Yes, the second entry ought to have been 6th and 5th centuries
BCE.
neologist wrote:I believe I now understand your point. But obviously, if the original writings were inspired by God, surely he would have protected the essential integrity of the copies.
That's a big "if" there, Bubba, and it places the burden of proof squarely upon whoever makes such a claim.
Quote:This seems particularly true in light of the many opportunities scribes would have had to excise what they might have considered passages less than complimentary to the Jews.
Absent any evidence that your imaginary friend wielded the ultimate celestial blue pencil, this is precisely why so many people are skeptical about the claim for divinely-inspired, inerrant truth in the Bobble. After all, the text is no different, to the scholar without a religious agenda, than any other text of a tribal people who are anxious to portray themselves in a favorable light. The claim to have a special covenant with your boy god is somewhat unique up to the point that all sorts of christian types began to trot out the same claim for themselves--but otherwise, it differs in no significant way from other such texts--such a Roman mythic history or the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, both of which can be shown to be less than entirely truthful, or at least in significant conflict with other sources. A famous example of how such sources trip themselves up is the claim in the AS chronicles that they conquered Somerset, followed about 70 or 80 years later of a report of the invasion of Somerset. If they conquered it the first time, why were they invading it three generations later.
The Bobble gets a pass in the mind of the true believers, even though it is as riddle with contradictions and absurdities as any other such text, and solely because he true believer wants to believe, and not because the text is any better founded than any other comparable set of ethnic fairy tales.
