What is sin?

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revsdd said:
I would suggest that it was unnecessary in the sense that if I build a barrier between me and my neighbour I AM in fact building a barrier between me and God.
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It would be nice if we could all take the extension as given.

I'm not sure that is always a safe assumption.

And rather than open up a can of worms I stopped short of asking for a definition of neighbour because I've seen where that can go with some in this crowd.
 
revjohn said:
It is certainly no secret that this is routinely alleged and accepted as given. Any proof that the allegation is actually fact appears to be secret.

That said, The Gospel According to Luke and the book of Acts are thought to be written by the same author and the dedication raises some interesting ideas.

Both books are written for Theophilus and there is some debate as to who Theophilus is.

Theophilus (or as written in the text) Theophilos can be a proper name or it can be an honourary title. As an honourary title (it means friend of God) it was used by both Romans and Jews of the era in which the books were written.

The Coptic Church believes Theophilus to be an Alexandrian Jew.

Because of the qualifier "excellent" there is a belief held by some that the books were addressed to a Roman Politician (which may or may not mean the politician commissioned the works). One particular candidate is Titus Flavius Sabinus and the use of Theophilus is an encoded dedication that would not betray Titus to the authorities of the time which were not sympathetic to Christianity.

Because the term is honourary and means friend of God there is a line of thought that it is written for all friends of God (ie., all believers).

There is growing opinion that the books were written for Theophilus ben Ananus then High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple. Theophilus would have been the son of Annas and brother in law to Caiaphas.

There is also a theory that it was written for Paul's lawyer during Paul's lengthy trial in Rome.

There are no other dedications of books to individuals and so very little discussion about the commissioning the books outside of the various communities of faith which collected and preserved them.

If we accept that the authors of the Gospels were commissioned by Roman Politicians it would be safe to say that they would have a pro-Roman bias.

Of course, none of the books has a sufficiently Roman bias that would prevent them from being deemed seditious. Rome was polytheistic the Gospels are not. Rome was the ultimate power in the world and the Gospels scoff at that idea.

So the spin is hardly one towards making Rome happy

One might also ask what "spin" folk are hoping for when they claim the Gospels are Roman Commissions.
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Thanks John, et-al. I realize now that I should've said that the Bible as we know it today was brought together, translated from Hebrew and compiled (canonized?) into the form it is today as the result of a Roman commission. I don't believe that it was written from scratch as a result of this commission and I wasn't trying to claim that with my statement above, it was bad wording on my part.

With that said, however, I still maintain that with this compilation many things were left on the cutting room floor and some kind of editing and rearrangement occurred to the original texts, thus resulting in a "spin".

Now I'm hardly an expert on this subject like yourself or Reverend Davis and others, but perhaps you could explain why the Gospels are reputed to have such differences from the original text, i.e.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_codices_Sinaiticus_and_Vaticanus

My personal belief, as one example, is that this influence attempted to remove all the references to reincarnation, which is a concept that seems congruent with the Jewish belief of the "recycling or transmigration of souls". Why this concept would've been removed would be a good example of "spin".

Mark 16 9-20 may not have been added by this commission but it seems pretty obvious that some body, at some time, added to the book of Mark.
 
Neo said:
Now I'm hardly an expert on this subject like yourself or Reverend Davis and others, but perhaps you could explain why the Gospels are reputed to have such differences from the original text, i.e.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_codices_Sinaiticus_and_Vaticanus
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For starters we don't have any original manuscript. The best we have is scraps of early copies. These may be first or second generation documents (copy of original or copy of copy of original). Without an actual, original manuscript or manuscript fragment we couldn't tell.

The codices in question are almost complete copies of the New Testament and the are written in ALL CAPS not because anyone was shouting but because the letters were easier to inscribe on the clay tablets that were thought to be the earliest materials the New Testament writings were committed to. Papyrus and vellum were more expensive than clay. They required ink (another expense) clay just needed a quill to etch with.

Eventually the material on clay tablets was transferred to more expensive materials because they were more durable and transportable. Since the early Church thought that Jesus return was much more imminent than it is proving to be, durability was not a primary consideration for the texts.

Most of the differences are minor textual variants. The article points to Matthew 1: 3 where Zerah is written in the Greek as either Zara or Zare. Unless one holds to Divine dictation this variation isn't particularly significant and amounts to similar differences in Canadian English knives and American English knifes.

Others are slightly more interesting variations. The article points out Matthew 1: 12 where the English "father of" (begat) is either genna (present active Indicative) or egennosen (subjunctive). Please note I haven't checked those actual parsings I am operating off the top of my head. I'm confident about the Present but the subjunctive also resembles aorist, not that it is important to the discussion. One is present beget and the other is past begot.

Neither of the codices is complete and other material has been found with portions of text that have been added.

Differences may be attributable to method of transmission. Scribes working from a manuscript would have checked with that document to ensure accuracy of copy. Scribes working from dictation would have written what they heard.

Most textual variations do not introduce completely new or opposite meanings.

Neo said:
My personal belief, as one example, is that this influence attempted to remove all the references to reincarnation, which is a concept that seems congruent with the Jewish belief of the "recycling or transmigration of souls". Why this concept would've been removed would be a good example of "spin".
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At present an argument for or against is an argument from silence and represents a logical fallacy.

Neo said:
Mark 16 9-20 may not have been added by this commission but it seems pretty obvious that some body, at some time, added to the book of Mark.
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And most modern English translations include notes to that effect.
 
Thanks John, that's interesting. You said "Scribes working from a manuscript would have checked with that document to ensure accuracy of copy. Scribes working from dictation would have written what they heard."
Do you not think that scribes who were paid by the government may have been influenced to twist things around a little?

I'm not trying to be cynical here, but it does seem that the gospels were scripted in a way to include myths and allegories from just about every other religion in the world. It's as if the story of Jesus was painted in a certain way so as to dovetail all the religions of the world into one. Wasn't this Constantine's goal with this commission?
 
Hi Neo,

Even if scribes were hired by the government (no evidence suggests this actually happened) the fact that there was already a Church tradition of copying manuscripts would be enough to show where such alteration appeared.

The discussions to set canon brought bishops in from all over the known world and there were already several Bibles in use. All versions of the Bible were placed up against each other and the gathered bishops examined what was held in common and what was unique to each region. The criteria employed in selection had nothing to do about what was friendly to Rome and what was unfriendly.

After all of the persecution that Rome had put the Church through I would imagine that there would have been some sensitivity on both sides. Bishops who led the Church through difficult times of martyrdom were certainly not going to be Rome friendly and Roman authorities in the midst of embracing a new religion are not going to alienate themselves from the rest of the Church by pretending nothing happened.

And then there is the fact of the Great Schism which brings to a head a process that has been happening since the fourth ecumenical council around 451. That split was doctrinal and while it does impact upon the respective shapes of the New Testament canons used by the Western Churches and the Eastern Churches none of the changes reflects a pro-Roman bias. The Eastern Churches do not operate in Roman territory if there were suppressed documents showing serious political redaction they would have been embraced.

Constantine's goal with the councils, and the goal of each successive council was to cement unity in the Christian tradition. It was not called as a means to ensure syncretism. Constantine, as other emperors before him, would have pushed Christianity as a state religion to the exclusion of other indigenous religions. Noting that Christianity is a monotheistic tradition it would be very difficult to fold the more common polytheistic traditions into it.

While the number of complete manuscripts is less than the number of partial manuscripts we do have families of manuscripts separated by hundreds of years and considerable geography. Textual variations exist, and while there is evidence that the oldest and most reliable transcripts do not include the longer ending to the Gospel of Mark there is nothing showing that the treatment of Rome in the Gospels has ever been redacted.
 
Hebrews claims Jesus "had to learn obedience through what he suffered," and yet was still "sinless" (4:15; 5:7-8). On this understanding, children who must learn to be obedient by trial and error are not sinning, just maturing.
 
Beloved said:
Is that cause no matter how far we drift, God is still there?
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Exactly.As Psalm 139:7 puts it: "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" Even if we want (and try desperately) to get away from God, God is still with us.
 
If, as I believe, humanity's biggest sin is not knowing who or what we ultimately are, as well as thinking and acting out of this ignorance, then the deliverance from sin would be becoming aware of who and what we ultimately are--which, in Christian terms, is known as Christ consciousness or simply The Christ--and thinking and acting from the depth of this awareness.

In non-Christian or secular terms, "Christ awareness" or "The Christ" would be the awareness of cosmic unity.
 
Hermann said:
Why? Really. Why?

Could it be because we ultimately are at-one with God?
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Not to my way of thinking, Hermann. If "we" were one with God (even in an ultimate sense) then "we" (collectively) would be God. That does not equate with my experience and understanding of God. There is a significant and substantive difference between "God is close to us" and "we are one with God." The former is my position. God is other than we are, but always with us; always close to us.
 
Hi revsdd:

If God is the "other," the diametric opposite of "we," then God is, of course, separate. This, however, would be the analysis of being.

But if, as I feel and speculate, the ultimate state of being is a state of synthesis, then we and God are also united.

I feel that both the unification and the separation are equally true, but the unification is the primary and ultimate Truth, and the separation secondary.

Thus, I agree and do not agree with you.:)
 
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