The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his126/bibl02b.arj/BIBL02B.TXT

Text File | 1990-05-15 | 28KB | 415 lines

.Critique of the article entitled, "Computer Analysis and Proofs That God, The
.Creator of All Things, Did (in fact) Write The 66 Books of The Holy Bible."
.
.    PREFACE
.
.    Well, the infamous article discussed herein begins with a preface, so
heck, I figured, "Why not me, too?"
.
.    I have been a Christian for 17 years now.  I spent some of those years
majoring in Bible and Theology in college, and some more teaching Bible full-
time, as well as Christian doctrine, apologetics, ethics, church history, and
other subjects relating to Christian thought and living.  I have also put
quite a bit of time into study of logic and philosophy, and some time in New
Testament Greek.
.
.    It's been some years since I was so heavily involved in Biblical teaching
and study.  My personal hobby for the past 8 years or so has been computer
programming.  I started with BASIC (as so many, if not most, computer freaks
do), moved on to Z-80 machine language (not assembly language, as my computer
had no assembler at the time -- I actually entered my programs in hex code),
and from there on to 6502 assembly language.  I still work with 6502 assembly,
but I am also now involved with 8088 code for IBM compatibles, and I dabble
some with C.  Besides my hobby interest, I am also now involved in some
commercial programming.  All of the above is to establish the fact that I know
at least a little about both the Bible and computers.
.
.    During this past 17 years, one of the things that has continued to
fascinate me is the gullibility of some of my fellow Christians.  I have seen
some believe and help to spread false rumors about various corporations
(MacDonalds and Proctor & Gamble come immediately to mind), myths about a
computer called "The Beast" that supposedly existed in the World Trade Center
in New York and which was ready to implement a 666-based number system for
every individual in the world, and various other myths that I knew, and could
for some of them prove, to be false.
.
.    I have never thought that my gullible brethren have intended to spread or
believe falsities.  Rather, that a criterion of judgement that they would
normally use in other, more "secular," contexts has been left out of their
thinking when the subject of certain spiritual claims has been close to their
heartfelt faith.  It's easy to develop a defensive mentality in a world that
on the whole thinks you are wrong in your religious views.  Some of us want to
vindicate our faith so much that the motivation to believe something that
purports to prove the truth of our faith can be so great that we can forget to
ask such basic questions as "How do you know that such is true?"  or "What are
the sources and the evidences for these claims?"  Especially when we hear
something from another Christian, it's tempting to think, "Well, surely
another Christian wouldn't lie about such a thing, after all, lying is wrong
for a Christian."  It may simply be the case, though, that the other Christian
heard the story in the same way as we, and that he/she thought about it and
accepted it on the same basis.  The fact that a myth makes claims that, if
true, would support our own faith or vindicate it before unbelievers can also
be a strong factor in our motivation to accept it without proper question as
to evidences, rationality, etc.
.
.    The article herein under question is a good example of the type of thing
I am talking about.  I read it briefly some months ago, shook my head and
laughed at some of its absurdities, and then threw it away as not worth closer
scrutiny.  But then recently I saw a message on a Christian BBS wherein one
Christian was trying to make a point to another regarding the reliability of
the Biblical text.  He referred to the article as proof in support of his
claims.  In the further dialogue, no one seemed to question the veracity or
reliability of the article itself -- its "results" were simply accepted by
both parties without doubt.  So, I left a message in response wherein I
expressed my basic opinion about the article in somewhat derogatory manner.  I
was a bit bugged that such a grand claim as is made in the article was simply
being accepted, and that no one so far seemed to have looked at the article
with a more critical eye.  Since I offered in my message to provide some
detailed reasons for my opinion if they were requested, I downloaded the
article again and scrutinized it more closely.  The closer I looked it over
and checked its claims, the more appalled I grew as to how terribly BAD a
piece of scholarship and claimed research it was.  I decided to write this
article instead of simply making my point in another message, as the flaws and
falsities (I don't like to say that they were lies, but some of the falsities
cannot qualify as mistakes; however, I will try and be as generous as I can in
what kind of character I attribute to the author(s)).  Even this article
doesn't go into all that can be said in refutation of the article's claims,
but I believe enough is shown herein to make the point:  there has been no
"scientific proof" take place.  Indeed, I will go so far as to question
whether the claimed research was even done.
.
.    Preface over, flame off, time to dig out the magnifying glass...
.
.    I suppose that part of the reason that the article's claims have been so
easily accepted is that it seems to SOUND so scientific and rigorous in its
claimed methods.  Such popular buzzwords as FACT, PROOF, EVIDENCE and
PHENOMENA are strewn throughout the text.  The claim is made that all of the
evidence will qualify as "scientific," that the research can be reproduced
under laboratory conditions.  Close scrutiny is invited, and the challenge to
prove the study and its results wrong is levied.  I would submit that the
reason that the challenge has never been taken up is possibly that most of
those who may have seen the text file and who are qualified to critically
analyze it have reacted somewhat like I did when I first saw it -- it's so
ridiculous in its claims and logic that it's beneath serious thought.  The
article is supposed to be usable as a tool to convince "intellectuals,"
"agnostics," and "atheists" of the Bible's truth.  PLEASE don't try to use it
as such -- it will be like trying to cut down a tree with a soup spoon, and
you will end up looking about that intelligent.
.
.    Now on to a few of my arguments and criticisms.  I will number each major
point and will illustrate where in the article we are (let's give the article
the shorter title ANALYSIS) with quotations.
.
.    1.  In ANALYSIS' preface the claim is made of "FACTS and PROOFS of God
being the AUTHOR of the BIBLE" (their emphasis).  I submit that the existence
of God himself hasn't been proven.  No unassailable argument or "proof" of
God's existence has yet been developed after almost 2,000 years of attempts.
Some of the arguments have helped to establish the point that belief in God is
at least not an unreasonable or irrational faith, that it is at least a
plausible belief.  But nothing yet has proven beyond all question his
existence.  Even those arguments that seem to support belief in SOMETHING
beyond the natural (such as those based on the laws of thermodynamics) do NOT
prove that that something is the God revealed in the Bible.  An argument that
could prove that something is there doesn't necessarily at the same time prove
what that something is like, whether it is personal and, if so, what are its
character traits and attributes, etc.  It takes special revelation, as when
Christ said, "He who has seen me has seen the Father," to understand the
personality and attributes of God.  Nature and reason by themselves can never
obtain such understanding.  To "prove" that God wrote the Bible there has at
least to be a prior belief in God's existence, and in this case, the Judeo-
Christian God as against the god's of other religious persuasions.  For those
who reject the existence of deity (agnostics, atheists, etc.) or even of the
Christian deity (Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.), the MOST that ANALYSIS
could possibly accomplish if its "phenomena" and arguments are valid (which is
about to be seriously questioned) would be the claim, "Look here -- some
extremely odd and unexplained phenomena!"  The scientific mind is more than
used to dealing with unexplained phenomena without the need for a "god of the
gaps."
.
.    2.  The claim is made that "all alleged errors" in the Bible "have been
shown, in context, to be non-existent upon careful investigation."  Such a
claim has so far only been accepted by conservative evangelicals or
fundamentalist Christians.  The somewhat tortuous arguments used by some to
explain many of the "alleged errors" have found no acceptance among those who
do not already believe that no error COULD exist in the Bible.  How many times
DID Peter deny Christ, anyway?  That depends on how you try to "harmonize" the
different Gospel accounts.
.
.    3.  After looking at a supposed numerical phenomena in Genesis 1:1, an
argument is developed: IF God is the same at all times (based on the statement
in Hebrews 13:8 that God is the "same yesterday, today and tomorrow"), THEN
"the numeric phenomena, briefly shown above, should be a measure of whether
God wrote the remainder of Genesis, the books of Exodus, Jonah, or any other
Old Testament phrase or book and, (2) It would also hold true for the New
Testament ... in IDENTICAL patterns."  The proposed argument is open to
serious question.  Hebrews 13:8, according to the best exegetical
understanding, is speaking fundamentally of Christ's basic nature and
character.  It does not necessarily follow from continuing consistency of
character that one would write 66 different books according to one overall
mathematical pattern.  Being always the same type of person doesn't mean that
one always does, or has to do, something in the same way or according to a
certain pattern.  God always loves His children, but although He has
miraculously healed some who were sick, He hasn't and doesn't ALWAYS do so, in
spite of the truth of Hebrews 13:8.  God doesn't change in His essential
character and attributes, but the way that He does things HAS and DOES change
at times, as when He changed the way in which He dealt with His people, from
the legal system of the Old Covenant to the system of grace in the New
Covenant.  Thus, if the above argument premise (if A then B, or IF God is
always the same THEN the numeric phenomena should be a measure of whether He
wrote the Bible) is rejected on the basis of the above thoughts, even if the
phenomena exists as claimed throughout the whole Bible (which is yet to be
thrown into serious doubt), it is NOT shown logically to be a "proof" of
divine origin for the Bible.  IF the phenomena exists, ALL we have is some
extremely odd and unexplained phenomena.
.
.    4.  The statement is made that "the 'evidence' we are about to present
would be null and void, in most cases, if EVEN ONE CHARACTER WERE DELETED,
CHANGED OR ADDED!" (their emphasis).  The claim is made throughout ANALYSIS
that for both the Old and the New Testaments, the research and computer
analysis is done on the "original" text, thus implying that there is one set
of manuscripts for both testaments that is understood and accepted as having
"original text" status.  This is simply not the case.
.
.    In the literal sense, there IS no "original text."  The original
documents as penned by the authors themselves are not available, and all we
have are copies of copies, all done by hand by scribes.  I'm more familiar
with the facts regarding the New Testament manuscript sources and criticism
than I am with the Old Testament sources, but even for the Old Testament I do
know that there are various different text copy sources for the different
books.  Besides the basic Masoretic text, for example, there is for the
Penteteuch the Samaritan Penteteuch (the five books of Moses), which does
diverge from the Masoretic text at certain points.  There are also the Dead
Sea Scrolls, with fragments from many of the Old Testament books, along with
the complete book of Isaiah.  These scrolls are much older by hundreds of
years, and therefore closer to the "originals" in time, than anything that had
been been available prior to their discovery, including the oldest copies of
the Masoretic text.  When the KJV Bible was translated, the Masoretic text was
basically it.  More modern translations, as well as critical Hebrew
manuscripts, HAVE to take the Dead Sea Scrolls into account in order to
further insure reliability in the text.  There supposedly has not been found
anything in the Scrolls that diverge seriously from the text as we had it up
until this century (the Jewish scribes WERE very meticulous in their copying
practices), but that is NOT to say that there are not any relatively minor
differences in the textual details.  All of these manuscript sources, along
with various and sundry other manuscript fragments, constitute part of the
most basic and fundamental evidence that has to be considered in reliably
establishing just what the text of the original documents was.  Even the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by the Jews in
Christ's time, and quoted from by Christ and Paul themselves, due to its age
and the corresponding fact that it was translated from quite an old Hebrew
source, can't be left out of the picture.
.
.    In the case of the New Testament, the textual evidence is even more
dense.  There are over 4,000 manuscripts and manuscript fragments from which
the text of Greek New Testaments are derived.  All of the manuscript evidence
must be taken into account when compiling a reliable Greek text, and ALL of
the Greek New Testaments, from which translations are made, are the results of
extensive work in collating, comparing and analyzing the document evidence.
The overall result is a highly reliable Greek text in just about all of the
Greek New Testaments, and no fundamental Christian doctrine has ever been
under threat due to variant textual readings in manuscripts.  But there's the
rub:  with over 4,000 different documents and document fragments there ARE
SOME differences between them in the text.  The differences are usually pretty
minor; a definite article may be included in a phrase in one document while
missing in another, for example.  In some other cases, a whole verse or more
may be under question (such as in the case of the ending of Mark, or I John
5:7).
.
.    Such a massive amount of textual evidence requires a heck of a lot of
work in order to decide upon the most likely original reading when important
manuscripts and manuscript "families" do vary in some detail.  This is the
work done in the science of Textual Criticism.  And although the results of
textual criticism have been to give us an even more highly reliable Greek New
Testament, there ARE times when the most that the best authorities in the
field are able to do is to make a best educated guess.  Such times include
those when two manuscripts of fairly equal weight and importance (such as the
Sinaitic and the Vatican, both from the 4th century) differ in the wording of
a phrase and there is no other textual evidence to support either reading.
.
.    Sorry if I have bored you with all of the above detail, but if you're
going to make a point in proof of a statement it behooves you to provide
evidence to back up your point.  And my whole point here is that THERE ARE
DIFFERENCES in the text between even the most reliable and important Biblical
manuscripts, both Hebrew and Greek.  And there IS NO original language
Testament, whether Hebrew or Greek, wherein the scholar(s) who produced it has
not had to deal with the problem of these variant readings in some way.  As I
said, I know the New Testament evidence better than I do the Old.  But in the
case of the New Testament alone, there are quite a few original language, or
Greek, New Testaments that have been used extensively in Bible translation.
Probably the one that has had the most influence in the Protestant world has
been the Stephan's "Textus Receptus" (Latin for Received Text).  This was the
most basic Greek text source for the translators of the King James Version of
the Bible.  Most of the actual work that produced this text was done by
Desiderius Erasmus, a Roman Catholic.  And although Erasmus didn't have access
to as much material for his work as scholars do today, he nevertheless did
have more manuscript evidence than he could handle, and he had to deal with
the same problems of variant readings that today's scholars do.  The story of
I John 5:7 is especially interesting, but I won't go into it here.
.
.    Since Erasmus' times, as more and more manuscript evidence has become
available, there has been continued production of Greek New Testaments by
others in order to continue to enhance the reliability of the Biblical text.
Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, Nestle-Aland, and the United Bible Society
have been just a few of those producing important Greek New Testaments.  And
in every case, including that of the Textus Receptus, NO SINGLE manuscript
source was used in producing the final result.  Educated guesses have had to
be made in every case regarding variant readings.  Surely, not all of the
guesses in any one case have been accurate.
.
.    All of the above has been presented in order to basically say this:
WHATEVER "original" language source the authors of ANALYSIS might have used in
their "scientific research",  it cannot plausibly lay claim to absolute
accuracy in every detail regarding every character.  There's just no way in
the world to prove such an outlandish proposition, given all of the evidence
of over 4,000 manuscripts and fragments for the contrary.  They may believe
and claim that their "original" had this character, but believing and claiming
is not proving.  And according to their own statement, if the text is off by
even ONE character, the results of their "research" are "null and void."  I
anticipate the claim by them or someone defending them that even if they can't
prove the 100% accuracy of the text that they used by other means, the
existence of the such outstandingly improbable mathematical phenomena in the
text is surely a proof that they have somehow happened on the precise
"original" as breathed by God.  Sorry, it doesn't work.  The authors do not
even inform us as to exactly which "original" texts they used, so there is NO
WAY to reproduce their research, as they claim, under "laboratory conditions."
.
If they used the Textus Recceptus, for example, and I happened to choose the
UBS Greek New Testament for checking for the phenomena; or if they used the
Dead Sea Scroll version of Isaiah and I used the Masoretic version; I would
most definitely not be able to reproduce their results.  That's not what I
would call a very "scientific proof."
.
.    Let's see -- they don't tell us which Hebrew and Greek "originals" that
they used.  They don't tell us how they used a computer in their "research"
(although they do mention much paper and pencil), what type of software
(computer programs), hardware, how they got all of that Greek and Hebrew text
onto computer disk for analysis, or anything else.  Not very reliable
information for taking up their invitation to reproduce their "phenomena" and
results, is it?  Sounds more like a great big snow job to me.  The results
simply can't be thoroughly checked, and in light of the above FACTS about the
manuscript evidence for reading variances, the evidence that we DO have seems
to point to "null and void" results.  It's their OWN claim that even one minor
variance in just one character brings about this voidness in the results.
Well, there are enough variances in the thousands of different manuscripts to
definitely satisfy that requirement for disproof.  And until they can inform
the public as to exactly WHICH Hebrew and Greek sources they used, all of
their claims are just that -- null and void.  They have "proven" exactly
nothing.
.
.    Of course, all of the above makes the gratuitous assumption that the
authors of ANALYSIS actually did the research that they claim to have done.
Much of what I am about to point out next throws even that assumption into
serious doubt.  After scrutinizing their article fairly closely, and checking
what "phenomena" I was able to devise means for checking, I am personally
convinced that most of what they claim to have done in their "research" was
never actually done.  As I said, I don't like to say that they're lying, but
look at some of these things for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
.
.    5.  In describing how the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek languages used their
respective alphabetic characters to signify numeric values, the authors state
that "In the Greek language, there are 22 characters.  The last character
would have a place value of 22, and a numeric value of 400."  GEEZ!!!  How in
the world did they analyze and do research on original Greek text if they
don't even know the Greek alphabet?!?  If you have access to ANY beginner's
Greek grammar book, lesson tutorial, etc., you can look in the first few pages
and find that the Greek alphabet consists of 24 characters, not 22.  And given
the numeric scheme that they point to, the last character (omega) has a place
value of 24, and a NUMERIC value of 600.  Considering that the "phenomena"
that is the supposed "proof" of their whole argument is numeric in nature, and
is BASED on the numeric values of the Biblical languages' alphabetic
characters, it would seem to me that a SERIOUS error in math has been made (if
the work could actually have been done by consistently skipping two characters
throughout the Greek text), and that such error would, again, render the
authors' WHOLE argument "null and void."  Such a blatant and simple mistake
makes me wonder: is someone possibly lying here?
.
.    6.  The authors state that "The Bible begins with the Hebrew word
'beginning' and ends with the Greek word "saint."  Well, you can throw the
phenomena based on THIS paragraph out.  Open your Bible to the very end of the
book of Revelation and read the last verse.  I think you'll find that it says
something like, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.  Amen."
Some of the Greek texts omit the word "Amen," but whether it's there or not
the result is still the same.  The actual Greek text of this verse can be
transliterated thus: H CHARIS TOU KURIOU IHSOU META PANTON.  AMHN.  The Greek
word for "saint," AGIOS, is just not there.  What's going on here?  They don't
know the Greek alphabet, they don't even know the text of scripture in this
case.  They develop a whole paragraph from the above sentence, and the
sentence is blatantly FALSE and easily proven so.  If they are susceptible to
such simplistic and blatant errors, how can they be remotely capable of
carrying on such complex research and producing reliable results?
.
.    7.  The authors give a list of the Bible writer's names, along with the
claimed numeric value for each name.  Interesting -- John occurs twice in the
list, each time with a different value.  Okay, I give up; which is the proper
value?  Oh, wait a minute -- if we delete the first occurrence of John, along
with its claimed value, then totaling the names' values results in 7,931, just
as the authors claim.
.
.    I wasn't quite satisfied, though, so I devised a quick and dirty program
in QuickBASIC to calculate the value of any Greek word.  I used the numeric
pattern as reported by the authors (alpha=1, etc.), but alas I HAD to include
those two missing Greek alphabetic characters in the pattern.  Since John has
an omega as part of his Greek name (IOANNHN), I'll bet that the numeric value
I get is different than that of the authors.  Yup, I get 737, which doesn't
agree with either of their claimed values.  How about James?  They have 833,
and I get 722.  Jude?  They have 685, and I get 364.  But wait: Jude's name in
Greek doesn't contain either of the last two Greek letters, the ones left out
by their claim that the Greek alphabet consists of 22 characters (psi and
omega).  Why do our results therefore differ?  Aren't we using the same
numeric formula?  The names PAULUS and PETROS, Paul and Peter, also fit within
the 22-letter range, yet I get 441 for Paul, as opposed to the authors' 781,
and 405 for Peter, as opposed to 755.  Either the authors haven't been honest
with us, or they have left something out of their description of how they
obtained their numeric phenomena.  For me, it's their honesty that's
questionable.
.
.    If you're interested in how I used a computer to calculate the above
values, I insert herein the QuickBASIC code that I wrote.  It's at least more
than the authors of ANALYSIS have been willing to do.  As I said, the code was
written in QuickBASIC (4.0), but it is easily adaptable to any form of BASIC.
One quick disclaimer: I program better than this, really.  This is just
something I threw together very quickly in order to do some quick
calculations.  It's a poorly written program, but it does the job.  I am
really not interested in improving it, as I am not into numerology.
.
.   DIM v%(24)
.   FOR i = 1 TO 9: v%(i) = i: NEXT
.      v%(10) = 10: v%(11) = 20: v%(12) = 30: v%(13) = 40: v%(14) = 50
.      v%(15) = 60: v%(16) = 70: v%(17) = 80: v%(18) = 90: v%(19) = 100
.      v%(20) = 200: v%(21) = 300: v%(22) = 400: v%(23) = 500: v%(24) = 600
.   15 a% = 0
.   PRINT "To figure the value of a string, enter the number representing the"
.   PRINT " place value of each letter.  Enter 0 when finished."
.
.   20 INPUT z
.   30 IF z = 0 THEN GOTO 100
.   a% = a% + v%(z)
.   GOTO 20
.   100 PRINT a%: END
.
.    Obviously, the dots at the beginning of each line above are not part of
the code.  They were placed there for formatting purposes on a TBBS type of
BBS system.
.
.    As I said above, these are just SOME of my criticisms of ANALYSIS' claims
and arguments.  There is more that could be said -- other mistakes that have
been made, flaws in the arguments' logic, etc.  But I think that enough has so
far been said that anyone with any rational ability can draw the conclusion
that the infallible proof claimed by the authors of ANALYSIS simply doesn't
exist.
.
.    Well, as I wind up this article, I wonder to myself, "Why did I do this?
I've got many other, more pressing, demands on my time.  Why waste my time on
such an unimportant matter as whether someone else, whom I have never met (and
I hope I never will), is either lying or seriously mistaken?"  I guess it's
because this whole thing has been done in the name of Christ, whom I love
dearly and hate to see misrepresented.  Christ doesn't need or desire for us
to tell lies or fabricate evidences for His truth.  And given that He IS the
truth, he surely doesn't want His people to believe things that are false.
And that is exactly what the arguments and claims of the article criticized
herein are: FALSE.  I love God, and I love God's people, but I HATE to see
God's people deceived by a bunch of crap wrapped up in a pretty package.
.
.   Charles Shelton