Saturday, July 20, 2013

Top Bible Scholars Debate: IS THE ORIGINAL NEW TESTAMENT LOST?

It is real interesting to listen to distinguished Bible scholars debate the New Testament whether the original is lost or not. I wish Muslims who are reading this among my FB contacts have read the bible which I believe are very few if at all because then; you will understand the significance of it. Muslims are a minority in a sea of Catholics. It is inevitable that Muslims will at some point in time comes to argue with their friends, classmates and neighbors about Islam and Christianity. You can only argue about something if you know what you are talking about.

I tend to agree with many Bible scholars now a day that it is nonsense to talk about the original New Testament bible. I realized recently that yea; the disciples of Jesus were ordinary people who at the time most probably didn’t know how to read and write. The teaching of Jesus was handed down to subsequent generations through oral tradition. Few educated people at the time who understood Aramaic and Greek wrote in Greek in bits and pieces of what they heard Jesus said and did. The earliest manuscript discovered so far is the size of a credit card which is obviously a part of a papyrus scroll dated 150 years after the facts.
It is not until about 350 years later that the New Testament book took shape out of what manuscripts was available choosing some and rejecting others to constitute a New Testament. Most of the 5,560 manuscript (copies of older manuscripts scribed by monks) now archived were written 800 years after Jesus and of these manuscripts; no two are alike although referring to the same events. Very significant among these is the crucifixion because Gospel writers heard very differently what Jesus is supposed to have said while hanging on the cross. There are more differences among these manuscripts than all of the words of the New Testament put together.

You are probably puzzled: if there is no copy of the New Testament from the days of Jesus then where did the New Testament now in the Bible came from? Early Christians wrote the New Testament from existing oral narratives which now constitute the massive 5,560 manuscript most of which were written in the 8th and 9th centuries meaning it is not based on textual evidence. It is like sitting down and writing from memory the bed time stories that your grandmother used to tell you that your grandmother likewise heard from her grandmother and so on and so forth.

 P-Noy will deliver his State of the Nation address tomorrow. Listen to it intently and then try to recall afterwards what he said and see how much you can recall.

There is a red letter bible where all what Jesus said is in red. If you take out those in red as the Gospel of Jesus; it will only fill about 2-3 pages.



If you are a Christian friend; don’t listen to what I say. Listen to what your scholars are saying because they are the truly learned. 





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