Replies

"...You are mixing apples and oranges..."

I do not believe so. Human beings created the texts being unearthed. Those Human beings were subject to the same foibles as people are today.

"...Conservative scholarship has been able to defend the position that ALL of the New Testament texts were written in the first century. So we are not subject to writers recollections after lots of time had transpired..."

First century covers 100 years. If I wrote today of events that happened to me when I was just 25 years old, my account would ALREADY be 29 years after the fact. So, I ask you, do YOU trust YOUR OWN MEMORY to be perfect after say, 20 or 30 years? I know that I do not.

"...It is true that Luke was probably not an eye witness, but he states that he interviewed lots of eye witnesses in order to produce an accurate account. He served as a reporter. The rest of the Gospel writers were there..."

Your use of the work "probably" means that there is already uncertainty in your mind whether Luke was or was not an eye witness. Others may not share this uncertainty. Taking my earlier example of Civil War artifacts, we can see actual newspaper accounts of various battles. You will find the same battles reported upon with fairly divergent facts. Even today, first hand reports of news accounts are often blatantly incorrect. Reference "Ferguson" and "Shot in the Back".

"...So any infusion of inaccuracy would be in the transmission of the original autographs ... there are NO MAJOR DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES SUPPORTED BETWEEN THE TWO SETS OF MANUSCRIPTS. So we are talking about nits and nuances..."

So then I would expect a smoothly homogeneous Christian faith. That is not what is observable. Those calling themselves "Christian" have sacred texts that are indeed quite different, with different language translations, with different gospel texts either included or omitted. There are fierce doctrinal arguments between various sects as to what is "Cannon", and what beliefs are essential to the faith.

I do not say these things to be insulting, I am merely observing that which is true of all faiths. There are differing sects of Judaism, Hinduism, Islam (or whatever the correct term is for that).

These differences arise from MAN'S interpretation of texts taken to be sacred. They are further evidence that the process of recording, copying, interpreting and repeating is rife with the flaws of the humans involved.

So then I would expect a smoothly homogeneous Christian faith. That is not what is observable. Those calling themselves "Christian" have sacred texts that are indeed quite different, with different language translations, with different gospel texts either included or omitted. There are fierce doctrinal arguments between various sects as to what is "Cannon", and what beliefs are essential to the faith.

It is quite true that Christian doctrinal beliefs vary between denominations. However, Roman Catholics and the vast majority of mainline Christian Protestants agree on the formulation of the New Testament canon. Most doctrinal differences are due to differences in exegesis and hermeneutics (how one interprets) instead of textual differences.

It is Old Testament books where Protestants differ with Roman Catholics resulting in some differences in doctrine and practice.

As far as Luke being an eye witness, my text does not reflect uncertainty in my mind. I was merely pointing out that Luke purports to base his books on what eye witnesses conveyed to him; Luke 1:1-3. He makes it unclear as to whether he might have personal observations to add to his accounts.

“So then I would expect a smoothly homogeneous Christian faith. That is not what is observable. Those calling themselves “Christian” have sacred texts that are indeed quite different, with different language translations, with different gospel texts either included or omitted. There are fierce doctrinal arguments between various sects as to what is “Cannon”, and what beliefs are essential to the faith.”

Let’s see you elaborate on this claim of yours. And not to quibble but the discussion here is the biblical ‘canon’. The only known biblical ‘cannon’ were four howitzers named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John by Confederate General Pendleton.

Greek was the common tongue of the New Testament era thanks to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The Hebrew bible in use in Christ’s time was the Septuagint, the Greek translation made in the 2nd century BC. The New Testament letters were written in Greek and versions such as the Peshitta and the Latin Vulgate were translated from the Greek original.

Early controversies in Church had nothing to do with language issues except for the homoousian/homoiousian debate. And even this had it’s roots in gnosticism. The actual doctrinal issues, as opposed to the ones you imagine, are well documented in JND Kelly’s classic work Early Christian Doctrines.

The New Testament began as letters circulating around the early church. The early church knew the authors. They didn’t always identify the author for posterity, and while you think that makes them of dubious origin the early church didn’t since they knew the provenance of the letters.

Marcion proposed a canon in 140 AD and he likely deserves credit for the finalizing of the canon as we know it, even though he himself was booted out of the church for teaching heresy.