After all, the Sacred Scriptures spent a thousand years in the hands of the Vatican (half of that if you count the Eastern Orthodox churches) . How do we know that the cabal didn't alter, add or supress anything important on them in all those years, that's also not counting the other supposedly reformed editions that were made by people with ties to Freemasonry and the City of London ?
I might also be in dire need of some time out of the news and the digging. Feel free to call me out if that's the case.
Because the scrolls found at Qumran were carbon dated to the 1st century and are substantially the same as a well translated modern version.
Nailed it. The Dead Sea scrolls corroborate almost 100% similarity between Biblical manuscripts dating 1000 yrs apart from each other.
-- Dr. Bryant Wood
Add that to the fact that the Bible possesses well over 25,000 manuscripts in its corner (all other books from early antiquity pale in comparison). The more manuscripts a specific work has, the harder it is to manipulate what the manuscripts say. Furthermore, all those manuscripts aren’t all stored in one location. A group of people can’t simply change the text of some manuscripts without being caught.
Keep this in mind, too: In order to know that an ancient manuscript has been changed or altered, one must first be in possession of the original, unchanged, manuscript(s).
We can be 100% confident that the versions of the Bible we possess today are, indeed, what the original authors wrote down.
"We can be 100% confident that the versions of the Bible we possess today are, indeed, what the original authors wrote down."
We can not be 100% confident about anything today and why, just because something was written down in antiquity does that make it unassailable truth that came straight from God's lips to these peeps stenopads?
Here is your leap of faith and that is exactly what it is. You choose to believe this is the case but you can not point at these text and establish a chain of custody to God's lips.
It is an article of faith to believe these translations dripped like honey straight from God's mouth into the ears of these protagonists.
It is an article of faith to pretend to know that the very forces that keep us ignorant today were not stymieing the human spark in Biblical times.
To pretend all this is knowable and science is to deceive yourself.
Any language in existence is a set of pigeon holes, words with finite meanings, that are interpreted differently even by contemporary people with agreed upon definitions.
To me the fallacy is that an ancient static, social and moral code can explain or even try to vaguely encapsulate a dynamic, infinite universe.
The Bible paints a limited, anthropomorphic and pedestrian look at the infinite and those who claim to 100% know the chain of custody of this screed all the way to God's mouth are deluding themselves.
You're entire response misses the point.
The authenticity/reliability of the NT documents (which I have 100% shown to be light years above any other book from early antiquity) is not an argument for whether or not the content in the Bible is true. All the information I provided does is prove that we can ascertain with a very high level of certainty (99.8%) that what we have in our hands today IS what the original authors wrote down - whether you believe that message came from God or not, or is true or not.
Do you see the nuance?
If you don't see the nuance, then maybe you should ask some clarifying questions to make sure you understand what is being said, before spouting off at the lip trying to wax eloquent.
By the way, your attempt at casting doubt on the ability of language to communicate meaning to another is a self refuting attempt. You say here:
You either believe the words you are using have some sort of common understanding and can communicate the intent of what you are trying to say to me, in which case your argument fails, or, what you are saying about the nature of language is true and no one can truly understand what it is you're trying to say because "words can be interpreted differently."
You can't have it both ways.
The facts that I have presented (and others) above in the previous comments show, without a doubt, that there is no other book from early antiquity that can claim the level of reliability/trustworthiness that the NT can claim.
Hands down.
I see your point and did not intuitively pick up that you were advocating for Christianity only to the point that someone wrote it down once.
That does not seem like a very profound statement. It carries somewhat less impact that God's words but I am certainly feeling you.
As to the words, "You either believe the words you are using have some sort of common understanding and can communicate...."
Dude, even the color "Red" does not have common meaning to someone who is color blind and we are talking about highly abstract concepts here. you were just posting about the limits of human understanding we are not talking about a chair or a table.
The word "God". It means something completely different to you than it does for me. In fact everyone in the world has some abstract notion of God that differs from everyone else. This is completely self evident.
Excellent. Thank you.
This and the Textus Receptus New Testament and Hebrew Masoretic Old Testaments were preserved by the Eastern Orthodox Churches during the 1260 years of darkness known as the Dark Ages.
Those are the manuscripts the Geneva Bible and King James are based on, not the edited Alexandrian manuscripts preserved by the Vatican.
This right here. This anon gets it.