godfry n. glad

Duplicate post deleted.

godfry

[ June 06, 2002: Message edited by: godfry n. glad ]</p>

Steven Carr

So if Muhammad didn't quite get down verbatim all that the Angel Gabriel passed on to him, and perhaps added one or two things himself, that would not in, itself, discredit the Koran?

Steven Carr

I give samples of this analysis in
<a href="http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/reli2.htm" target="_blank">http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/reli2.htm</a>

godfry n. glad

Thanks, Steven, for the link and the site.
I'm agreeable with the general tenor of your
commentary but would amend your conclusion as follows:

"We have seen that scribes were prepared to alter the most crucial parts of the Gospel accounts to make them more convincing and more suitable (for what was to become orthodox) Christian doctrine. Many more examples could be given , but examples from the Last Supper, the Passion and the Resurrection show that (those who would eventually become orthodox) Christians themselves altered and tampered with the texts. They were prepared to alter the teachings of Jesus about such basic issues as divorce. In doing so, they have reduced their status as evidence for the life of Jesus."

Your source, Bart Ehrman, is careful to point out this distinction of _eventual_ orthodoxy in his masterful _The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture_ because it is an important distinction.

The reason for redacting and otherwise altering scripture was to bring existing tractates into line with established dogma of one "school" or another. I would suspect that each of the variant "schools" were busily editing each other's scripture to make it fit within their particular dogma. What survived as redacted, edited or otherwise amended are those which, once changed, fit the dogma of the splinter group which managed to manipulate itself into the good graces of the power which controlled violence, the Roman Empire of Constantine to Theodosius.
Once there and accepted as a partner in maintaining order, the "church", the variant belief system which prevailed to become orthodoxy, proceeded to suppress, through censorship, destruction, murder, exile and terror, all other variant teachings and enforce "orthodoxy".

Thus, while there were several Christianities prior to the Nicean gathering of 325 CE, by the end of that same century, there was only one Christianity and it was busily directing the police powers of the empire to stamp out anybody or anything that alluded or asserted otherwise. What we see in the presently accepted canon is what one conniving, sycophantic, and obsequious splinter group enforced upon all, after wheedling their way into the charmed circle of imperial power.

godfry n. glad

[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: godfry n. glad ]</p>

CX

There are 7 epistles in the NT canon for which there are no MSS prior to in the 4th century. In the first 2 centuries of the Xian era we have MSS evidence for approximately 0.00277% (22 verses out of 7955 total in the NT) of the present canonical text which are too fragmentary to be useful in determining attestation to the canonical text. At the turn of the 3rd century (ca 200) we have the Beatty and Bodmer papyri and Oxyrhynchus find P77 (which attests to only about 9 verses of GMt) Finally in the 3rd century we start to see MSS evidence of the canonical texts, but most are fragmentary or incomplete. There is no complete text of any book in the NT prior to , although a few of the Pauline epistles have early MSS evidence that is better than 90% complete and P66 (circa 200 C.E.) contains about 95% of GJn

Given the tremendous paucity of MSS evidence in the early centuries of the Xian era, I fail to see how we can be justified in making any claims regarding the autographs of the Xian texts. At best all we can say is what the developed Church in the 4th century considered canonical. Comparison of identical redactional errors can only tell us about the common ancestor of two or more given texts, but nothing about the autographs. Fully 85-90% of all the MSS evidence we have dates after the 9th century.

Kosh

You're not supposed to think for yourself and question statements about that. You're supposed to go "oh my, that is a good argument", then bow down on your knees and give your life to Christ. This is how apologetics work. Man are you out of the loop!