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About LinkBacks"But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you" (Kirsty Maccoll)Originally Posted by j1979
"But he's a liar and I'm not sure about you" (Kirsty Maccoll)
this thread could go anywhere from here on in!
nope, it isn't. Sorry. I can quote you sura after sura which shows quite the opposite. And if you look at the latter part of Mohammed's life, it was all about waging war, not peace.
I would also argue that the majority of Muslims are peaceful, but that is not a justification for saying Islam is peaceful. They just don't know their Qu'ran very well. Unfortunately, I do.
And furthermore, about 80% of Muslims don't speak arabic, but they can recite verse after verse of the Qu'ran in Arabic. A sad fact - they learn it in a language they don't speak, and rely on their Imams to translate it for them. NOT very helpful for constructive debate. After all, the very word 'islam' means to submit, not argue / debate / discuss.
oh, and I like Muslims for the most part. Very hospitable. But they generally don't know their own scripture.
sorry, not true about the Bible. There is much that can be historically verified. MUCH. Which is why the British Museum now has direct scriptural references on some of its exhibits.
also, the new testament can be proven to be correctly translated from the originals beyond any reasonable doubt, beyond any other historical document in history within 750 years of its writing (i.e. better than documents 750 years NEWER than the Bible)
"...or understood": - that is a rash comment to make. In no way justified.
um, not true. the widely unknown fact is the Qu'ran was only canonised in the 1930's!!!!! Not a 1000 years ago etc.
The earliest document we can study of the Qu'ran has *thousands* of annotations, i.e. revisions of the original text. It's late now, but I can provide exact numbers if you want.
Further, I can provide MUCH material from *Muslim* scholars about all the contradictions and inconsistencies within the Qu'ran. Forget about scholars of other faiths / secular scholars.
HTH
Then why is there so much argument over some critical parts, right down to words or phrases?
For instance, and to use one of the more obvious examples, is it killing or murder that's prohibited? (That's rhetorical, by the way)
It's not just about a literal translation from one language to another, though that alone is contentious enough. It's also about interpretation. For instance, murder is a legal definition, at least in today's society and in the UK. And as the legal system, in a different country and 2000 years ago was very different, interpreting a prohibition against "murder" requires a thorough understanding, not just of the original language, but the original cultural and legal contexts too, in order to not just translate words but cultural contexts. Did, for example, the "authors" of the Bible have a word, then, for what we call murder these days? We need to compare like with like to be sure that "killing" then isn't equivalent to "murder", in context, these days.
Consider James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Unless you either have a thorough understanding of the cultural setting, or study that context quite carefully, reading the book would inevitably result in either a considerable degree of misunderstanding, or confusion, or completely missing a good percentage of the point, or all three. And that's in our own language (sort-of) and less than 100 years ago. Anyone that wants to know what I'm talking about ought to try reading it.
The same point applies, for instance, to Dickens. Taken at a simplistic level, they're good (or depending on your point of view, bad) novels. Taken on another level, they're biting political satire. Taken on yet another level, they're a political reformation project.
And to take yet another example, read Chaucer in the original. Again, our own language, but without a fair bit of training and interpretation, most people would see it as a foreign language, and that's just the language, let alone the cultural context.
But even if it's 'kill', not "murder", kill what? An absolute prohibition against killing anything, or just humans? Does it mean you can't even kill in self-defence if it's the only way to protect yourself? Or is it a justification for vegetarianism, in that is you can't kill at all, then you can't kill animals to eat. But wait, plants are alive too, so does the prohibition preclude killing plants? Because if it does, we're all going to get a tad hungry if we obey it.
The argument about the literal translation of that commandment bounces back and forth among academics, some arguing one way, others another way. Are all those arguments objective, or are some putting things in their own cultural or political context, and arguing for how they want it to be interpreted, regardless of whether that is how it was originally intended.
And to complicate matters much further, if we accept for the sake of argument that the Bible is the Word of God, how much of it was actually written down from first hand witnessing of God's actual word, and how much was handed down for years, word of mouth, or even generations like that, before it finally got written down? How much of what we currently have is that original word of God, and how much has been through the "send three and fourpence, I'm going to a dance" process. I'll explain that remark if anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about.
j1979 has a point - much of the Bible can't be proven. Even if you could prove that it was 100% correct translation, and that requires a correct transposition of cultural contexts to ensure correct meaning, as well as a literal translation, I'd love to see how you're going to prove that it actually is what it is claimed to be, i.e. the Word of God.
It may be that much Biblical detail can be historically verified, but so it would be if someone contemporaneous to the relevant period made it up as a novel, or just ..... erm ..... embellished it a bit. But while some facts can be verified as accurate, or at least consistent, it's impossible to verify a lot. We can't even verify a lot of what happened at JFKs assassination, and I for one was alive at the time, it was caught on film, and it's been the subject of investigation after comprehensive investigation, numerous documentaries that examined living witnesses, and a vast amount of research and writing. And we STILL don't know quite what happened for sure. You have no chance at all of being 100% sure of events 2000 years ago that have passed mouth-to-mouth, let alone the meaning, or indeed whether it actually is the word of God, or just a paraphrasing of the collective words of an eloquent and charismatic political reformer.
RoBe (16-07-2008),Salazaar (16-07-2008),shadowmaster (16-07-2008),spazman (23-07-2008)
send reinforcements, i'm going to advance!
Saracen: good points all.
Was simply stating that the assumption that the biblical text has been corrupted through translation is bogus, NOT that there is a single interpretation, or that it can all be proven 100%
from a historian's POV, it is accurate to the original texts.
This isn't a competition of which religious text is somehow going to be more 'acurate', as thats like going to a miss america pagent and woundering which one can do quantum mechanics best.
It is simply a case of interpretation, as always a reader will be able to find out whatever message they want from any text, because they go looking for that particular message and convientantly ignore everything else.
As i write this is sudenly think this phenonominan is in no way restricted to religious texts. There was a program on a couple of weeks ago about 9/11 conspiracies, there the advocates blindly find little cracks in the offical explaniation and create something concrete out of them, completely ignoring rational thought about anything that contradicts their desired outcome.
In short, they suffer from an appaling lack of logic and clarity of thought. Why would a religious zelot be any different? The book dosent have to be evil, they will make it evil themselfs.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
well, the thing is, if one IS going to dicuss any religion and its claims, one has to go back to the text. There is nothing else we can appeal to, for the very reasons of the differing interpretations you mention.
After all, in this case, both texts claim to be divine.
So, if either text illustrates historical inaccuracies, blatant contradictions, bad grammar, a lack of logic etc, mistranslation, a lack of continuity, one would naturally view it with some skepticism.
So, was simply saying that the accusation of mistranslation over the centuries cannot be levelled at the Bible. Of the other text in discussion.........
Lets pretend it was this simple.
We all knew the sacred text of scientology was correct, it was proved beyound all un-equivicable doubt. We also knew that the fible was wrong, flawed etc.
It dosen't remotely matter which book the person leverages to fit their goals, because they will be able to spin it how they see fit. Carefully picking and chooseing the 'evidence' in the same way a consipiracy theorist does.
This is why its important that people who are deaply beliving that their text is sacred... Have an understanding that their interpretation might be deaply flawed. In much the same way some people try to claim the earth is only 6k years old or some such easily dis-proveable tosh.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
An example how accurate the christian bible is:
How come so many parts where stolen from the Sumerian legends - example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth
Of course the accusation can be levelled. That is a cold, hard and easily provable fact. For a start, I levelled that accusation, so you have proof positive right there. And I'm incredibly far from the first to do so, rather doubt I'll be the last, and am also very far from the best qualified.
Whether those accusations are justified or not, or correct or not, is another matter.
Lets see... It seems to me that all religions (and subsets/castes/splinter groups of said religions) tend to:
a) disagree with each other wildly about the nature of god and the tenants of faith
b) steal ideas wholeheartedly from each other and from earlier religions and
c) claim that their truth is the only true truth despite all the other religions being united on the single issue that they are wrong.
This leads me to deduce that:
a) They must all be wrong (except the ones that are right).
b) Believe whatever the hell you like (who knows, you might be the one who's right).
c) Don't get pissy if everyone else who thinks you're wrong doesn't take well to being told to do things your way.
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(='.'=)
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well the three main monotheisic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam are all based on the same god and all could be called sects of the same religion. then there are sects within each,
Judaism has Orthodox, reform ect.
Christianity has catholic / Anglican
Islam has Sunny, Shia
and lots and lots of smaller sects ...
the only thing that we can conclude is man loves fighting/disagring with his fellow man. no matter what the end goal is or how small the issue. we love it. so bring on WW3 , you know you wanna!!
Ooh, you wordsmith, you. Bravo!
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