God is unclear and that's a problem.

  1. Number of manuscripts doesn’t matter. The vast overwhelming majority of those are from the Middle Ages and are useless for reconstructing an “original” text.

  2. Those second century “manuscripts” are scraps with perhaps a couple dozen words. Complete things don’t show up until the fourth century.

  3. The complete manuscripts that we do have were copied by professional scribes after Christianity was a big deal. Before that Christian books were copied by slaves and the barely literate, amplifying errors. One book, the shepherd of hermas, documents the practice of Christians who could only recognize letters copying texts letter by letter, not even understanding the words.

  4. There are changes that are more significant spelling and grammar

/r/DebateReligion Thread Parent