Dead Sea Scrolls To Go Digital On Internet 324
mernil writes to mention that the Dead Sea Scrolls are headed for the internet. The Israel Antiquities Authority, custodians of the scrolls, plan on digitizing the 900 fragments to make them available to the public via the internet. Unfortunately they are claiming the project will take somewhere in the neighborhood of two years to complete.
2 years is too long (Score:5, Funny)
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To be fair, 2 years is probably less time than it took them to be transcribed initially. So after however many hundreds/thousands of years, we should be grateful that technology has advanced to a point where it takes 2 years instead of 10. Maybe by 2500 it will only take 1 year to transcribe them.
Re:2 years is too long (Score:4, Funny)
Clearly if it's going to be 50% faster in a mere 492 years, our best bet is to wait until then to transcribe them rather than wasting our precious time now.
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Edifying (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released. Debates will be much more entertaining and edifying, with some good old material to validate certain arguments and invalidate others.
Regardless of your Religious background, the dead sea scrolls are very important and to have them readily available for those who speak the language is exciting for many reasons.
2 Years though, at least this shows you how seriously people take preserving historical documents like this.
My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with. How are we going to be able to validate the good copies from the publicly tampered ones? From a technical standpoint is there anyway to protect things like this so the average Jo knows which is real and which is not?
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Insightful)
My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with. How are we going to be able to validate the good copies from the publicly tampered ones? From a technical standpoint is there anyway to protect things like this so the average Jo knows which is real and which is not?
Ummm... as if it was more difficult when they were *not* on the net? Now you can just claim it says something else, in the future you have to do a pretty good photoshop job on it. And in any case, maybe like with all other information getting it from a source you trust?
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Yeah, his concern is pretty lame.
There will still have the originals.
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Actually no, they're digitizing the originals using the same technique predicted by the movie tron. That's why it's taking 2 years, they've not quite perfected the technology.
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Re:Edifying (Score:5, Funny)
I came across photograph copies in my College Library the other day
Did you wipe them off and apologize to the librarian?
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Informative)
My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with.
Digital watermarking, digital signatures, heck, even a CRC checksum will go a long way to preventing forgeries. And if I'm not mistaken, these things will be on an "official" website somewhere, so if fakes start circulating it will be easy to point to the original.
And I quite agree as to the importance--as a non-Christian who studies ANE culture, this is an exciting and important step.
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Insightful)
So now are we going to get a bunch of jokes on how it takes 2 years to have good 'fakes' made?
Nobody I'm aware of is claiming the Dead Sea Scrolls are not ancient documents.
As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released.
Why? The Dead Sea Scrolls really say nothing, at least nothing positive, about Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain copies of some Old Testament works and works related to the Essenes, a Jewish Zealot group that vaguely resembled Christianity in some ways. If anything, the Dead Sea Scrolls weaken the arguments of orthodox Christianity by demonstrating that Christians were influenced by other Jewish reform movements as much as (or more) than Jesus.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are of enormous importance to Jews as they contain the oldest know copies of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament). But for the most part, the copies of the Torah in the DSS strictly conform to the current translations of the Torah.
Regardless of your Religious background, the dead sea scrolls are very important
I'm not sure why Hindus, Jains, Budhists, Taoists, Native Americans, Neopagans, etc. should care.
2 Years though, at least this shows you how seriously people take preserving historical documents like this.
It's more likely due to he massive egos and arguments surrounding the DSS, and archeology in general. To this day, over 60 years since their discovery, not all of the DSS have been published.
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I mean, aren't these, like, some of, if not THE, oldest writings in the world?
Not even close. You could spend your entire life reading Greek and Chinese documents 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. The oldest writing comes from the Chinese, followed by the Sumerians and Babylonians.
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So now are we going to get a bunch of jokes on how it takes 2 years to have good 'fakes' made?
I welcome the jokes; humor and laughter is the only thing unique to our species.
As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released
As am I, but it will be as enlightening to me as watching "Passion of the Christ" with subtitles turned off.
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I think you misunderstand the essential nature of religion [wellingtongrey.net].
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Informative)
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That mean your less irrational. Not rational.
There really isn't anything rational in Christianity.
I'd like to see some solid premises and reason that applies to an act of blind faith.
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an act of blind faith.
Rational faith is not blind. It is based on experience or reason.
Furthermore faith is not synonymous with belief. You could believe in God's existence without having faith in him (although vice-versa would obviously not make sense).
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Re:so what does it mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not actually how it's used in the Bible.
To quote James 2-19, Demons have this sort of faith but they're not welcomed by God: http://net.bible.org/passage.php?search=Jas%202:18-19&passage=Jas%202:18-19 [bible.org]
It's actually not how it's used most often in real life. Simply put, faith means trust.
Let's assume you're married but it could equally be applied in other close relationships.
* Do you have faith in your wife?
* Are you faithful to her?
* If you close your eyes and fall backwards towards you wife, do you have faith that your wife will at least try to stop you from falling?
* If she says or does something that hurt you, do you still have faith in *her* or do you immediately assume the worst about her?
* If your wife were to try something new that she has no experience in, but you've seen that she's fantastic at improvising, so you have faith that she'll succeed?
On the flip side, if your parents tell you "I have faith that you will win the basket ball game" but you see them betting on the other team, do they really trust you?
> So, "faith in God" in the common senses could imply that one believes he exists, as described, without evidence (an arguably irrational position)
True, it is arguable, which in simple terms means, debatable. Ferocious former Atheist, Anthony Flew (credited for the "Invisible Gardener" parable outlining how stupid believers in God were), switched to Deism (the God of Einstein, Spinoza, Plato, Einstein, and Darwin) precisely because he determined that it was a more rational explanation of the universe and all that there is in it than Atheism.
None of these people are stupid. They looked at the evidence....all the evidence. Granted, there isn't a single piece of evidence that shows God's existence, but the bulk of it tells you that he's there.
It's no different in real life. Getting back to the wife analogy, *why* would you have faith in her? If you give any single situation to prove your point, I could just as easily argue that your interpretation is wrong. However, if you give the sum total of all your experiences, you can build a credible case.
Anyway, here's a question to ponder. Assume that the universe and everything in it is pure matter caught in a cause and effect chain. Essentially pure materialism. You are essentially a bag of marbles held together by natural forces caught in a causal chain that fully determines every move you make. A chair or a rock is no different....you're just composed of different atoms and are configured in different ways, but ultimately, everything is just a bag of causal marbles.
If you truly believe in pure materialism, you must accept the following:
a) There is no difference between you and a chair. What you perceive as life is just an illusion.
b) There is no fundamental difference between breaking your legs and breaking a chair's legs or smashing you to death or smashing a chair to pieces. All you're doing is breaking a few bonds and rearranging the configuration of atoms.
c) All atoms in your body get replaced every decade, so there is nothing that defines who you are other than your overall appearance and even that changes with time. Ultimately, *you* don't exist.
c) There is no such thing as free will....just atoms caught in a causal chain. Evangelical Atheists are thus wasting their time trying to convince anyone, but then again they can't help it, so there's no problem.
d) A consequence of all the above is Humanism or other morality has no foundation in pure materialism and it's actually pretty arrogant to be a Humanist because why are human's more valuable than chairs or rats? If you expand goal of humanism to reduce the total amount of suffering in the world (whatever "suffering" means in materialistic terms),wouldn't it make more sense to sterilize all humans so that animals might flourish in a hundred or so years?
e) Knowledge is irrelevant. What is kno
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I think you've answered your own question:
Leave religion completely aside for a moment and ask yourelf what you meant last time you said you had faith in someone. If you are anything like me, you meant that you trusted them to deliver on what they had promised, and you trusted them to do that because of past personal experience with them, or perhaps a testimonial of them from s
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Belief in the deity is only one fraction of the meaning of Christianity.
Christian means 'like Christ', which is generally accepted as trying to have the insight into life and humanity that he did.
How on earth is that not rational??
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So then Buddhism is somehow more rational because this person is verified to exist? Would it be more rational to follow the teachings of Tom Cruise because I like the color if his hair?
Whether or not the person actually existed isn't really all that questionable. You can deny it, if you wish, but if he did not exist then we're looking at a vast conspiracy. He even appears in the Koran, for example.
I'd also challenge your statement that practicing the principles of Camelot isn't so nutty as you're making
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Focus more on the concept, less on the person.
At that point it ceases to become a religion and turns into a philosophy, which I'd actually argue Buddhism and Arhurianism to be as well. It's the faith part that's irrational, the philosophy part is perfectly rational. Believing in Jesus Christ the son of God is as irrational as believing in King Arthur the son of God (The latter would get you sent to the nuthouse, but not the former. Why?)
However, philosophically agreeing
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Believing in Jesus Christ the son of God is as irrational as believing in King Arthur the son of God
So, are you rational or not?
Ah, now this is a very well constructed argument.
I am willing to concede that Christ may not have been the 'son' of God, in a rational sense, because as I have stated before, I do not believe that God possesses a penis, semen, or any of the required biology used to produce a son.
I am also willing to entertain the possibility that he was literally sent to Earth with a purpose. A destiny, if that suits you better. This seems reasonable, seeing the impact of his life, and considering that he believed it hims
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The power of your reasoning overwhelms me.
Pop-culture assumptions aside, "faith" does not mean "acceptance of something as true without adequate evidence". I have faith in a modern airline's ability to give me a flight that will land safely. (I don't have faith that they'll get me there on time, mind you.) That faith is a trust in something I regard as reliable. My f
rationale for atheism (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the rationale for atheism?
Inasmuch as the scientific method is concerned, the presumption of a controlling intelligence eliminates the need for some categories of investigation, which ultimately inhibits progress.
For example, if you ask, "why does a person get sick?" and one answers "because God wills it, either as a punishment for sin or as a test of faith." You have eliminated the incentive to investigate into things like bacteria, the immune system, and so on.
By beginning with the premise that th
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I'm not sure who modded him Funny, but I agree with his statement.
Some examples:
1) I do not believe in the literal global flood. There's just too much common sense to the contrary, and I haven't personally witnessed anything that makes me believe it may have happened. I don't go in for the 6000 year creation story, or 900-year-old mothers, or any of this nonsense. I'm quite certain that these exist in the Bible as a matter of human error rather than God's will that we all believe in a super-human history
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I do not find it reasonable that God would hate all homosexuals, again as a single example.
I don't find that particular concept anywhere in the Bible, but I'm sure you know that homosexuality as a sin was definitely not invented by Paul. It's mentioned several times explicitly in the Mosaic law. Again it's mentioned in 1 Co. 6:9-11. You'll notice in verse 11 it speaks of those who WERE practicers of such things such as homosexuality. So clearly there's no special hatred reserved for homosexuals, it's simply a sin such as any other. When someone accuses the Bible of being anti-homosexual I usu
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Perhaps you were only stating that Bible thumpers claim God hates homosexuals and not that you thought it was an actual Bible teaching that was in error.
That.
To state it more clearly, I realize that there is a Biblical (Old Testament) basis for the position, but I highly doubt that Christ would have ever said that it was a sin. A lot of what Christ came to say was basically that the religion had strayed too far into tradition, and was getting off-message.
And as to why I don't care much for Paul, see the entire book of Romans...
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I'm curious: Why? Other than personal incredulity.
Would you agree that people sometimes do need "moral education"? That something might not seem bad to me--because of mistaken assumptions or distorted sensibilities on my part? In that situation, wouldn't my own appeal that "I houghly doubt that Christ would have said that ___ was a s
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Why? Other than personal incredulity.
I find nothing about homosexuality particularly sinful. We're talking here about a man loving another man (or woman/woman, etc.) The ability to produce a child isn't really as important as two people living a life in one another's care and being happy. The notion of a wholesome gay relationship may seem odd, but it really would fit the Christian ideal in many ways.
Promiscuity, on the other hand would be on the 'bad' list. It causes all sorts of human problems that are easily avoided by just a tiny bit o
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And even that was based on a transcription error. Originally in Exodus it read that God hates the gOys.
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there is a subset of us Christians who came to faith because it made sense
There is another subset who came to faith by being baptized in blood [kuro5hin.org]. Some people won't accept witness or any other proof.
We tend to be ashamed of the Christians that are most often portrayed in the media.
Never trust a preacher who wears a five thousand dollar suit. Pat Robertson has converted more Christians to athiesm than all the slashdot athiests combined. He is one of the "wolves in sheep's clothing" Christ warned you about; so i
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This is wonderful. If you can read modern square-script Hebrew it's simple to learn Paleo-Hebrew as it is very similar, other than that the glyphs themselves changed (a yod is still a yod, a vav is still a vav, so if you learn the paleo-hebrew glyphs you can read the manuscripts which are in paleo hebrew). This will be great because it will give us direct access to high-quality scans of early scripts of leviticus and other manuscripts from the tenach (old testament). With these going online showing proof of
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Crap. I guess I can't type yivret on /.?
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The size of the Multi-verse (as physics assume now that the universe is only a subset of multi-verse. Is infinite so the probability that any particular event that isn't happening an infinite number of time is 0. So however we exist so there forth we couldn't have come here from probable chance of events. So the concept of a God who in some way willed the circumstances of what exists is just a good answer to the paradox of Math as anything else.
Then there is pascals rational.
There are these possibility.
No G
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Then there is pascals rational.
(ITYM wager) Well, how do you expect to get to Valhalla if you worship the false god Jehova? You may as well worship a frost giant. Thor would be a much better choice, if you don't want to end up in Hel.
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This is hedging your bets of the Picky God/god. I am not debating any faith just a religion in general. Picking a religion where there is/are picky God/god(s) are still the best probable action to choose. There is still the chance of going the Picky God Rout that you will choose the wrong way of life however you are better going that route then choosing the others.
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By the way, the norse Hel isn't the same as the Christian Hell. The land of Hel (Helheim) is the lowest level of the world, and encompasses Niflheim (the land of ice) and Muspell (the land of fire) both of which predate the world (they're part of the creation myth and therefore can't really be part of the world), and is ruled over by Hel (except for Muspellheim which is ruled by Surt, with a flaming sword :-). The middle bid isn't all fire and brimstone torture. I think the dead kind of wander around.
But yo
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This was moderated down not because it was off topic (As it was a response to a modded up challange) but because it proved a point that someone didn't want to hear. Just like Religious Fundies Athiest want to bring down oposing ideas as it would force them to think of things differently. Nothing has changed in the universe.
Absolute fail. (Score:2)
FAIL. There are nine-thousand picky gods. Which do you want to bet on?
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Well if you accept a definition of God as have always existed. Science shows that the Universe hasn't always existed however if God has always exited then there is no point of going a step back as God created time and existed beyond time there forth there is no step back.
The hard part about the debate it the use of infinity as a variable, making it hard to come with a 100% convincing argument however you can make a rational argument. Just not one that can convince everyone. People can make a rational argume
Premise (Score:2)
Then I'm willing to bet you don't know what a premise is.
â"verb (used with object) to assume, either explicitly or implicitly, (a proposition) as a premise for a conclusion.
â"verb (used without object) to state or assume a premise.
A premise doesn't have to be accurate. It has to simply be an assumed foundation for an argument.
They can absolutely defend their belief with rock solid premises. For example:
If was assume God exists.
And we assume God smites those who don't believe in him.
(the premise)
Then it makes a lot of sense to believe.
(a very accurate statement IF the assumptions that form the premise are true)
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Honestly I don't not want to convert you to Christianity and won't proselytize you because you have
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Is it rational to mask your disgust with a display faux befuddlement? If you're going to take time out of your busy day to poke Christians with a stick, you could at least make a rational argument.
But I guess you don't have to because at Slashdot your "point" is an accepted meme by the majority of readers. Which further makes me wonder "why bother?". Maybe you're just a bigot who can't tolerate those who aren't like you.
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Informative)
So what? You're talking about a religion that has had its primary texts re-written countless times over the centuries, already. Nobody today can point at any kind of original "Bible". Whether or not these are "accurate" is pretty irrelevant, even if you're somebody who is Christian/Jewish.
Perhaps you should read up on textual criticism.
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you really say that? Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document? You don't have to share the beliefs of the writers of it to understand that this is an immensely important piece of history.
While you're at it, why don't you take a ball peen hammer to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel since it contains religious thought. Or perhaps make it your life's work to erase any remnant of the works of William Blake since he was apparently a Christian.
It think that this is why many look at hostile agnostics and atheists and see people who are just as irrational as the religious folks that they seem to hate so much.
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document?
Did you really say that? Christianity is ENTIRELY based on the testimony recorded in early Christian texts and the teachings of early Church fathers. If you invalidate early Christian texts, you invalidate Christianity. Much the same is true of Judaism.
Christians tend to attribute psychotic hatred and irrationality to anyone who says "Christianity is nonsense" because it clashes so strongly with their point of view.
Atheists are not talking about smashing the Sistine Chapel, burning the books of William Blake, or killing modern "Christian rock" stars. Find me some quotes or news accounts. You will find people who attack religious art (like Michelangelo's David). They're all religious nuts, who find any depiction of religious figures sinful.
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That would seem to me to be more of a reason that it is historically significant, rather than less. And more of a reason that it should be available.
Christians tend to attribute psychotic hatred and irrationality to anyone who says "Christianity is nons
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While you're at it, why don't you take a ball peen hammer to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel since it contains religious thought.
Sadly, there are those here who would do just that. Fanaticism knows no bounds. There are religious fanatics even among the fanatical athiests.
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I don't so much "look at hostile agnostics and atheists and see people who are just as irrational as the religious folks that they seem to hate so much" any more.
I see people who say that believing in something that is unprovable is wrong. And they want you to believe in that, or them.
Yes, that's what they are asking you to do; either something they are asking you NOT to do (believe), or to just believe them rather than someone or something else.
We might as well have the argument over the entire issue, ra
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It may have been a straw man, but it is hardly passive-aggressive [wikipedia.org]. It's usually best to know terms before you use them.
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FYI, you're talking only of the post-State Religion phase of Christianity.
Forget not that pre-State Religion Christianity was one of many sects of Judaism (could be said there were "many Christianities" at the time) that were nearly all eliminated with prejudice by Rome. This changed marginally when Constantine couldn't deny the popularity of the movement anymore and co-opted it. Maybe the first instance of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish in recorded history.
-Matt
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You're talking about a religion that has had its primary texts re-written countless times over the centuries, already.
You should try reading a little less Dan Brown and a little more actual scholarship. There is certainly debate about the actual origins of the biblical text - whether, for example, the gospels represent mostly eyewitness accounts or are just a written version of oral traditions that circulated for decades in the early church. But there is very little dispute about the fact that the text as
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Interesting)
Listen, there are a LOT of reasons to criticize religion. Take your pick. Hateful violent groups, both internally and externally. In many cases religions encourage people to turn away from knowledge and discovery. Blah blah blah. There are many fruitful, and many flame-ish discussions you can have about religions. But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.
So, for instance, there are fairly minor differences (generally several letters different) in the First 5 books of Moses, between the Bible that the Ethiopian Jews, and the rest of the Jews had, in spite of these groups having virtually no contact for several thousand years.
Now, the Ethiopians had in their cannon several books the rest of the Jewish world has as Apocrypha (I.E. they largely ignored). And, they did not have many later books, or traditions of the rest of the Jewish world.
Different groups have been funny about how they pick and choose which books get INTO (or taken out of) their cannons.
And there are a whole mess of interesting things that come up when a religion starts TRANSLATING texts.
But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong. And wrong from a hateful disposition (assumed from tone) really doesn't belong in an exchange of knowledge. Propaganda? Sure, but an educated conversation? No. Shame on you, and anyone modding you up. If you want to decry the wrongs of religion, there really are enough out there to pick on. Disseminating untruths is really unnecessary.
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But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.
Which religions are you thinking of? The only really good example is the Book of Mormon. Most other religious have periodically revised their religious texts.
But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong.
Some religions, sure. Judaism in particular. The Torah was re-written around 500BC to remove polytheistic references (as the Jews converted to monotheism) and to either re-wrote Genesis and Exodus to make Egyptians the bad guys (due to recent wars with them), or just made the story up at that time.
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew and Luke) were revised, m
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So to summarize, Dead Sea Scrolls != New Testament. Thanks for coming out.
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Insightful)
The most amusing part of this, to me at least, is that YOU are also not supposed to judge. No one is, because it isn't a smart thing to do.
Say what you want, but Christ was a pretty bright guy. It is really pretty hard to find fault in the basic tenants of his message. Certainly there are numerous examples of humans behaving as humans do and labeling it with a religion named after him, but this has little impact on the actual message itself.
I can see why you might resent Christians. I resent a handful myself. I cannot, however, understand how you would bear such ill will towards the epitome of a good person.
Oh wait, you're trolling. Oh, well never mind then. Sorry about that...
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For one who truly believes, they'll take it to heart. For someone who uses their belief for selfish motives, they'll abuse it.
Matthew 7:1-2 [biblegateway.com]
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I have the same issues you, in the realm of 'thug vs son'. My take on it is that God's message to us started out as one of love, got warped along the way, and Jesus came to reiterate it. The thug you see is the justification for what humanity did to the message over the course of several thousand years, or what-have-you.
Re:Edifying (Score:5, Interesting)
There are only two serious flaws in your argument:
1. Jesus said He is the Son of God. You will have to refute Jesus' own description of Himself, or challenge the writings that make that statement and the authors thereof. You are, you know, challenging the veracity of men who went to their deaths to defend that point. They may have been lying, but read Romans 5:7 and consider that. Several died for Jesus' name.
2. God, if He is what and who He claims to be, need not be fair or even just, though he claims to be. As Creator, we are His do with as He pleases. Looking around, He has pretty much left us alone to do as we wish, wouldn't you agree? Reading the Old Testament, God pretty regularly (if not always) declared why He caused disaster or punishment on Man. You may not believe God is who He says He is, and that's fine. But to then challenge His actions according to your interpretation of who and what you think He should be isn't intellectually honest, to me. Dismiss God as not real, I can tolerate that as your opinion. Try to redefine God according to your standards, that doesn't work for me. You and I do not get to decide 'who' God is.
And if you "find the idea of "a god" far more reasonable than the extremely elaborate justification for the story of how Jesus came to exist", I'm interested. If God does exist, and He is who HE says HE is, what's so hard about sending His son as He did? God as Creator can do pretty much anything. A virgin birth is trivial, compared to creating the Universe. Picking and choosing the attributes of God or Jesus leads you down the road of intellectual dishonesty. Don't be lukewarm. Be a believer or not, but don't pick out the parts you like and toss the rest you have a difficult time with. Challenge. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 - "Test everything. Hold on to the good."
I'll leave it to you to discern what is good.
And if you want to dismiss the Bible as hopelessly inaccurate, I can tolerate that as your opinion as well. But doing so leaves you with nothing to base your judgement of what or who God is, since you've dismissed what is considered by His followers as His word. Remember, if God is who He says He is, he could change the Bible to be what He wanted it to be. It is what it is, and He has allowed it. Christians should remember that He may indeed have left it imperfect. We should stop nitpicking the details and focus on the truth.
While I would love to convince you of the truth of Jesus as our Saviour, I'm really just trying to convince you to be either fully atheist or not. Don't get trapped in the middle, thinking Jesus was a 'great teacher' but dismissing some of His own words. If you need to deny Jesus' own claim to being God's Son, you need to pretty much ignore His other words too. He's either right or wrong.
And I'm grateful that I will some day be able to examine and understand the Dead Sea scrolls, with the help of many many scholars. So far as I know, as we research more the Bible is upheld as correct, and is confirmed as accurate historically. We may never settle every issue, but that isn't necessary for me. For you, that I can't be the judge of.
Please accept my offer of blessing in His name.
Re:Edifying (Score:4, Insightful)
So if you are wrong once, then you are always wrong? This is the type of thinking that gives fundamentalist Christians a bad name. Of course its possible to respect Jesus as a great teacher and leader without buying into the whole Christian mythology surrounding him. Muslims do, and so do a lot of athiests.
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There is supernatural being to forgive a non-believer for bad things they do.
In the spirit of Obama, let's agree that there are extremists in every group but most of us are in the reasonable middle. A reasonable (rational) christian can have faith but not feel obliged to impose it on everyone else. Atheists can be moral, amoral, and immoral-- and so can christians (and anyone of any faith). The point being that HUMANS are moral, amoral, and immoral.
In fact, the same human can be amoral (very young), mora
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What kind of "intolerance" are you expecting from him?
It's a manuscript of a Gnostic gospel that we already knew about. Some writers from the early church mentioned that this composition had been written. It is historically quite interesting to now have the contents of that work.
You act as though you expect Christians to put our hands over our ears and shout "I
Patience (Score:3, Funny)
You've waited this long ... what's another two years?
What we need is for Google to develop an actual, physical spider that goes out and searches hard copies of documents for indexing.
Dead Sea Scrolls were proprietary for decades (Score:5, Interesting)
Access to the Dead Sea Scrolls was carefully guarded for decades. Think proprietary database formats.
Back in the '80s or '90s, a scholar published a very detailed index. It was so detailed that other scholars were able to reverse-engineer the text of the scrolls, breaking the data monopoly for those scholars who were only interested in the text on the scrolls rather than the scrolls themselves.
Since then, the keepers of the scrolls have been much more, what is the work I'm looking for, open.
infighting over "first publication" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing it was more professional jealously rather than some "secret revelation invalidating Christianity or Judiasm" that caused the delay.
Confucius say (Score:2, Funny)
Confucius say "Now we can find out if the People's Front of Judea are a bunch of splitters."
front page? (Score:2, Funny)
you know, the bit that goes "to my darking Wendy, all names and places in this book are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to real.."
They aren't paper (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately they are claiming the project will take somewhere in the neighborhood of two years to complete.
Why will it take two years? Part of the problem is because they aren't made of paper. One of them is made of copper, [wikipedia.org] and most of them are made of parchament, [wikipedia.org] which is much more difficult to work with. Especially considering the age.
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Yeah. What's the MIME type for copper?
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Unfortunately they are claiming the project will take somewhere in the neighborhood of two years to complete.
Why will it take two years? Part of the problem is because they aren't made of paper. One of them is made of copper, [wikipedia.org] and most of them are made of parchament, [wikipedia.org] which is much more difficult to work with. Especially considering the age.
My reaction to reading that it will take two years was: DAMN THAT'S FAST!
These are fragments of documents, not full scrolls. And there are what, thousands of fragments? They ought to be handled in clean-room conditions (don't know if they will be). They are extremely fragile. Anyone who damages them will suffer the ire of thousands upon millions of people. Since any manipulation runs risk of damage, presumably you want to ensure that it gets done right the first time. That means lots of logistical pla
The abridged Dead Sea Scrolls (Score:5, Funny)
'The Romans are bad'
'So are any Jews who don't do what we do'
'We don't like women'
'Why is is so hard to get a damn bath around here'
Considering they ar already available (Score:2)
on dvd, I don't understand why it takes two year to put them on the web. Are they adding something? do they need to redo it?
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on dvd, I don't understand why it takes two year to put them on the web. Are they adding something? do they need to redo it?
*citation needed*
Off-topic post (sorta) (Score:2)
I'm convinced all religions are the result of chieftain ancestors who suffered from OCD.
OCD => useless rituals performed to prevent bad things from happening.
Religion => useless rituals performed prevent bad things from happening.
Now.. for the on-topic portion. This has to be a good thing. Access to Earth maps and astronomy images have yielded new discoveries by amateurs. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/08/07/space.discovery/index.html?eref=ib_topstories [cnn.com] The same should happen here.
Time To Recycle (Score:2)
I saw them when they were in San Diego, a few months back. They're all musty and falling apart anyway. I say digitize them and then recycle the paper in to something more useful to people today... like a Vista how-to guide. Everyone wins.
Just one missing datum (Score:2)
You mean... (Score:2)
We might finally have an opportunity to understand why the catholic church had to kill so many people over the past two millenia ?
---I---CAN'T---WAIT---!
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Honestly, anything... even interpretive dance would be more useful than reading them untranslated for Joe Sixpack.
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Wikitranslation?
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Religious text is different from fairy tales. fairy tales could be a subset of the text where say a fictional story is used to illustrate a point. However for the most part most of the religious texts are attempts to keep historical records thousands of years ago.
A large meteor hits and destroys your city, that must be God striking down the sinners. As a guy who was just banished from the city survived and saw the destruction, he gets to make the details.
A merchant dealing with livestock builds himself a boat for easier trading with other cities. Luckally enough survived a food that covered the visible landmass. Whiping out thousands of people. It must of been God flooding the entire earth and his livestock and his wife and kids are whats left of the animal population. He survives so he can make the story.
Religious Texts do offer a good historical perspective if you read them with the fact that they have been translated many times, passed by word of mouth for a longer time. Truth = Beauty Art = Beauty so Artistic alterations have been placed it to make it easier to remember and pass on. Adding a few more lessons here and there... So when reading them many of the facts are right however the moral of the story has been changed.
Fairy tales are ficion just to prove the point. Religious Documents are the best history we have for the time.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
Almost.
Religious texts have rarely been "translated many times", that I know of. That is, they haven't come down to us through a long sequence of translation from one language to another. (They may have been translated many times in the sense that Harry Potter has been translated many times, of course. The question is whether we still have manuscripts in the original language.)
The manuscripts have, however, often been copied many times, introducing textual variants. Such that if we have few manuscripts, we're less confident in the exact wording of the originals. (And if we only have a small number of manuscripts that were under the control of a central religious authority, then all bets are off.) But then if we have many manuscripts, we can become extremely confident in the original wording, through the wonderful world of textual criticism.
That does leave open the possibility of significant change during times of oral transmission. (Though there are limits there, too. Suppose that we only had orally-transmitted knowledge of the JFK assassination. We couldn't be too confident in some details of the events, but if the story is widely-disseminated & widely-known, that would tend to restrict the changes that would occur.)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any error, addition or omission would have been corrected immediately.
If any geek arose to tell the story of Star Wars and claimed that Obi Wan said "Tashi Station, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany" they would be flamed, flogged and their geek card would be confiscated. It was in the writing that things broke down because for most of human history most of the humans couldn't read but they could all talk and listen.
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Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation [questia.com]
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It wasn't just the village elder telling the stories at all. It was a group project, usually done with rhythmic de
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
Religious Texts do offer a good historical perspective if you read them with the fact that they have been translated many times, passed by word of mouth for a longer time.
As for the older stuff that you mentioned (Creation, Flood, Destruction of Sodom, perhaps), I suppose that these stories would indeed either need to be passed by word of mouth or else given by direct inspiration from God.
Most of the later stuff in the Old Testament (really everything except for Genesis and parts of Exodus), though, was written down from the beginning.
Leviticus, for example, is recorded Ceremonial, Religious, Moral, and even Secular Law. This was VERY highly regarded and as such copied extremely carefully. In other words, when a priest or scribe was charged with copying a scroll, he was not allowed to copy line-by-line or word-by-word. Instead, he was required to copy letter-by-letter. All of the other scrolls were held in the same regard--they all either dealt with essentially History, Prophecy, or Law.
The scribes had some VERY strict laws on how to copy, which means that today, of the stuff that remains, there are fewer discrepancies among texts than with copies of any other ancient text.
I saw statistic once that compared Homer's Odyssey with the Old Testament. The OT is significantly longer and has more copies remaining. Statistically, that would mean there is a higher chance of error while copying as well as a higher chance of discrepancies among the surviving texts. This, however, is not the case. Homer's shorter work actually contains many more errors overall--not just per line, but over the course of a shorter book.
How you choose to interpret the Bible is up to you. But at least let it be said that the Bible was properly copied.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Informative)
A few other interesting tidbits on OT scribes:
*If a scribe made an error while copying, he had to completely start over on that page. He was not allowed to blot out a word and rewrite it.
*When a scribe completed a page, it was checked against his original. Every line was counted to ensure that each line had the same number of characters, and each page the same number of lines.
*When a scribe came across the name of God, the vowel symbols were never written, leaving (a transliterated) YHVH.
*Even though the scribe was writing the full name of God, he was still required to ceremonially wash his hands and break his stylus before continuing.
Pretty cool, huh? :)
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Blotting out ink on sheepskin parchment really doesn't work. The Torah scrolls are works of art, having messy blots all over would rather ruin that.
All words in the Torah are written without vowels. Hebrew pretty much never uses vowels, except for teaching children. The "name of god" is also written as Yid Yid and "Hashem" (The Name) in various texts, though the Torah mostly uses Yid Hay Vav Hay.
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*ducks* as evangelicals brandish pitch forks and rocks.
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These may be the oldest fairy tales on the net when the project is complete.
You can at least the following genres among the fragments: Poetry, wisdom, legal code, historical narrative, genealogy, myth/fable, prophetic writing, construction schematics, census, apocalypse/vision.
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