Genesis
Quote "Tell me, have you every told a lie? even a little one? If yes, then that makes you a liar" I agree. And we can't trust liars because anything they tell us might just be another one of their lies.
But hold on a minute. If everyone who tells any untruth is a liar that means that everyone is a liar correct? After all EVERYONE has told untruths at sometime in their life. If everyone is a liar that means you & the authors of the bible are also liars. So why should we trust anything you or the bible says? It was written by liars. It must have been because everyone is a liar...that includes the authors of the bible.
Ah but that's different you say. The authors of the bible were inspired by God. Why should we trust you when you tell us that? yAccording to your argument you're just a liar. And how do we know that the bible is inspired? Because the liars who wrote it tell us so? But they are liars! You said so yourself. EVERYONE lies. Unless you were lying about that :)

Pericles, that article was terrible. It had all the worst aspects of modern biblical criticism, and its attendant presuppositions.

http://ntgateway.com/Q/ten.htm is part of Mark Goodacre's case against Q - the postulated source of quotes used by Matthew and Luke to write their Gospels.

There is no good reason for doubting Matthew wrote his Gospel :) despite what liberal Catholics say.

http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/gospdefhub.html#anon

The teaching arm of the Church praises the historico-critical method but does not endorse all its conlusions, it is happy keeping the traditional beliefs about the Gospels - there is as yet no good reason to change. This is the teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

It is a tribute to Catholic openness that a magazine publishes different ideas about Our sacred text. If I were you I wouldn't rush to embrace them though :)

If you were to ask four people to write biographies of Lincoln you would get four different biographies – essence the same however. Those closest to him would have most cause to write because he was a great man, and they saw him up close.

For any event of the ancient near east you will not find better evidence, its as simple as that. Ancient history is a rich area of inquiry, but if you banish the Gospels you must be consistent and banish all ancient history if you're consistent in your skepticism.

Doubt your doubts Pericles.

Martin, you have a wicked sense of humour.

>>For an easy to understand summary of how to read the Bible. You can't go past Dei Verbum.<<

Five thousand words, prepared by a committee. That's really going to help.

Here's a sample.

"This plan of revelation is realized by deeds and words having in inner unity: the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them."

I'm sure it sounds better in Latin.

Please advise us, Martin, exactly which part of Dei Verbum provides “an easy to understand summary of how to read the Bible”?

Otherwise I shall be forced to assume you simply want to divert attention from your inability to discuss cogently with Aziliz by changing the subject.

Genesis

You want me to accept "God's standards". Where do I find these, pray tell? The Bible (Catholic or Protestant)? The Holy Koran (Shia or Sunni)? The Torah? The Buddhist scriptures (Mahayana or Hinayana?), Taoist or Confucian writings? All these - plus numberless tribal shamans - claim to have The Truth. Unfortunately the Truth differs from one to the other: they can't all be right but you can't show which one is, you can only accept one blindly, on faith. All, as Bosk so logically and mercilessly points out, are the works of people: people like you and I (ie, occasional liars, thieves, lusters-after-sexually-desirable others, etc). The noted scientist Sir Fred Hoyle once put these words into the mouth of a character in one of his Sci-Fi novels:

"Aye, there is no shortage of men who are privy to the word of God. So they say themselves. But I have never heard anything from this God myself, only from the men who say they are privy to his word."

Not to be insulting, Genesis, but you are just one more such. Trot out your God and bring him to my place one day - he's omniscient, so he'll have the address - I'll give him a hearing then, O yes precious, certainly I will.

Martin, you ask me to “doubt my doubts”. I do that all the time, and intend to continue to do so.

It is evident from your posts here that you do not take your own advice. You are highly selective in the scholarship that you are prepared to accept and reject, witness my reference to a piece from an overtly evangelical site that clearly didn't meet with your approval...

>>It had all the worst aspects of modern biblical criticism, and its attendant presuppositions <<

Do you ever listen to yourself? Doesn't it occur to you that people who don't share your views can – and do - substitute “Christian fundamentalism” or “rabid single-minded Christian evangelism” for the “modern biblical criticism” that you complain about?

Particularly the bit about the attendant presuppositions.

>>There is no good reason for doubting Matthew wrote his Gospel despite what liberal Catholics say <<

Ooops, there you go again. There are plenty of reasons to doubt it, as many scholars have argued, and will argue, for years. Only people who arrogantly assume they are in possession of the uniquely “right” answer will reject any and every argument, in favour of blindly retaining their belief.

>>For any event of the ancient near east you will not find better evidence, its as simple as that <<

If we were talking here purely about an historical event, or series of events, then there would be no issue. But we are talking about the birth of a spiritual movement that has had a major impact on world affairs for centuries. The fact that these works were put together, not as a purely historical record but as a basis for putting ones faith in one particular deity and its concomitant religious strictures, had a major influence on what was written.

Livy was an historian, so were Herodotus and Thucydides. The four gospels were religious tracts. There is a difference.

The entire edifice of your belief system rests on these books, so you are obliged to defend them as historical records, I understand that. But I don't suffer from the same limitation.

Dei verbum– presented by Pope Paul VI November 18, 1965

Blah– yes Pericles a document dedicated to obfuscation rather than enlightenment.

Martin, I think you are referring to (12) which instructs to read the scriptures:

with regard to the style of the times
with regards to the unity of the whole of scripture
and taking into account that "texts are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse"

Saying that parts of the Bible are 'poetic' would certainly mean that they aren't to be taken literally as you suggested, but poetry would be something like "The Song of Solomon" (which has been controversial enough over the ages) and not the simple instructions on slavery that are repeated seven times within the NT - how on earth could they be interpreted as 'poetry'?

If the instruction to see things ‘in context of the times’ means, as you suggest, that part of the rules, laws and instructions on how to behave is irrelevant to today there is no point having a Bible – at very least it is an admission that it is not ‘eternal truth’.

Anyone who attempted to take the Bible as a unity would just self-combust– there is far too much contradiction to make that possible.

But the crunch is, Dei Verbum states:

"The books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation."

I think you stretch the interpretation of Dei Verbum if you think it means it is okay not to take parts of the Bible (of your choice) literally and decide parts (once again of your choice) aren’t relevant to today.

Even so, the main thrust of the Dei Verbum is “We are right because God says so and we have tradition behind us and we keep the right to say what the Bible means not you”.