Annoyed Pinoy decided to call it quits with a face-saving lie

Blogger doesn't facilitate the degree of "point by point" rebuttal that I require in scholarly discussions, at least in the response sections where there's a 1400 character limit.  But its free so I don't complain.

I've challenged "annoyed pinoy" on several issues.  See here.  He responded but then announced he was cutting off his end of the debate, ostensibly because I was becoming "pendantic".  I therefore have copied and pasted his replies here and will  respond to each point respectively.  What he calls "pendantic" is more fairly characterized as "concern for Paul's immediate context".  The quotes in italics were my own comments that Pinoy was responding to.

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 19, 2019 at 3:17 PM

//What evidence within the immediate context of v. 16 are you relying on to justify your own interpretation that Paul in v. 16 was speaking about scripture in the “abstract”?// 

That's the most common way the term "the Scriptures" is used among Jews and Christians at the time. As well as the New Testament. As far as I can tell, the term "Scripture", "Scriptures" and the phrase "the Scriptures" in the New Testament usually refers to "the Bible" in the abstract rather than any specific manuscripts. A possible exception is Luke 4:20-21; Acts 8:32-35; 17:11; 18:28. Maybe a few more. But the vast majority refer to them in the abstract. Most knowledgeable atheists would agree with me. Like Richard Carrier, Robert Price, John Loftus, Bart Ehrman. You're just being pedantic.

First, you admit the non-abstract way of referring to scripture might be employed in Luke and Acts.  But you merely assume that Paul in 2nd Timothy 3:16 must have been speaking of the scriptures in the abstract, as if you had no further obligation except to assume Paul referred to scripture the way the "majority" of other Christians did.  Surely you are aware of the "Problem of Paul" and its dangerous to blindly assume Paul believed the way the original Christians did?

Second, you provide no evidence that the "copies" interpretation of 2nd Timothy 3:16 is denied by the atheist bible debunkers you name.  Either way, I would have to examine their arguments, I don't worry whether my position is unreasonable merely because another atheist might not agree with it.

//No, I justified the “copies” interpretation from the context or previous verse. Contextual interpretation does not involve imposing foreign cultural, literary, scribal or theologicall novum.// 

That's the problem. You read the Bible like a fundamentalist. Contrary to 2000 years of Christian history which often tries to take those things into consideration.

sorry, but trying to taper my interpretation of an author's words to his own immediate literary context is a very objective manner of reading a text, a hermeneutic ALL scholars of language and history agree on.  Call it what you want.

//Might be nice if you point out what exactly it was about interpreting v. 15 to be speaking of copies,// 

If you're going to be annoyingly pedantic, then I can too. Where does it say that Paul is talking about copies?

I drew that inference from the obvious fact, nowhere contravened by any scholar, that before the 1st century, the originals of the OT books had perished.  It's not pendantic to make use of an assumption that NOBODY disagrees on.

How do you know that Timothy didn't have the originals?

I don't know it absolutely, but I don't need to know it absolutely.  Historiography is an art, not a science, therefore, it is more reasonable to ask whether one's interpretation of a bible verse is 'reasonable', instead of pretending it can be resolved in terms of absoluteness by asking wehther their interpretation is "accurate".

 Denying that the originals Moses and Isaiah actually set their pens to survived into the first century is "reasonable", given that everything we know about the conditions under which they wrote would cause such originals to perish within 100 years long before the 1st century arrived.  Especially in light of the bible's own statements that Mosaic writings were recopied by later generations.

It doesn't say he didn't have the originals.

It doesn't have to.  The issue is whether my inference that Timothy didn't have the originals, is reasonable.  It is.  Not all inferences have equal reasonableness. 

Apparently you think I lose a debate unless I can knock your contrary position all the way out of the ballpark.  Not true.  I never claimed that ability, I only claimed that my interpretation of 2nd Timothy 3:16 was reasonable.  That does not require that your own interpretation is unreasonable.

Therefore, the burden of proof is on you to show that he's talking about copies.

And in accord with normative conventions of historiography, remembering that what an ancient author meant  is solely a question of greater or less probability, not one of absolute certainty, I've properly shouldered that burden.

If you won't allow me to use cultural and historical context to make my case, then you shouldn't be able to either.

Not seeing your point, as when I examine the immediate context of v. 16 by looking at v. 15, I'm not resorting to cultural or historical context.  I'm staying within the literary context.

In which case, you can't argue that all the extra-Biblical evidence suggests that the autographs were lost to history.

I never said historical or cultural evidence was inadmissible, I simply asked you to respond to some concerns I had from the immediate literary context.  The reason was that you jumped to historical and cultural issues before you exhausted the immediate literary context.  Since an author might include in the context a statement that he is departing from normative cultural convention, it appears to me that objectivity is best served if you avoid the historical and cultural questions until after you've settled the literary context question on its own as far as you can.  Historical and cultural context won't help if you ignore the author's own clues to the meaning of his chosen words.

That's using things outside of the passage, and you shouldn't be allowed to do it if you're not allowing me to. See how ridiculous your argumentation is? It's laughable. Again, no atheistic, agnostic or Jewish scholar would argue your point.

Again, you don't cite any atheistic, agnostic or Jewish scholar who would disagree with me and deny that 2nd Timothy 2:15-16 is talking about copies.  Under your logic, I could dismiss without commentary most apologetics works, written as they are by fundamentalists, since most atheistic, agnostic and Jewish scholars deny the arguments therein, to say nothing of the fact that most legitimate Christian "scholars" are not fundamentalists or "apologists".

//Why would it be unreasonable to characterize this as simply quoting whatever version of the OT they thought might support their intended doctrinal teaching, sort of like the non-Jehovah Witness who doesn’t believe Jesus is god, but who merely cites the NWT of John 1:1 without acknowledging that other forms of that verse exist which do not support Arianism?// 

Because the 1st century Apostolic church didn't publish their own edition of the OT and claim it was the "only true" Scriptures.

Actually they sort of did.  If most scholars are correct that the NT quotes variously from Hebrew and Greek versions of the OT, then apparently the NT authors had their own ideas about which specific readings were inspired and which weren't.  The fundamentalist "explanation" for Paul's preferring the Lxx over the Hebrew in Hebrews 10:5-6 is foolish: 

 5 Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, "SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME;
 6 IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE.
 7 "THEN I SAID, 'BEHOLD, I HAVE COME (IN THE SCROLL OF THE BOOK IT IS WRITTEN OF ME) TO DO YOUR WILL, O GOD.'" (Heb. 10:5-7 NAU)

The NT author is obviously talking about the time when "he comes into the world".  He therefore quotes the Lxx of Psalm 40 which says "but a body you have prepared for me", when in fact the Hebrew of Psalm 40 says "my ears you have opened". It is no coincidence why the author chose the Lxx here, the wording just happens to more closely support the idea of incarnation than would a statement about how somebody's ears have been opened.  God can open your ears without causing you to become incarnate.  So the ideas expressed in Lxx go far beyond the discernible intent of the original Hebrew, and therefore, the Hebrew likely wasn't what gave rise to the Lxx reading.

So it would appear that, given the undeniable difference in the two versions of Psalm 40, the author, whom most Christians think is Paul, declared to the Christian world the particular reading that he felt was "correct". 

That is to say nothing of the other problem that some Lxx scholars raise, whether the only reason our post-Christian Lxx manuscripts read the way Hebrews 10:5 does, is because Christian scribes, copying out Psalm 40 and realizing the version quoted by Paul in the NT was different from the Psalm's original Hebrew, simply decided that Paul's preferred textual choice for that verse of the Psalm was best and used Paul's textual choice as their base-text for Psalm 40 (i.e., the Lxx is merely quoting the NT, since the Lxx manuscripts we have do not pre-date the 1st century, and were mostly authored by Christian scribes who would naturally think Paul's choice of OT text was superior to anything they might infer from OT manuscripts).

They knew that differing copies of the LXX were already spread throughout the Roman Empire by the Jews in the diaspora generations prior AND they accepted them in their contemporary state as generally reliable. This is historical fact.

And as the above reasonably shows, they also accepted that the original Hebrew didn't say quite as much as they wanted it to say.  Quite simply, you don't get "Jesus became incarnate" out of "my ears you have opened".  The author of Hebrew certainly did inform his readers of which versions of the OT he thought were inspired.

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 19, 2019 at 3:18 PM

//You are assuming Paul and the apostles were consistent in their beliefs about the nature of scripture.// 

Paul was taught by Gamaliel.

Oh, I'm sorry...was Gamaliel always consistent in what he taught?

I don't believe everything the NT says.  So that's a presupposition you now use that it might be best that we debate before you use it?

It was common knowledge that there are differences in various copies.

 Had Paul explained in Hebrews 10 why the Lxx is to be preferred above the original Hebrew, you might have something to talk about.  Since he did not, it looks to me like he merely quoted from whatever OT source just happened to align closer with his views...which is not different than the Jehovah Witness who "proves"  Arianism by quoting the NWT of John 1:1 and then saying nothing further.   Today we call is "proof-texting".  Why you would insist Paul or the NT authors weren't affected by such lack of critical thinking skills, I don't know, but they certainly blindly presume that their own textual choices for the OT quotes are not even worthy of discussion.

You are assuming that the Christian church either didn't know that there were differences between between Hebrew copies themselves, and LXX copies themselves, and Aramaic copies of the Targumim themselves [and other languages]. OR, you would have to be assuming that the Christian church believed they alone were in the possession of the inerrant editions of the OT Scriptures.

Given that it seems absurd that they wouldn't know the Lxx and Hebrew often told different stories, the latter is closer to my position, except that I think in the first century, the concept of "inerrancy" wasn't as fully developed, so that while they may have believed the OT "inspired", whether this did or didn't allow certain types of errors into the originals, was not a subject they spent much time trying to resolve...which might suggest that today's Christians can be more "apostolic" if they refuse to entertain scriptural issues the apostles saw no reason to educate the church on. Apparently, you really can do all that Jesus wants you to do, and grow in the spirit at an acceptable rate, without making your spiritual life more complex by joining in the modern day Pharaseeic "inerrancy" fray.  How much time have you spent indulging in the sin of word-wrangling, when you could have used that time to visit those in prison or handing out free food, or preaching on the street? 

Are you quite sure the third person of the Trinity likes everything you do?  Is there no danger that what personally interests you has become such an obsession that you've lost sight of the originally simple gospel commands?

There's no hint of that whatsoever in the NT,

Wrong, those who followed Paul and noted that the Hebrew OT and Lxx told different stories, would likely have assumed whatever version Paul used to support an argument, was the "right" version.

and would be against the fact when Christians evangelized an area, they encouraged the Jews in that location to examine the Scriptures they had (in whatever language) to confirm the truth of the Christian message (e.g. Act 17:11).

Which means nothing more significant than Jehovah's Witnesses who remind Trinitarians to "check out the bible" to see its disagreement with the trinity.   This actually counts as a sign of lack of critical thinking skills on the part of Paul and the earliest Christian converts, since to "check the scriptures" presupposes that the person doing the checking has a reliable copy of the scriptures, when in fact the differences between the Lxx and Hebrew are often substantial, and we reasonably assume it was worse in the 1st century, before later editors could create "approved" texts and get rid of the more complex earlier textual truth. 

//Viewing him as stupid only bothers fundamentalists like you. But whether something “bothers” you is not the criteria by which to decide whether it is reasonable to believe.// 

Same here.

I don't claim your view of Paul is unreasonable, I only claim my view of Paul is reasonable.  You apparently think that the reasonableness of your own position necessarily requires that my contrary position is thus unreasonable.  That's not how reasonableness works.  Reasonableness is not limited to "being correct". In the context of interpreting the bible, reasonableness requires taking into account grammar and immediate context.  That's what I did, but i skipped the grammar part since you and I would not disagree on those matters.

That you think these objections have any weight doesn't bother me at all since more informed atheistic scholars would laugh at your objections, criticisms, interpretations and view regarding Paul's scholarship.

Except that you never cite them.

So, I'm done with this topic.

I usually outlast the fundamentalists.  Once you step outside the safe confines of Triablogue, the stuff you depend on for your arguments doesn't last long in cross-examination.  Now you know why Triablogue routinely bans the skeptics that actually know what they are talking about, and why Steve Hays and Jason Engwer have a solid history of dogmatically mistaking rebuttal for their opponent's lack of memory.

You're just being pedantic.

I'm also demonstrably concerned to interpret 2nd Timothy 3:16 in light of its own literary context.  Call it what you want.

You're either not being serious, or you're lacking such basic understanding of the issues that you suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Or you are quitting early because you can predict your own demise in this debate if you continue subjecting yourself to piercing questions that expose your blindly assumed presuppositions.

//Paul’s expressions are often rambling, and he takes the OT out of context all the time, prompting die hard fundies today to write numerous articles wherein they trifle that Paul “wasn’t necessarily wrong”. 

That statement seems to be so ignorant of many issues. Including the Jewish PaRDeS approach to interpreting and applying the Tanakh.

I don't see your point, since I also accuse the 1st century Jews of using exegetical methods that were far from objective.  Midrash and Pesher are examples.

// I am not unreasonable to saddle Paul with the belief that the words of the OT contained hidden meanings that could not be discerned by merely reading them the way one normally reads anything.// 

Actually, while I think the main point of the historical-grammatical interpretation of the Scriptures is the primary way to interpret the Bible, I don't limit it to that. The grammatico-historical method is wrong in saying it's the only way to interpret the Bible. I would include other ways as well. For example, PaRDeS, and the sensus plenior among others.

The "R" refers to "remez" which means hidden or symbolic meaning, and the "S" refers to "Sod" which means secret, mystical or esoteric meaning.  Have fun trying to incorporate such fantasyland techniques into your apologetics replies to bible skeptics. 

As far as the fuller sense or "sensus plenior", I would deny the legitimacy of this since in any other context it is utterly foolish to pretend an author's words implied more facts than the author himself intended to convey.  This won't stop being reasonable merely because you can trifle that god can inspire people to say things whose meaning they don't consciously apprehend.

//I told you before that I do not believe in bible inerrancy, therefore, I obviously don’t use bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic.// 

It's not about your beliefs, but about the author of 2 Timothy's beliefs about inspiration.

But it IS about whether my method of interpretation is "reasonable".  I'm not seeing your point, you haven't shown that Paul believed in "inerrancy" anyway, so you cannot just automatically assume he did and expect me to become breathless due to your scholarly acumen.  And let's not forget examples from your own bible showing that God's inspiration does NOT necessitate inerrancy (Acts 10:17, 2nd Peter 3:16). Once again, you appear to prefer to get caught up in a debate that the apostles never saw fit to include in their canonical teachings.  Are you quite sure that your own sinful lust to argue doesn't play a part in the reason why you think "god" wants you to adopt "inerrancy"?  Does your "god" also like the same foods that you do?

Regardless of whether it was Paul, the Christian who wrote it likely believed a view of inspiration and inerrancy like his fellow Christians and Jews.

Sorry, you have provided no evidence of such, and we could hardly justify today's Christian in-house debate on inerrancy if there were 1st century evidence on how Christians understood specifically "inerrancy".

Therefore, you have to interpret v. 16 in that light, not in your anachronistic, literalistic and Biblicistic [i.e. historical and cultural vacuum] way.

You mean in my "what did Paul mean by the same term in the preceding verse?" way.   I take that as a compliment on my scholarly abilities.

//Then apparently inspiration/inerrancy were not limited to just the originals.// 

And if you were paying attention, I said that in my previous posts. Apparently, you're either not paying attention, or not reading my comments in their entirety.

No, what I'm not perceiving is why you fight so hard for inerrancy if you also "allow" that bible inspiration could be true without inerrancy.  Sort of like "allowing" that a defendant is truly guilty, but fighting to the death to support her innocence.  In such cases "allow" means precisely nothing.  It is just a dishonest attempt to sound objective.

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 19, 2019 at 3:18 PM

//Well since you think inspiration = inerrancy, would you also be willing to say that the copies are inerrant “to the extent that they faithfully represent the original"? Or does that just sound stupid despite what logically follows from your own belief that inspiration and inerrancy are synonymous?// 

I don't believe that inspiration = inerrancy. I already implicitly said so when I said that there is a secondary sense of "inspiration" that I'm willing to hold which can affirm the inspiration of the errant copies.

What is your biblical evidence to justify this "secondary" sense?  AGAIN, NONE, you have simply been confronted by the undeniable fact of copy errors, and you have invented a new form of "inspiration" that will account for errors in the copies.

But the question is whether Paul believed the copies to be inerrant, not whether you can invent a version of inerrancy that will account for copyist mistakes.  You need to let Paul say all that he has to say, before you begin doing apologetics and coming up with excuses.

//Then its also possible for the originals to be inspired without being inerrant,// 

And I said as much in times past. 

//Your god is rather stupid for putting forth such massive effort to render the originals “inerrant”, only to let the copies become infested with error.// 

Not at all. God providentially preserves the general truth

Hold it just one cotton picken' minute...what part of the bible teaches that god's preservation of it extends only to "general truth"?  Now you are adding another "caveat", taht cannot be sustained from the bible, to your doctrine of inspiration/inerrancy.  Is there a slimit to how often you will allow non-biblical evidence to color your "biblical" doctrine of inspiration? The  more non-biblical evidence you use, the more likely the devil will find a clever way to trip you up, right?

through the copies among his true believers whom He elected and saved among various denominations down through history.

How could you possibly believe that a non-Calvinist Christian could be saved, when Jesus never taught any such thing as a "essentials/non-essentials" doctrine?   Aren't you afraid that what you get from "later revelation" is in reality only making things more complex than Jesus ever intended?  Are you so sure of the historical evidence in favor of the 27-book NT canon that it deserves as much devotion as you have for Christ's own words? 

How could you possibly go wrong by choosing one of the canonical gospels and throwing everything else away?  Maybe you couldn't do as many good works if you didn't hear Paul's retort on divine sovereignty (Romans 9:20)?  Maybe you wouldn't be able to preach the gospel if you didn't study the perils of falling away in Hebrews 10? 

//But nothing you have said renders my interpretation “unreasonable”, so you have no basis for declaring that interpretation unreasonable. // 

I dare say Richard Carrier, Robert Price, John Loftus and Bart Ehrman would likely disagree with most of what you've said, argued or inferred.

This boast is dismissed until you decide to support it.

//You provide no contextual warrant for the supposition that Paul in v. 16 was talking about the originals, or talking about scripture in the “abstract”.//
 Because I'm not accepting your fundamentalistic and Biblicistic limitations on the interpretation of Scripture.

I rested my argument about 2nd Timothy 3:16 on nothing more than how Paul obviously intended the meaning of "scripture" in the prior verse.  If you wish to call concern for context "fundamentalistic" or any other epithet, you aren't demonstrating any unreasonableness on my part.

Thanks for the conversation. I'm terminating my end of the conversation because it's getting into issues that are just ridiculously pedantic, anachronistic and to a WAY OUT THERE fringe and conspiratorially suspicious approach to "scholarship".

Wow, all that because I drew an obvious inference from 2nd Timothy 3:15.

ANNOYED PINOYNovember 19, 2019 at 3:33 PM
BTW, Timothy didn't actually have to have the autographs for your challenge to be met. It would be sufficient for him to have THOUGHT (though wrongly) that he had the autographs.

Ok, what is the likelihood that Timothy thought he had the autographs of the OT in the first century?  Is it greater than the likelihood that he knew the scriptures he possessed were copies created within the 100 years prior to his birth?

Going by your pedantic Biblicistic method of interpretation, then the burden of proof is on you to show that the author of 2 Timothy in 3:16 was talking about copies and not the autographs and that Timothy didn't have the autographs. Since, for all you know, Timothy actually did have the autographs. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. That's where your hermeneutics and exegesis leaves you.

Ok, then we need merely ask which is more likely, that 1st century Timothy believed the OT manuscripts he could handle and read were the actual pieces of papyrus that the OT authors actually wrote on...or whether he believed that what he was touching and reading were copies created by earlier copies.  You would still lose the debate, because it would be decided in terms of probability, not possibility. 

The mere possibility that Timothy might have thought the scriptures he handled were originals, would not have a hope of trumping the conclusion of every other Christian and biblical scholar, that the originals of the OT disappeared long before the 1st century, surviving only by extensive copying and recopying.