Hope you caught the pun.
Except for football, I don’t watch TV, so I sadly (!) missed this latest round of Bible secrets nonsense. I let others suffer in my place, like the author of “Bible Secrets Revealed?: A Response to the New History Channel Series (Part 3).” The author is a New Testament scholar (PhD University of Edinburgh). Honestly, “Bible Secrets Revealed” ought to be titled “Bible Secrets Contrived.” Same old uninformed claptrap about the canon, Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. It’s like the researchers they put on the show to spout the conspiratorial nonsense have never read any of the primary source material and scholarship on anything they comment on.
Did I just stumble onto their method … ?
Actually, that’s only part of it. Dr. Kruger already outline what these shows do to mislead their audience.
The odd thing about the History Channel Sir, is that unlike other educational channels that follow a pure ‘naturalistic’ or a new age (Ghost Hunters etc. etc.) worldview, the history channel seems to be Gnostic in it’s leanings (I refuse to partake; thanks Irenaeus ). I abstain from current television programming, it is most abhorrent! Surely to render a man blind, figuratively and literally! Heaven help us Sir, there is also possibility deducting 1 IQ pt. per watched episode of ancient aliens (and there are many episodes). *aghast*.
Sorry for this OOT question Dr. Heiser. It seems that an old bit news about some “Syriac Bible” is again making the rounds on facebook. I, for one, had never heard about it before, but it seems to be an old tome that allegedly has “Jesus” speaking of the coming of Muhammad after him. Now, I’ve found old articles basically saying that it’s an over-hyped fraud (links below), but I haven’t been able to find any recent (2013) article about it. I wondered if you knew anything of it by any chance. Thanks.
The Syriac Bible: a media/PR/looting morality play
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/1789
The ‘1,500’ Year Old ‘Bible’ and Muslim Propaganda
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/52073.htm
I’ve heard about it, but don’t have much interest. I hated Syriac in grad school (sorry, but true). Anyway, Syriac translations of the Bible (if this is a genuine one – note the errors in it noted in one of your links) are, by definition, after the original compositions of both testaments – centuries in fact. This one would be no exception. Syriac translations are well known and still used by biblical scholars in textual criticism. The company I work for produces them in digital form. There’s nothing in them that’s going to upset any theological apple cart, like Jesus predicting Muhammad. I’ve seen other such arguments that engage in wordplay in an OT passage, twisting the language to that effect, but I don’t know any scholar who can’t recognize the propaganda. If something like that were for real, the entire scholarly world would know about it, point it out, and it would have been part of the discussion for centuries now. It’s just silliness.
Thanks for the reply. I assumed as much. I guess I should shelve this together with all the other Facebook shares designed to poke Christians in the eye to get a reaction.