Clivedurdle

Gore Vidal has Julian commenting that xians are continually re - editing their writings.

Ok, is there any evidence of this?

What are the dates of the earliest manuscripts we have? What evidence do we have of amendment, deletion and insertion?

What level of trust can we put in the documents we have now? Are there bands of years over which books may have been amended?

For example Mark, originally written assume 60's, what about future editions? Origin of Species has changed for example.

Toto

I think that Celsus or some other early critic of Christianity made that charge against the Christians. I don't think you would necessarily find documentary evidence of it 2000 years later.

Clivedurdle

But we have discussions here that this passage may have been inserted, I would have thought the limits, timelines would be discernable.

mountainman

1) Isaac Newton's "A Historical Account of Two
Notable Corruptions of Scripture".

2) Arius 325 CE: "[God’s Son] is subject to alteration or change"

3) Evidence of perversion of the patristic literature?

robto

Mark had an ending added to it that included the resurrection appearances of Jesus. That's two versions of Mark.

Luke and Matthew are both re-writings of Mark. So we've got 4.

If Clement's Secret Mark is genuine, that's one more for sure and one possible beyond that.

So Mark existed in as many as 6 different versions.

For later changes, see Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.

Ben C Smith

There is a big difference, unaccountably fudged more times than I can keep up with, between (A) using an existing work as a source in order to pass off the new work as your own and (B) editing an existing work in order to pass it off as belonging to the original author.

Ben.

Clivedurdle

But has anyone constructed a family tree of documents, similar to the fossil record, showing where and how and why things fit together? There will be arguments, but it is very useful to outline the extent of the arguments.

S.C.Carlson

Yes. I once did a family tree for manuscripts of John 4.

Stephen

Clivedurdle

Now we need someone to extend that into a full biblical genome project!

notapadawan

Where did you get the information that Gore Vidal has Julian saying something? If you don't know, how can you be certain such a monster exists?

Ryland Papyri dates to like 150 a.d. or so. Even if the earliest is the Sinaiticus it is still earler than anything we have for any other classical literature such as Pliny, Josephus, Julius Caesar, et al.

If you don't know, maybe there isn't any. Even Bart Ehrman won't go that far.

High level of trust.

Books have been amended since the beginning. Ever hear of Marcion the Heretic? He edited his canon to just Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Luke, and deleted every semetic reference. As such his view was discarded very early.

Origin of Species was a hypothosis that was later recanted by the author. To my knowledge Mark never recanted his views about Christ.