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To: Free Baptist; Kolokotronis
Why would you think that common believers (there were many educated enough to read and write Greek and Syrian) would not have been copying the New Testament books and distributing them just as soon as they had them in their hands.

Because parchment and vellum were very expensive (paper was not yet invented), and literacy not at all widespread (90% of the Roman population were rustics in the countryside, another 5%+ were the illiterate urban rabble). Parchment and vellum were so hard to come by that oftentimes, when a new book was to be written, an old one would be erased, and the vellum leaves reused.

And why would you think they would not be translating them, too, as they went and did personal evangelism and mission work in regions beyond.

They did translate them, but that began much later than you seem to think. The first Germanic language Bible, that of Wulfilas, was not done until the mid 4th Century.

And why would you think that the Holy Spirit could not superintend the preservation of His word through such common believers who had no desire to build ecclesiastical or political positions for themselves?

The Holy Spirit certainly did a poor job then of preventing textual variants and errors in this copyign and translating.

424 posted on 12/21/2005 6:32:21 AM PST by Hermann the Cherusker
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
Your inadequate study in what was happening among common believers in Asia Minor is due to the fact that your sources are protecting the religious system to which you adhere. Expensive or not expensive, copies were made and distributed, and proliferated throughout south eastern Europe, and all the way to current day Poland. And there was a Latin from 160 A.D. that you missed, but was used extensively much later by the Waldenses and other congregations that never merged with the system (from Nicea) that eventually became Roman Catholicism. That Latin can be traced to the 2nd Century. Translating began in the 2nd Century.

Since the high liturgical systems need to protect their own authority, their studies on these things are skewed, and very much information is discarded that might prove or even imply that there were congregations and preachers, and common Christians and mission work and translating work that was blessed of God and superintended by His holy Spirit without the authority of a high mother church system.

The Holy Spirit did a perfect job in preserving His Words to every generation (as He promised -- Psalm 12:6, 7; many other) and to us in exactly the form He intended us to have it. We have seen the fruit in that preserved text (especially in English -- obviously the language of the last days of this dispensation) from the 17th to the current Century. That text has been the Final Authority for the preaching in every major spiritual, soul-winning, Revival to the present day.
426 posted on 12/21/2005 7:01:02 AM PST by Free Baptist
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