"if you simply remove" is an arbitrary position. If I simply remove my name from a legal document, yes, it would fit a myriad of documents.
"Simply removed" was my sloppy use of language. I do not believe what the scholar was suggesting was arbitrary at all. From the article he explains the rational basis for removing these portions which appear inserted into the texts:
One thing I had noticed in my own work on the Book of Revelation over the years was that the explicit references to either “Jesus” “Christ,” or “Jesus Christ” outside the letters to the churches of chapters 2 & 3 are mostly clustered in chapters 1 and 22, with few in the middle chapters.
But what is even more astounding, to me at least, was the observation that nearly all of these references can be easily removed without detracting in any way from the structure or flow of the passages in which they occur. In other words, one could get the distinct impression that references to Jesus Christ lay quite lightly on the text and could even be seen as secondary interpolations.
In the references below I have put these interpolative elements bold italicized brackets. This exercise strongly suggests that these are later additions to an original Jewish text inserted to “Christianize” a book that in its origins had nothing to do with Jesus. This is a rather astounding phenomenon and once one sees it it seems clear that the underlying
original text remains intact and makes complete sense without these references:
It's hardly being arbitrary. It seeing something that stands out as strong possibility of being inserted into the texts based upon the nature of the text itself in the genre of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and then a high degree of confirmation leaps out as the texts being able stand on their own by removing them.
You can't do that that easily with just any text. You couldn't just rip verses out of Paul's letter to the Corinthians that is considered legitimate Pauline writing, without disrupting the flow of the passage. But you can however remove some later 2nd century injection into the Paul's letter such as the verse, that women should keep silent in the church, without disrupting the flow. In fact it flows better without that verse, which disrupts the flow. One of several reasons modern scholars recognize that as a later insertion.
So since these happen with the Bible texts, it is hardly arbitrary or random to recognize the telltale signs of this with the book of Revelation either. Only 7 of the Pauline letters are considered to be authentic. The rest are later texts by 2nd century Christians penning Paul's name to their texts to lend credibility to them.
Why is saying that the author of Revelation was aware of Daniel and made deliberate references to them as part of his acoplythic text, "quite arbitrary"? There's nothing arbitrary about it. It's common sense. It's not like the guy was unfamiliar with Daniel, wrote something that paralleled something he'd never read before, and then it surfaces a thousand years later for the first time in history and shows unexplainable parallels. That might be a miracle. But John of Patmos clearly knew Daniel, as did all Jews alive back then. Right?
With your position you are actually saying no book has God behind its composition. Certainly you have the right to say that but it wouldn't make it true because you said it.
It says that to you. But my understanding of writing inspired by God, does not mean what it apparently does to you. I do not understand that as dictations. I do not understand that as passive speaking like someone in seance trance channeling a deceased loved one's word from the great beyond. I know many Christians tend to think of the Bible in terms like this. I don't.
Yes, I believe the text speak the truth of God, or rather another way to put it, I believe that divine inspiration can be heard in those texts. I also hear the human being and his views of the world at that time in history being part of that painting. It's not, either all God, or all man. It's God or Spirit, through man, as a human expression of the Divinity of God as they understood him. That doesn't make it valueless. It makes it contextually relevant.
To make the scriptures we have infallible and inerrant, is the key ingredients to creating atheism through a collapse of that house of cards. To me, that's building your house on shifting sand, not the Rock.
I think you have it wrong. My words make up who I am and I am by the words that I speak.
No you aren't. Someone may speak all the right words, yet be a whitewashed sepulchre. On the inside they are full of rot. It's by one's actions that the Truth of who there are is made known, not by words.
God and His words are not dependent on your faith.
I do not consider God's Word, to mean linguist utterances. The lilies of the field speak of God's glory without uttering one single syllable of human language.
The problem with equating God's Words, or Self Expression, with texts on a page, is that every single human who reads them has to read them through their own interpretive minds! A mind that is not illuminated by Spirit, simply will read them very differently than someone who has actual Spiritual awareness. That's not a mental activity. And reading texts and deducing meaning is a mental activity. All you need to do is look at how wildly differing in meaning and intent people see things from the exact same words on the page, to understand that!
As Paul so eloquently said (paraphrased)
"Though everyone else in the world is a liar, God is not.
I have not problem with that understanding. But I do not equate words on a page in a book, to be God. God is Spirit, not
ink and paper. We "hear" with the heart. We see through Spirit. And that does not require words on a page.
Do you not hear God outside of what you read on a page? Is that outside your experience? What do you think this passage is saying?
Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts
They are doing God's will, without reading words of ink on a page of paper. God's word is not about language and texts. It's about an intuitive,
nonverbal understanding with the heart. It clearly says this. Surely, "God's Word", must mean something far, far greater than mere words found in the Bible. Yes?