Mormonismo e a Bíblia Sagrada/Infalibilidade e a Bíblia Sagrada

Índice

Infalibilidade da Bíblia

Perguntas

Alguns Cristãos alegam que o texto Bíblico, ao menos em sua forma primitiva, não possuiam qualquer erro. Portanto, seria incorreto Joseph Smith afirmar que a Bíblia contém erros e omissões.

Tópicos do Evangelho, "Bíblia, Infalibilidade da"

Tópicos do Evangelho

Os Santos dos Últimos Dias possuem grande estima e reverência pela Bíblia. Eles a estudam, tentam viver seus ensinamentos e estimam seu testemunho da vida e missão do Senhor Jesus Cristo. O Profeta Joseph Smith estudou a Bíblia durante toda a sua vida e ensinou seus preceitos.

Ao ser a Bíblia compilada, organizada, traduzida e escrita, muitos erros textuais perpetuaram. A existência de tais erros tornam-se aparentes ao considerarmos os numerosos e frequentes conflitos entre as diferentes traduções existentes em nossos dias. Estudantes cuidadosos da Bíblia são frequentemente confundidos por aparentes contradições e omissões. Muitas pessoas tem também permanecido curiosas a respeito de referências bíblicas de profetas a livros ou passagens escriturísticas que não se encontram na bíblia.

Conclusão

A evidência textual existente torna o conceito de Bíblia infalível insustentável. Além disso, a doutrina de infalibilidade não é Bíblica e pode apenas ser imposta ao texto por fontes externas.

A postura dos Santos dos Últimos Dias de honrar a Bíblia e tentar compreendê-la, apreciando-a como a Palavra de Deus apesar de ter sido escrita por humanos imperfeitos é consistente tanto com os ensinamentos da Bíblia como as evidências disponíveis a nós em nossos dias.

Insistir em infalibilidade da Bíblia é uma presunção teológica e ideológica e não uma consequência natural dos ensinamentos da Bíblia.

Perguntas e respostas detalhadas

Conclusão Antibíblica

A Bíblia em nenhum lugar declara ser infalível.

Como Blake Ostler observou na "Declaração de Chicago da Infalibilidade da Bíblia"^[1]

A doutrina da infalibilidade é internamente incoerente. Em minha opinião, inúmeros problemas insuperáveis ​​ditam a rejeição da infalibilidade em geral e infalibilidade como promulgada na Declaração de Chicago em particular. Em primeiro lugar, a Declaração de Chicago é auto- referencialmente incoerente. Nenhuma pessoa pode afirmar de forma consistente que a Bíblia é a base de suas crenças e em seguida afirmar que por isso obrigatoriamente deve-se aceitar infalibilidade bíblica como afirmado na Declaração de Chicago. Esta declaração contém uma série de afirmações e proposições que não são bíblicas. Inerrância, pelo menos como recentemente afirmado pelos evangélicos, não é mencionada em qualquer parte da Bíblia. Em nenhum lugar a palavra "infalível" aparecem na Bíblia. Tais visões teóricas são estranhas para os escritores bíblicos. Além disso, a infalibilidade não está inclusa em qualquer um dos principais credos. Tal noção é recente e bastante peculiar para o evangelicalismo americano. Ao longo da história do pensamento cristão, a Bíblia tem sido uma fonte ao invés de um objeto de crenças. A afirmação de que a Bíblia é inerrante vai muito além das declarações bíblicas que toda a Escritura é inspirada ou "ditada por Deus". Portanto a infalibilidade, como um compromisso de fé, é inconsistente com a afirmação de alguns de que suas crenças são baseadas no que a Bíblia diz. A doutrina da infalibilidade é uma doutrina extra-bíblica, com base em considerações não escriturísticas. Deve ser aceita somente se for razoável e caso se enquadre com o que sabemos das Escrituras em si, e não como um artigo inerrante de fé.

A Declaração de Chicago só pode funcionar como uma declaração de crença e não como uma observação racional do que encontramos na Bíblia. A própria Declaração de Chicago reconhece o fato de encontrarmos declarações infalíveis na Bíblia, pois é apenas "quando todos os fatos são conhecidos" que veremos que a infalibilidade é verdadeira. É extremamente conveniente propor uma teoria que não pode ser avaliada, a menos e até que sejamos de fato oniscientes. Por esta razão a Declaração de Chicago é uma proposição inútil. Não se adequa como uma declaração derivada da Bíblia, porque não está na Bíblia. Não pode ser uma declaração sobre o que a evidência mostra porque a evidência não pode ser avaliado até que sejamos oniscientes.^[2]

Textual witness

A atual evidência Bíblica em manuscritos demonstram de maneira inequívoca que a corrupção e adulteração de textos bíblicos é a regra e não a exceção.

Old Testament

Emmanuel Tov^[3], J. L. Magnes Professor of Bible at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication project wrote:

• "All of [the] textual witnesses [of the OT] differ from each other to a greater or lesser extent."
• "There does not exist any one edition [of the OT] which agrees in all of its details with another."
• "Most of the texts—ancient and modern—which have been transmitted from one generation to the next have been corrupted in one way or another." (emphasis in original)
• "A second phenomenon pertains to corrections and changes inserted in the biblical text. . . . Such tampering with the text is evidenced in all textual witnesses."
• "Therefore, paradoxically, the soferim [scribes] and Masoretes carefully preserved a text that was already corrupted."
• "One of the postulates of biblical research is that the text preserved in the various representatives (manuscripts, editions) of what is commonly called the Masoretic Text, does not reflect the 'original text' of the biblical books in many details."
• "These parallel sources [from Kings, Isaiah, Psalms, Samuel, etc.] are based on ancient texts which already differed from each other before they were incorporated into the biblical books, and which underwent changes after they were transmitted from one generation to the next as part of the biblical books."
• "S[eptuagint] is a Jewish translation which was made mainly in Alexandria. Its Hebrew source differed greatly from the other textual witnesses (M[asoretic], T[argums], S[amaritan], V[ulgate, and many of the Qumran texts]). . . . Moreover, S[eptuagint] is important as a source for early exegesis, and this translation also forms the basis for many elements in the NT."
• "The importance of S[eptuagint] is based on the fact that it reflects a greater variety of important variants than all the other translations put together."
• "Textual recensions bear recognizable textual characteristics, such as an expansionistic, abbreviating, harmonizing, Judaizing, or Christianizing tendency."
• "The theory of the division of the biblical witnesses into three recensions [Masoretic, Septuagint, and Samaritan] cannot be maintained . . . to such an extent that one can almost speak in terms of an unlimited number of texts."
• "The question of the original text of the biblical books cannot be resolved unequivocally, since there is no solid evidence to help us to decide in either direction."
• "We still have no knowledge of copies of biblical books that were written in the first stage of their textual transmission, nor even of texts which are close to that time. . . . Since the centuries preceding the extant evidence presumably were marked by great textual fluidity, everything that is said about the pristine state of the biblical text must necessarily remain hypothetical."
• "M[asoretic] is but one witness of the biblical text, and its original form was far from identical with the original text of the Bible as a whole."
• "As a rule they [concepts of the nature of the original biblical text] are formulated as 'beliefs,' that is, a scholar, as it were, believes, or does not believe, in a single original text, and such views are almost always dogmatic."
• "During the textual transmission many complicated changes occurred, making it now almost impossible for us to reconstruct the original form of the text."
• "many of the pervasive changes in the biblical text, pertaining to whole sentences, sections and books, should not . . . be ascribed to copyists, but to earlier generations of editors who allowed themselves such massive changes in the formative stage of the biblical literature."
• "It is not that M[asoretic text] triumphed over the other texts, but rather, that those who fostered it probably constituted the only organized group which survived the destruction of the Second Temple [i.e., the rabbinic schools derived from the Pharisees]."

New Testament

A similar situations confronts us with the New Testament. Leon Vaganay and Christian-Bernard Amphoux^[4] wrote in An Introduction to New Testament Criticism:

• "They [ancient methods of rhetorical interpretation] are used to reveal a secret code, only accessible to the learned or initiated. If the 'Western' text is seen from this perspective, it becomes less of a product of a certain theology than of a certain system of meaning. . . . But this sophisticated kind of coded writing is not suitable for general circulation. For wider distribution, the text had to be adapted to the mentality of the people who were going to receive it, it had to be revised and changed so as to make it acceptable to an audience who were not expecting to have to look for hidden meaning."
• "The wide stylistic gap between the two main New Testament text types, the 'Western' on the one hand and all the other types on the other hand, cannot have arisen by chance."
• "In AD 178 the secular writer Celsus stated in polemic against the Christians: some of the believers . . . have changed the original text of the Gospels three or four times or even more, with the intention of thus being able to destroy the arguments of their critics.' (quoted in Origen, Contra Celsum, SC 132, 2, 27). Origen does not deny the existence of such changes." Indeed, Origen wrote, "It is an obvious fact today [third century A.D.] that there is much diversity among the manuscripts, due either to the carelessness of the scribes, or to the perverse audacity of some people in correcting the text, or again to the fact that there are those who add or delete as they please, setting themselves up as correctors."
• "It is therefore not possible to reconstitute with certainty the earliest text, even though there is no doubt about its having existed in written form from a very early date, without a preparatory oral stage."
• "In the period following AD 135, the recensions proliferated with a resultant textual diversity which reached a peak before the year 200."
• "Thus between the years 150 and 250, the text of the first recensions acquired a host of new readings. They were a mixture of accidental carelessness, deliberate scribal corrections, involuntary mistakes, a translator's conscious departure from literalness, a reviser's more systematic alterations, and, not least, contamination caused by harmonizing to an extent which varied in strength from place to place. All these things contributed to diversification of the text, to giving it, if one may so put it, a little of the local colour of each country."

Who made the changes?

Christian writers often accused heretics (such as Marcion of the second century AD) of altering the Bible text. However, there is another more disturbing finding for those who insist on an inerrant Bible text:

...recent studies have shown that the evidence of our surviving manuscripts points the finger in the opposite direction. Scribes who were associated with the orthodox tradition not infrequently changed their texts, sometimes in order to eliminate the possibility of their "misuse" by Christians affirming heretical beliefs and sometimes to make them more amenable to the doctrines being espoused by Christians of their own persuasion.^[5]

Thus, the "orthodox" Christian tradition required the original texts to be reworked to support their views or oppose the views of those with whom they disagreed. It seems strange, then, to now accuse those who do not wholly accept the "orthodox" view of "violating scripture," since that very scripture was originally tampered with by those we now label 'orthodox,' which is merely another way of saying that they won the battle to define their view as the 'proper' one.

As Bruce Metzger observed:

Odd though it may seem, scribes who thought [for themselves] were more dangerous than those who wished merely to be faithful in copying what lay before them. Many of the alterations which may be classified as intentional were no doubt introduced in good faith by copyists who believed that they were correcting an error or infelicity of language which had previously crept into the sacred text and needed to be rectified. A later scribe might even reintroduce an erroneous reading that had been previously corrected. …The manuscripts of the New Testament preserve traces of two kinds of dogmatic alterations: those which involve the elimination or alteration of what was regarded as doctrinally unacceptable or inconvenient; and those which introduce into the Scriptures ‘proof’ for a favorite theological tenet or practice...^[6]

What did early Christians think?

Justin Martyr, a second-century Christian author, complained that the Jews had altered scripture:

And I wish you to observe, that they [the Jews] have altogether taken away many Scriptures from the translations...^[7]

Origen, a third-century Christian author, bemoaned the problem of poor textual transmission even in his era:

The differences among the manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others; they either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please.^[8]

Textual scholar Bruce Metzger quoted this passage, and then observed:

Origen suggests that perhaps all of the manuscripts existing in his day may have become corrupt...^[9]

The Book of Mormon describes how "plain and precious things" (1  Nephi 13:28) were removed from the Bible—Origen here complains of "deletions," from the scriptures, which would be the hardest changes to detect. An alteration may be detectable, but a deletion is simply gone forever.

Corinthian bishop Dionysius complained in the second century:

When my fellow-Christians invited me to write letters to them I did so. These the devil's apostles have filled with tares, taking away some things and adding others. For them the woe is reserved. Small wonder then if some have dared to tamper even with the word of the Lord himself, when they have conspired to mutilate my own humble efforts.^[10]

Latter-day Saints wish to defend the Bible

While not believing that the Bible—or any book—is inerrant, the Latter-day Saints are far more concerned with defending the Bible's value than in denigrating it. Harold B. Lee observed, in 1972:

I believe that the problem of our missionaries in our day too might be not so much to prove that the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price are indeed the word of the Lord, but that the Bible, which is generally accepted as the word of God, is being doubted as having been derived from the words of inspired prophets of past generations.

In this day when the Bible is being downgraded by many who have mingled philosophies of the world with Bible scriptures to nullify their true meaning, how fortunate that our Eternal Heavenly Father, who is always concerned about the spiritual well-being of His children, has given to us a companion book of scriptures, known as the Book of Mormon, as a defense for the truths of the Bible that were written and spoken by the prophets as the Lord directed....

It is only as we forsake the traditions of men and recover faith in the Bible, the truth of which has been fully established by recent discovery and fulfillment of prophecy, that we shall once again receive that inspiration which is needed by rulers and people alike. ^[11]

Notas

1. [note]  On the Chicago Statement, see Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, rev. and exp. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 181–185.
2. [note]  Blake T. Ostler, "Bridging the Gulf (Review of How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation)," FARMS Review of Books 11/2 (1999): 103–177. off-site PDF link (italics in original)
3. [note]  These examples are taken from William J. Hamblin and Daniel C. Peterson, "The Evangelical Is Our Brother (Review of How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation)," FARMS Review of Books 11/2 (1999): 178–209. off-site PDF link. References to Tov's original work may be found in footnotes 26–49.
4. [note]  These examples are taken from William J. Hamblin and Daniel C. Peterson, "The Evangelical Is Our Brother (Review of How Wide the Divide? A Mormon and an Evangelical in Conversation)," FARMS Review of Books 11/2 (1999): 178–209. off-site PDF link. References to Vaganay and Amphoux's original work may be found in footnotes 52–58.
5. [note]  Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (HarperSanFrancisco, [2005] 2007), 53. ISBN 0060859512. ISBN 0060738170.
6. [note] Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament. Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (second edition 1979; first edition 1964), 195, 201.
7. [note]  Justin Martyr, "Dialogue with Trypho," in Chapter 71 Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Philip Schaff (Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886)1:234. ANF ToC off-site This volume
8. [note]  Origen, Commentary on Matthew 15.14 as quoted in Bruce M. Metzger, "Explicit References in the Works of Origen to Variant Readings in New Testament manuscripts," in Biblical and Patristic Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey, ed. J Neville Birdsall and Robert W. Thomson (Freiburg: Herder, 1968), 78—79; reference from Erhman, 223.
9. [note]  Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament. Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (second edition 1979; first edition 1964), 152; citing Metzger, “Explicit references in the works of Origen to Variant Readings in New Testament Manuscripts,” in Biblical and Patristic Studies in Memory of Robert Pierce Casey, ed. J.N. Birdsall (1963): 78–95.
10. [note]  Cited in Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (HarperSanFrancisco, [2005] 2007), 53. ISBN 0060859512. ISBN 0060738170.
11. [note]  Harold B. Lee, Teachings of Harold B. Lee (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1996), 158-159. GospeLink (requires subscrip.) ^{[citation needed]}