Gee, I got a flurry of comments, so I will try to address them all at once:
"...Just because the originals burned up doesn’t mean what was written in 400 AD was made up or embellished. If nothing was written down for 400 years, and then someone attempted to write the history of what happened, that would be different. But that is not what occurred. There were written records out the wazoo. Paper tends to burn, but luckily, copies exist elsewhere..."
"...People didn’t wait 500 to 600 years to start writing - the originals were lost along the way and what remains are copies or texts that reference original sources..."
"...Early Christians had no bibles. But they had prayer, and a personal relationwhip with their Creator. The bible helps, but it is not a requirement..."
"...Don’t worry, Rebel Ace. There’s no lack of ancient texts..."
These comments basically boil down to something like this:
"The writings of these sorts of texts were based on copying even older texts, and we are confident that the copying was done accurately."
My point does not depend upon whether ancient texts preceded these or not. To illustrate, and to try to remove the emotional attachment that discussions of religious beliefs invoke, let's just talk about the American Civil War.
We have copious documents from that time. We even have PHOTOGRAPHS from that era. We have ORIGINAL, CONTEMPORARY news articles from that era. It has ONLY BEEN about 150 years since the events. None of that is in dispute.
Now, compare the works of CONTEMPORARY (to epoch 2000) Authors.
Bill O'Reilly wrote
. Doris Goodwin wrote
. I could go on listing many, many more.
My Point is the Honest Answer to these questions:
Are these accounts all the same?
Do the Author's opinions color their choice of words, and what material to include or dismiss?
Do Author's have specific, goal oriented agendas when creating these works?
All of these questions, and their honest answers, lie in the domain of human limits and behavior. These behaviors, motivations and limitations shape the works of Man.
If you ignore these realities when evaluating ancient written artifacts, you do so at your own intellectual peril.
You are mixing apples and oranges. Conservative scholarship has been able to defend the position that ALL of the New Testament texts were written in the first century. So we are not subject to writers recollections after lots of time had transpired.
It is true that Luke was probably not an eye witness, but he states that he interviewed lots of eye witnesses in order to produce an accurate account. He served as a reporter. The rest of the Gospel writers were there.
So any infusion of inaccuracy would be in the transmission of the original autographs. The question at hand is whether we have reliable text. "Textual criticism" is the body of scholarship which deals with this problem.
Textual critics fall in both camps. There are those that argue that we do not have reliable texts as well as those who contend that the texts are reliable.
There are enough early manuscripts around to result in two major schools of thought within the Church. There are those who support the use of Byzantine texts, which are more numerous, from the area of modern Turkey. The other, more modern school, wants to use older manuscripts from Alexandria.
Recent New Testament translators have leaned toward the use of the Alexandrian texts. However, there are NO MAJOR DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES SUPPORTED BETWEEN THE TWO SETS OF MANUSCRIPTS. So we are talking about nits and nuances.
It should also be pointed out that there is a large body of manuscripts from the early church fathers. They quoted the manuscripts which later were adopted as the New Testament so frequently that most of the entire text of the New Testament can be reconstructed simply be resorting to these quotations.
I’ve heard your line of thought so often that it’s just not worth the effort to respond beyond this. If we acquiesce to your mindset we find nothing is historically reliable. I, instead, recognize that there is a valid textual and historical reference for my acceptance of the validity of the Christian tradition that my faith is built upon spiritual understanding and intellectual. The former is enough - the latter helps me to understand that my faith is as rational as it is spiritual.