>> “books are relatively new you know and while there were probably letters and such, there weren’t very many and not all the apostles had copies of them.” <<
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What an idiotic statement!
The apostles wrote them; why would they need copies of their own letters?
The individual believers are the ones that were making copies of them; where do you think all the thousands of MS copies came from?
The scriptures to which they all referred were the Torah scrolls in the synagogues that dotted the lands.
you have no idea of what went on in those days, do you???If one Apostle wanted to relate the letters of another Apostle, he would either have memorized (tradition) that message or required a written copy of it.
since written copies were virtually impossible to come by, tradition seems to be the way that the messages were transmitted to the people.
Paul wanted to tell his audience of the wonderful teachings of Peter....do you suppose that he went to Peter and asked for a transcription of his last sermon??????????????
the individual believers could neither read nor write....where do you think these meetings took place, Harvard, Columbia University???....these were shepherds, local merchants, people on the streets....they couldn't read books...there were no books to read.....I'm willing to bet that Peter, the fisherman, could only speak 1 language, and that he could neither read nor write.
you have to realize that these people were in the B.C. time period....yes, they were intelligent, but no, they were not schooled in reading nor writing.