I still believe in a merciful god and there was a historical Jesus; however, I don’t consider the bible totally as a historical records because of its discrepancies, etc., and today’s translations were based on copies of ancient manuscripts , not by the original ones. Good job Bart Ehrman, and I will still continue reading his books.

look at that again, and then go to Psalm 22, and take a look at what it says, and you will see that Jesus is quoting Psalm 22. Psalm 22 just so happens to be a Psalm of trust, and you will see that Jesus is expecting his death to be glorified through his ressurection which we read about shortly after this passage in Mark.

‘Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands, and then say: “This is from Allah,” to traffic with it for miserable price! – Woe to them for what their hands do write, and for the gain they make thereby’ (Surah Al Baqarah, 02 : 79).

For further elucidation on this, read ‘The First & Final Commandment: A Search for Truth in Revelation Within the Abrahamic Religion’ by Dr. Laurence B. Brown.

ummmm, the new testament was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew. Changes to scripture were mostly done for theological reasons. other than that, i agree with you, incompetant people made silly mistakes in translating the scriptures, it is the accumulation of both of these “problems” that leads scholars such as Dr.Ehrman to conclude that the holy bible we have now can not be the original message, and we can not now “correct” the mistakes of people of the past because the original manuscripts are unfortuanately gone.

QUESTION 2: What would be the most important item missing in your life if you did not have Religion or a God to worship?

There is but one small thing on which I don’t agree with him.
At page 213 of Italian translation, where it is talked about some followers of St Paul, the author states that the name Giunio (as a male name) cannot be found anywhere in the ancient world.

This is not true, for example we have Marco Giunio Bruto (one of Cesar’s killers), Decimo Giunio Giovenale (a Roman poet).

Regards
Walter

different Christians all saying different things – about God, Christ, the world, salvation, the Jews, in fact, about just everything. And all these Christians believed they were right and that all others were wrong. And all of them had sacred books to prove their claims

This is misleading in the extreme. There are a number of excellent books that refute Ehrman’s theories. It’s sad, but as someone else said, the following is now true of the work of Ehrman:

If only he could be equally honest and admit that in his scholarship he is trying now to deconstruct orthodox Christianity which he once embraced, rather than do ‘value-neutral’ text criticism. In my own view, he has attempted this deconstruction on the basis of very flimsy evidence– textual variants which do not prove what he wants them to prove.

In Matthew 27:5, in the KJV, it uses the word “hanged”, but then the KJV seems to be allergic to the word “hung”. It says that the Jews “hanged” their harps on the trees when they were singing by the rivers of Babylon too.

In the Greek, Judas:
απЄρχομαι απαγχω
(This is from http://www.blueletterbible.com.)
The word translated as “hanged” can be translated in Latin as “angustus” and English as “anguish”.

απЄρχομαι means:
to go away, depart

Matthew 9:7 says: And he arose, and departed (aperchomai) to his house.
‘απο’ means:
1) of separation
a) of local separation, after verbs of motion from a place i.e. of departing, of fleeing, …
b) of separation of a part from the whole
1) where of a whole some part is taken
c) of any kind of separation of one thing from another by which the union or fellowship of the two is destroyed
d) of a state of separation, that is of distance
1) physical, of distance of place
2) temporal, of distance of time
2) of origin
a) of the place whence anything is, comes, befalls, is taken
b) of origin of a cause

Matthew 7:16 says:
Ye shall know them by (apo) their fruits. Do men gather grapes of (apo) thorns, or figs of (apo) thistles?

αγκαλη from agkos (a bend, “ache”) also means:
1) the curve or inner angle of the arm, the bent arm
2) anything closely enfolding, as the arms of the sea, etc.

For example, Luke 2:28 says:
Then took he him up in his arms (agkale), and blessed God, and said…

Therefore, it seems as though Judas was in anguish, as though he was being curved or enfolded as in the arms of the seas.

Acts 1:18
Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

The word for “burst” can also mean:
- to crack, crackle, crash, to burst asunder with a crack, crack open

“Gushed out” can also mean things like, for example, in Mark 2:22:
And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled (gushed out), and the bottles will be marred: but new wine must be put into new bottles.

So therefore I think the following web page might provide some assistance as to Judas’ condition when he was inspecting his field:
http://www.healthinsite.gov.au/topics/Irritable_Bowel_Syndrome