I love the Internet. It allows me to be a student of Yale University.
Well, that is to say that I’ve been making my way through a series of lectures by Dale Martin, of Yale University, on early New Testament history, available for free on iTunesU. Yep, I may as well be sitting in the lecture theater with all the rich kids.
I’ve been fascinated by Bart Ehrman’s (of ‘Misquoting Jesus’ fame) work for a while. It is fascinating to learn what scholars have been thinking about the NT for centuries. (Spoiler: we don’t really have a fucking clue exactly what the original gospels and epistles would have said. We can track all the changes and alterations back and back and back until we hit this cloud – a few decades right at the beginning – the texts of which we don’t have, and variations coming out of the cloud on different paths, but no idea which variation was earliest or closest to the intended meaning of the author). Anyway, I’ll have my more-than-a-year-in-the-making video about it up hopefully this month. To that end, I’ve been reading a little beyond Ehrman only, as one does, and spoiler alert: it turns out he’s not making it up. Several other scholars (that is to say, all of them) have known this for centuries.
In the meantime, Dale Martin is lots of fun, as well as being, obviously, a serious scholar who knows more than I could ever hope to learn in one lifetime (and I do hope to learn a fair bit of it). He started his semester at Yale by giving his students a pop-quiz. Ten questions, yes or no, to test their knowledge of the bible.
Give it a shot! I confess to only scoring 8 correct of the ten. Scribble somewhere your ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for the following ten questions, and the answers are beneath the ‘fold’.
Does the bible contain the following teachings, stories, or sayings…?:
1) The immaculate conception.
2) This quote: “Loves bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
3) The story of three wise men, or kings, who visited the baby Jesus.
4) This quote: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
5) The doctrine of the trinity
6) Jesus saying of Peter “Upon this rock I will build my church.”
7) Peter founded the church in Rome.
8) After his death, Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem.
9) After his death, Jesus appeared to his disciples in Galilee.
10) Peter was martyred by being crucified upside down.
Answers below.
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ANSWERS:
1) Immaculate conception: No. That’s refers to Mary’s conception, and is a Catholic tradition only. Not scriptural.
2) Love bears…Yes, 1 Cor 13.
3) Three wise men: No. This is only a tradition, with no scriptural basis. It arose because the bible mentions three gifts, and it was assumed that there were three people, each bringing one.
4) From each…, to each…: No. That was Marx.
5) Trinity: No. Some would say it is hinted at in scripture, but historically, not. The creeds are as specific as they are about that because of scriptures vagueness on the topic. Also, the scriptural references to it are regarded as very late additions (ie appearing first in copies made decades or centuries after the originals), inserted in response to those who were accusing Christianity of being polytheistic.
6) Upon this rock: Yes.
7) Peter founded church in Rome: No. That’s tradition only.
8) Jesus appeared in Jerusalem: Yes. In Luke and Acts
9) Jesus appeared in Galilee: Yes . In Matthew. Interestingly, it says he appeared only in Galilee.
10) Peter crucified upside down: No. Only a tradition, attested to by many paintings but no scripture.
So, boast! How did you go? Anyone who scores a ten will be given an honorary doctorate from Yale.
The iTunesU series of which I speak is called: Introduction to New Testament History and Literature – Video
EDIT: Or, as a few readers kindly pointed out, you can see them here on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL279CFA55C51E75E0&feature=plcp
57 comments
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Shayrah
December 2, 2012 at 4:10 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
For number 3, we don’t know how many there were but there was a group of dudes that brought three gifts.
Von Krieger
December 2, 2012 at 4:18 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I got six of ‘em.
HemlockStew
December 2, 2012 at 4:37 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
“The doctrine of the trilogy” — You mean, doctrine of the TRINITY? I had to laugh when reading that one.
NonStampCollector
December 2, 2012 at 4:44 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
#3 Whoops!
That’s auto-correct for you.
Fixed. (Everyone knows the trilogy was invented by Peter Jackson)
StevoR
December 2, 2012 at 4:44 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Fun quiz.
Seven out of ten for me.
I got (5) only because you’d written trilogy and I thought aha it was trinity not trilogy which is for books!
I missed (4) – thought the Bible did have that or perhaps merely something very much like it and maybe Marx was quoting/ paraphrasing it?
Also got (7) and (8) – figured (8) was a trick question because Jesus appeared on the road to somewhere to a traveller and then in Galilee, didn’t recall him appearing in Jerusalem anywhere so again, figured they were being tricky!
StevoR
December 2, 2012 at 4:51 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
D’oh. Key missing word that’s :
Also got (7) and (8) wrong.
jakc
December 2, 2012 at 5:10 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
the idea that there are original texts for the gospels or other parts of the bible is a prejudice of a literate society. the stories of the bible certainly existed prior to being written, and it’s probably more appropriate to think of them as being codified when reduced to writing rather than created at that time. as a literate society, we have a preference for written documents over oral accounts, and yes, it’s far easier to find 2,000 year old written evidence than to recreate 2,000 year old oral accounts, but even if you had the very first written copy of one of the gospels, it wouldn’t be definitive. it isn’t like the golden tablets of Joseph Smith which, if they had actually existed, would be definitive. indeed, although we think of earlier copies of the gospel as being more likely to be correct, that’s due to our prejudice towards literacy. an earlier copy of a gospel might only reflect the writer’s understanding and not that of the larger community, and of course, given that most people would not have been able to read the gospel (or might not be given the opportunity to read a text), they might very well have been unaware of the claims being made.
the fetish towards original texts is part of the underlying claim of inerrancy. it’s a shame that so many fundamentalists don’t seem to understand that it is not that we haven’t found the original & definitive texts but that such texts cannot exist. it makes me sympathize with a fundamentalist relative who regards the King James version as the original, which sounds like a bizarre claim but it makes a certain amount of sense in that it does establish something as the original (and fits in with the ideas that the catholics had been getting it wrong for 1500 years, or so, anyway).
jakc
December 2, 2012 at 5:17 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
on the bible quiz
I’ve long thought that it’s more accurate to describe the gift bearing wise men as “astrologers”. that’s what they appear to be. Matthew would be less offended by calling them astrologers, a perfectly respectable discipline, than he would by the modern nativity scenes. I imagine Matthew would say something “why the f**k are they out in the stable?” (while Luke would ask “what the f**k is the star doing over the stable?”)
Kevin Dugan
December 2, 2012 at 5:26 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Woot, 10 for 10, but then again, read the damn thing 5 times and memorized several passages as a fundy and then listened to a book about biblical origins on tape a couple years ago, can’t remember the title.
Thanks for the great quiz, so when do I get my degree?
Also, Thanks to Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World”, Mike Shermers “A skeptic manifesto”, the SGU, lesswrong.com and all the other voices for reason out there, I’m no longer a slave to dogma, fear and mysticism.
Kevin Dugan
December 2, 2012 at 5:30 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@jakc
We know they weren’t astrologers. First off because the were working together and astrologer’s horoscopes never agree with each other, and secondly because it’s ability to predict never rises above chance. Maybe one lucky astrologer, who overheard something and two wealthy clients he duped in to following him? THAT I could believe.
maxdwolf
December 2, 2012 at 5:50 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I actually got 8, but luck played a large part.
grumpyoldfart
December 2, 2012 at 6:54 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Thanks for mentioning that Yale course. I found it on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL279CFA55C51E75E0&feature=plcp
`
latsot
December 2, 2012 at 7:46 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I didn’t know the answers to 2 and 4. I got the answers right but they were only guesses so I don’t feel like they count. Bizarre amount of honesty for something entirely inconsequential
So 8/10 for me. I feel….dirty….
LykeX
December 2, 2012 at 10:05 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Missed #2, but I’ve never really read deeply of the epistles. Forfeited 8 and 9 because I honestly had no clue. I mean, Jerusalem? Galilee? Both? Neither? I guess I didn’t pay too much attention to the locations.
The Marx quote is cheeky, especially given the other parallels to communism in the NT, such as the communal property of the apostles.
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort
December 2, 2012 at 11:29 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
9 out of 10, only missed the Wise Men one.
Guest from Holland
December 2, 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
10/10 Yay! At last something good coming from my fundy years (I got better, thank you…)
The Jerusalem appearence includes the Doubting Thomas scene, and even as a kid I could not understand why Thomas got told off. Probably my first ‘Hmmm’-moment. Goes to show skepticism rubs off, even when it comes from the Bible.
khms
December 2, 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@jakc:
I’m sure stories existed before it was written down – in fact, that is most of the point of the argument that none of the authors was an actual eyewitness – but given how many exact quotes from each other there are, it seems pretty obvious that original written texts must have existed.
Furthermore, both the Romans and the Jews had written texts at this time, so it is not exactly unlikely for there to be original written versions. And given graffiti found in Pompeii, it seems pretty clear that at least the Romans of that time were a literate society.
sumdum
December 2, 2012 at 12:29 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
8/10. Had the Marx quote and upside down Peter wrong.
jimroberts
December 2, 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Got all 10, I’m afraid:(
helenaconstantine
December 2, 2012 at 2:36 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
In regard to no.7:
There certainly would have been an ur-copy of an individual document that its author considered finished–although any handwritten document the size of say Mark would contain errors (like writing trilogy for trinity), though in practice many of these might be fixes with cross-outs, corrections, interlineations, etc.
It’s important not to confuse the accuracy of the text of a given document with the agreement of that document’s contents with historical reality. Those are two quite different issues. And the fact that a text might based on earlier documents either written or oral doesn’t change the fact that a given document sill has a definite and establishable text. If the author decides to modify a story he has heard and then write it down, that isn’t a mistake.
Francisco Bacopa
December 2, 2012 at 4:07 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I’m for using the term “astrologers” rather than “kings”. Does anyone know what the text says in Greek? I’m pretty sure it’s some Greek version of a Persian word that refers to the Magi, the priests of the religion of the Persian royal court. These priests practiced astrology, so I think its better to call them astrologers.
For decades the planetarium in Houston used to present a program called “The Christmas Star”. Pretty cool show. Pointed out things such as that Jesus would likely have been born in the spring and that 3 or4 BC is a likelier birth date.
The program completely dismissed the idea of a bright visible star over Bethlehem, others would have reported a nova or a comet, and no one did. It said that the “star” would have to have been something that only a close observer of the skies, such as a Persian astrologer, would have noticed. It then makes a case that a series of conjunctions that happened in the constellation of Pisces might have tipped off the magi.
Great program. Assures people that science is consistent with religion, while at the same time giving the viewer enough scientific knowledge to dig a little deeper and maybe figure out maybe science doesn’t agree so much with religion. I remember it well even though I saw it once 30 years ago.
BTW, I just checked the HMNS website, and they are indeed still showing “The Christmas Star” this year as they have done for 40 years. Anyone else seen it?
Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden
December 2, 2012 at 7:06 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
missed the first 3, perfect after that.
jakc
December 2, 2012 at 7:14 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@khms
of course there was a point in time when say Matthew was first written down. my point though is that it’s wrong to think of that as the “original” gospel of Matthew. It’s pretty clear that the gospels were written down decades after the death of Jesus, most likely because the disciples were dying/dead and because of the growing understanding that the second coming might be far in the future.
In modern society, most people are literate, and we expect people to be literate. We favor the written document over an oral understanding – get it in writing is a sound bit of advice. But our modern preference that the written document is the original and true version is not correct for 1st century Judea, even though both the Jews and Romans had writing. Assuming that the non-supernatural parts of the gospels are true, than it’s quite likely that many of the early disciples of Jesus – fishermen for example – were illiterate. They would have spread the story of Jesus by telling people, and not as Paul did by sending letters to various congregations (letters that were meant to be read to the congregation, not meant to be read by the congregation). The original writer of Mark or Matthew was not claiming authorship as we think of it but was writing down the teachings that had been circulating for 30 or 40 years.
It’s akin to the different versions of a song like “House of the Rising Sun”; there is certainly an earliest recorded version of the song, but that version is not the original. The song existed for a long time, with many variations, before it was ever recorded. And, earlier versions are not necessarily more true to the original. One big difference in the song is whether it ought to be about a man (the Animals version) or a woman. Finding demo tapes by the Animals, or a recorded version similar to theirs from the 1930′s doesn’t in any way establish their version as the original.
In the same way, finding the first gospel of Matthew doesn’t establish it as true. The gospel of Mark was probably written down before Matthew; it may be that the writers of Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels in part to correct what they saw as errors and omissions in Mark. And it may be that those familiar with the stories of Mark read Matthew and Luke and thought, “well, that’s not quite right” and produced slightly different versions of Matthew and Luke.
We are used to the idea that there is an original text of things, with the writer of that text claiming authorship. The writing of much of the bible was an effort to preserve already existing oral traditions. It was not an act of creation. The underlying oral stories are lost to us, but that doesn’t make them less valid. It simply means that we have no way to recover the original gospels.
jakc
December 2, 2012 at 7:17 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
@Kevin Dugan
Your analysis of why the magi can’t be astrologers – they were right about things – is impeccable, and can’t be refuted.
geocatherder
December 2, 2012 at 11:32 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
There’s also the issue that in the Roman world in the first few centuries CE, Christianity often had to fly under the radar. Some emperors tolerated it, some didn’t, it was persecuted in some regions and allowed to function fairly freely in others. It usually had to do with whether the powers-that-be perceived it to be a hindrance to the running of their piece of the empire. Under those circumstances, even in societies that were top-level literate, it would’ve been hard to start writing anything comprehensive for awhile. The Letters (at least the real ones) were perhaps the first attempt, and those are piecemeal and usually addressing certain specific issues. And there are few enough of those. It was a big empire. Who knew what the congregation in Back-Of-Beyond was believing?
Monkeytree
December 2, 2012 at 11:50 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
It’s a great lecture series. I also highly recommend the Christine Hayes lecture series on the Old Testament (Hebrew bible) which goes into Ancient Near East history generally a bit and is very interesting. It’s a different lecture series from the same university.
The Dale Martin New Testament lectures are available here (in many formats):
RLST 152: Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152
And the Christine Hayes Old Testament lectures are availabe here:
YALE RLST 145 – Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) with Professor Christine Hayes
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145
obscure1
December 3, 2012 at 12:15 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I was a hardcore believer in Christianity as a youth and into adulthood. As the decades went by and I continued to read…. the idea of faith being a virtue lost its potency. At the age of fifty-two I still held to a Buddhaistic/Taoistic type of Eastern spirituality. At the time cliches like, ‘What goes around comes around’ made sense. Then I bought my first computer in 2002. After a few years of reading about the scientific method, natural selection and free-thought I discarded belief in belief altogether. That’s the back story. The front story is seven out of ten.
nohellbelowus
December 3, 2012 at 1:19 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Number 4 had “trick question” written all over it. And it got me.
I’m actually pretty happy that I only got seven correct. Hopefully it means those formerly corrupted brain regions are now finally available for facts and useful information.
Bjarni
December 3, 2012 at 4:08 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Trilogy? Peter Jackson? Blasphemy!
There was only one return, and it wasn’t of the king, it was of the Jedi.
geocatherder
December 3, 2012 at 11:37 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
But it was Douglas Adams who truly redefined the trilogy.
Paul Durrant
December 3, 2012 at 1:09 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
7/10 for me.
I didn’t recognise (2), so guessed wrong that it wasn’t in there.
I forgot that (3) was three gifts, not three people (although it is evident in the story that there is more than one wise man).
I guessed right on (7) and wrong on (10).
The rest I knew.
tynk
December 3, 2012 at 3:44 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I hit 7 out of 10. I missed 3, 6, and 7. Just happened to be the three I guessed on.
@Paul Durrant #31;
If you have ever been to any form of christian wedding, odds are you have heard (2). It is the cliche reading that is almost always done.
Cosmic Teapot, purveyor of cakes and beer.
December 3, 2012 at 4:33 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
7 out of 10, 2, 4 and 8 being wrong.
Matt 2:1 has both in one passage:
tou de iesou gennethentos en bethleem tes ioudaias en hemerais herodou tou basileos* idou magoi** apo anatolon paregenonto eis ierosoluma
of-the yet Jesus being-born in Bethlehem of-the Judea in days of-Herod the King to-see Magi from east came-along into Jerusalem.
Matthew (mistakenly) calls Herod King, in Greek Basileus*. He calls the wise men Magoi**.
The apostles mentioned in Paul’s letters are never identified with fishermen. For all we know, the 12 disciples were an invention of Mark. Paul’s apóstolos (meaning “one who is sent away”) would have been traveling preachers of unknown background. Being Jerwish, they would probably have been literate, Jewish education having been formalised by Simeon ben Shetah and Joshua ben Gamla. Boys apparently began their training at the age of 6, studying the Torah in both oral and written form.
Josephus also records the importance of education in Jewish life in “Against Apion, and Seneca also noted the quality of Jewish education in De Civitate Dei.
Your point about the teachings being verbal is still valid though, not because the Jews were illiterate, but because the target Hellenistic audience probably were.
besomyka
December 3, 2012 at 5:15 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
9/10. Missed #3. Could have sworn that was textual. Didn’t my old church quote it when they perform the Nativity? Gonna have to pay close attention this year.
Also, putting in that Marx quote is great!
abbeycadabra
December 3, 2012 at 6:58 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The Dale from Yale makes quizzes many fail.
jimroberts
December 3, 2012 at 8:19 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
“Seneca also noted the quality of Jewish education in De Civitate Dei”
Isn’t it that, in De Civitate Dei, Augustine quoted Seneca as having noted the quality of Jewish education (only of boys, of course).
Nathanael
December 3, 2012 at 8:55 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Regarding #4, the actual Bible quote is (in cne translation)
“Sell all your possessions, and give the money to the poor. ”
Yowza. It’s in *three* of the gospels.
Pretty rare for a self-described Christian to actually do this, though a few do.
amm
December 3, 2012 at 9:40 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
While I’m no biblical scholar, numerous bible scholars (as in: studied at reputable universities) have told me that it is generally assumed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were based on a single account, from which they selected and adapted parts and added new material to suit their audience.
There were probably a number of such accounts floating around. Given that everything was copied by hand, it was probably a lot like blogging is today, only without the tradition of carefully distinguishing your own work from what you’ve copied from someone else. (And with insertions rather than hyperlinks.)
I think it’s also worth noting that literal accuracy was not considered very important until a few centuries ago. Ancient writers were more concerned with making their accounts agree with whatever they considered eternal truths (or a good yarn) than with repeating all the dirty, dismal, and often dishonorable details of what actually happened, and their readers wholeheartedly agreed.
And I can sort of understand their point of view. Life back then was chancy, brutal, senseless, and often degrading. Who’d want to sit around reading or listening to the sordid details of life as it actually was? Better to read or hear tales in which life (and death) made some sort of sense.
LykeX
December 3, 2012 at 11:25 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I don’t know about a single account, but they definitely share more material than can be accounted for by coincidence. I recommend this, where you can look up parallel verses in the gospels. Very handy.
Which is a big problem when doing history. Writers of that time might well invent something and insert it into a text because “that’s what it ought to have said”. This makes these accounts almost completely useless as a source of clear, factual information.
An example of this is the nativities of Matthew and Luke. Clearly, they shared a tradition of Jesus being born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. So, they each came up with a story that satisfied those two criteria.
Do either of those stories have anything to do with what actually happened? Nobody knows.
Ubi Dubium
December 4, 2012 at 12:18 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Ten for ten. With the modification that for #3 I said “Yes and no”. Yes for the bible containing a visit from “wise men”, but no to their being kings or being three of them.
I’d love to see the results from this test being given to a group of Catholics!
Cosmic Teapot, purveyor of cakes and beer.
December 4, 2012 at 12:21 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Good catch, and thank you for the correction. I’ll update my brief notes on Jewish education.
Richard Carrier
December 4, 2012 at 7:31 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
His answer to question 4 is not as clear cut as suggested here. It is correct only if you futz about exact wording. Otherwise, Acts 4:32-34 says:
LykeX
December 4, 2012 at 8:21 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
That’s actually a lot closer than I remembered.
jakc
December 4, 2012 at 10:53 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
While I’m no biblical scholar, numerous bible scholars (as in: studied at reputable universities) have told me that it is generally assumed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were based on a single account, from which they selected and adapted parts and added new material to suit their audience.
Probably the most accepted idea is that all three had access to “Q”, an account of the sayings of Jesus that has not survived, and that Matthew and Luke had copies of Mark. Both Luke and Matthew attempt to explain/fix shortcomings/omissions in Mark (the lack of a nativity narrative, for example), which is where many of the differences in the synoptic gospels show up. Some of the differences, as LykeX says, were theological. The writer of Mark may have omitted the nativity as unimportant, whereas the writer of Matthew, after reading Mark, may have seen the need to add it in because of earlier prophecy about the messiah. My point though is that we value written accounts over oral ones. It’s a practical decision as you can’t find oral traditions stored in a cave for 2,000 years, but it’s wrong to think of the written scrolls being more legitimate. The first copy of Matthew may accurately reflect the gospel according to Matthew, but it’s also possible that a later copy of Matthew includes corrections and additions and may be a more accurate reflection of the oral tradition.
Cosmicteapot
Thanks for your comments on Jewish literacy. One point: I wasn’t referring to the apostles who were traveling preachers long after the crucifiction, but to the direct disciples of Jesus, some of whom, such as Peter, were called fishermen. And I certainly don’t mean to imply that no one in Jewish society was literate, but rather that, even with a strong societal aspiration toward literacy, many adult Jewish men were probably not literate, or had what we would call functional literacy. They knew enough to read short phrases or write their name, but were without the skills needed to create a long written document. Today, we expect a high school student to be able to write an essay as long as Mark, but even after years of schooling, many can’t.
There are probably many reasons for the gospels not being written at the time of the death of Jesus, or during his lifetime, but I think one reasonable view is that many of the immediate followers of Jesus had only limited literacy. Limited literacy would certainly be a reason for people to prefer oral accounts of Jesus. I bring up this point in part because modern fundamentalists assume that the gospels are the work of eyewitnesses(our friends at Conservapedia claim Mark,Matthew and John as eyewitnesses, and that Luke was working directly from eyewitness testimony) which is why they place such an emphasis on the original texts. My argument is that the first texts are not the original gospels. The original gospels are the oral stories that the followers of Jesus were content to use for many years and that it is a modern conceit to regard writings as original.
Cosmic Teapot, purveyor of cakes and beer.
December 6, 2012 at 2:58 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I never said you did and wonder where you got this idea from.
As you said, this is only valid if the none supernatural part of the gospels are true, a very large assumption to make. We do not have any independent support of the 12 disciples other than one mention by Paul, and that may be a later interpolation.
alwayscurious
December 7, 2012 at 6:36 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
jakc, I think you’d like Bart Ehrman’s ‘Misquoting Jesus’ as mentioned by NSC. The author makes a similar, but different point about the searching for original texts. The layman’s operating assumption is that older texts are more “accurate”–having changed less from the original. Older texts can therefore be recognized by their consistency (tracing a backwards through lineage of changes for example). This turns out to be FALSE.
Instead, propagation of the written text in the earliest days was frequently done by well-meaning, but informal, methods. In some cases, the transcription was undertaken by people that couldn’t themselves read! {Don’t forget to dot that “i” or it may become an “l”; perhaps a smudge turns it into a “t”) Proofreading for transcriptional mistakes (much less meaning) weren’t standard, leading to great diversity in the oldest available texts. It wasn’t until after the Bible was codified and the church took over the transcription efforts that basic standards of editing and copy-to-copy consistency emerged.
I got 8/10. I knew the number of wise men wasn’t 3 but I said yes anyways. Being more familiar with Matthew, I said Jesus had only come to the disciples in Galilee and so missed the Jerusalem question.
Paul D.
December 8, 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Perfect ten here. You can send my diploma by post.
FinallyFreed
December 9, 2012 at 6:28 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Hooray my “Little House on the Prairie” home school years have finally paid off. And here I was all worried my fundamentalist education had robbed me of a future. I would like my doctorate now please!
Curt Cameron
December 10, 2012 at 11:10 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I had to make educated guesses on a couple of them, but I wrote them down and got all ten right. Yay! I’m a Yalie!
People ask why I (of all people!) know the Bible so well – I tell them it’s a result of my mis-spent youth.
Corvus illustris
December 12, 2012 at 12:46 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Apropos q.1: the Immaculate Conception question was still being fought out in the high Middle Ages. St Thomas Aquinas was against the doctrine; the Franciscans, who (obvs) ultimately prevailed, were for it. After the disagreement faded, the doctrine was held always to have been a part of Apostolic Tradition™.
Ubi dubium: the responses you’d get from a group of Catholics would depend on whether their Catholic educations were pre- or post-Vatican 2.
freemage
December 12, 2012 at 6:02 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Man, 6/10. I’m getting creamed by you folks.
I got busted by the difference between “Immaculate Conception” and “virgin birth”; the “love” quote (like a lot of others, I just didn’t remember it as one that was brought up regularly; instead, I always heard the “love is” quote that is favored at weddings); the three wise men (like others, I fell into the trap of three men for three gifts); and Jerusalem (I think the Episcopal Church might favor Matthew for certain Gospel readings, which would definitely account for my memory that this was the only place he appeared).
SomersetJohn
December 16, 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
9 out of ten.
Didn’t know 2, thought it might be from Shakespear. Quite surprised I didn’t have to guess at any of the rest.
Ichthyic
December 20, 2012 at 3:24 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
^^ditto.
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February 23, 2013 at 12:44 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Wow! I rather enjoyed the way you managed to put your thoughts into an intelligent, well-written article. I will share this with friends and family.
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March 20, 2013 at 7:07 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
That’s always the case.I am looking forward to your visit next week.They praised him highly.His boss might get angry with him.Do me a favor? When I was young, I’d listen to the radio, waiting for my favorite songs.It’s no use complaining.I’m sure we can get you a great good dealI’m his fanIt’s nothing to be surprised about.
LykeX
March 21, 2013 at 12:04 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Every sha-la-la-la, every wo-o-wo-o…
Now, that’s a spambot I can appreciate.
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April 27, 2013 at 1:20 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Chasteness is prejudice within a frilly green attire