Trump exposes Israel's PM Bibi, "No two state solution."
(twitter.com)
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Allow me to give you a simplified analogy of how textual critics reconstruct the originals with a very high degree of accuracy (99.5%) using the 25,000 plus manuscripts and copies and fragments we possess.
Imagine you have a handwritten letter from a friend, but there are a few smudged or unclear words. To understand what your friend meant, you might ask other friends if they have copies of the same letter. If many friends have copies, and most of them have the same words, you can be more confident about what your friend originally wrote.
Now, think about the Bible as a very old and important letter. Over thousands of years, people have made copies of it by hand, just like your friends with the letter. Some of these ancient copies have small mistakes or missing words due to human error, just like the smudged words in your letter.
The more copies (manuscripts) of the Bible we have from different times and places, the better we can compare them. If most of the copies have the same words, we can be more confident about what the original text said. We can even see where mistakes crept in because they won't match the majority of the copies.
Having lots of manuscripts allows scholars to carefully study the text, cross-reference them, and piece together the most accurate version. It's like having many friends with copies of the letter; the more you have, the better you can reconstruct the original message.
So, in the case of the Bible, having a wealth of manuscripts from various times and places (which we have) helps ensure that the text we have today is very close to what was originally written, despite the centuries of copying and potential errors. This makes it one of the most well-preserved and accurately reconstructed ancient texts in history.
You didn't address the two specific points I raised. Instead you gave me an analogy of how you can reconstruct a text from many different copies of similar text - which as a general process does not require that much explanation.
Let me change the course of this discussion and tell you where I am coming from, because you might be misinterpreting my stance as I dont believe anything in Bible.
I believe that both Old Testament and New Testament are records events that happened in the history. I believe humanity had contact with other wordly beings, and set in course the flow of our civilization. I believe some of these beings were not so benign whereas others were. Jesus, for instance, was a pure and benign being who was sent here to correct our course as a civilization, bring awareness to the nature of Evil and to set us back on the right path.
However, I do believe that many layers of interpretations have crept into the Bible, that alter the meanings from the originals ever so lightly. Some of this is natural, some of this was planned.
I believe that for the most part living your life according to the teachings of Jesus is a good way to lead a good life as individuals, and free life as a civilization.
However, I do believe that using Bible prophecies, specifically, to decide our course of action - esp in relation to Israel - is extremely dangerous because very small changes can end up giving completely different meanings, and also this is an area that is most prone to intentional obfuscation by people with vested interests.
I will end this with my own stand that nothing you have provided me establishes as a fact that the Bible we can read today is exactly as it was transmitted to the Humans from the other worldly beings. Not to the point where I am willing to bet our future on some prophecies.