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Let's be honest, shall we? I'm not going to do your homework for you. It would be a total waste of time.
Two reasons; you wouldn't accept anything as fact anyway and you simply don't care.
Generally speaking, scoffers and skeptics aren't really interested in the pursuit of truth - they only want to have their preconceptions justified by lies, innuendo and mockery. Case in point is that any time the historic record is quoted, or the Biblical one either, the standard rebuttal is a request for documentation - which when provided is mocked just as much as when it isn't provided.
We all use the Internet and the truth is out there to be easily discovered. The contradiction is in the mind of the one who refuses to accept it, not the data itself. It isn't the body of evidence that is the issue, its the suppression of it.
That being said, I will give you a slight benefit of the doubt and name two of the historians who've made contributions. One is Pliny the younger and the other is Josephus. Google them.
There are at least a half dozen others, but personally, I doubt the effort will be made. The records of Jesus' ministry and resurrection are so plentiful that even if the Biblical accounts didn't exist there would be sufficient record of them all for the world to see. Looking the other way doesn't count for scholarship.
and that's just me, hollering from the choir loft...
For one, you've made a rather ignorant assumption that I don't care...And I have searched this subject out...The only reason that I can see of your not listing these documentations that you say exist is that I may have hit the nail on the head...That old catch phrase, I am not going to do your homework for you, and then you decide to through to controversial writings at me...
three passages in non-Christian works have been used to support the historicity of Jesus. These are two passages in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, and one from the Roman historian Tacitus. Although the authenticity of all three passages has been disputed to varying degrees, most biblical scholars believe that all three are at least partially authentic. - Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doesn't look like many to me...looks like three...So, where are these others?...
There is a lot of garbage on the NET, just look at this forum...
Firstly, Nicaea had nothing to do with the Bible, but there was a great deal going on concerning canonizing scripture in that century, so not a big deal. Especially since I agree with most of the rest of what you said.
Interesting that you should mention the Protestant Bible which in the 16th century discarded a number of books considered canonical for over a thousand years.
BTW Ehrman's companion work Lost Scriptures contains many of the actual non-canonical writings so you have more input to make up your own mind about their relevance.
Nicea has nothing to do with the Bible if you believe every single document written and claimed to be Christian---is the Bible. But in the modern sense, the Bible is either the Protestant or Catholic Bible. Those were absent from early Christians--indeed absent from most medieval worshippers. Most of them may have had scraps here and there.
In addition, I don't think Protestants discarded any of the Bible. Instead Catholics added to it at the Council of Trent in 1546--as a point against Luther. In other words, it was a theologically political decision.
Quote:
The first official council of the Roman Catholic church to ratify these books was at the Council of Trent in 1546, only twenty-nine years after Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg. The acceptance of these books at this time was convenient since the books were being quoted against Luther. For example, 2 Maccabees speaks of prayers for the dead (2 Macc. 12:45-46) and another book teaches salvation by works (Tob. 12:19).
The original ending of Mark 16 does mention the Resurrection.
Mark 16:5-8
"5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. "
The "Longer Ending" was added in the second century perhaps to make Mark agree with Matthew's and Luke's extended (but contradictory) accounts of the post Resurrection.
Mark is the earliest gospel. At the time of its writing Christianity was in its embryonic stage and its leaders weren't sure which way they wanted to carry this new religion. Hence in Mark you find more a "skeleton" narrative devoid of all the "meat" added in the three later accounts to fill out the skeleton. Anytime a writer is "dressing up" an account he invariably is going to exaggerate and add detail he really has no way of proving objectively. That's why we have contradictory information in each account such as who went to the tomb on resurrection morning and who was there to greet them.
The problem of "inerrancy" enters when you have to define what "inerrant" means. If inerrancy is "sure there are some contradictions but the overall story still hangs together" then the accounts are not really inerrant. If inerrancy is "every details agrees down to the crossed t's and dotted i's" then anyone with eyes and the ability to read can see for themselves that the gospel accounts are rife with errors and contradictions. It's like Clinton said, "It depends on what your definition of "is" is."
So when Mark got to the end of his account, the issue of Jesus saying he was going to appear to his disciples had not been developed as a dogma. In Matthew the writer decided to write in an episode in which Jesus said he would appear to his disciples. This is all in preparation for the formulation of the story of Jesus' ascension, which did not exist when Mark was written. When the story of Jesus appearing to his disciples and then ascending appeared after Mark the later church leaders circa 200 AD had to "fix" Mark up so that it would agree with the later gospel accounts, but Mark himself knew nothing of Jesus appearing post-resurrection to his apostles. Far as Mark was concerned, Jesus had risen and had gone back to heaven.
Nicea has nothing to do with the Bible if you believe every single document written and claimed to be Christian---is the Bible. But in the modern sense, the Bible is either the Protestant or Catholic Bible. Those were absent from early Christians--indeed absent from most medieval worshippers. Most of them may have had scraps here and there.
In addition, I don't think Protestants discarded any of the Bible. Instead Catholics added to it at the Council of Trent in 1546--as a point against Luther. In other words, it was a theologically political decision.
The books of the Catholic Bible are those referenced by Athanasius in 362 and approved by the Synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). They are the same books that appear in the Latin Vulgate and the Gutenberg Bible (1454). The contested books even appear in the Luther Bible although segregated as apocrypha. These ‘apocrypha’ happen to appear in the Septuagint, the scriptures used by the authors of the NT.
The Canon of Trent formalized this same list of books that had been the de facto standard for over a thousand years. This was done because Luther was publishing his own variation. The reason there had been no formalized Catholic standard before this was that the Bible was never the be-all and end-all of the faith. Sola scriptura was a Protestant invention. When Luther abandoned the centralized authority of the Roman Church, he adopted the Bible as a new source of authority. Most people think that is was all about corruption (and there certainly was a great deal of that). Even the movie makes much of it. But if one reads the 95 Theses it becomes clear that corruption was not the main issue. The 95 Theses were mostly about challenging the authority of Rome in spiritual matters. Corruption is mentioned pretty much as a byproduct of misplaced authority.
The books that Luther segregated and which later Protestant Bibles discarded completely are those that do not appear in the Jewish canon developed in the second century. This was an additional method of separating from Rome. (That one of the segregated books – 2 Maccabees – contains the ‘proof text’ for Purgatory, a major factor in the corruption in the Church – did not hurt either.)
So no, the Council of Trent did not add anything. Protestants removed something.
The books of the Catholic Bible are those referenced by Athanasius in 362 and approved by the Synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). They are the same books that appear in the Latin Vulgate and the Gutenberg Bible (1454). The contested books even appear in the Luther Bible although segregated as apocrypha. These ‘apocrypha’ happen to appear in the Septuagint, the scriptures used by the authors of the NT.
The Canon of Trent formalized this same list of books that had been the de facto standard for over a thousand years. This was done because Luther was publishing his own variation. The reason there had been no formalized Catholic standard before this was that the Bible was never the be-all and end-all of the faith. Sola scriptura was a Protestant invention. When Luther abandoned the centralized authority of the Roman Church, he adopted the Bible as a new source of authority. Most people think that is was all about corruption (and there certainly was a great deal of that). Even the movie makes much of it. But if one reads the 95 Theses it becomes clear that corruption was not the main issue. The 95 Theses were mostly about challenging the authority of Rome in spiritual matters. Corruption is mentioned pretty much as a byproduct of misplaced authority.
The books that Luther segregated and which later Protestant Bibles discarded completely are those that do not appear in the Jewish canon developed in the second century. This was an additional method of separating from Rome. (That one of the segregated books – 2 Maccabees – contains the ‘proof text’ for Purgatory, a major factor in the corruption in the Church – did not hurt either.)
So no, the Council of Trent did not add anything. Protestants removed something.
The link on Hippo and Carthage is quite helpful. I am aware that Constantine "authorized" the publication of fifty Bible at Nicea--but there is no record of what was contained in them.
That Luther was concerned primarily about corruption should be evident from the title of his letter to the church--and to whom it was delivered-- archbishop Albert of Mainz and Magdeburg, -- who was in charge of indulgence sales. The letter was entitled "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences," which became known as The Ninety-Five Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of challenging the church but saw his dispute as a scholarly objection to church actions, and the voice of the letter is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire.
The one that raised a lot of eyebrows was Thesis 86 which poses the question: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of Saint Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"
It appears, based on some recent public outcries against a bishop or two, that the latter charge still prevails in the church today.
The link on Hippo and Carthage is quite helpful. I am aware that Constantine "authorized" the publication of fifty Bible at Nicea--but there is no record of what was contained in them.
That Luther was concerned primarily about corruption should be evident from the title of his letter to the church--and to whom it was delivered-- archbishop Albert of Mainz and Magdeburg, -- who was in charge of indulgence sales. The letter was entitled "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences," which became known as The Ninety-Five Theses. Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of challenging the church but saw his dispute as a scholarly objection to church actions, and the voice of the letter is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire.
The one that raised a lot of eyebrows was Thesis 86 which poses the question: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of Saint Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"
It appears, based on some recent public outcries against a bishop or two, that the latter charge still prevails in the church today.
Corruption was a major concern - and rightly so - but the main thrust is not a call to end corruption but to argue that there is no power to grant the indulgences in the first place.
75. To consider papal indulgences so great that they could absolve a man even if he had done the impossible and had violated the mother of God is madness.
76. We say on the contrary that papal indulgences cannot remove the very least of venial sins as far as
guilt is concerned.
I agree that Luther made good points and that they are still relevant today.
The original version of Mark did not include anything after the original ending, which describes his followers running away afraid and terrified from the empty tomb.
The new "updated" version of Mark describes Jesus appearing again. (Did this represent his physical body or some kind of spiritual event for his followers?)
The books of Matthew and Luke were also "updates" of the gospel of Mark. They added even more miraculous events to the gospel story. (Virgin birth, etc)
Why do so many Bible believing Christians just ACCEPT everything as literal fact when there is so much to be skeptical about?
First of all you are 100% wrong in assuming that Mark's Gospel has been updated.
Several sources cite the entire book as finished in that day.
Look at the supposed update - the last 12 verses
However, it seems that Irenaeus in 150 A.D., and also Hypolytus in the 2nd century, each quote from these disputed verses, so the documentary evidence is that they were deleted later in the Alexandrian texts, not added subsequently.)
BUT... just look at those last 12 verses. How come there are more than 75 instances of 7 in just 12 verses???
Man cannot accomplish that type of mathematical skill in design in writing. Just try and duplicate it and you or a computer will fail. EVERYTIME.
Let's examine these verses and explore their underlying design. Just as we encounter fingerprint or retinal scanners to verify an identity in today's technological environment, it seems that there is an astonishingly equivalent "fingerprint" hidden beneath the Biblical text that is still visible despite the veil of the centuries.
The "Heptadic" (sevenfold) structure of Biblical text is one of the remarkable characteristics of its authenticity. What about these disputed 12 verses?
The Heptadic Structure of Scripture
Everyone who explores their Bible quickly discovers the pervasiveness of Seven: there are over 600 explicit occurrences of "sevens" throughout both the Old and New Testaments. As many of our readers are aware, there are also prevalent evidences of design hidden behind the text.[SIZE=2]4[/SIZE] The "Heptadic" (sevenfold) structure of Biblical text is one of the remarkable characteristics of its authenticity. What about these disputed 12 verses?
There are 175 (7 x 25) words in the Greek text of Mark 16:9-20. Curious. These words use a total vocabulary of 98 different words (7 x 14), also an exact multiple of seven. That's also rather striking.
Try constructing a passage in which both the number of words and the number of letters are precisely divisible by seven (with no remainder)! The random chance of a number being precisely divisible by 7 is one chance in seven. In seven tries, there will be an average of six failures.
The chance of two numbers both being divisible by 7 exactly is one in 7, or one in 49. (This is a convenient simplification; some mathematical statisticians would argue the chance is one in 91. This still might be viewed as an accidental occurrence, or the casual contrivance of a clever scribe. But let's look further. The number of letters in this passage is 553, also a precise multiple of seven (7 x 79). This is getting a bit more tricky. The chance of three numbers accidentally being precisely divisible by seven is one in 7, or one in 343. This increasingly appears to be suspiciously deliberate.
In fact, the number of vowels is 294 (7 x 42); and the number of consonants is 259 (7 x 37). Do you sense that someone has gone through a lot of trouble to hide a design or signature behind this text?
As we examine the vocabulary of those 98 (7 x 14) words: 84 (7 x 12) are found before in Mark; 14 (7 x 2) are found only here. 42 (7 x 6) are found in the Lord's address (vv.15-18); 56 (7 x 8) are not part of His vocabulary here.
This is, conspicuously, not random chance at work, but highly skillful design. But just how skillful?
With 10 such heptadic features, it would take 282,475,249 attempts for these to occur by chance alone. How long would it take the composer to redraft an alternative attempt to obtain the result he was looking for? If he could accomplish an attempt in only 10 minutes, working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, these would take him over 23,540 years!
But there's more. The total word forms in the passage are 133 (7 x 19). 112 of them (7 x 16) occur only once, leaving 21 (7 x 3) of them occurring more than once; in fact, these occur 63 (7 x 9) times.
If we examine more closely the 175 words (7x 25), we discover that 56 (7 x 8) words appear in the address of the Lord and 119 (7 x 17) appear in the rest of the passage.
The natural divisions of the passage would be the appearance to Mary, verses 9-11; His subsequent appearances, verses 12-14; Christ's discourse, verses 15-18; and the conclusion in verses 19-20. We discover that verses 9-11 involve 35 words (7 x 5). Verses 12-18, 105 (7 x 15) words; verse 12, 14 (7 x 2) words; verses 13-15, 35 (7 x 5) words; verses 16-18, 56 (7 x 8) words. The conclusion, verses 19-20, contains 35 (7 x 5) words.
It gets worse. Greek, like Hebrew, has assigned numerical values to each letter of its alphabet. Thus, each word also has a numerical ("gematrical") value.
The total numerical value of the passage is 103,656 (7 x 14,808). The value of v.9 is 11,795 (7 x 1,685); v.10 is 5,418 (7 x 774); v.11 is 11,795 (7 x 1,685); vv.12-20, 86,450 (7 x 12,350). In verse 10, the first word is 98 (7 x 14), the middle word is 4,529 (7 x 647), and the last word is 791 (7 x 113). The value of the total word forms is 89,663 (7 x 12,809). And so on.
Individual words also tell a tale. , deadly (v.18) is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It has a numeric value of 581 (7 x 83), and is preceded in the vocabulary list by 42 (6 x 7) words, and in the passage itself by 126 (7 x 18) words.
This all is among the legendary results of the work by Dr. Ivan Panin.
In fact, he identified 75 heptadic features of the last 12 verses of Mark.
We have highlighted only 34 heptadic features. If a supercomputer could be programmed to attempt 400 million attempts/second, working day and night, it would take one million of them over four million years to identify a combination of 34 heptadic features by unaided chance alone.
Authentication Codes
Just as we encounter coding devices in our high technology environments, here we have an automatic security system that monitors every letter of every word, that never rusts or wears out, and has remained in service for almost two thousand years! It is a signature that can't be erased and which counterfeiters can't simulate.
Why are we surprised? God has declared that He "has magnified His word even above His name!"
We can, indeed, have confidence that, in fact, the Bible is God's Holy Word, despite the errors man has introduced and the abuse it has suffered throughout the centuries. It is our most precious possession-individually as well as collectively.
And it never ceases to unveil surprises to anyone that diligently inquires into it.
The very first verse of the bible Genesis 1:1 is totally 100% impossible for any man or machine to duplicate.
In that short verse of 7 (Hebrew) words comprised of 28 letters includes more than 30 instances of 7
God's fingerprints of skilled mathmatical design flourish on every page of the bible. Man's problem is that he refuses to study and observe the obvious.
PROVERBS 2: Search the Scriptures as for "hidden treasure(s)"
PROVERBS 25:2 It is the Glory of God to CONCEAL A MATTER - It is your duty to search!!
First of all you are 100% wrong in assuming that Mark's Gospel has been updated.
Several sources cite the entire book as finished in that day.
Look at the supposed update - the last 12 verses
However, it seems that Irenaeus in 150 A.D., and also Hypolytus in the 2nd century, each quote from these disputed verses, so the documentary evidence is that they were deleted later in the Alexandrian texts, not added subsequently.)
BUT... just look at those last 12 verses. How come there are more than 75 instances of 7 in just 12 verses???
Man cannot accomplish that type of mathematical skill in design in writing. Just try and duplicate it and you or a computer will fail. EVERYTIME.
Let's examine these verses and explore their underlying design. Just as we encounter fingerprint or retinal scanners to verify an identity in today's technological environment, it seems that there is an astonishingly equivalent "fingerprint" hidden beneath the Biblical text that is still visible despite the veil of the centuries.
The "Heptadic" (sevenfold) structure of Biblical text is one of the remarkable characteristics of its authenticity. What about these disputed 12 verses?
The Heptadic Structure of Scripture
Everyone who explores their Bible quickly discovers the pervasiveness of Seven: there are over 600 explicit occurrences of "sevens" throughout both the Old and New Testaments. As many of our readers are aware, there are also prevalent evidences of design hidden behind the text.[SIZE=2]4[/SIZE] The "Heptadic" (sevenfold) structure of Biblical text is one of the remarkable characteristics of its authenticity. What about these disputed 12 verses?
There are 175 (7 x 25) words in the Greek text of Mark 16:9-20. Curious. These words use a total vocabulary of 98 different words (7 x 14), also an exact multiple of seven. That's also rather striking.
Try constructing a passage in which both the number of words and the number of letters are precisely divisible by seven (with no remainder)! The random chance of a number being precisely divisible by 7 is one chance in seven. In seven tries, there will be an average of six failures.
The chance of two numbers both being divisible by 7 exactly is one in 7, or one in 49. (This is a convenient simplification; some mathematical statisticians would argue the chance is one in 91. This still might be viewed as an accidental occurrence, or the casual contrivance of a clever scribe. But let's look further. The number of letters in this passage is 553, also a precise multiple of seven (7 x 79). This is getting a bit more tricky. The chance of three numbers accidentally being precisely divisible by seven is one in 7, or one in 343. This increasingly appears to be suspiciously deliberate.
In fact, the number of vowels is 294 (7 x 42); and the number of consonants is 259 (7 x 37). Do you sense that someone has gone through a lot of trouble to hide a design or signature behind this text?
As we examine the vocabulary of those 98 (7 x 14) words: 84 (7 x 12) are found before in Mark; 14 (7 x 2) are found only here. 42 (7 x 6) are found in the Lord's address (vv.15-18); 56 (7 x 8) are not part of His vocabulary here.
This is, conspicuously, not random chance at work, but highly skillful design. But just how skillful?
With 10 such heptadic features, it would take 282,475,249 attempts for these to occur by chance alone. How long would it take the composer to redraft an alternative attempt to obtain the result he was looking for? If he could accomplish an attempt in only 10 minutes, working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, these would take him over 23,540 years!
But there's more. The total word forms in the passage are 133 (7 x 19). 112 of them (7 x 16) occur only once, leaving 21 (7 x 3) of them occurring more than once; in fact, these occur 63 (7 x 9) times.
If we examine more closely the 175 words (7x 25), we discover that 56 (7 x 8) words appear in the address of the Lord and 119 (7 x 17) appear in the rest of the passage.
The natural divisions of the passage would be the appearance to Mary, verses 9-11; His subsequent appearances, verses 12-14; Christ's discourse, verses 15-18; and the conclusion in verses 19-20. We discover that verses 9-11 involve 35 words (7 x 5). Verses 12-18, 105 (7 x 15) words; verse 12, 14 (7 x 2) words; verses 13-15, 35 (7 x 5) words; verses 16-18, 56 (7 x 8) words. The conclusion, verses 19-20, contains 35 (7 x 5) words.
It gets worse. Greek, like Hebrew, has assigned numerical values to each letter of its alphabet. Thus, each word also has a numerical ("gematrical") value.
The total numerical value of the passage is 103,656 (7 x 14,808). The value of v.9 is 11,795 (7 x 1,685); v.10 is 5,418 (7 x 774); v.11 is 11,795 (7 x 1,685); vv.12-20, 86,450 (7 x 12,350). In verse 10, the first word is 98 (7 x 14), the middle word is 4,529 (7 x 647), and the last word is 791 (7 x 113). The value of the total word forms is 89,663 (7 x 12,809). And so on.
Individual words also tell a tale. , deadly (v.18) is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It has a numeric value of 581 (7 x 83), and is preceded in the vocabulary list by 42 (6 x 7) words, and in the passage itself by 126 (7 x 18) words.
This all is among the legendary results of the work by Dr. Ivan Panin.
In fact, he identified 75 heptadic features of the last 12 verses of Mark.
We have highlighted only 34 heptadic features. If a supercomputer could be programmed to attempt 400 million attempts/second, working day and night, it would take one million of them over four million years to identify a combination of 34 heptadic features by unaided chance alone.
Authentication Codes
Just as we encounter coding devices in our high technology environments, here we have an automatic security system that monitors every letter of every word, that never rusts or wears out, and has remained in service for almost two thousand years! It is a signature that can't be erased and which counterfeiters can't simulate.
Why are we surprised? God has declared that He "has magnified His word even above His name!"
We can, indeed, have confidence that, in fact, the Bible is God's Holy Word, despite the errors man has introduced and the abuse it has suffered throughout the centuries. It is our most precious possession-individually as well as collectively.
And it never ceases to unveil surprises to anyone that diligently inquires into it.
The very first verse of the bible Genesis 1:1 is totally 100% impossible for any man or machine to duplicate.
In that short verse of 7 (Hebrew) words comprised of 28 letters includes more than 30 instances of 7
God's fingerprints of skilled mathmatical design flourish on every page of the bible. Man's problem is that he refuses to study and observe the obvious.
PROVERBS 2: Search the Scriptures as for "hidden treasure(s)"
PROVERBS 25:2 It is the Glory of God to CONCEAL A MATTER - It is your duty to search!!
Well, this is a lot of hogwash. And yes, man CAN put mathematical concepts into literature. Will Shakespere wrote thousands of verses in iambic pentameter where the very syllables of the words are of mathematical design. Not only do they have a wonderful beat and melodic tempo--some are funny and some are tragic. And he was a man whom no one even knows whether he was a Christian.
The early Hebrews did have a numeric concept in their religion, and in dozens of places it was replicated for thematic purposes. The three "double-sevens" in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus--only works because Matthew skipped a couple of generations in one set (if you compare the lineage in the OT to what Matthew wrote)--and then he goofed and in the third set of fourteen---he got only THIRTEEN. But he was trying real hard to meet you sevens theory.
And there is no assumption about the last twelve verses of Mark. The earliest copies we have of Mark don't contain those verses. In addition, Greek linguistic and style differences in those verses make us certain that whoever did write them was not the same person who wrote the rest of the gospel.
The books of the Catholic Bible are those referenced by Athanasius in 362 and approved by the Synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). They are the same books that appear in the Latin Vulgate and the Gutenberg Bible (1454). The contested books even appear in the Luther Bible although segregated as apocrypha. These ‘apocrypha’ happen to appear in the Septuagint, the scriptures used by the authors of the NT.
The Canon of Trent formalized this same list of books that had been the de facto standard for over a thousand years. This was done because Luther was publishing his own variation. The reason there had been no formalized Catholic standard before this was that the Bible was never the be-all and end-all of the faith. Sola scriptura was a Protestant invention. When Luther abandoned the centralized authority of the Roman Church, he adopted the Bible as a new source of authority. Most people think that is was all about corruption (and there certainly was a great deal of that). Even the movie makes much of it. But if one reads the 95 Theses it becomes clear that corruption was not the main issue. The 95 Theses were mostly about challenging the authority of Rome in spiritual matters. Corruption is mentioned pretty much as a byproduct of misplaced authority.
The books that Luther segregated and which later Protestant Bibles discarded completely are those that do not appear in the Jewish canon developed in the second century. This was an additional method of separating from Rome. (That one of the segregated books – 2 Maccabees – contains the ‘proof text’ for Purgatory, a major factor in the corruption in the Church – did not hurt either.)
So no, the Council of Trent did not add anything. Protestants removed something.
If memory serves, the KJV 1611 originally had the apocryphal writings...
Well, this is a lot of hogwash. And yes, man CAN put mathematical concepts into literature. Will Shakespere wrote thousands of verses in iambic pentameter where the very syllables of the words are of mathematical design. Not only do they have a wonderful beat and melodic tempo--some are funny and some are tragic. And he was a man whom no one even knows whether he was a Christian.
The early Hebrews did have a numeric concept in their religion, and in dozens of places it was replicated for thematic purposes. The three "double-sevens" in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus--only works because Matthew skipped a couple of generations in one set (if you compare the lineage in the OT to what Matthew wrote)--and then he goofed and in the third set of fourteen---he got only THIRTEEN. But he was trying real hard to meet you sevens theory.
And there is no assumption about the last twelve verses of Mark. The earliest copies we have of Mark don't contain those verses. In addition, Greek linguistic and style differences in those verses make us certain that whoever did write them was not the same person who wrote the rest of the gospel.
Your biased claim is nothing by b.s.! You offer no proof. My proof is that no one - can duplicate Genesis 1:1
PROVE ME WRONG!!
Harvard Mathematicians using the most powerful computers in the world can't duplicate that mathematical design.
THEREFORE: If man is incapable; & machines are incapable - Then God has left his fingerprint(s) in plain sight!
You are just too stubborn to admit the truth.
The bible is God's Word - He wrote it -!
Who is the Word of God ? Who became flesh?? He is the author of the bible and creation!!
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