One Christian Thought

It doesn't matter what I believe. It only matters what I can prove. It is 7:15 P.M. as I write this on New Year's eve, 2020. I have managed, it looks like, to meet my goal of completely finishing this blog, publishing everything I want on it, before New Year and school starts. This blog started in January, and I have exhausted my knowledge by now. Funny how God planned it that way. I want to thank my three followers for deciding to be so, and everyone who has commented on this blog. Out of all the nine comments so far, 5 were from me, 4 responding to somebody. I haven't had much interaction on this blog at all. Considering how long things get, and lack of a good amount of interested people to share it with, that's not surprising. I have tried to keep some things short, like the handout argument for the resurrection , suggested reading plan of the big resurrection argument, and pointing out quick posts in titles, but really this blog took the form of me to get all my th

  "Conclusion"   It feels a bit wrong to me to speak of coming to a conclusion. With this, textual critics have long had the answer, and I hardly came up with anything myself. I just analyzed, cited, and cross-examined some sources. When Wallace said only about 1 percent of the NT variants change meaning and have a plausible chance of going back to the original, Strobel realized that's still a significantly big number. Ehrman was right when he said in many places we don't know what the actual text was, albeit not relatively to the entire text. Wallace drew attention to things like Romans 5:1, and pointed out "most of these are not very significant at all"! (1) Geisler and Saleeb cite statics, and here they are in order(2): Westcott and Hort estimated accuracy of 98.33%. (They published their NT copy in 1881.) Historian Philip Schaff calculated that out of 150,000 variants he knew, only 400 affected meaning, 50, were significant, and none affected any doctrin

What was the purpose?  Whereas some readers have gone away from Misquoting Jesus with their faith shaken, I had to ask myself, was that appropriate? I could see someone who isn't educated on evidence, and critically analyzing their faith, getting the idea we can't have the originals. But is this really what Ehrman, the famous agnostic New Testament scholar, one of Christianity's greatest critics, thinks? Because he said this paragraph, all the emphasis's his: "These are questions that plague textual critics, and that have led some to argue that we should abandon any quest for the original text--since we can't even agree on what it might  mean  to talk about the 'original' of, say, Galatians or John. For my part, however, I continue to think that even if we cannot be 100 percent certain about what we can attain to, we can at least be certain that all the surviving manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts, which were themselves copied from other man

Confidence in the Bible In the acknowledgements, Ehrman dedicated Misquoting Jesus to Bruce M. Metzger, his "Doctor-Father." In the introduction he explained Metzger as "the world's leading expert in the field, a scholar named Bruce M. Metzger who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary." (1) Lee Strobel interviewed him when it came to the question, was Jesus's biographies accurately preserved for us? Not surprisingly, Metzger wasn't aware of any threatened doctrine (and if there were he would know)(2). At the end, Metzger said that what heavy scholarship did to his faith was "built it. I've asked questions all my life, I've dug into the text, I've studied this thoroughly, and today I know with confidence that my trust in Jesus has been well placed." Metzger took a second to look at Strobel's face, and then emphasized, " Very well placed." (3) In the next chapter was Edwin M. Yamauchi, a razor-sharp intelligent schol

 I'm sorry if you really like the story of the woman caught in adultery. My suggestion to you is to instead immerse yourself in Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4. Like it was said, one reason the story has been seen as able to be included is because it contradicts no doctrine and fits alongside Jesus's nature.  You see, when I read the book, Wallace's statement that I have remembered, for many months since whenever I last saw it, really sunk in. "The remarkable thing is you go through his whole book and you say, Where did he actually prove anything? Ehrman didn't prove that any doctrine is jeopardized." (1) (To be fair to Ehrman, I don't think that was his intention, it was more to accurately assess this part of scholarship so important to him than criticize Christianity. And to be fair to you, reader, I have included everything I have recorded which I think could look like they attack core doctrines.) Wallace said, "Readers end up having far

Bart Ehrman exposed two actual passages that aren't original at all. They are the so-called ending of Mark, and the story of the woman caught in adultery (usually placed as John 7:53-8:11). The fact of the matter is that, at any rate, obviously God did not leave enough evidence to show us if He inspired the passage. And I am firmly convinced we can prove they weren't inspired at all. The forgery in Mark The first verse, after 16:8, parallels Matthew's account, and more significantly John's first resurrection appearance account. Mary might have seen Jesus by herself before the other women. She did indeed go and tell others, specifically the Disciples, and Luke specifically says in 24:11 that they didn't believe the women. Luke 8:2 says Mary Magdalene formerly had seven demons. The next two verses contain errors along with truths. Jesus never appeared in a different "form." I remember reading a book where someone said Jehovah's Witnesses once used it to