TomboyMom

What texts do we have? From when?

Correct. However, my understanding is that the first time there was a list of the books close to the list we now use was 367 C.E., in any form.

For example, do we have an earlier text of say, just for a random example, the gospel of Mark? From when? How close is it to what we are now reading, using, referring to as the gospel of Mark?

An anyone else comment on this?
When one allegiance referred to the bible being close to "the original", to what would he have been referring?

Julian

Here is a list of what we have and when it is from: http://www.laparola.net/greco/manoscritti.php

Julian

TomboyMom

Wow! That's a lot of info. Without studying it in depth (because as we have seen before, I'm deeply lazy) do the Roman numerals mean centuries? So it looks like we start getting a wide variety of different parts of what we now know as the bible in the third century? Would you agree with that, Roger? (to totally oversimplify)

Julian

Indeed.
As am I. If I hadn't bookmarked it, I wouldn't have... ZZzzzzZZzzZZZZzzzz
Yes.
P46 is right on the cusp (2nd/3rd), probably, and quite an exemplar.

Julian

TomboyMom

So what I'm getting is a tiny scrap around 50 C.E., and a book that in some way resembles today's bible in 367 C.E., and in between, from 200 C.E. on, a lot of different manuscripts of different parts/books, some of which got included in the 367 manuscript, and some of which didn't, is that right? That sounds about a million miles away from what one allegiance and his sites are saying, that the bible is "closer to the original" than other ancient texts. What are they talking about? What do they even mean by the original? Or by the bible, for that matter, the KJV? Are they saying that the KJV is very close to those individual manuscripts? Or that the 367 manuscript is close to the various separate ones floating around before that, or what????

TomboyMom

btw, that earliest NT like thing, in 367 C.E., how much does it resemble today's bible, allowing for translation?

TomboyMom

It looks like P45 and P46 are the doozies. Do they have names? What's the story on them? Is it thought that they formed the basis of the 367 text? Does it have a name? What % of today's NT is covered by P45 or P46?

Julian

Technical info on P45 and P46, also known as part of the Chester Beatty Papyri: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/Man...apyri.html#P45 and http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/Man...apyri.html#P46

Julian

Julian

KJV is a pitiful copy and probably as far away from the autographs as you can get while still using Greek manuscripts as your basis. We don't know what the autographs looked like but they were probably reasonably close to what we have today in NA27/UBS4 although some tendentious decisions still hold sway there. The important thing to remember is that it is very likely that the most severe changes to the manuscripts probably happened in the 2nd century, when there was no unified church, no canon, and orthodoxy was just a small group barely hinting at what they would become, a period from whence we have virtually no manuscript remnants.

Julian

aa5874

So the other religions' Bibles are not tainted because they are also prevalent.