Steven Carr

Ask Bart Ehrman.

He will tell you 'As I will explain in my next post, the kinds of manuscripts we would really need to be able to say with some assurance that we know what the “originals” said – very early and very extensive manuscripts – simply don’t exist.

If you want 'some assurance' that you can know what the originals said, you won't get that from Professor Ehrman, one of the leading scholars on textual transmission in the world.

dog-on

The most we can say with confidence for Paul is that it is a fact that the letters were contested prior to our earliest extant copies.

aa5874

We don't know such things. Again, imaginary evidence is being used to counter actual dated sources. This is NOT acceptable any more.

We actually have NO evidence to corroborate virtually all of "Against Marcion" by Tertullian and Apologetic sources CONTRADICT the very same writings.

The writings "Against Marcion" by Ephraim the Syrian although supposedly written AFTER Tertullian's do NOT contain anything that can be seen to be represent Tertullian's "Against Marcion.

Ephraim's "Against Marcion" hardly have anything about Luke and the Pauline writings.

Another Apologetic source, Hippolytus in Refutation Against ALL Heresies, claimed Marcion did NOT use the Pauline writings.

Justin Martyr also claimed Marcion preached ANOTHER GOD and ANOTHER SON.

ALL we know is that:

1. NO Pauline writings have been DATED to before c 150 CE.

2. Apologetic sources CONTRADICT one another about Marcion.

3. Apologetic sources did NOT know when Paul lived and when he wrote his Epistles.

4. The author of Acts did NOT claim Paul wrote letters to the Churches.

5. The Pauline writers are NOT credible.

These are some of the things we know so let us deal with what we know and NOT with what is imagined.

Once we use what we know we can COME TO A SPEEDY resolution of the matters before us.

The Pauline writings cannot be deemed to be interpolated based on the Presumption that they were written early.

People here become so IMMERSED in PRESUMPTIONS that they begin to believe their very own imagination is historically accurate.