New 'Dead Sea Scrolls' Revealed
livescience.com
livescience.com
This is a common thing that comes up since most of these manuscripts were gathered by private "archaeologist." If not seen in the light of manuscripts we have for other ancient text it is easy to forget how significant these were/are. We don't have any ancient manuscripts with anything close to these.
its awesome just to see them online.
Or was that the point of Nicene, to create a coherent narrative with that was a tad more believable at the time?
The Qumran scrolls have nothing whatsoever to do with Nicaea. The OT canon was well established before the Christian era.
As far as canonical issues, the council of Nicaea had nothing to do with establishing the canon of Scripture as accepted by the 4th century church. They did publish a list of those books which were already widely recognized in the church, however, no votes were taken as to what books were or were not to be counted as part of the NT canon. No decisions regarding the canon, whether of the Old or the New Testament were made. This is not speculation. We have the proceedings of the council.
Regarding the OT: There are specific works, and not that many in all, that were universally recognized in Judaism as the works of recognized prophets. We have no records or evidence of any formal process of canonizing these books. By the time of the inter-testamental period, there was unanimity regarding the canonicity of these books. Likewise there was unanimity regarding the status of the Apocrypha: works that were useful for history or piety, but were not considered to be scripture.
Regarding the NT, the situation is pretty much the same. Works which could reliably be attributed to an apostle, or one of the close associates of the apostles, were widely recognized by the early church as scripture.
A few books that were "spoken against," meaning there was not unanimity regarding their apostolic provenance. These are known as the "antilegomena," and were placed into a separate category. They were subordinate to the other books, and were not used as the primary sources for any particular doctrine, but were still highly regarded. For the record, the antilegomena are: Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude, and Revelation.
There are several lists of NT books extant which are largely consistent with one another, but with some differences. See the Muratorian Fragment for one such example.
A third category of books were also recognized: books which did not have apostolic authority, and thus were not considered to be scripture, but were useful theological treatises and widely disseminated. The "Shepherd of Hermas" was one such work. The Didache is also often considered to be such a work.
Outside of this, there were many late works which were never considered to be part of the recognized canon. These are often, and inaccurately, referred to by modern authors as "lost books of the Bible." However, they were never "lost", and were known by the early church fathers to be works of late authorship, and thus lacked apostolic provenance. In other words, they recognized them as forgeries, and the church never took them seriously.
Regarding any "official" canonization of the books of the Bible, we have no extant official pronouncements until the Council of Trent in the late 1540s. Some suspect that the Synod of Hippo Regius made a determination regarding the canon, but as those proceedings have been lost, it is an open question. Regardless, all extant evidence demonstrates that the NT canon as we know it was settled by the mid 2nd century.
Was there? I thought this didn't really become a question in Christianity until Luther.
It was not until the Council of Trent that any controversy arose regarding the apocrypha between the Lutherans and Rome, when Rome formally declared the apocrypha to be inspired and canonical. For more on this topic, see the Examination of the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent by Martin Chemnitz.
As to the relation to the Jewish canon of the intertestamental period, there is some ambiguity as to where some "apocrypha" works lie (in which the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves play a role.) The position you've put forward is common and goes back to at least Jerome, and holds that the works which were accepted as the Jewish canon, in the Hebrew form they were found in, at much later dates than the intertestamental period, accurately reflect the canon of the earlier period. Which isn't an implausible assumption, and for a long time there wasn't a concrete reason to suspect any particular variance though there was very little reason to assume no variance, either.
However, regarding whether the Tanakh in the inter-testamental period, namely those books that were "laid up" in the temple at Palestine: We have no evidence or reason to suspect that the canon preserved by the Masoretes, was in some part different from the Tanakh.
We know of the dispute between Jerome and Augustine, which appears to be due to ignorance on Augustine's part, who thought the Jews counted the apocryphal books as part of the Tanakh. He was obviously wrong.
Jerome's opinion was shared by Gregory the Great, and even, somewhat ironically, by Cardinal Cajetan in Luther's day. Luther simply followed the best scholarship of his day.
Another interesting story, about FBI investigating Greens: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/26/exclusive-f...
I'm an Israeli too, and I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't taken those mandatory classes, and encountered Biblical Hebrew today for the first time, I wouldn't really understand it. Back in highschool, we had to use a commentary/thesaurus/teacher all the time.
That said, when I say differences it's generally a matter of a few words, not huge, distinct plots or something.
Sometimes these finds can also include lost, non-canonical texts, but it looks like not in this case.
The vast majority of them are terribly boring, by way of example, the very first one on the page:
> τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, [καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ] ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον [μεθ’ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός.]
> All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: Behold, the virgin in the womb will conceive, and will bear a son, and [they will call the name of him Immanuel], which is translated, '[with us God]'
The [bracketed] parts are omitted in some manuscripts. These omissions may feel significant, but since this is a quotation of well-known saying, the shorter readings are probably some scribe trying to scrimp on paper who thinks you should go buy that book if you wanted to know what's in it. This can be annoying in cases where the book in question didn't make it out to modern scholarship, and all the scribes scrimped on paper that day, which does happen.
Less commonly (although not infrequently), a textual problem is significant enough to bleed all the way through to the end user. This typically happens when there is no agreement about how to resolve the conflicts or the possibilities are so strange as to be nonsensical. One amusing example is 1 sam 6:19 [1]. There is overwhelming manuscript support for a reading like this:
> But the Lord struck down some of the people of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the ark of the Lord; he struck down 50,070 of the men. [NET]
However, in addition to there being a glaring grammar error in the manuscript, this reading presents a number of obvious problems: logistical (how exactly do you get 50,070 people to all look into a box?), numerical (this is a surprisingly exact figure to collect during wartime in enemy territory), internal (elsewhere in the same book Beth Shemesh is a tiny rural village), archeological (it really was a tiny rural village).
This problem has lead to various wildly different resolutions over the years, a small sampler:
> But God struck down some of the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they looked into the ark of the LORD. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the LORD had dealt them. [NIV]
> God struck down the men of Beth-shemesh because they looked inside the ark of the LORD. He struck down 70 men out of 50,000 men. The people mourned because the LORD struck them with a great slaughter. [HCSB]
> Then God smote those of Bethshemesh because they had looked at the ark of the LORD; he smote fifty thousand of the people and seventy principal men. And the people lamented because the LORD had smitten the people with such a great slaughter. [Jubilee]
> And He smiteth among the men of Beth-Shemesh, for they looked into the ark of Jehovah, yea, He smiteth among the people seventy men -- fifty chief men; and the people mourn, because Jehovah smote among the people -- a great smiting. [YLT]
> Perhaps the text should be understood to read the LORD killed 70 men and 50 oxen. [NKJ footnote]
> [...] ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν [...]
There is a more glaring problem here: "παρθένος" here can be translated as either "young woman" or "virgin", with the former being the more common original meaning. The virginity of Mary can, in fact, very well be a striking mistranslation that's stuck over the centuries.
You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_7:14
But leaving that aside, a reading of 50,070 has a number of other problems. First, it does not explain how such an exact figure was calculated, which would have been a major statistical undertaking at this time. Compare to a similar situation in Numbers 1, where nearly 60 verses are devoted to explaining the procedure used to arrive at figures much less exact than these. (Those figures are difficult too, but not because of their exactness.)
But leaving that aside also, it doesn't account for the glaring error in the number itself: שִׁבְעִ֣ים אִ֔ישׁ חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים אֶ֖לֶף אִ֑ישׁ is a bizarre way to write a number. It's like saying my software has "70 lines 50KLOC". Everything is wrong: the place order (fifty-thousand seventy, not seventy fifty-thousand), the conjunction (fifty-thousand and seventy), the noun ("lines") is redundant and even interrupts the number. If somebody said "70 lines 50KLOC" you would not assume they meant 50,070, you would assume they made an error.
All lines of evidence point to some problem with the figure, but there is really no agreement as to how it is resolved. The modern style is to assume that "70 men" and "50,000 men" are two different figures, one of them is spurious, and choosing 70 is better than choosing 50,000. The style falling out of favor is to assume two figures for two distinct things, one of which is lost, which is how you wind up with the "70 men and 50 oxen" readings.
Finding a new manuscript could very well blow the lid off this debate, but it would have to be quite old, as both the problem and the debate around it are positively ancient. I believe we have the 50,070 reading all the way back to 50BCE, and we certainly have rabbinical sources arguing about it by c. 300. The book itself only dates to 550 BCE, so it is a very narrow window to stumble onto a manuscript.
There is an outside chance this particular section may be lifted from an older, lost work all the way back to the time of David, so this problem may even pre-date the book in which it appears. Unfortunately we have only tens of lines of manuscripts from that whole period, so recovering that work – if there even is an earlier work, which is not at all clear – is terribly unlikely.
What OP may be referencing are the much more significant variations between the MT and the LXX. The LXX version of Daniel is quite a lot longer, uses very different details, and even includes additional stories [1] not present in the MT.
This has presented something of a problem, since although the LXX is a translation of a source text and so is inherently inferior to it (like any English translation would be), it is a translation so incredibly old that the later parts of the bible use it when they quote the earlier parts, and it was the standard version in the ancient world for quite some time. Meanwhile, the MT is an actual manuscript in the source language but arrives at least a thousand years later on. This creates a bit of a puzzler about which one to follow when they are quite different, and they are quite different in Daniel.
The DSS basically settled the issue with regards to Daniel in favor of the MT and against the LXX. There was not really anything "new" that we did not have in the MT, but there were some LXXisms that fell out of favor.
However, in other books it went the other way, sometimes favoring the LXX reading. This suggests that the LXX and the MT may reflect different underlying source texts, that are both quite old and both have some legitimate claim to being authoritative. The situation is complicated somewhat because most of these books are more compilations than they are a work by a single author, and deciding where the original work ends and the interpolations begin is pretty arbitrary.
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=6f9-Fnmy3sEC&pg=PA149&lpg=...
One would not say that the historicity for the old and new testament documents is comparable to "many" ancient works. On the contrary, the number of MSS for old and new testament documents is like a nuclear explosion in the timeline of ancient history. There are no ancient works which even come close.
"Judaism had adapted a posture of reverence for scripture"
That's a strange statement to make? It sounds more like modern-day form criticism creeping through than an objective understanding of events.
The parent says nothing about historicity (although is Kings really more historical than Livy or Plutarch or Herotodus?) but just marvels that through so many copies there were relatively few major changes. But any ancient work we have was preserved in precisely the same way -- scribes making copy after copy.
> That's a strange statement to make? It sounds more like modern-day form criticism creeping through than an objective understanding of events.
What's strange about it? The Bible was considered holy writ; if careful copying is done for stories without the benefit of that classification, surely it's all the more appropriate in that case.
As to some claiming its merely dealing in stolen artifacts, most of this concern only arises when profit is to be made or the group claiming ownership has a strong voice. When does it stop? We argue day in and day out here about the absurdity of copyright and patents yet rush to defend states declaring ownership over stuff they know not existed? (its even sillier with sunken treasures)
I'd argue that the state should own historic artifacts so that they can be held in common. That way no one individual can claim ownership, retain the right to destroy it if they wish, and prevent others from viewing/studying it.
Of course the state isn't going to let me or you handle it, but they'll obviously give access to research institutions and whatnot who will publish their findings. Hobby Lobby dude might not do the same and as a private owner, he retains the right not to.
I'm more than slightly sure the Green family has total control over this, "museum", and this was less a donation, than a transfer of stolen artifacts from an individual, to a private company held by that individual.
Hobby Lobby, as you may recall, is the privately held company that disallowed its workers to use the Affordable Care Act to cover birth control, because of the religious beliefs of the owners.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/us/hobby-lobby-case-suprem...
More than slightly sure? What you really should have said is: "I have no idea what I'm talking about"
"Hobby Lobby, as you may recall, is the privately held company that disallowed its workers to use the Affordable Care Act to cover birth control, because of the religious beliefs of the owners."
Ahhh, so you demonize them because they go against your personal beliefs.
One has nothing to do with the other. You just wanted to post your displeasure with Hobby Lobby.
I also demonize serial killers, because they go against my personal beliefs. Because that's what personal beliefs mean. I also don't calibrate the lives destroyed from insanity, why should a tolerate the mass delusions from religion again?
In a wider context indoctrination of children. I feel that 'Sunday school' is child abuse. But, where we don't tolerate public beatings of children some topics are considered off limits.
PS: I accept many people will disagree with this. But, while many pat them on the head and move on I think it is important for everyone to understand their bubble is just that, and their assumptions are far from universal.
A class that covered the 4-5 most common world religious beliefs as well atheism in a way that did not promote any of them, much less one over the others (a tall order in some communities, I'm sure), would do a great deal to both inform individuals on various beliefs and how they interrelate, as well as foster understanding for others.
So, it's not actually about 'religion' or 'tolerance' it's about the short list of accepted religions.
PS: Some argue that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Child_Welfare_Act fixed this, but there are plenty of more recent cases disproving that idea. As of 2010, Alabama,[41] Indiana,[42] Kentucky,[43] Louisiana,[44] Missouri,[45] and Tennessee[46] still use the "existing Indian family" exception.
I prefer to think I'm "falling into the trap" of assuming that personal choice is important and we want to preserve it. Like most things, both extremes of the spectrum are unhealthy. Indoctrination by your parents about the "one true way" to think is dangerous, but so is indoctrination by the state.
The way to fight misinformation is not to restrict that information, it's to provide more information so people can make informed choices. It's a free market of ideas, and information (and light regulation) is key.
> We where happy to indoctrinate Indians though forcible separation from their parents.
We were happy to enslave people as well. That doesn't mean we should condone conduct such as that going forward.
> So, it's not actually about 'religion' it's about the short list of accepted religions.
No, it's about opening people up to the possibility of choice, and that there there may exist views different than they have been exposed to. I'm an atheist myself, but I can't imagine a world in which people are forced, coerced or steered to a particular belief as being better.
This has been a common state of affair in many places for thousands of years. But here is the thing, you don't need to indoctrinate someone as an agnostic.
An interesting comparison is the effort to maintain belief in Santa Clause vs end it.
On the other hand, I think the history of humanity, which involves nearly universal belief in some flavor of divinity, is all-but-conclusive proof that your second point is incorrect. That doesn't mean the x-theists are right: just that religion is quite obviously the default state of humanity, and irreligion is the exception.
I suspect in 10,000 years looking though limited and relatively random records Santa could be considered a widely warshiped god even if effectively zero adults believe in him today. Private journals are solid evidence, writing on temple walls is not. A coworkers Rabbi growing up was an atheist.
If we are going by popularity either Atheism or Agnostic beliefs are probably the single most common specific beliefs. Religions come and go, shifting through time so a modern Mormon has little in common with a 5th century Christian sects.
There is no ethically sound justification for forcing a child to go to Church repeatedly during their development. Most religious people believe that children have innate innocence until a certain point. Until that point, they have no need for religion and should be given the opportunity to make up their own mind about it when they are old enough.
Yes, of course the US only plays lip service to separation of church and state so that can cause confusion.
Separation of church and state doesn't mean you're entitled to various federally funded benefits, regardless of your beliefs. At the state level - sure.
required to provide disability and sick leave for women who are recovering from an abortion.[4].
What's your point?
Also, indoctrination of children is an abhorrent crime. It's child abuse. It's brainwashing, fact, and there's no way to argue otherwise. Brainwashing is the word. It's instilling fear, implanting a worldview in a child while their brain is developing that will cripple and condition them for life. Sending your child every week to church and Sunday school to have dogmas drilled into their heads is tantamount to the "hypnopaedia" in Brave New World. Insidious and abhorrent, a crime against freedom and self-determination.
Not providing access != prohibiting access.
Those are exactly the kind of situations where the societal cost of not ensuring access to contraceptives is vastly higher than the cost of contraceptives, so it's not just the employees that are harmed in this, but wider society as well.
Indoctrination to you = any time somebody teaches a child something you don't approve of.
Who is the dangerous extremist enemy of freedom? Look in a mirror.
Critical thought is a beautiful thing. Brainwashing a child into accepting an absurd dogma for no reason other than authority and fear is wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kqo6a5n1ArQ
start around the 5 min mark.
While I normally side with Orwell's dislike of this kind of linguistic indirection, it does sound like you're over-reacting to justinator's verbiage.
> "Hobby Lobby, as you may recall, is the privately held company that disallowed its workers to use the Affordable Care Act to cover birth control, because of the religious beliefs of the owners." > > Ahhh, so you demonize them because they go against your personal beliefs.
Cute use of the word demonise there. :)
Is it legal in the USA (where I'm assuming you, and indeed this Hobby Lobby company are located) to discriminate for health benefits based on religious views? (Preemptive apologies - not all of us are based in the same place as other people assume we are, and I'm really not sure what the legislative arrangement there is.)
Yes, a privately held company can offer plans that do not meet ACA standards if the owners object on religious grounds to those options.
It is legal for a specific class of privately held companies, though the matter was sufficiently unclear to reach the supreme court and will probably be subject to follow-up cases which will clarify/expand/narrow the extent of the decision.
EDIT: perhaps "own" is the wrong word to use. The owner of Hobby Lobby is the chairman of the board for the museum and the museum's collection was largely built from his personal collection.
There are different types of contraceptives, and that we use the same word for all types is disingenuous and muddies the argument.
The day after pill is very different from a condom, and at least a little different from "the pill".
Why? They both prevent conception.
The primary mechanism of action of levonorgestrel as a progestogen-only emergency contraceptive pill is, according to International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), to prevent fertilization by inhibition of ovulation and thickening of the mucosa of cervix. FIGO has stated that: "review of the evidence suggests that LNG [levonorgestreol] ECPs cannot prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.
(references on the wiki page as always)
Example: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/conception
"Formation of a viable zygote by the union of the male sperm and female ovum; fertilization."
Well I don't, the money belongs to the employees and it's not up to Hobby Lobby to decide how they can spend it.
"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's" and whatnot though eh.
If the government says, "Give us $X so that we may use it to purchase a health plan that includes contraceptive coverage," the effect is exactly the same as if they said, "Spend $X purchasing a health plan that includes contraceptive coverage." I don't see how one could be moral and the other not.
I can see it at the point where it changes from spending money to taking actions. Actually dispensing or taking contraceptives would be qualitatively different from paying for a health plan. But if it's just your money going to an insurance company, I don't see why it matters if it passes through the government first.
Thing is though, "ignorance is bliss", or so it's said. If you were aware that life insurance companies across the US were about to make a huge gamble that might put them out of business, would you stick with yours (supposing you had one) if they (a) told you they were going to make the gamble or (b) not told you? (I suppose we could have also referred to purchasing manufacturer warranties from unsteady businesses - same principle.)
Money going to the government via taxes doesn't necessarily end up paying for contraceptives. It's supposed to be for other things. We pay taxes knowing full well that people are siphoning off money for their own gain. We don't like it, sure, but we pay taxes because of what the money is intended for. "It's the thought that counts." :/
I'll fight to get the government to stop spending my money on these things, but on the basis that they shouldn't be doing it at all. I'd never argue that my own personal tax money should only go to things I agree with, because the whole point of taxes and government is to take collective decisions and collective action. I may not always agree with the results, but the basic concept is important and useful.
Why is it OK to send money to the US treasury when you know some small part of it will buy Hellfire missiles, but not OK to send money to Aetna when you know some small part of it will buy Plan B?
Did I catch your logic this time?
I pay my taxes, but I consider it the least moral thing I do, for my own morality.
I look at paying taxes the same way I view my drug addicted friend that just needs a fix so he can make it til tomorrow. I don't like it, I'm enabling his problem, but I don't want him to get into a worse situation or die.
It continued because "that's the way it was done" by the time WWII was over.
But it gets muddied because of taxes. Most people get to pay for their health insurance pre-tax, whereas if the company just gave them the money, they'd pay for it with post-tax dollars. Also, many employees contribute some of the cost themselves. So it's fair to say that part of the money belongs to the employees, but it's not fair to say that all of it does. The rest belongs either to the employer or the government.
The reason for the U.S. having enumerated powers where states could pass such laws but the federal government couldn't was that if you disagreed with your state's world-view, you could leave that state for one more aligned with your beliefs.
There may be specific individuals contracted with Hobby Lobby, but the general "employee" doesn't have any such contract.
For example, if you are against an action like prevention on religious reasons you should of course be free to not use them yourself. Enforcing those standard on others, including your employees, is not exercising your own religious freedom.