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From: karl@osu-eddie.UUCP (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Deception by misrepresenting fragments of NT as manuscripts
Message-ID: <21@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Dec-84 17:22:08 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.21
Posted: Thu Dec 27 17:22:08 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Dec-84 06:00:13 EST
References: <1835@ucf-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Society for the Advancement of Raw Weirdness
Lines: 154

----------
> From yiri@ucf-cs.UUCP (Yirmiyahu BenDavid)
>>Anyway, it  is  agreed  that  sticking  to the  more  scholarly  aspects  is
>>important. I must disagree, obviously, with your claim that Christianity  is
>>a counterfeit. You attempted  a  couple of  times  in the recent past to use
>>some of the New Testament (as we call it) to maintain your position. I feel,
>>however, that you  did  so  incorrectly. As  an  example, you recently cited
>>Jesus' claim that he came to fulfill the Law, not to destroy it [Matt 5:17].
>>You said that  this  proved  that  the  keeping  of  Torah  by  men is still
>>important,  even  in  Jesus' opinion which  you  generally  dislike  anyway.
>>However, the verse actually reads,  "Do not think that I came to abolish the
>>Law  or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill"  [NASB,  if
>>you care]. After verifying things with a friend who reads Greek (I don't), I
>>note the importance of the fact that Jesus said, "*I* come to fulfill," that
>>is, that he himself  was  fulfilling  the  Law.  Thus,  that verse cannot be
>>construed to mean that Christ was saying that Law is required. (You are free
>>to point out other verses where you think such a claim is made, of course.)
> 
> ***************************
> Yiri responds:
> Your argument fails on a number of points. First, the logic of ignoring
> that he did not come to abolish the Torah according to this passage is
> glaring.
----------
You are misreading my statement.  I  did  not  ignore it. The law exists. It
will  continue to exist for quite some time yet, I suspect; Matt 5:18  deals
with that quite well. The point is that, since Christ came and fulfilled the
law, there is no further need for us to adhere to it.  See next paragraph.

----------
>          Second, interpreting the word 'fullfil' (actually 'fill') in
> that symbolic way rather than the simple and direct (and correct) inter-
> pretation that he simply kept Torah, is what one would expect from a
> Christian frame of reference... however that is not the frame of
> reference of the 1st century N'tzarim...
> Thirdly, the term is more correctly 'crash down' rather than 'abandon'.
> Thus, the passage should more accurately read "Do not believe that I
> came to crah down the Torah or the Prophets. I did not come to crash
> down, but rather to fill."  You and other Christians have simply applied
> interpretations to 'fill' (or 'fullfil') which were alien to the Jews
> who spoke/wrote the words. In point of fact, the verse cannot be
> construed as you would have it without injecting the antinomian
> counterfeit frame of reference of the Roman pagans into what was, in the
> time of the historical Y'shua, a Jewish idea. 
> ****************************
----------
It appears to me that  you  wish  to  split  hairs.  Fine;  what constitutes
"filling the law"? Particularly as distinct from "fulfilling"? I do not  see
any way you can get the simpler,  "I  keep  Torah" out of "I did not come to
crash down, but rather to fill." If the law is filled, then it is done with,
since "filling" in any way  I  understand  it  implies an act of completion.
(When I fill a cup, I can't put any more coffe in it. When I've had my  fill
of a discussion, I stop  reading  articles  on  that discussion.) Further, I
didn't imply any sort of "abandonment"; when I'm done with something, I  put
it down and  leave  it.  Those  concepts are  hardly  the  same.  (If I have
business out-of-town, I am not abandoning my family, though I see to it that
my responsibilities toward  them  are  filled  or  fulfilled  so far as I am
capable to do so.  I leave them, I do not abandon them.)

----------
>>Also, someone else  pointed  out  the  existence  of  a  huge  number of New
>>Testament manuscripts, some dating from before 150AD, to which you responded
>>by saying that any scholar who  knows his  way in out of the rain knows that
>>no manuscripts in existence are that old. I emphatically disagree here. From
>>McDowell's *Evidence That Demands  A  Verdict*  (my  copy is old enough that
>>it's  before  there  was  vol  1 and vol 2), I  note  the  citation  that  a
>>manuscript  known  as  Bodmer  Papyrus  II,  archaeologically  dated  around
>>150-200AD,  is in the Bodmer Library of World Literature, and contains  most
>>of John. McDowell  in  turn  cites  Bruce Metzger  in  *The  Text of the New
>>Testament* in support of this. Further, there is the Chester Beatty  Papyri,
>>dated approx  200AD.  Numerous  other  manuscripts  are  described  in  this
>>book.
> 
> ***********************
> Yiri responds:
> And I reiterate... any scholar who knows his way out of the rains knows
> the difference between a manuscript of the 'New Testament' and a papyrus
> fragment of a few verses... Furthermore, it is despicable to be so
> deceptive as to try to give the impression that the 'New Testament' is
> supported from 150 CE when, in fact, there are only a few fragments of a
> few verses here and there. The earliest mss. is the codex Sinaiticus
> (some argue the vaticanus from roughly the same period.. but the
> Sinaiticus in my view is more closely linked to Palestine origins while
> the vaticanus is more closely linked to Egyptian origins) dating from
> circa 450 CE.  The papyrus to which you refer is P66 and dates from
> circa 200 CE, not 150. What it actually covers is John 1:1 - 6:1; 6:35 -
> 14:26,29-30; 15:2-26; 16:2-4,6-7,10-20,22-23; 20:25 - 21:9. This is
> hardly the 'New Testament'!!! Get your facts straight and quit being
> deceptive and misrepresenting things.
> ***********************
----------
(a) I challenge your source.  To  begin with,  the  Bodmer Papyri constitute
more than one mss, specifically P66, P72, and P75, whereas you attempted  to
reduce it to  only  P66.  Incorrect.  Further,  as  Paul  Dubuc noted in his
posting on this subject, they contain (collectively) most of John and  Luke,
as well as Jude and 1st and 2nd  Peter. This is indeed a good-sized fraction
of  the  NT  to be in one place. My sources are  McDowell's  *Evidence  That
Demands a Verdict* and  Geisler  and  Nix'  *A  General  Introduction to the
Bible*.

(b) Since you feel a need  to  start  name-calling,  I  deduce that you have
decided  that it is time to leave the scholarly aspects of  this  discussion
behind. Fine, you do that;  I  however reserve  the right to ignore anything
further  you have to say on this subject. If you cannot be civil but  merely
wish to  to  reduce  the  discussion  to  "you're  despicable"  and  "you're
deceiving  everybody," effectively calling me a liar, then I don't feel  any
compunction at all about  blowing  you off.  I  will not participate further
once this article is complete.

----------
>>I trust you now see my  position.  You have  raised some interesting points,
>>and  I fully expect to see more coming from you, but I think you  were  far,
>>far off the mark on these items. I have other examples where I feel you made
>>mistakes,  but  I'm not doing this to try to beat you into the  ground;  I'm
>>just  explaining  how  I  feel   about  the idea  that  "Christianity  is  a
>>counterfeit."
> 
> ***********************
> Yiri responds:
> It is obvious who is off the mark.
> ***********************
----------
Further support for the idea that Yiri is no longer interested in discussing
the  subject,  but  rather  that he is interested  in  deriding  anyone  who
disagrees with him. It is rude, insulting, and totally unnecessary.  I  will
not lower myself to that level in this newsgroup; it is too important to me.

----------
>>[Side,  somewhat  editorial  comment:  The  use  of  !s  in articles in this
>>newsgroup has risen rather dramatically of late. I submit that use of  them,
>>particularly in long  strings  of  4  or 5,  do  little  more  than give the
>>impression  that  the writer is yelling at all his readers.  Such  usage  is
>>bound to cause people to stop  reading these  writers' articles, or at least
>>to  discount  their  appropriateness/veracity/factual  content.  I  strongly
>>suggest that we all try to stop the habit.]
> 
> ***********************
> Yiri responds:
> Regardless of how you interpret exclamation points, they are used to
> attempt to draw the attention of the reader to something which NEEDS to
> be grasped. It is my hope that you do so.
> **********************
----------
I doubt it. From your attitude in  preceding paragraphs, I conclude that you
do  not  in fact hope any such thing. There is more than one way to  draw  a
reader's attention when writing. If  your  only mechanism is to yell, then I
neither  want  nor  need to listen to you. Write anything  further  on  this
subject you wish; I won't be reading any of it.
-- 
From the badly beaten keyboards of him who speaks    +---best address
in textured Technicolor *TyPe* f-O-n-T-s...          |
						     |
Karl Kleinpaste @ Bell Labs, Columbus   614/860-5107 +-----> cbrma!kk
                @ Ohio State University 614/422-0915   osu-eddie!karl