Has ne1 read the newly found original hebrew version of Matt?
In the 90's an archeologist stumbles across The Gospel of Matthew written in ancient Hebrew. At first it was thought it was simply the 'original greek version of Matt' simply written in old Hebrew, so he shelved it in a Israeli museum. He didn't even have it read. It stayed there, un-translated until last year or so. After translating it, the guy not only realized it wasn't a Heb translation of the greek, but almost certainly the original version! After reading it and studying it, I also am 100% sure it's the original version and NOT the greek I can go more deeply if you are interested but for now i'll show the biggest corrections/diffs. 1. The first shocker is it does not say Jesus was born of a virgin, it says 'A young woman shall concive'. It also says Mary wasn't a virgin her whole life because 'Joseph did not lie with her UNTIL she gave birth' 2. The 'Wise men' are called Astrologers. continued......
...cont. 3. The astrologers were not lead by a star, but by an angel. 4. John the emersing plainly says baptism means total emersing, not spinkle. 5. Jesus doesn't say that he has come to fulfill the law, but instead says he has come to obey it. 6. Instead of the famous 'If a man smites thy right cheek, offer him thy left.' He says 'He a man slaps you on your right cheek, turn your left and walk away, kept he strike your left'. 7. This is a biggy, mainly because it destroys the entire catholic church. In the Greek, after Peter pronounces jesus as messiah, jesus seems to make him the leader of the church as wall as giving him the power to forgive sins and either sentence one to hell or heaven it says 'You are peter, and what you have said will be the rock that the church will be built on.' meaning, proclaiming jesus is the messiah is the rock of the church, not Peter. When jesus says peter has the ability to lock or unlock heaven to people, this one adds 'by spreading the word of god'.
8. The Greek jesus seems to say getting a divorce for any reason is a sin, the heb Jesus says 'You have heard you must give your wife a bill of divorce but I say, he you leave your wife without a bill oh divorce, anyone the man is with he commits adultry and any man the woman marry commit adultery' He wasn't against divorce, he just says to divorce before remarrying or else it's adultery. 9. The Greek Jesus seems to say that you should never swear, but the hebrew jesus says 'you shall not swear by my name falsely, but I say swear not falsely in an matter' 10. The greek jesus seems to say you should not go an eye for an eye, but the Heb jesus says 'You have head an eye for an eye, but you have turned justice into revenge. I say do not repay evil for evil' The term eye for an eye isn't literal, it simply means to be fair in judgement. i.e don't give a murderer a day in jail and give a petty thief the death penalty. Jesus didn't do away with EFAE.
11. This one fixed the biggest contradiction in Matt. The Greek jesus seems to say that 'The pharesees sit in the seat of moses, so do what the say and not what they do.'. This makes no sense since jesus spends the entire book condemning they, but here he says to obey them. This is fixed in the Heb 'The pharisees sit in the seat of moses, so do what HE says and not what They do'. Meaning you should do what moses says and not them. That makes sense. Anyway, there are a lot more, he ya want I'll continue, but he not I won't
Not the way I meant, I fully believe that the Bible has changed much through the years as it's re-written over and over and over by man, who is faulty by nature.
Reading your comment again, I can see that I misinterpreted the intent - sorry!
That's all fairly inconclusive and controversial...as is the fact (not mentioned by the OP) that the "manuscript" he's referring to is a mediaeval one, and that most scholars nevertheless believe it to be a translation (although perhaps of a separate tradition).
Inconclusive? I'd say it isn't, simply on the fact that man is re-writing biblical scripture and not God, so it's open to human error and frailties such as arrogance, envy and hatred.
We don't have to go back thousands of years, compare a KJV with the newer NIV, NASB, NLT, CVC etc., they differ, sometimes only slighty, but I ask, if the bible is God's spoken word, why should it change even a little?
Now compound those little changes by thousands of years.
When I said it was "inconclusive," I wasn't meaning to imply that there hasn't been change - but I would say, as you seem to, that it is primarily linguistic change, and that this has effected the Biblical "canon" (at least) very little, at least in terms of substantial change in meaning.
As it stands, most Biblical translations - excluding textual variants/anomalies such as the Dead Sea Scrolls - are fairly literal adaptations of their predecessors. Of course, scribal (i.e., human) error does occur, but it occurs everywhere and shouldn't result in overwhelming damnation for any text.
I suppose a more enlightened and religious person would say that the linguistic change/translation process is key to getting the message across, and any changes - which you note are slight, and which very often don't alter the meaning - are easy enough to deal with?
The word of God shouldn't have any change, even minor, this is just me talking. A mild change can also change the meaning, mild changes over and over and over will likely change the meaning.
The DSS aren't an anomaly, they're older religious text and they're a direct indication of just how faulty man is in re-writing scripture. Around 50% of the DSS vary from inconsistencies to outright different meanings with more modern translations.
Those "slight changes" can and do alter the meaning though. Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13(the homo one people always bring up) is an example of changes that can change drastically from the original Hebrew.
Also of note, the Bible wasn't written when Jesus or his prophets were alive. So there's the probably errors of someone saying something; it being told and re-told and then written down between 50 and 90 years later. If I told you a 20 word phrase and had you tell it to another so on and so forth and then the 50th person hearing it had to write it down, the text would vary greatly from my spoken words, just human error.
But it's not a huge change of substantive meaning: It's minor linguistic change - which is a function of human "nature," if you will - which allows for the text to be better understood by a given people.
That there was a certain degree of fluidity about the way the texts were composed seems to be true...but to what degree is very uncertain, and all of their interrelations aren't fully understood...
And what do you mean when you bring up Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13? The ambiguities (in whether they prohibit male and female homosexuality or simply male homosexuality) seems to be in the Hebrew text itself...
There are a lot of problems with the New Testament...lol.
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Last edited by The Rover on Apr 19th, 2011 at 11:07 PM
Human nature also allows for errors. Even if they're only "minor", as noted, what happens when minor errors are compounded century after century? Little change here, a little change there etc.
If something around 50% is different, that should raise a red flag.
Female and/or male, the exact acts that are a sin, the acts performed where etc. There's a lot of difference, depending on translation. Those differences can greatly change the meaning, which should matter, considering the penalty is noted as "death."
According to what? Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, do not believe that Jesus died on a cross, purely because their version of the translation differs from the other 99% of Christian sects out there. That's resulted in the JW's being one of the few sects to not have a cross involved anywhere in their religion. They also believe that the Jesus was not god but rather his son, and the whole thing about the trinity is considered to be false.
All of these discrepancies are due to differing translations of the same original text. So I think the changes are pretty huge.
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