Yet when older manuscripts are found like the Dead Sea Scrolls, or even questionable ones like the Vaticanus or Siniaticus, the differences are minor. The latter two in particular were discarded versions that deleted some verses and changed the wording in others. They did this enough to not be reliable for use in Bibles (in my opinion), but even so one could read those manuscripts and still get the gospel.
“There may be content in the Bible (or other book) that’s been systematically erased” is fundamentally an argument from silence. As a Christian I simply have faith that God has accurately preserved His Word in spite of man’s attempts to corrupt it, and so far the evidence is in favor of the Bible (specifically the Textus Receptus) being the fruit of that preservation.
The DSS have nothing to do with Christianity, Gnostic or otherwise. They were all written at least a century before Christ.
How on earth does my endorsement of the Textus Receptus indicate support of the RCC? They don’t use the TR; they use the Vulgate. A brief examination of my comment history will reveal that I am not a Catholic and do not agree with their theology.
I am forced to conclude that you are ignorant of anything concerning Christianity.
Further, youre the one that brought up the DSS as a way to validate that Christian thought has remained unchanged.
I should have been more clear here. The DSS validates the accurate transmission of OT through the centuries, which in turn validates a substantial portion of Christian thought as Christianity considers the OT to be divinely inspired. “The DSS doesn’t have anything to do with NT canon” is what I should have said.
Assuming that CNN is the RCC in your analogy, said analogy is highly flawed.
CNN has their own narrative and their own articles, but Fox (Eastern Orthodox Church) had their own writings (Byzantine Greek Texts), and these were never touched by CNN. Fox didn’t restrict access to their writings like CNN did, and eventually some of CNN’s staff caught onto the differences (Erasmus) and others found discrepancies even between CNN’s own material (Luther). They defected (Reformation) and made their own text (TR) based off Fox’s uncorrupted info.
The RCC never had a complete monopoly on all translations of Scripture. Their lies were found out; that’s why denominations other than the RCC exist.
The Nag Hammadi library is not the DSS. The former was found in Egypt in 1945 and the latter near the Dead Sea in 1946. They don’t have any content in common with each other.
Once again, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Even if the DSS contained texts written by gnostics, that is not necessarily an endorsement of those texts or a testimony of their accuracy. The DSS was simply a library of texts that the Essenes had. Most of the texts are just copies of portions of the OT (which match the later Masoretic texts) and small portions of their own writings. That they were stored together does not mean the Essenes weighted them all with the same religious authority, much like how some Christians today read the Apocrypha or biblical commentaries despite not holding to them as inspired scripture.
So even if Gnostic texts were found with the DSS, it still doesn’t prove your point, as it still would not imply that said texts were viewed on the same level scripture, the texts still date before Christianity, and all of this still does not explain the obvious contradictions between Gnosticism and the plain teachings of Scripture.
Yet when older manuscripts are found like the Dead Sea Scrolls, or even questionable ones like the Vaticanus or Siniaticus, the differences are minor. The latter two in particular were discarded versions that deleted some verses and changed the wording in others. They did this enough to not be reliable for use in Bibles (in my opinion), but even so one could read those manuscripts and still get the gospel.
“There may be content in the Bible (or other book) that’s been systematically erased” is fundamentally an argument from silence. As a Christian I simply have faith that God has accurately preserved His Word in spite of man’s attempts to corrupt it, and so far the evidence is in favor of the Bible (specifically the Textus Receptus) being the fruit of that preservation.
The DSS have nothing to do with Christianity, Gnostic or otherwise. They were all written at least a century before Christ.
How on earth does my endorsement of the Textus Receptus indicate support of the RCC? They don’t use the TR; they use the Vulgate. A brief examination of my comment history will reveal that I am not a Catholic and do not agree with their theology.
I am forced to conclude that you are ignorant of anything concerning Christianity.
I should have been more clear here. The DSS validates the accurate transmission of OT through the centuries, which in turn validates a substantial portion of Christian thought as Christianity considers the OT to be divinely inspired. “The DSS doesn’t have anything to do with NT canon” is what I should have said.
Assuming that CNN is the RCC in your analogy, said analogy is highly flawed.
CNN has their own narrative and their own articles, but Fox (Eastern Orthodox Church) had their own writings (Byzantine Greek Texts), and these were never touched by CNN. Fox didn’t restrict access to their writings like CNN did, and eventually some of CNN’s staff caught onto the differences (Erasmus) and others found discrepancies even between CNN’s own material (Luther). They defected (Reformation) and made their own text (TR) based off Fox’s uncorrupted info.
The RCC never had a complete monopoly on all translations of Scripture. Their lies were found out; that’s why denominations other than the RCC exist.
http://www.compassdistributors.ca/topics/textchoi.htm
https://www.gotquestions.org/Textus-Receptus.html
The Nag Hammadi library is not the DSS. The former was found in Egypt in 1945 and the latter near the Dead Sea in 1946. They don’t have any content in common with each other.
Once again, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Even if the DSS contained texts written by gnostics, that is not necessarily an endorsement of those texts or a testimony of their accuracy. The DSS was simply a library of texts that the Essenes had. Most of the texts are just copies of portions of the OT (which match the later Masoretic texts) and small portions of their own writings. That they were stored together does not mean the Essenes weighted them all with the same religious authority, much like how some Christians today read the Apocrypha or biblical commentaries despite not holding to them as inspired scripture.
So even if Gnostic texts were found with the DSS, it still doesn’t prove your point, as it still would not imply that said texts were viewed on the same level scripture, the texts still date before Christianity, and all of this still does not explain the obvious contradictions between Gnosticism and the plain teachings of Scripture.