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Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are?
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I’m going to end it with this because I’m watch TV.
The reason I want non biased sources is because the primary way Christians wrote scripture is by forging it. Half of the epistles in the Bible are fake just like 1st and 2nd Peter. Peter couldn’t read or write either.
When there are so many forgeries we have to take a step back and figure things out.
https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
NIV Matthew 5: 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
The funny thing is that Matthew didn't write Matthew. Hundreds of years later the Roman Catholic Church decided to name the gospels after specific followers of Jesus ...
We don't actually know who wrote the bible. We know that the RCC compiled it differently and that the OT of Christians is not the OT of the Jews.
Bart Ehrman talks about that a lot. https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
Your linking scripture from people who wrote 50 years after the death of Jesus and treat it like these people were eye witnesses.
Here’s the current list of disputed scripture and a good book
https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622#
You should read a book about it to give you sources and so on. I’m not interested in writing a paper lol.
2 Thessalonians Colossians Ephesians 1 Timothy 2 Timothy Titus 1 Peter 2 Peter James Jude
These are the current disputed scriptures if your interested. Many scholars with years of experience with cite sources
https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622#
Here’s a great book that talks about it.
> Jesus was perfect, he exemplified it while still having flaw
You are saying that Jesus Christ was perfect while still having flaws. "Perfect" means "without flaws", So you are arguing that Jesus Christ was "without flaws while still having flaws". This is a contradiction.
> he was not a world champion in woodcarving, not that we know of). He probably could if he wanted to.
Of course he could have. If he is "fully god", then he is omnipotent. Then again, he wouldn't be human, because humans are not omnipotent. If Jesus Christ is "fully god and fully man", then he is "omnipotent and not omnipotent". This is a contradiction.
> Jesus' perfection is purely spiritual and moral while his human traits are up tp improvement.
You are now arguing that Jesus Christ's spirit is god while his body is man. This is not "fully god and fully man". This is "part god, part man". You are arguing that Jesus Christ is a demigod.
> But as I said, you should read more on it.
No, you should explain it. So far, you are not doing very well. Then again, I don't expect you to do well, because your beliefs are contradictory.
> the thing that remains for you is to educate yourself in depth
That can go both ways. How many of the books of the bible are forgeries? You can read about that in Bart Ehrman's layperson's work "Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are". Have you ever heard the term "Deuteropauline"? It's a well-known term in scholarly Bible study, something you probably know nothing about.
Bart Ehrman literally wrote an entire book promoting the view that many of the New Testament books are outright forgeries. Nearly all of his works are attacks on the Bible. He's not just a skeptic, he's vehemntly opposed to any veneration of the Bible as authentic, reliable literature, and has a million reasons why. Do you have a family history of schizophrenia by any chance?
> There are excellent reasons for thinking that this letter was not written by the brother of Jesus, but was forged in his name. For one thing, the teaching being opposed must have arisen later than the writings of Paul. That is to say, it is a later development of Pauline thinking in a later Pauline community. The teaching is indeed similar to the teaching found in Ephesians, written after Paul’s lifetime in his name. But it goes even farther than Ephesians, since the author of Ephesians would never have said that it didn’t matter how you lived so long as you have faith. Just the opposite in fact! (See Eph. 2:10.) Whoever is writing the book of James is presupposing an even later situation found among Paul’s churches. But since the historical James was probably martyred in 62 CE, two decades or so before Ephesians was written, the book could not very well have been written by him.
> Moreover, the one thing we know best about James of Jerusalem is that he was concerned that Jewish followers of Jesus continue to keep the requirements of Jewish law. But this concern is completely and noticeably missing in this letter. This author, claiming to be James, is concerned with people doing “good deeds” he is not at all concerned with keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath and Jewish festivals, or circumcision. His concerns are not those of James of Jerusalem.
> The real clincher, though, is one we have seen before in relation to both Peter and Jude. This author has written a very fluent and rhetorically effective composition in Greek. He is intimately familiar with the Greek version of the Old Testament. The historical James, on the other hand, was an Aramaic-speaking peasant from Galilee who almost certainly never learned to read. Or if he did learn to read, it was to read Hebrew. If he ever learned Greek, it would have been as a second language in order to speak it, haltingly no doubt. He never would have gone to school. He never would have become proficient in Greek. He never would have learned how to write, even in his native language, let alone a second tongue. He never would have studied the Greek Old Testament. He never would have taken Greek composition classes. He never would have become skilled in Greek rhetoric.
> This book was not written by an illiterate Aramaic-speaking Jew. Whoever wrote it claimed to be James, because that would best accomplish his objective: to stress that followers of Jesus need to manifest their faith in their lives, doing good deeds that show forth their faith, since without works faith is dead.
The Bible is just one forgery after another: https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
Jesus warned us the devil would pretend to be a Christian and a lot of so called Christian churches have done a lot of evil things and neither practice or preach the commandments.
In 2022, every sincere Christian should take it upon themselves to study Biblical history rather than just believe the rhetoric of powerful and corrupt men without doing their own research.
Here is a great lecture on the topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63QvWMBxsW4
or a great book.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forged-Writing-God-why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
Sounds like she needs a professional and medication for the anxiety.
But if she reads or likes YouTube, get her to watch NT scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman's content on YouTube or buy his books.
In particular, Ehrman's books on forgery in the New Testament should convince most people that the Bible is not inspired, which is a core doctrine of Christianity. The main thesis of his work is that forgeries were being produced constantly in early Christian times, and these forgeries also appear in the Bible itself. For example, the majority of New Testament scholars believe that 7 of Paul's letters are fake. They weren't written by Paul and even try to contradict other letters that appear in the New Testament. And more -- 11 out of the 27 books of the NT are probably forged documents. And guess what? Scholars have believed/suspected that the letters were fake more or less for 100-200 years. It's old news, but most people in the pews don't know these things.
https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF3nu4cYC78
I think part of your confusion may be that you are assuming those letters were actually sent to a recipient?
If you are going to forge authorship of a letter, and you have letters from that author to build off of, and that author gives his regard to various people in those authentic letters - is it unlikely that you will pull those details into your forgery?
The letters with questionable authorship are like a "best of" of the other letters, pulling in some of the most interesting bits in an attempt to ground them in "Paulisms."
As an example, Paul was prone to emphasizing that he wasn't lying:
> I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit,
Romans 9:1
> The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying.
2 Corinthians 11:31
> (Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.)
Galatians 1:20
So it's not surprising when 1 Timothy 2:7 invokes the same:
> For this I was appointed as a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
But that's not the only odd callback to the other Epistles in 1 Timothy. There was this choice bit from 1 Corinthians 5:5:
> I have decided to turn such a person over to Satan for the destruction of his body, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
And 1 Timothy 1:20 brings that back too:
> Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.
It's clear if these letters are inauthentic that they both (a) have access to the other authentic letters and (b) are emulating what they find in them.
The reasons why they are thought to be forged are numerous and the strongest typically relates to anachronisms. For example, Ehrman's <em>Forged</em> points out that this same 1 Timothy discusses the role of church elders as an authority using a term thought to have grown out of the tradition surrounding John the Elder - who was hardly even himself "the Elder" when Paul was alive.
So the use (arguably even overuse) of Paulisms is present in the questionable letters, but the reasons why their authenticity is in question goes beyond just the stylistic differences, and if later forgeries they were not actually being sent to the recipients named so the inclusion of greetings as in the other letters shouldn't be assumed to be markers of authenticity.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062012622/
This book is super interesting.
> You’ve asserted that three times now and still won’t back it up with anything more than an online encyclopedia where the whole of epistemology can change at the click of a mouse.
I recommend Forged by Bart Ehrman. If you don't want to spend money and would like a quick version, here's a lecture he gives at Cambridge on the subject. Ehrman's not only a distinguished scholar in the field, but he's just a great character -- he was a fundamentalist Christian (like I was!) who became an agnostic atheist through intense, obsessive study of the Bible, while still retaining an incredible enthusiasm for and appreciation of Christianity and its history.
I honestly get into just as many debates with atheists who subscribe to the Jesus Myth hypothesis, a fringe concept that Ehrman vehemently opposes. He even wrote a book defending the historicity of Jesus. The state of Bible scholarship is really interesting, and Ehrman does a great job of relating it to casual readers, e.g. people who don't speak ancient Hebrew.
Worth reading: Forged, by Bart Ehrman
> It's a theory, not a fact. Does it make sense? Yes, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.
You're not even using the word "theory" correctly.
Theory is pretty much a fact. Theory is what explains facts. Like for example, the Theory of Gravity.
What you mean is "hypothesis".
So you can say something is only a "hypothesis" and therefore not a proven fact.
The coloquial use of the word "theory" differs from the use in science, and history is also a science that follows a scientific method.
> However, Luke does not claim to use such written documents
And?
We can still look at Mark and Luke and see Luke copied Mark.
> Rather, he cites the use of eyewitnesses
If that's exclusively the case, you would expect same stories, not same paragraphs, word for word.
Honestly, I'm gonna stop the conversation here because you need to study textual criticism. If you don't accept the modern historical method, there's nothing I'm gonna tell you that you will accept.
You're only prone to accept what supports the views you like.
> It is equally plausible to suggest that the commonality amoun the Synoptic Gospels derives from a common memory and oral telling of the stories about Jesus.
And it's not plausible to expect that this would result in texts from different authors and different decades to contain entire paragraphs which are nearly identical word for word.
> Second, the assumption that the shorter and more difficult document must be earlier (Marcan priority)
So you're gonna argue against the vast majority of experts in the field who agree Mark is the oldest gospel for no reason whatsoever?
> If the whole Bible is not true how do you determine what to believe?
I look at the evidence for each claim.
Is there evidence for the claim that the temple was destroyed by the Romans. Yes, yes there is. That's a very reliable story.
Is there evidence for the claim that the Noah's flood happened? Absolutely not.
I don't understand why you have this "all or nothing" attitude towards the Bible.
> There is some research to suggest the authors, though we don't know for certain. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, is attributed to him by several church fathers whom we know lived in the 100s AD.
Stop it.
It wasn't Matthew who wrote Matthew.
> because Jesus, of whom it was written, declared it to be so.
Are you aware that when said that there was no gospels of Mark or Matthew or Luke? There was no new testament.
Jesus was talking about the Hebrew Bible. Jesus never read the New Testament, as it was written decades after his death.
> "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." 2 Timothy 3:36.
Oh the irony!
2 Timothy, which was thought to be written by Paul, was not written by Paul.
That right there is a forgery.
Maybe you should read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
We often tell people who are still on the fence to read their Bibles.
Since you no longer believe, I would recommend "Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are" - by Bart D. Ehrman.
As far as evolution goes, I don't think that it's necessary to read "The Origin of Species", I certainly haven't read more than a chapter or two. But then again, I have never had a distrust of evolution or any other field of science. That isn't to say I have always accepted whatever I was told, but it does mean that I have learned to trust that incorrect information will eventually be discovered and corrected.
If you are interested in having a better understanding of how evolution works, I would highly recommend reading "Why Evolution Is True" - by Jerry A. Coyne.
The Bible IS corrupted. Not said by me, but by Christian scripture scholars. TL;DR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy
TooLong;See you next month: http://smile.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622?sa-no-redirect=1
The Bible is a source of wisdom? Right: "to cure leprosy, you need two pigeons, to cut off one of their heads and sprinkle the house with its blood." Have you ever read the Bible? Seriously? There's far more abject nonsense in there than appreciable wisdom, and much of what wisdom there is, such as the Golden Rule, far predates the Bible and its barbaric authors. Do you think that "thou shalt not kill" was an idea that didn't occur to people before that crappy book was written, or that the Bible, full of hatred, violence and even genocide as it is, motivated people to kill any less?
Most of the history in the Bible has been falsified. Spiderman comics are set in New York, but we don't turn to them as a source on the history, geography or culture of New York.
Something you may be unaware of and that badly damages your silly argument about the 24000 copies is the fact that those copies are in fact badly inconsistent. The inconsistencies in those crappy copies are in fact part of what has allowed Bible historians to identify the forgeries and after-the-fact redactions.
You may want to study the work of Bart Ehrman to learn about how we know about the tampering with the Biblical manuscripts. The book of his that deals almost exclusively with this point is, appropriately enough, Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
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