I don’t have any problem with it inherently. I don’t think it’s particularly useful as anything more than a historical novelty, though.

Pierpoint and Robinson*

(Idk if edits go through to FSE)

I'm not saying that the Byzantine text is correct 100% of the time, and in fact, the KJV uses a somewhat strange version of the Byzantine text, but I believe there's still a better case for it as a valid source than there is the Alexandrian version, whose greater manuscript antiquity can be attributed to entirely to climate.

If you get a version of Pierpoing and Robinson's Greek New Testament, there's usually a very readable essay explaining exactly why, from a historical perspective, it's more likely that the version preserved by the Church has less error.

nostr:npub1pnpez7cn4h04pxg07dmmklzyz7u7fm0w2ddrw220qh785rq3m42ql452zw gm

There are multiple levels of analysis.

The only thing I can think of that the ESV does significantly better is incorporating Christian manuscripts of the Old Testament, whereas the KJV only used jewish copies supplemented by Latin (which was also based on later jewish copies.)

Otherwise, the KJV New Testament is based on the Byzantine text, which I prefer over the Alexandrian text that the modern translations use. It's also meant to be read aloud in an actual liturgy, which is not true of any modern versions. The reason the KJV is verbose is because it's meant to be a holy document. It's not just some book, it's God's Word, and no one treats it that way.

Well, no. The apostles literally planted the institutional churches themselves, and appointed bishops to run those churches when they were gone. We know Paul did this from the New Testament, and we know the other Apostles also did this because other early Christian writers knew the Apostles personally, or knew people who had been directly trained by the Apostles.

The institution itself was founded by God. It was not something that came later. The epistles in the New Testament weren't written to individuals, they were written as administrative documents to actual church buildings run by actual bishops.

The term "Christian" also didn't come later. It's in the Book of Acts. You're probably thinking of "catholic" which is still very early. About 15 years after the Book of Revelation.

this all leads to questions on what/who The Church is, if it’s to be structured as an apostolic succession, if that succession holds a certain Automatically Right stature regardless of its actual conduct, and so on.

Apostolic succession is something that originally served a very practical purpose; to distinguish true from false teachers. Orthodox Christians could tell you exactly where their teachings came from, all the way back, because it had only been a couple of generations, whereas the gnostic heretics had to claim it was “secret” and that’s why you couldn’t trace it.

There are diminishing returns on that, though. It makes sense when your teacher directly knew an apostle, but once you get past 3rd generation, it becomes harder and harder to verify where things have mutated, especially because each new bishop is ordaining potentially dozens of new bishops in his lifetime.

Apostolic Succession as a necessary mark of the Church is foreign to the Apostolic Fathers. It’s a corruption. As for what the Church is, the Greek word is just ecclesia. If there is a body of true Christians with a hierarchy, that’s the Church. The thing that separates true from false is whether they worship Christ. But Nestorians, for example, are not the Church, because they don’t worship the real Christ. The atonement doesn’t make sense if he’s just a spirit in a skin suit.

we’re getting third hand … texts that have gone through who knows how many rounds of editing, reconstruction, compilation, and who knows what else…

That definitely didn’t happen for the New Testament, because both the text and the Church were decentralized. There’s no recorded event like the revision of the Quran, it was just distributed and copied in different locations. The only “revisions” were after the Christianization of Rome, minor variants from different manuscripts in the empire were synthesized to agree with one other. But we also have large manuscripts from outside the empire, and prior to the synthesizing. We already know what it looked like before then, and it’s barely different at all.

You have more of a case in the Old Testament, because it’s more clearly a series of composite documents and we don’t know exactly where it came from. It doesn’t take a Hebrew expert to realize the vocabulary changes vastly between different places, even within the same book. There’s also the problem of the Masoretic vs the Septuagint, and older Hebrew variants agreeing with the Greek. But the Greek is often paraphrase, so you can’t use it as a primary source either.

It’s fucked, but one thing we can trust is that the New Testament, which has a much stronger proof, presupposes the accuracy of the Old Testament, and even though Old Testament variants are broader than New Testament ones, we still don’t have anything that deviates all that much. Except in cases where it varies so much that it doesn’t even constitute the same book, like Jubilees, or the Dead Sea Scrolls version of Genesis and Exodus.

Even with all that evidence, there’s not much evidence of deliberate tampering prior to the split between jews and Christians. The composite nature of the document can be attributed to the loss of Old Hebrew as a language in late antiquity. We can presuppose that there is genuine editing, or that there isn’t. I trust that if there was, we would know about it. Christ or one of the Apostles would have told us.

The Church was founded by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when he descended on the Apostles.

When Paul and the others wrote their epistles, they were writing to the institutional church established by Jesus Christ.

There’s nothing wrong with institutions. There is something wrong with claiming you institution is infallible when all the leaders are fucking hookers and children in the Vatican apartments.

Mormonism 2 already exists, it’s called the RLDS Church. You’ll have to start Mormonism 3.

If you’re going to start with a heretical organization because you don’t like the Trinity, it makes more sense to start with JW’s or “Two Babylons” Baptists than Mormonism, though.

The idea that Protestants changed the canon is ludicrous.

What happened is, there was already a distinction between protocanon and deuterocanon. When the humanist movement happened, we needed to decide how we were going to justify dogma based on the original Scriptures. Protestants decided that the protocanon can establish, and the deuterocanon (or apocrypha) can only inform it.

Roman Catholics also largely accepted this ancient distinction, which goes back to St Jerome, including Luther’s critics. But the Council of Trent, to set themselves against reformers, decided to abolish the distinction altogether, and call everything protocanonical.

However, this was not the case in the East. If you look in Eastern Orthodox catechisms, they will still make the same distinctions Protestants do. Their protocanonical list is still the 66 book canon, though the deuterocanon is still in lectionaries (as it sometimes is in Protestant lectionaries, as well.)

There’s a separate issue, which had to do with printing. Publishers, at a date well after the Reformation, decided it was prudent not to print the deuterocanon because it wasn’t as important, and then when Bible translation became an industry in its own rite, Protestant groups usually opted not to bother with the deuterocanon for the same reason, it’s just not an important use of resources.

Uneducated Roman Catholics will take these modern business decisions, and anachronistically attribute them to Luther. I disagree with those decisions, I don’t use Bibles without the apocrypha, but that’s not something that you can put on the Reformers. Luther did have his opinions on the legitimacy of certain books, which were wrong, but some of those he recanted, and the Lutheran tradition has never followed him on that point, nor has any Protestant tradition.

Thank u for coming to my micro-lecture.

Loyalty to your family, even when they’re wrong, is an admirable trait.

He just doesn't want to point people somewhere, only for it to disappear right away, but that's not likely to happen with Minds. It's just so obscure that no one is going to cause a fuss over it.

Bittorrent isn't running a communications platform, and there's a reason for that.

Making a social network p2p would accomplish nothing except radical inefficiency.

P2P is a terrible idea anyway, unless you just want to use something broken for the fun of it (many FOSStards do)

1 Kings 9:1-9, 10:1-13

1 And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the house of the Lord, and the king’s house, and all Solomon’s desire which he was pleased to do,

2 That the Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as he had appeared unto him at Gibeon.

3 And the Lord said unto him, I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication, that thou hast made before me: I have hallowed this house, which thou hast built, to put my name there for ever; and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually.

4 And if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded thee, and wilt keep my statutes and my judgments:

5 Then I will establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever, as I promised to David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of Israel.

6 But if ye shall at all turn from following me, ye or your children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods, and worship them:

7 Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people:

8 And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and to this house?

9 And they shall answer, Because they forsook the Lord their God, who brought forth their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have taken hold upon other gods, and have worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath the Lord brought upon them all this evil.

1 And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions.

2 And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.

3 And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not.

4 And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon’s wisdom, and the house that he had built,

5 And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the Lord; there was no more spirit in her.

6 And she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom.

7 Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard.

8 Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom.

9 Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee, to set thee on the throne of Israel: because the Lord loved Israel for ever, therefore made he thee king, to do judgment and justice.

10 And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the queen of Sheba gave to king Solomon.

11 And the navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees, and precious stones.

12 And the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the Lord, and for the king’s house, harps also and psalteries for singers: there came no such almug trees, nor were seen unto this day.

13 And king Solomon gave unto the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty. So she turned and went to her own country, she and her servants.

Would you like to know about her relationship with her father?

All non-Lutheran churches are disrespectful

Deleted Minds since I don't need it anymore. If following Fedi accounts from there helps I might open a new one to do that, though.

desktop, but si

Opinions can be wrong. Wtf are you talking about?