Thursday, March 21, 2013

Sixteenth Link Year Recap 3/19-3/21

This week we got the amazing privilege of hearing from Ben Williams. He was a pretty great teacher and conveyed his messages to us well, with sound knowledge and humor, everyone seemed to enjoy him. He used to teach college but now teaches Worldview's and Apologetics in Kansas City. Anyway, the main thing he talked about this week was different Worldview's and how to defend the historical accuracy of the Bible not using the Bible itself. But the best way to tell what he was teaching on is by letting you know the five things I learned this week or that stood out to me.

1) He talked about the five basic things Worldview's have. Five Basic Beliefs: Origin (where did everything come from), identity (what is a human being), meaning (what is the purpose of life), morality (who determines right and wrong), and destiny (what happens when we die). These are all questions that a Worldview answers and that we should know the answers to in our own Worldview.

2) I thought it was really interesting that how in the Eastern religion there is no concept of repentance. Who are you to repent to? If each and every person is a "god" than there is really no one person better than the other. So why would you need to repent? You just have to work and have good karma. That way in your next life you can get a "rank up" in the Caste System. 

3) Buddhism teaches four things. 1st Noble Truth: There is pain and suffering in the world. 2nd Noble Truth: Desire is the cause of suffering. 3rd Noble Truth: Suffering will cease when desire ceases. 4th Noble Truth: Desire can be extinguished by following the Eight-fold-path.  

4) We do not have the original autographs of any book of the Bible. We almost have no original copy of any ancient document. The Papyrus doesn't last. The copying process became very important. When interpreting any ancient text they use the criteria of quantity, quality, and time interval. 
Quantity - How many say the same thing?
Quality - Is the paper good condition? Writing legible?
Time Interval - How much time has passed between manuscripts or documents?

5) New Testament letters started to be written from 50AD - about 80-85AD (maybe 120AD). Oldest NT manuscript we have is Rylands - 138AD. 
     1. We have 5700 Greek Manuscripts.
     2. 10,000 translations in Latin.
     3. All told we have 20,000-25,000 translations. 
     4. We have more than 1 million quotations from a group called the Patristics and Early Church.    These show up in hymnals, letters, books. 
If we lost the first three things, we could still accurately comprise the NT with the fourth.
We have 10-15 manuscripts from within 100 years of the conclusion of the NT. Within two centuries we have approximately four dozen. Of the manuscripts produced prior to 400AD we currently have 99.

These are all really cool things that were taught this week and I am really grateful for the speaker. We learned a whole lot more but this is just a short amount of it. But now it is time for me to go and do more work, thanks for tuning in!


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