How can we determine which parts of Scripture are true?

[Zelduck]

This is really a question for Christians, but since it doesn't assume the validity of the Bible, I think it belongs here rather than in the Theology, Doctrine, and Dogma section.

There have been multiple canons of Scripture. Books have been accepted and rejected for various reasons throughout Christian history. Books have lied about their authorship. Passages have been added and removed. Books were written in different times and different places by different authors and for different reasons.

So how can I have confidence in any particular verse, chapter, or book, that what I am reading is the inspired work of the Holy Spirit, and not the work of a man, no matter how pious?

What method ought I use to reliably determine what is and is not the Word of God? Has someone already done this for me, and if so, how can I tell if they didn't make a mistake?

[Zzyzx]

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I think Im right and everyone else in wrong.

Exactly. YOU think you are right and that everyone else is wrong. No one seems to agree with your self-analysis. Does that tell you anything?

Perhaps if your evidence was convincing to scholars, theologians, or even website posters you could gain some traction or acceptance or credibility. After forty years of trying, has that happened?

[Korah]

Exactly. YOU think you are right and that everyone else is wrong. No one seems to agree with your self-analysis. Does that tell you anything?

Perhaps if your evidence was convincing to scholars, theologians, or even website posters you could gain some traction or acceptance or credibility. After forty years of trying, has that happened?

Ive tried to avoid answering personal rebukes. This one once again evades any discussion of the issues and just appeals to authority, but it is not directly a personal affront. Its in a form open to answering how one person could be touting views that everyone agrees are wrong, but still standing without refutation beyond appeals to the Consensus. Is that possible? (More than one correct answer.)
1. Academic scholarship is locked into preconceptions that preclude assessing unconventional views.
2. Scholarship is locked into two camps, methodical skeptics vs. Christian apologists. Wherever they agree, like in the dating of GJohn, dissent is quashed almost conspiratorially.
3. Us vs Them sides have already been taken, and the heat of battle prevents a vision of any reconciling position, particularly if it is very complicated.
4. Someone from the Establishment has preferred to use a stand-in to present outlandish views in order to avoid risking his own reputation.
5. The source documents have been found in the form of seventh century copies, but unprovenanced. Before the current owner bought them and stashed them away while negotiating for a higher price, they were typed up and available for study in this completely unprovable form. Theyre correct, but not subject to any proof.
6. Some Establishment figures see the threat, but are patiently exploring counter-attacks which they currently keep under wraps.
7. Reincarnation. Somebody involved in the gospel process has come back. Or some noted Bible scholar of a previous generation is here. (I wont list vampires).
8. Extra-terrestrials. Theyve been around since before Jesus, so ones who were there could tell someone what really happened.
9. Genetics. Creative synthesis requires a mentality that has not existed until the current American mixture of Europeans, Indians, and Blacks.
10. Bipolar. Genius is to madness near allied.
11. Revelation. God has chosen now to let the truth be known. (Or maybe its the Devil.)
12. Free will. People in general dont have free will to change their beliefs. The search for truth would be facilitated for someone who could by will-power switch to a different belief system and then test it out. Then after getting established in it, switch to something else"but all this without a dilettante flippancy about the importance of truth and earnestness.
13. (And turning to possibilities apart from truth value): internet trolls are well known. This is just an elaborate deception that has thus far escaped detection.
14. Similarly, this is an enterprise in making people think outside the box. (If so, its been a massive failure, as everyone seems to hunker down as atheist, Christian, skeptic, or whatever.)
15. Same thing, except God is the instigator. God gives charismatic gifts to people who are not necessarily good nor purveyors of truth. One lesser-known gift (in German the same four letters mean poison) is the Gift of the Sower. Its not mentioned in the Bible, but a highly gifted charismatic leader assessed me as having this gift. Its a lonely gift. I interact with people without ever finding out if I have had any influence on them (for good or bad). I have long thought of myself as a gad-fly, that I should present creative views to test them out. I dont seem to get much response, but along the way I think I stumble on to unusual views that are nevertheless better than what is commonly accepted. I dont stop presenting them just because they arent accepted.

And what is the relevance of all this to the OP? Well, its some evidence that the Parable of the Sower is part of Scripture that is true.

[Zzyzx]

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And what is the relevance of all this to the OP? Well, its some evidence that the Parable of the Sower is part of Scripture that is true.

After all that verbiage, EXACTLY what part of the parable of the sower has been shown to be true?

[Korah]

[Replying to post 332 by Zzyzx]
I was hoping someone would get back to substance, but meanwhile I can comment that my closing line was not meant to imply that nothing else was relevant that I said in my Post #331. Almost all of it is relevant to whether I or any other non-academic can say anything worthwhile. What is the point of DC&R if not? Do such people ever debate here?

[Zzyzx]

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I was hoping someone would get back to substance,

Perhaps you can lead the way by providing SUBSTANCE beyond your personal opinions?

but meanwhile I can comment that my closing line was not meant to imply that nothing else was relevant that I said in my Post #331.

Yes, you have SAID many things and faithfully refer to your own opinions. Have you convinced anyone anywhere to accept your opinions as truthful, accurate and significant?

Almost all of it is relevant to whether I or any other non-academic can say anything worthwhile.

If you have worthwhile and credible things to present, by all means start doing so. Repeatedly referring to your non-accepted "thesis" has evidently been a dead end. Perhaps it is time to try something different, something that can be substantiated, something more than opinion and speculation?

What is the point of DC&R if not?

The point of DC&R is specified in Debate Forum Intro and Rules http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... a0586f296b and in various sub-headers at the top of each page (such as "Pressing matters of the day and of all time, debated among thoughtful participants of all faiths").

Do such people ever debate here?

To the best of my knowledge no recognized / credentialed / educated religious scholar or theologian has debated here. Some of us have invited faculty and students of divinity schools to participate in our debates with no known results. Perhaps they dislike our level playing field whereupon their prejudices and presuppositions are not given preferential treatment.

That is unfortunate because it would be interesting and perhaps even challenging to have sound arguments presented in favor of theism.

Very few have even been bold enough to identify themselves as professional religionists (preachers or others who derive income from religious activities).

The only claimed "respected theology professor" (Mcarma) appeared a few years ago and was exposed as a fraud (a divinity school dropout masquerading as a professor) by me personally.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 334 by Zzyzx]
Thanks for the information, but I remind you that you have not dealt with Posts #308 and 316, excerpts from my scholarly article. Does Ignosticism forbid dealing with any substance not fully defined into your system?

[Zzyzx]

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Thanks for the information,

It might be prudent to seriously consider the content of said information

but I remind you that you have not dealt with Posts #308 and 316, excerpts from my scholarly article.

Scholarly article? Surely you jest. An article may be deemed scholarly by scholars " not by the author. Citing one's own work as proof of their argument is amateurish rather than scholarly.

Does Ignosticism forbid dealing with any substance not fully defined into your system?

The Ignostic position, as I have explained many times to those ignorant thereof, is "We cannot intelligently discuss proposed supernatural entities until they have been defined, identified and described" [and shown to be something more than product of imagination].

I am not bound by the Ignostic position (as "tending toward Ignosticism" would indicate to an astute person) so if you ever come up with substance (beyond personal opinion and conjecture) I am willing to evaluate its merits.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 336 by Zzyzx]
If you think the Consensus shields you from having to discuss the evidence for eyewitnesses, you surely can't say it precludes discussion of the Synoptic Problem.

One would think Dennis Ninehams dictates from the 1950s would not still preclude considering whether there might be eyewitnesses to Jesus after all, but maybe Richard Bauckhams 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses was too mild-mannered and unfocused to take effect. (It was soundly critiqued by David Catchpole in 2008.) In any case it did not open doors to my more radical position that seven eyewitnesses actually themselves wrote about Jesus. Let me turn instead to an opposite case, one in which there is no agreement and perhaps the conviction among many that the matter cannot be solved. Im talking about the Synoptic Problem, certainly a matter related to the OP of whether we can determine whether the Scriptures are true. Specifically, is Luke a gospel derived from one or both of the other two?

The Synoptic Problem may require a new solution much like I have been developing for the past year. However, the explanation can start with the prevailing view, the Two-Source Hypothesis. In it the Gospel of Mark plus Q are thought of as the original texts. The former is best amended to the Triple Tradition (excluding parts of Mark like most of chapters 6 to 8 that are not in Luke) and the Double Tradition (whatever is not in Mark that is in both the other Synoptics). Conservative scholarship would attribute these to origination from the apostles Peter and Matthew. However, it is now known that GMark includes much that is best understood as coming from Q (for those who believe in a Q). The upshot is that the two sources can be attributed to the same men, but the more verbally exact comparable pericopes can traced to Peter probably at 44 AD (see Acts 12:12) adding Q2 and Petrine portions of GMark on to the earlier Aramaic portions (Q1 and Twelve-Source) that had already been compiled by Matthew (who did not write any of the later portions of GMatthew). In total these come back to the Triple Tradition and the Double Tradition, but with a different composition and origin. Our extant GMark was not known to or used towards GLuke.

Whether as two different documents or as one combined mixed Aramaic and Greek text, this Proto-Gospel was used as the basis for a translation into Greek that led to GLuke in a Proto-Luke form. This happened before the creation of texts leading to the other two Synoptics that included the extra material shared by GMatthew and GMark. The major addition was the L material unique to GLuke, but some small portions were inserted back into the Proto-Gospel (or simply copied more exactly in the first place) where we see the longest stretches of exactness between GMatthew and GLuke: see especially Luke 3:7-9, 16-17; and 7:22-23, all about John the Baptist. (Apparently whatever method used was burdensome and subsequent exactness is less close.) To this point the term the gospel had never been used, which tells us that GLuke is the best candidate for the earliest gospel.
Meanwhile the dual-language Proto-Gospel text(s) had the Aramaic portion independently translated into Greek and the M material was added to from Proto-Matthew. The Pauline term the gospel now starts to appear.

There is too much difference between GMatthew and GMark for Proto-Matthew to have gone for use by one and then copied by the other. Yet there is so much similarity that they must share this intermediate phase (Proto-Matthew) that each subsequently used. This Proto-Matthew was abridged towards GMark and rearranged towards GMatthew.

Along the way the various source texts were still available for use or for copying into other variant gospels. Apparently an (in-progress?) Proto-Matthew got back to where L could be added. We can know this occurred because we have many citations from lost gospels that seem most often like this L material. A case in point is the Gospel of Marcion that seemed so much like Luke that opponents called it a mutilated Luke. It turns out that this is not correct. Marcion included much that is in the other three gospels, on the one hand, and his critics charged him with omitting verses that were never in Luke at all, but in the other three gospels. It is thus impossible (as radicals say) that Marcion wrote a pre-cursor text to GLuke. Yet the text he used was early, preceding the addition of the Infancy Narrative. Marcions gospel was parallel to GLuke, neither before it nor after it. Likewise it was parallel to the other gospels mentioned in the 2nd Century, the Memoirs of the Apostles and the Gospel of the Hebrews. We cannot know whether citations are to our gospels or to collections preceding or subsequent to them, but there is so much evidence of non-extant early texts that we can dismiss the other contenders for solutions to the Synoptic Problem, both the Griesbach Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goulder (Goodacre) Hypothesis. Occams Razor just does not apply to such complicated histories of early development and citations. Neither one allows for the evidence (no the gospel) that Luke was first.
(Reflections on two other scholars have contributed to my greater aggressiveness here: Steve Mason and Stephan Huller.)

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 337:

...
However, the explanation can start with the prevailing view, the Two-Source Hypothesis. In it the Gospel of Mark plus Q are thought of as the original texts.

Until this Q source is found, any conclusions based on it should remain firmly in the realm of the hypothetical. Such a "prevailing view" then is merely an argumentum ad populum by wayum of hypotheticalationums.

All I hafta do now is declare a hypothetical Joey Document that says "Naw, y'all got it all wrong", and I've hypothetically refuted any hypothesis one may present.

Aint it funny how "That source ain't convincing" can be "overcome" by, "Naw, I got me another'n, but I can't show it to ya".

[Korah]

[Replying to post 338 by JoeyKnothead]
No, I denied that there ever was a Q that was simply the conventional overlap between Matthew and Luke. The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas in 1946 made that obsolete, and just recently Dennis R. MacDonald has conclusively shown that GMark included Q text, including some narrative. For my purposes I expand Q to include almost everything in GMark's overlap with GLuke, then divide that between the originally Aramaic portion and the originally Greek portion, from Matthew and Peter respectively, the latter identified by verses with verbal exactitudes. This includes all the Triple Tradition and Double Tradition as the Greek Proto-Gospel first used towards GLuke (first as Proto-Luke).