How do we know any Bible we have today is an accurate representation of what was written in the first and second centuries? We have no “original documents” to verify such a claim, independently, apart from the Church. I do believe that the oldest existing document we have from the first century is a fragment of the book of Matthew. (or some Gospel, I can’t remember which one with 100% accuracy).
We can know that by several means . . . .
1. Holy Spirit within us is our witness.
2. There is adequate scholarship to demonstrate that what we have is QUITE CLOSE ENOUGH to the original artifacts that we can be confident that what the Scriptures we have tell us about forming an eternal relationship with God are reliable.
3. It IS logical, as well, that God would protect HIS WRITTEN WORD sufficiently to show us how to relate to Him; gain eternal life and relate to one another.
4. It is plausible, given His fierce exhortations against idolatry that He would have caused the original artifacts to disappear lest they become idols as well.
5. It is logical that He would have insured that there were a diversity of secondary artifacts, fragments of some diversity of location and origin so that no one little clubby clique could claim any RELIGIOUS NOR SPIRITUAL monopoly.
6. The Scriptures we have are congruent with the Old Testament description of God The Father.
7. The Scriptures we have are congruent with reality about man; the heart of man; man's tendencies in relationships; man's tendencies toward arrogance and idolatry . . .
8.The Scriptures we have are congruent with history and prophetically have been validated repeatedly in terms of fulfilled prophecy.
Doesn’t this fact shock people? Doesn’t the fact that we have, at best, “copies of copies” force people to realize that we need an authoritative body to verify, through continual witness to the fact, that the “bible” we have today is indeed a fair (if not 100% accurate) representation of what was written in the first century? How do we know that what we have today wasn’t corrupted between the first, and early part of the second century, and when it was finally compiled in the 4th century?
Actually, I'm much more shocked that any group of people with IQs above that of a slug could even FANTASIZE OR PRETEND that the RC edifice and magicsterical has had any serious semblance of a "continual witness" even from 400 AD on. And the idea that they did from Christ chatting with pebble Peter on is beyond hysterically ludicrous.
It is also hysterically ludicrous that any rational RC folks would really buy into the utter unmitigated farce that the RC magicsterical has been a seamless, homogeneous, UNIFIED, STRICTLY KOSHER AND RIGHTEOUS WITNESS even from AD 400 to this . . . in the face of an abundance of historical record to the contrary.
To me, this is the ultimate destruction of sola scriptura. If we claim the Church is incapable of teaching authoritatively, then we are left with nagging doubt, “How do we know the english Bible I have in my hand accurately represents what was originally taught back in the 1st and 2nd centuries?” We certainly can’t claim it “verifies itself”, as a general distortion of all Scripture could still “verify itself”; it would be “verifying” error though.
Holy Spirit has been more than adequate in my life to fulfill that role. Sorry so many RC's are so disinclined/unable/unwilling to ear HIM on such scores. Christ died that we might have 1:1 direct fellowship with The Father.
It seems to me that the RC magicsterical and edifice have been concocting and fabricating out of thin air all manner of rationalizations to do the opposite--tu construct untold numbers of layers between the individual and God; to construct untold layers of hierarchy and fantasized jr god personages to get between the individual and God.
And on top of such blasphemous heresies as that--they expect us to think that THEIR interpretation of Scripture is the more SOUND one!????
That's about like putting the most faith as young parents in a Jeffry Dahlmer book on the care and feeding of sons to prevent child abuse and canibalism.
Off to supper. Maybe more when I return.
Good one.
Quix:
We can know that by several means . . . .
1. Holy Spirit within us is our witness.
This is a fair point, I will (must) grant, however, by your own post, this cannot be the only reason, since, as you (seem to) know innately, as human beings created by God with the capacity to reason, we must have reasons that convince us apart from this. That is, anyone can claim the Holy Spirit "witnesses" to anything. Anyone can claim the Holy Spirit teaches, literally, anything. It's an easy claim to make, but not one that should be taken lightly, especially if there are no other reasons to believe in something other than, "The Holy Spirit tells me so".
This isn't to diminish the role of the Holy Spirit. It's actually meant to take the inspiration thereof seriously, for if one casually assigns authority to something simply because of the claim of inspiration, and no other reasons, then it actually cheapens God's work in us, here on Earth.
2. There is adequate scholarship to demonstrate that what we have is QUITE CLOSE ENOUGH to the original artifacts that we can be confident that what the Scriptures we have tell us about forming an eternal relationship with God are reliable.
To which scholarship do you refer? Does this scholarship rely upon independent sources, apart from any testimony of the Church?
3. It IS logical, as well, that God would protect HIS WRITTEN WORD sufficiently to show us how to relate to Him; gain eternal life and relate to one another.
I agree that God has done a perfect job in protecting His Written Word throughout the centuries. But again, this doesn't really address the fundamental point, "How did God protect His Written Word during the time of persecution of the Romans?"
We certainly can't point to any "protected copies" during that time period (AD 100-AD 300), as that was the point of my original question: There exist no complete copies of the Canon of Scripture during that time period. So, God must have protected His Word in oral form, transmitting it via the traditional teachings of the early Christians, until the time period of the 4th century (AD 300), when it was finally written down, in complete form.
4. It is plausible, given His fierce exhortations against idolatry that He would have caused the original artifacts to disappear lest they become idols as well.
That's a very interesting point, one that seems to agree with what I wrote earlier, to whit, "I believe everything happens for a reason, God’s reasons, and the fact that the originals were lost (probably due to persecution by the Roman Empire during that period), is, IMO, God’s message to us today to not rely on the “Bible alone”, but rather, to rely on the men and women He has chosen to teach us about the faith, through various charisms, for our PERFECTION (cf Eph 4:1-13)."
5. It is logical that He would have insured that there were a diversity of secondary artifacts, fragments of some diversity of location and origin so that no one little clubby clique could claim any RELIGIOUS NOR SPIRITUAL monopoly.
Which, I believe, is what happened. It's just how we define "clubby clique" here which seems to be the point of dispute. What we can see from the historical record is, that during the 4th century (AD 300-399), there were a diversity of churches spread out all throughout the known world at the time, some of which had copies of some books/epistles, some of which had copies of others. They all had their own opinions about which were Scripture and which weren't. It doesn't appear that until the year 397, at the Council of Carthage, did there come to be any agreement about which ones of these books were actually Scripture. But that's really a side issue (as we aren't really discussing the formation of the Canon, rather, the accuracy of Scripture). The point is that, I believe, we don't have any one local church possessing the entire Canon during the time period AD 100-AD 397, thus, we have no way of verifying that all those Scriptures that composed the Canon were indeed an accurate representation of what was taught during the time period of AD 100-AD 300. IOW, there don't exist any copies during the time period AD 100 - AD 300 (especially not during the time period AD 100-AD 200) that we can go back and verify are the same as what we had after AD 397. The only way we can know the Scriptures after the 4th century are the same Scriptures taught during AD 100-AD 300 is through the living witness of the Church. It's either that, or again, we are left with nagging doubt if we reject the Tradition of the Church in that regard.
6. The Scriptures we have are congruent with the Old Testament description of God The Father.
As I pointed out to roamer, the OT comes under similar scrutiny as, when NYer pointed out "How do we know the 10 Commandments are accurately represented?" in her reply to me. That is, certainly we have the DSS to verify the OT independent of any Tradition from the 1st century onward, however, BEFORE the 1st century, we only have Jewish tradition to verify their (and therefore the entire OT's) veracity. So again, if one rejects the equal role tradition has played in the preservation of Scripture, one must also reject Jewish tradition for similar reasons, and thus, we have no way of knowing for certain that the NT "represents the OT description of God the Father" accurately.
7. The Scriptures we have are congruent with reality about man; the heart of man; man's tendencies in relationships; man's tendencies toward arrogance and idolatry . . .
True, however there are many works throughout the centuries that also bear accurate witness about the realities of man, but are not necessarily inspired. Simply accurately describing the state of man, his wretched tendency towards evil, and evil practices, doesn't necessarily mean, by itself, a work is divinely inspired.
8.The Scriptures we have are congruent with history and prophetically have been validated repeatedly in terms of fulfilled prophecy.
Congruent with history, when such comparisons can be made, yes. But this merely makes it a good history book, not necessarily inspired.
As far as fulfilled prophecy goes, yes, that's true with regards to Christ if one again assumes in the first place, the OT is accurate (an assumption one cannot make if one throws out the tradition of the Jews, for reasons I explained above). As far as present (current) events fulfilling NT prophecy, (if you are implying that at all, I can't be sure), well quite frankly that's really such a nebulous claim it's not really relevant to the discussion of the historical accuracy of the NT itself, as it begs the question.
Actually, I'm much more shocked that any group of people with IQs above that of a slug could even FANTASIZE OR PRETEND that the RC edifice and magicsterical has had any serious semblance of a "continual witness" even from 400 AD on. And the idea that they did from Christ chatting with pebble Peter on is beyond hysterically ludicrous.
It is also hysterically ludicrous that any rational RC folks would really buy into the utter unmitigated farce that the RC magicsterical has been a seamless, homogeneous, UNIFIED, STRICTLY KOSHER AND RIGHTEOUS WITNESS even from AD 400 to this . . . in the face of an abundance of historical record to the contrary.
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean here, as even the most radical anti-Catholic states that "the RCC began in the 4th century under Constantine". So even they admit that the Church has been in continuous operation from at least then.
Holy Spirit has been more than adequate in my life to fulfill that role. Sorry so many RC's are so disinclined/unable/unwilling to ear HIM on such scores. Christ died that we might have 1:1 direct fellowship with The Father.
As I pointed out above, one cannot simply rely on the claim, "The Holy Spirit teaches me this", to ground one's faith in something. It invariably makes Him the author of confusion, as anyone can claim that. I believe we are to use our reason as a method of faith, that is, the method of faith is reason, for indeed, as St. Peter exhorts, (1 Peter 3:15) "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and [be] ready always to [give] an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:" We must be ready with a (many) *reason* for our faith, which implies a necessity for a fact. The Holy Spirit is not a fact for those who don't believe. Thus, we cannot rely on the simple claim "The Holy Spirit shows me" to convince anyone, of anything, on its own.
It seems to me that the RC magicsterical and edifice have been concocting and fabricating out of thin air all manner of rationalizations to do the opposite--tu construct untold numbers of layers between the individual and God; to construct untold layers of hierarchy and fantasized jr god personages to get between the individual and God.
And on top of such blasphemous heresies as that--they expect us to think that THEIR interpretation of Scripture is the more SOUND one!????
That's about like putting the most faith as young parents in a Jeffry Dahlmer book on the care and feeding of sons to prevent child abuse and canibalism.
This portion of your reply, with all due respect, to me is a self serving diatribe, that has no bearing on the original question, "How do we know the Scriptures we have today are an accurate representation of what was taught back in the 1st century?". IOW, you seem to be saying here that "I refuse to entertain the question anymore, as it forces me to look harder than I'd like at the reality of what faced early Christians". For the same reason, I shall not reply to your post 1310, as anything there that did address my original question is answered here, and anything that didn't, seems to be the same kind of obfuscation described above.