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I'm surprised no one has compared this to the 1950s killing of five missionaries in Ecuador. It's the first thing that came to my mind, and it happened a couple of years before I was born, but I grew up hearing about this in my church and read the book as a young girl. I remember the pictures of the bodies floating in the river with spears sticking out of them.
We used to have missionaries come to our church and talk all the time when I was little. They would tell us about how they had to eat the most disgusting things, and I knew I would never become a missionary.
Can’t understand the mind of Christians who “have”to convert people. The arrogance is appalling. They think they have all the answers...
They really believe that it is the right thing to do. That's the problem with anyone of that mindset, religious or otherwise. If you believe you are doing things for the good of others, you can do a heck of a lot of harm.
Scholars generally agree that Mark 16:9-20 is not original to the text. While it is true according to other text [Matthew 28:19] that Jesus did tell the eleven disciples [Matthew 28:16] to go and make disciples of all the nations, you cannot use Mark 16:18 with its statements about picking up serpents and drinking deadly poison to claim that Jesus promised that those who preach the gospel would be protected from harm. He made no such promise. Quite to the contrary, he said that his disciples would be killed because of him.
Matt. 24:9 "Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.
John 16:2 "They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God.
So if you are going to go by the text, Jesus made no promise that his disciples would be protected from harm but that his disciples would (in many cases at least) be killed. Again, Mark 16:9-20 is recognized by most scholars to not be part of the original text which means that you are basing your argument on a false premise.
So that’s the question.
What else in the Bible is not original to the text?
And more over, what were the pieces of original text that are now missing from the Bible?
Many scholars are on the record proving that Bible has been miscegenated, and the original message is long lost - and you seem to agree with it.
And if you know that it’s not pure anymore then you really can’t put your faith in it.
I think perhaps that’s why, what’s in the Bible is not important in modern day Christianity, which says, “just believe in Jesus to be your savior and you are through. A red carpet cosmic welcome is awaiting in paradise.”
One spiritual law of God is Fear blocks the hand of God , where this missionary had fear he was going to die , and this will doom the best of missionaries ..... Look at the story of Jonah who feared His mission , and was thrown into the sea where a giant fish swallowed him , and then through him up , Fear is a blocker for faith , and the lack of faith will silence God hand
Jonah didn’t fear, he just didn’t want to see them saved...
So that’s the question.
What else in the Bible is not original to the text?
And more over, what were the pieces of original text that are now missing from the Bible?
Many scholars are on the record proving that Bible has been miscegenated, and the original message is long lost - and you seem to agree with it.
And if you know that it’s not pure anymore then you really can’t put your faith in it.
I think perhaps that’s why, what’s in the Bible is not important in modern day Christianity, which says, “just believe in Jesus to be your savior and you are through. A red carpet cosmic welcome is awaiting in paradise.”
Most New Testament textual critics are pretty confident that the New Testament as we have it today is around 99 percent faithful to the original text. While there are an estimated 500,000 textual variants in the extant New Testament Greek manuscripts, no one really knows for sure the exact number, the vast majority are absolutely meaningless and some aren't even translatable. The major ones such as Mark 16:9-20, John 7:53-8:11, which are quite lengthy, have been discovered and are known to be not original to the text. There are shorter interpolations such as the comma johanneum - 1 John 5:7 (For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one) for instance, but again, these are known to scholars.
Read my post - #9, on the thread //www.city-data.com/forum/chris...-literary.html It's not my thread, but my post addresses the issue of textual variants in the New Testament and quotes a few NT textual critics concerning the reliability of our New Testament.
The reasoning behind your statement that if we know it's not pure then we can't really put our faith in it, is faulty for the simple reason that if we know what is not original to the text then we can disregard it and go with what is original to the text. Many Bible translations have footnotes regarding the major interpolations. Really, most NT textual critics are quite confident that for the most part, not all, but for the most part, the original text is recoverable though there are some instances in which we may never know the exact text of some verses. They also say that none of the variants jeopardize any core doctrine of the Christian faith.
I should add also that New Testament textual criticism isn't concerned with the issue of whether or not the Bible is infallible or inerrant, but is only concerned with recovering the original NT text as nearly as possible. I'll also add that there are NT textual critics who don't agree that the original text can be recovered. Study the subject and come to your own conclusions.
Last edited by Michael Way; 11-25-2018 at 11:19 AM..
A couple of observations.
Many newer translations don't even include those verses in Mark 16 because they don't appear in the oldest manuscripts. When they are in modern Bibles, there is a footnote.
Jesus prophesied persecution and there are also examples of martyrdom in the Bible. There is also something said about shaking the dust off your feet if people aren't receptive.
To use the Bible as the only guide without any historical explanation outside of itself leads to a lot of confusion and distortion of the Christian faith.
I don't know the full intentions of the missionary or his story.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike555
Scholars generally agree that Mark 16:9-20 is not original to the text. While it is true according to other text [Matthew 28:19] that Jesus did tell the eleven disciples [Matthew 28:16] to go and make disciples of all the nations, you cannot use Mark 16:18 with its statements about picking up serpents and drinking deadly poison to claim that Jesus promised that those who preach the gospel would be protected from harm. He made no such promise. Quite to the contrary, he said that his disciples would be killed because of him.
Matt. 24:9 "Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.
John 16:2 "They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God.
So if you are going to go by the text, Jesus made no promise that his disciples would be protected from harm but that his disciples would (in many cases at least) be killed. Again, Mark 16:9-20 is recognized by most scholars to not be part of the original text which means that you are basing your argument on a false premise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
So that’s the question.
What else in the Bible is not original to the text?
And more over, what were the pieces of original text that are now missing from the Bible?
Many scholars are on the record proving that Bible has been miscegenated, and the original message is long lost - and you seem to agree with it.
And if you know that it’s not pure anymore then you really can’t put your faith in it.
I think perhaps that’s why, what’s in the Bible is not important in modern day Christianity, which says, “just believe in Jesus to be your savior and you are through. A red carpet cosmic welcome is awaiting in paradise.”
Here we touch on yet another conundrum re a document (the "Holy" Bible) that is claimed by most Christians to be the "inerrant, (no mistakes) infallible (incapable of being wrong)" Word of God direct from the Holy Spirit to the men who wrote it.
Now some Christians can use the Mark 16:9-20 addition (as Mike 555 does) as an excuse for Jesus' failure to protect John Chau and other missionaries whose families were slaughtered:
Quote:
Staines' killing: Murder of Australian missionary and his two sons [Phillip, 10, and Timothy, 7] in Orissa shocks India
But doing that opens a whole 'nother can of worms, as Cardinals alludes to: what else in the Bible are later additions beside the Mark 16 passage (and there were originally no less than 2 "endings" to Mark's gospel before the present one was chosen--yet another problem with the infallibility issue) and the story of the women taken in adultery in John? And what do these additions to the texts do to the "inerrant, infallible" label?
Three questions:
1. did the Holy Spirit say, "Ooops, I forgot to to tell Mark to add 9-20"?
OR
2. did the Holy Spirit intend the gospel to end with Mark 16:8 and some overzealous monk decide to finish it for Mark?
OR
3. was there an original ending to the gospel that was inspired by the Holy Spirit but somehow got detached and lost?
In any case the label, "inerrant infallible Word of God" gets damaged--severely.
In No 1 the Holy Spirit makes mistakes.
In No 2 the Holy Spirit didn't warn the tampering monk off with "Don't mess with this text. It's the way I want it to end."
In No 3 the Holy Spirit cannot keep His own handiwork safe from the effects of the passing of centuries.
No matter how you cut the pie Christianity is weakened. A pastor can no longer say to a congregation with any degree of confidence, "This book is the inerrant infallible word of God" because in all three scenarios I gave the Holy Spirit proves himself to be incompetent.
Now some Christians can push this salient fact completely out of their minds and go on believing the Bible is God's word. However they choose to rationalize the "inerrant infallible" part is up to them.
What hasn't been dealt with here is the possibility that all claims Jesus supposedly made for the apostles to go out and make converts of all nations was a man-made addition to the texts to aid a struggling religion in its infancy to grow so it would survive. The problem then becomes what to do with texts like Mark 16:9-20 which have outlived their usefulness. Christianity is the largest religion in the world now. It doesn't need missionaries anymore dragging their innocent children off to hostile foreign countries to be put in harms way through no fault of their own. John Chau got exactly what he deserved, but Phillip and Timothy did not. They were slaughtered by the stupidity of their father, not the Indian radicals who burned them alive in their jeep. Chau knew he was breaking Indian law and he had to get there under cover of night to avoid the Indian patrol boats. That in itself demonstrates Chau's hubris. It even points to the possibility that he had psychological problems that his Christian zeal masked. I did notice in a pic of him with an ordinary man that he was extremely short (check the pic of him next to an ordinary-sized man in the link below
and you'll see he was only about 5'4" or so) and any short man can tell you being short wreaks havoc on their psych. Maybe this possible inferiority complex he had induced a superiority complex far as Christianity goes--the need to compensate for being little by proving himself a "big man" in the world of Christian evangelizing. Who knows?
Mike555's exculpation of Jesus raise yet another issue: for roughly a millennium the Bible "owned" Mark 16:9-20. Modern scholars cannot willy-nilly disown a part of a book that was thought for nearly two millennia to be "perfect". Where does the tampering of the "Holy" Bible end? What else can scholars cut from the text yet still claim the Bible is "perfect". Not only that, Jesus telling the his disciples in Matthew that they would be killed for their faith while Mark 16:9-20 has Jesus telling them they would be divinely protect is a huge contradiction. Mike555 can say with assurance Jesus never made the promise in Mark 16:9-20 but for 15 centuries or better the promise did stand.
If the Bible were inerrant and infallible it would need no additions and subtractions and edits. It would be pristine from its creation and be perfectly preserved. If it needs additions and subtractions and edits then it cannot be God's "perfect word" and should be looked upon as just another holy book no different from the Egyptian and Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Hindu Bhagavad Gita.
In sum, Christianity needs to reinvent itself and get rid of this "go out and make disciples of all nations" obsession. It also needs to come to terms with the fact its holy book is not so holy after all. It's a text filled with lots of wisdom and lots of disgusting archaic laws and vile stories of lurid sexuality, violence and other sundry abominations--and lots of errors. No Christian should be staking their life on it as John Chau did.
Now some Christians can use the Mark 16:9-20 addition (as Mike 555 does) as an excuse for Jesus' failure to protect John Chau and other missionaries whose families were slaughtered:
Mike555's exculpation of Jesus raise yet another issue: for roughly a millennium the Bible "owned" Mark 16:9-20. Modern scholars cannot willy-nilly disown a part of a book that was thought for nearly two millennia to be "perfect". Where does the tampering of the "Holy" Bible end? What else can scholars cut from the text yet still claim the Bible is "perfect". Not only that, Jesus telling the his disciples in Matthew that they would be killed for their faith while Mark 16:9-20 has Jesus telling them they would be divinely protect is a huge contradiction. Mike555 can say with assurance Jesus never made the promise in Mark 16:9-20 but for 15 centuries or better the promise did stand.
If the Bible were inerrant and infallible it would need no additions and subtractions and edits. It would be pristine from its creation and be perfectly preserved. If it needs additions and subtractions and edits then it cannot be God's "perfect word" and should be looked upon as just another holy book no different from the Egyptian and Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Hindu Bhagavad Gita.
In sum, Christianity needs to reinvent itself and get rid of this "go out and make disciples of all nations" obsession. It also needs to come to terms with the fact its holy book is not so holy after all. It's a text filled with lots of wisdom and lots of disgusting archaic laws and vile stories of lurid sexuality, violence and other sundry abominations--and lots of errors. No Christian should be staking their life on it as John Chau did.
The oldest and best manuscripts do not contain Mark 16:9-20. And you have simply ignored the fact that rather than promising that his disciples would be protected from harm, Jesus made it quite clear that some of his disciples would be killed. I provided the text. And it kills your argument.
The oldest and best manuscripts do not contain Mark 16:9-20. And you have simply ignored the fact that rather than promising that his disciples would be protected from harm, Jesus made it quite clear that some of his disciples would be killed. I provided the text. And it kills your argument.
Mike, you've completely glossed over the fact that for 1000 years and better the added text was taken as "gospel" words imspired by the Holy Spirit and used by the Catholic Church and later Protestant missionaries as authority Jesus promised to protect them from all harm. You're well aware that even today up in Appalachia handling deadly snakes is a routine part of Christian services as per Mark 16:18. The fact that modern scholars have concluded the text was phony would be completely lost on them. Maybe you'd have better luck. I suggest you go up there and give it a shot. You might save a few lives. You might also decide to try handling the snakes and say, "Hey, this is fun" and stay up there.
But your statement that 99% of the Bible is in its original state doesn't negate the fact that 1% of it is not. 100% is perfection; 99% is imperfection. You may accuse me of haggling but I can't compromise on a perfect book being only 99% perfect.
Mike, you've completely glossed over the fact that for 1000 years and better the added text was taken as "gospel" words imspired by the Holy Spirit and used by the Catholic Church and later Protestant missionaries as authority Jesus promised to protect them from all harm. You're well aware that even today up in Appalachia handling deadly snakes is a routine part of Christian services as per Mark 16:18. The fact that modern scholars have concluded the text was phony would be completely lost on them. Maybe you'd have better luck. I suggest you go up there and give it a shot. You might save a few lives. You might also decide to try handling the snakes and say, "Hey, this is fun" and stay up there.
But your statement that 99% of the Bible is in its original state doesn't negate the fact that 1% of it is not. 100% is perfection; 99% is imperfection. You may accuse me of haggling but I can't compromise on a perfect book being only 99% perfect.
I haven't glossed over it. That many Christians believe that Mark 16:9-20 is authentic and have done some stupid things, such as snake handling is irrelevant to the issue of whether Mark 16:9-20 is authentic. And the simple fact of the matter is that the earliest and best manuscripts do not contain the text of Mark 16:9-20.
Your claim that Mark 16:9-20 is authentic, and your attempt to use Mark 16:18 to claim that Jesus promised that his disciples would not come to harm puts you in opposition to the majority of scholarly thought.
And again, far from promising that his disciples would not come to harm, Jesus said the opposite as per Matthew 24:9 and John 16:2.
Further, as I've already said, New Testament textual criticism is not about whether the text is inerrant or infallible. It is only concerned with getting back to the original text as closely as is possible. And most scholars are confident that the New Testament as we have it is some 99 percent faithful to the original text, though not all would agree with that conclusion.
So it’s a “proof beyond a shadow of doubt that Jesus is imaginary”?
There are plenty of Christians who chime in whenever they believe god or jesus intervened on their behalf saving them from some horrible fate. When something like this happens they seem to keep quiet.
That being said you cannot prove something is imaginary. So the title of the thread is poorly written.
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