believe in him is condemned or Paul saying he doesn't permit a woman to teach or, you know, the entirety of the Old Testament.
Yes. But the graphic is painting the idea that the text can't have been transmitted accurately. Whereas it's most likely we have good portions of what Paul actually taught, less so the historical Jesus but some parts more likely than others. The OT is different given it's largely legendary. But, even so, it's transmission from the post exile communities that first authored it is surprisingly accurate. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in the late 1940s pushed back the earliest OT texts we have a full thousand years from ~900ad to ~100bc. The level to which they were accurate copies was astonishing showing that textual transmission in the ancient world was more reliable than previously thought.
This isn't a religious point of view, but rather one of secular scholarship.
Based on this description, KJV should be pretty accurate then. You wouldn't have needed the original texts by the apostles.
You're saying vast amounts of people copied the apostles' texts at the time. Any mistakes made would have been like typos if the majority of people copying it were doing so honestly.
After that, King James of England ordered that the Bible be translated into English by a group of collaborating scholars who had gathered as many versions of the text as possible.
Whether stuff in the Bible is true is a whole other question. I'm not a Christian myself but it seems to me like they would have ended up with quite an accurate text for English speakers.
