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[Menk]

I am going to present reasons that demonstrate Christianity is false. I hope atheists will take notice.

1. Scholars who make my Bible can't even figure out what the original authors wrote for many of the books. Furthermore, they don't even have unanimous method for constructing the text. Why favor Alexanderian text type over Western text type? How did the original book of acts look (Alexandrian vs. western text type are 8.5% different)? Did the Gospel of John contain prologue and epilogue? Why is there new editions always coming out with verses removed like John 5:4, John 7:53-8:11, etc.

2. The historical unreliability. I just can't for the life of me figure why people try to presuppose the New Testament contains no contradictions. Just let the data speak. Did Jesus die before or after the Passover? What is the original number of the beast 616 or 666? Why are the Christologies so different between John and the synoptic gospels?

3. I have heard every apologetic for the ressurrection and none of them have any weight. I know the classic minimal facts approach:
a. Jesus was crucified
b. People saw him
c. Empty tomb

How does the crucifixion of a Jew lead to resurrection? Thousands of Jews were crucified and buried in tombs. Most likely there wasn't any empty tomb: Paul doesn't mention it and unlike a lot of historical religious sites there isn't any identification of the empty tomb today (there two big ones people visit today for fun). Also, this method fails because there are numerous facts about Jesus that don't prove he was resurrected. Jesus was a jew.

4. The Old Testament doesn't even prophecize a crucified messiah. Just ask any Jew or Christian scholar and they will tell you Isaiah 53, psalm 22:16, Daniel 10, Isaiah 9:6 aren't prophecies unless you take them out of context or make them double prophecies. Even Jews cry that Christians are mistranslating the Hebrew to foreshadow a crucified messiah.

5. Lastly, I think the arguments for "god" used by Christians can be used by any theist. Cosmological argument, intelligent design, etc. Jews to this day will call you silly and blasphemous if you even dare tell them God can become a man. They quote numerous verses to show this is bogus claim. Any theistic religion can use argument like first cause to show their god is real.

6. My last point and this may seem strange to you. But have you ever really asked yourself how can you be a follower of Jesus if you are not a jew. I for the life of me can't figure which denomination goes back to Jesus and the apostles. Did the ebionites, marcionites, catholics, etc. preserve the tradition?

[jimwalton]

1. The Biblical text. With 25,000 documents to examine, and a combined total of maybe 200,000-400,000 variants between them, it is unlikely that we'll find more variants than those already known. But that's only an average of 8-16 variants per manuscript (and many variants cluster in only 6% of the NT and 10% of the Old). The bottom line is that the text we have is incredibly accurate (>97%). Again, Blomberg: "One may fantasize about all kinds of wild changes being introduced between the first, complete written form of a given book and the oldest copy we actually have, but it will be just that—fantasy—unless some truly remarkable new discoveries change the state of the discipline."

Also, you must show some understanding of manuscript creation in an oral world. Orality was a reliable means of transmitting culture and teachings, but it allowed certain flexibilities in that transmission without subverting the authority of the source.

2. Historical unreliability. Bloomberg says, "Any anthology of sacred literature written in diverse literary genres over many centuries, and to a wide variety of audiences for many different purposes, will inevitably exhibit apparent contradictions and theological diversity along with some measure of continuity and unity.

As far as contradictions, in the rhetorical oral culture of the 1st c., variants were both common and accepted. In contrast to the text-dominant ways of Western culture, the written word was not considered reliable. But they had standards. Proverbs and poetry were fixed, but parables and stories allowed a certain amount of adaptation, inversion, or alteration, though the key elements could not be changed. The Gospels and Acts follow the precise mores of their culture, but that doesn't undermine their authority. We show a bit of ethnocentrism when we try to hold ancient historiography to the flame of modern historiography.

> Why are the Christologies so different between John and the synoptic gospels

They had different purposes in writing. A physicist and a musician both writing about Beethoven's Fifth will have completely different perspectives, but I dare say neither of them are wrong.

3. Resurrection apologetic. Lord Lyndhurst (1772-1863), known as the finest legal mind of his day, said, "I know pretty well what evidence is; and I tell you, such evidence as that for the Resurrection has never broken down yet." Those who doubt the resurrection need to explain why...
a. In the capital and religious center of Judaism, a mere few weeks after a common Jew was killed, why suddenly thousands changed religions based on claims and (we can assume) evidences of his resurrection.
b. Local adherents, local by geography and chronology, by the thousands were willing to die for what they knew to be an obvious and ridiculous lie.
c. The "rumors" of resurrection were not quashed when evidence to the contrary would be so easy to assemble.

> Most likely there wasn't any empty tomb

That shows some bias on your part. Four contemporary writers say there was. Which writers say there wasn't?

> Paul doesn't mention it

1 Cor. 15.3-6.

4. OT prophecies of a crucified messiah. Isaiah 53: Before Rashi, Jewish scholar and commentator in the 12th c., most rabbinic interpretation applied Isaiah 53 to the messiah. The Talmud applied v. 4 to the Messiah, called him the afflicted one (Sanh. 98b). Targum Jonathan, an Aramaic paraphrase, renders 52.13 as "Behold, my servant, the Messiah, shall prosper." Rabbi Moshe Alsheikh (16th c.) states, "I may say, then, that our rabbis with one voice accept and affirm the opinion that the prophet is speaking of the King Messiah." Rabbi Eliezer Hakalir, and 11th c. religious poet, paraphrased part of this chapter into an acrostic rhymed poem which is still printed in some of the Yom Kippur prayer books in the section of Kether. Rabbi Moshe Kohen (16th c.) chastises those who refer the text to Israel. Also Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai (2nd c.) and dozens of others, including Maimonides.

5. The arguments for God are the arguments for the rationality of theism, not YHWH in specific.

> if you even dare tell them God can become a man.

That's true. More rests on the incarnation than almost any other theology. If God became human, all kinds of things are now possible. If not, then Jesus should be thrown out. So the true debate lies in the reasonability of incarnation.

6. Gentiles as followers of Jesus. Even Abraham was justified by faith, not by following the Law. And in the calling of Abraham (as well as many OT texts), all of the nations of the world are the aim of God's saving efforts, not just Jews. If justification is by faith, and the intent is global (even incorporating Rahab, Ruth, and others), then Jewish enculturation cannot be one of the requirements to follow Jesus. God made it known in the early era of the church that the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles were eradicated in God's determination to bring the world to himself.

> I for the life of me can't figure which denomination goes back to Jesus and the apostles

None of them do, any more than any of the rabbi's teachings go back to Moses. The thread is not able to be followed, and there's no reason to follow it. We have the written record to read and understand.

[Protein]

> As far as contradictions, in the rhetorical oral culture of the 1st c., variants were both common and accepted.

I think that's fascinating. In one, you've said exactly why The Bible should not be used as a historical document, it wasn't written with the modern idea of truth and consistency, it wasn't intended with the modern idea of truth and consistence, therefore there shouldn't be any expectation of the modern idea of truth and consistency...

> that doesn't undermine their authority

"Did Jesus actually exist?", not a question The Bible was concerned with.This means The Bible is not viable proof of Jesus' existence, which is a problem, because no other documentation even mentions the guy. Using the bible to say Jesus existed is performing the exact sort of historical expectation you've gone at length to say is invalid for The Bible.

So, do you think whether Jesus existed an important question concerning the authority of Jesus? Modern people certainly do, but you've just stated the people in the 1st century did not. This is a problem.

The other thing being dodged is why the modern expectation of truth and accuracy came about. The reason is that as time went on, looking back at documents that did not have these as very fundamental ideas were judged to be risky at best and worse than useless at worst at making conclusions.

How can one talk about Neitsche when you have multiple self-contradictory copies that disagree on what Neitsche even said?

The modern demand for accuracy and consistency is not only different, it's better.

Sidenote.

> Proverbs and poetry were fixed

Please look at other ancient books, The Illiad for instance. "Fixed" by modern standards was not possible in ancient days, by modern standards all ancient books were wibbly wobbly, with the only 'Precise' documents being ones which, by nature, had very few copies

[jimwalton]

> why The Bible should not be used as a historical document

Ancient historiography differed from our modern approach. Herodotus, for instance, had almost all oral sources with virtually no textual ones. His method as more than just curiosity, but not quite systematic inquiry. But he was no naive storyteller, but a rather fair-minded historian.

Thucydides, who wrote about the Peloponnesian Wars, was more of a social scientists than a historian. He became somewhat of a pioneer in reporting events with accuracy, describing details carefully. He often favored oral sources to written ones. And he admitted to using "historical imagination" in reconstructing speeches.

Grant comments that if we were to judge the histories of the Greeks and Romans by modern standards, we would conclude that they were a mix of information and misinformation. But that would be an unfair assessment. Give the limitations of sources and the expectations of their audiences, this histories served ancient societies well.

If we go to the Bible, we find that the authority of the OT narratives is more connected to revelation than to history. Our modern approach is to determine and reconstruct what "really happened" (though even modern historians selectively represent a particular reality associated with events). We make an anachronistic mistake to presume that ancient narratives that we label "historiography" have the same goal, though they certainly would see their work as "truth telling".

Let's use art as an example. Picasso paints a portrait of a man's wife. the man could claim, by looking at a photograph, that she looks different than Picasso's rendering, but Picasso would insist his painting is accurate. The artist has options as to how to represent the truth. Historians, in the same way, can choose conventions meaningful to them and their intended audience. They can "reconstruct what really happened," or they can "truth tell" from a vantage point. Any photographer or novelist does the same, as well as documentary writers. It doesn't mean their work isn't true or that they haven't portrayed what really happened. It's just different than event-oriented historiography.

> "Did Jesus actually exist?", not a question The Bible was concerned with.This means The Bible is not viable proof of Jesus' existence, which is a problem, because no other documentation even mentions the guy.

Tacitus and Suetonius, both Roman historians, mention Jesus, as does Josephus. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus) says, "There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed."

> The modern demand for accuracy and consistency is not only different, it's better.

Our modern demands and critical analyses are what is showing that the documents we have of the Biblical text are astoundingly reliable.

> Please look at other ancient books, The Illiad for instance.

I have. The process of composition of the Iliad and Odyssey are unclear. The tale is from the 12th c. (approx), the work is from the 8th c. (maybe), and it was written down in about 400-ish. It was transmitted orally, and changed slightly through time.

By the time we get to the 1st c. AD, culture has changed a little. The era is a transitional one from orality to textuality. The culture of Palestine in the 1st c. AD is one of "informal controlled oral tradition." It's informal in its setting, with no certified teachers. The telling of the stories can be flexible, but the main lines of the narrative cannot be changed. Whether Jesus was going in or out of Jericho, for instance, or whether there was one rooster crow or three was immaterial to them. What mattered was the healing, or the denial.

You're right that "fixed" by modern standards was not possible in ancient days, but that doesn't mean that the story we have of Jesus is not true, or that he never did those things or said those words. What we have is reliable truth telling more interested in revelation than modern standards of historiography.

[Auto Teacher]

> The bottom line is that the text we have is incredibly accurate

Accurate to what? There is no original manuscript for it to be accurate to.

[jimwalton]

You're right that we have no original manuscript (though we would have no way of knowing that we had one even if we did). But with 25,000 manuscripts to work from, 200000-400000 variants to weigh, the bottom line is that we have better attestation to an accurate reading of the Bible than to any other ancient text. The amount of information we have about the biblical text gives us an accuracy index of greater than 97%, and it's 100% when it comes to meaningful text. (The 3% that's up for grabs is incidental portions.)

Granted that the text of the OT is not as secure as that of the NT, but the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed that the copies had been faithfully transcribed to an absolutely unbelievable accuracy, given the 1000-year gap between them and the Masoretic Text.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the textual evidence for the Biblical books is substantial, and far greater than for any other historical text, and we can reconstruct the text of the Bible to a high degree of probability as remarkably close approximations to the autographs.

[Auto Teacher]

>You're right that we have no original manuscript (though we would have no way of knowing that we had one even if we did). But with 25,000 manuscripts to work from, 200000-400000 variants to weigh, the bottom line is that we have better attestation to an accurate reading of the Bible than to any other ancient text.

Please stop and think for a moment. If you don't have the original manuscript, it makes no difference how many copies you have. Copies of what? What you're saying makes no sense.

Think it through. I write a book. There is one copy. I destroy it. Decades later, someone who never met me or read the book tries to capture what I wrote, by writing down what other people said about it. Then he makes a million copies of his work, all of them perfect photo-copies. Does that make them accurate?

> gives us an accuracy index of greater than 97%,

Accuracy of what? To what? This makes no sense. You have nothing to compare it to, so you have no idea how accurate it is.
As for other ancient texts, in some cases we have the original text. So no, we don't have better attestation to the Bible. For example, we have one of few stone direct copies of the Code of Hammurabi, many centuries older than the NT, and much better recorded and preserved. Once again, you are simply mistaken.

> Granted that the text of the OT is not as secure as that of the NT

The Tanakh is another story. Scholars agree it's a botched compilation of many stories by many authors, often not reconciled, and we don't know who wrote the originals, none of which we have. Most likely it starts with oral traditions.

Actually, the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal the opposite. 30% are Hebrew texts not canonized in the Tanakh. 30%! Think about it.
The unavoidable conclusion is that the textual evidence for the Biblical books is far from substantial, and virtually non-existent.

Compare to the Quran, unchanged since written.

[jimwalton]

> If you don't have the original manuscript, it makes no difference how many copies you have. Copies of what?

You greatly misunderstand, and your illustration shows it. There is every indication the copies were made of the original before it was destroyed. For instance, George Houston recently did a study of "libraries, collections and archives from late antiquity," showing that "manuscripts were in use anywhere from 1550 to 500 years before being discarded." Craig Evans has shown that "The fourth-century Codex Vatican's (B) was re-inked in the tenth century, which shows that it was still being read and studied some 600 years after it was produced." You're assuming a copy was destroyed before a new one was dreamed up, but that's not what scholarship and history have discovered. The evidence is that the "original" copy of a biblical book would most likely have been used to make countless new copies over a period of several centuries, learning to still more favorable conditions for careful preservation of its contents. This is exactly what we see at Qumran, which schools of OT books being preserved for 200-300 years. There is no evidence to suggest that the Hebrew text of a biblical book was ever treated without great care by the majority of copyists in *any* era of its transmission.

> Accuracy of what? To what? This makes no sense. You have nothing to compare it to, so you have no idea how accurate it is.

Suppose I text you. When you text what I said to another person, let's say one letter gets changed by auto-correct, or you mistype one letter. Any reasonable person can probably figure out what the original said. Suppose the text gets transmitted 25 more times, each with some kind of mistake, or some that are accurate. Now let's suppose the original text is deleted. Do you think we would most likely be able to reconstruct an accurate version of the original text? Probably. And the more variants we have, the more likely we'd be able to weigh the similarities and differences and be able to figure out what the original was. Even though we don't have the autograph to compare it to, we have enough versions of the text to reconstruct it with not only credibility but reliability. Since we have 25,000 texts to work with, and 400,000 variants, we have enough versions of the biblical text to reconstruct it with not only credibility but reliability.

> we have one of few stone direct copies of the Code of Hammurabi

Sure, we have a copy of the Code of Hammurabi, but some of it is missing, and there are variant readings of other extant copies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi): "Various copies of portions of the Code of Hammurabi have been found on baked clay tablets, some possibly older than the celebrated diorite stele now in the Louvre. The Prologue of the Code of Hammurabi (the first 305 inscribed squares on the stele) is on such a tablet, also at the Louvre (Inv #AO 10237). Some gaps in the list of benefits bestowed on cities recently annexed by Hammurabi may imply that it is older than the famous stele (it is currently dated to the early 18th century BC).[17] Likewise, the Museum of the Ancient Orient, part of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, also has a "Code of Hammurabi" clay tablet, dated to 1750 BC, in (Room 5, Inv # Ni 2358).[18][19]

In July, 2010, archaeologists reported that a fragmentary Akkadian cuneiform tablet was discovered at Tel Hazor, Israel, containing a c. 1700 BC text that was said to be partly parallel to portions of the Hammurabi code. The Hazor law code fragments are currently being prepared for publication by a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem."

That doesn't make me mistaken about the Bible.

> The Tanakh is another story.

Indeed it is. There's no doubt that it starts with oral traditions. The ancient Near Eastern societies were hearing dominant and had nothing comparable to authors and books as we know them. The Bible says at least some of them were written (Ex. 24.7; Josh. 1.8;1 Ki. 2.3; 11.41 et al.). There were rules of transmission in oral cultures to maintain the reliability of the narrative. There were both recognized authorities and tradents for the perpetuation of traditions, laws, and cultural narratives. Expansions and revisions were an accepted part of the process, and no different with the Biblical text. I would maintain, however, that the authority of the source was was respected and preserve as the "document" (more likely oral than written) was transmitted. In other words, whatever role Moses had in the composition of the Torah, he would have been recognized as the primary tradent of the work, though there is no reason to consider him the first, last, or the only tradent. But the work would be considered Moses's, and its authority likewise would be the authority of God as transmitted through Moses. In the same way, Isaiah would be viewed as the authority figure speaking the word of God prophetically. He wouldn't be the "author" the way we talk about authors today. Isaiah would speak his prophecies, and they would be repeated orally, sometimes varying assorted pieces of it within the confines of oral transmission mores, and eventually the "document" would be committed to writing and compiled in a book we know as Isaiah. His oracles would still be recognized as carrying his authority as the tradent, though critical analysis may be able to identify different contributors from different eras, and we, in the modern era, don't know when the work was actually committed to papyrus. But none of that affects the authority of the book. So also with Joshua, Judges, the historical books—no matter. The literature was created by tradents, transmitted orally, and eventually written. What we recognize is God as its source, his authority in the locutions, his hand over the process, and a text that has been communicated and preserved without the necessity of exact wording.

It is safe to believe that the authority behind a book is more important than identifying someone as the sole or direct author.

It is safe to believe that the existence of an autograph is not always realistic or necessary.

It is safe to believe that some later material could be added and later editions could have a role in the compositional history of a canonical book.

It is not accurate to believe that the authority of Scripture is falsified by its oral transmissions.

> Actually, the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal the opposite. 30% are Hebrew texts not canonized in the Tanakh. 30%! Think about it.

My assertion was not that everything found in the DSS should have been canonized, but only that the DSS give us evidence of the reliability of the transmission of documents of the canon.

The unavoidable conclusion is that we have prodigiously reliable versions of ancient documents (the Bible) with massive amounts of support that what we have in the Bible has even extraordinarily well preserved. The textual evidence for the Biblical books is substantial.

> Compare to the Quran, unchanged since written.

From Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism#Qur.27an)

In the 1970s, 14,000 fragments of Qur'an were discovered in an old mosque in Sanaa, the Sana'a manuscripts. About 12,000 fragments belonged to 926 copies of the Qur'an, the other 2,000 were loose fragments. The oldest known copy of the Qur'an so far belongs to this collection: it dates to the end of the 7th–8th centuries. The important find uncovered many textual variants not known from the canonical 7 (or 10 or 14) texts.

The examination of Gerd R. Puin who led the restoration project revealed, "unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment."[73] Recent authors have also proposed that the Koran may have been written in Arabic–Syriac.[74]

See also http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Text/.

[Protein]

> Grant comments that if we were to judge the histories of the Greeks and Romans by modern standards, we would conclude that they were a mix of information and misinformation. But that would be an unfair assessment. Give the limitations of sources and the expectations of their audiences, this histories served ancient societies well.

This paragraph is a marvel of self-contradiction.

It seems sincerely written, but it is disturbing how it goes 180 degrees. Replace “Historical practices” with “Medical practices”, and I think the problem is self evident. If I may simply fill in the blank: "Grant comments that if we were to judge the medical practices of the Greeks and Romans by modern standards, we would conclude that they were a mix of information and misinformation. But that would be an unfair assessment. Give the limitations of sources and the expectations of their audiences, this histories served ancient societies well." No, not really, the ancient medical practices really did not serve the ancient societies well; ancient medical practices only served them barely 'better than nothing', and the development of better medical practices today show how fundamentally flawed many ancient practices were.

History is the same way. The reason modern methods came to be was because the ancient methods, while being the 'best' they could do, were really really not that great. If they were, as is implied, 'as good as modern methods for the people involved, just different' there would have been no need to develop modern methods.

> Our modern demands and critical analyses are what is showing that the documents we have of the Biblical text are astoundingly reliable.

Which is it? "Don't demand modern levels of consistency and reliability from ancient documents" or "Go ahead, demand it, and you'll find The Bible works just dandy!" These are mutually exclusive viewpoints, switching willy-nilly from one to the other is not discussion in good faith.

> Tacitus and Suetonius, both Roman historians, mention Jesus, as does Josephus.

Could you please, for the jury, point to which of these historians was alive during the time of Jesus?

> You're right that "fixed" by modern standards was not possible in ancient days, but that doesn't mean that the story we have of Jesus is not true, or that he never did those things or said those words.

It means the evidence of what he said and did is suspect. For example, evidence is really compelling that entire sections of Mark were "tacked on" by a later writer (historians have copies of bibles both before and after the change).

It's a classic case of having to prove an affirmative (That Jesus said and did X) but providing evidence for that is woefully inadequate, in this case a book, compiled centuries after the fact, with the closest gospel being decades after the fact (at most generous), copied by hand, again and again, for milennia, by people who, as you have said, had no expectation of consistency or reliability....

Not that big of a deal when the figure in question is said to have, say, ridden horses and eaten bread, but kind of a deal-breaker when the documents say the figure in question had divine powers and rose from the dead....

[jimwalton]

> This paragraph is a marvel of self contradiction

Before the Greeks and Romans, no one was really interested in writing history as we know it. What they wrote, aside from legal documents and school exercises, was to glorify the king and the gods. Herodotus is really the first palpable historian of the world. Herodotus was not an eye-witness (as most historians are not), but collected oral anecdotes from a variety of sources. The point Grant is making is that Herodotus, while trying to separate the probable from the improbable, and fact from fiction, was still more interested in a good story over objective event-reporting. It had to be believable more than it had to a provable. But he was still an honest historian.

Thucydides, who came after him, was more refined, but his objectives were utilitarian (looking for lessons), and therefore his "historiography" was quite selective—designed to catch the attention of readers. By "serving their societies well," Grant is saying that they actually captured much of the history, but at the same time were story-tellers and moralists at heart. Our modern notions of historiography are like the old "Dragnet" show: "Just the facts, ma'am. Just give me the facts." The Greeks stirred a few extra ingredients into their renditions. If you, with your modern mindset, cried out, "But it's not TRUE!", they would look at you funny. "Of course it's true," they would reply. If you asked Picasso if his painting was a true representation of his subject, he'd answer, "Of course it is."

> The reason modern methods came to be was because the ancient methods, while being the 'best' they could do, were really really not that great.

This sounds like a bit of ethnocentrism and presentism. Possibly our methods are the result of the Enlightenment and rationalism. And just possibly our cold "objectivity" (which is still selective and interpretive) is not as superior as you assume. Who's to say?

> Which is it, "Don't demand modern levels of consistency and reliability from ancient documents" or "Go ahead, demand it, and you'll find The Bible works just dandy!"

We have to read the ancient documents in their cultural and historical context. We have to read them with ancient eyes as well as modern (since we can only operate from our own vantage point). Our ancient eyes show us how they conform to their cultural and historical context, so we can understand the variegations of oral tradition, editing, story-telling, etc. Our modern eyes scrutinize them from a critical analysis perspective. In both cases the biblical documents prove themselves to be astoundingly reliable.

> "Tacitus and Suetonius, both Roman historians, mention Jesus, as does Josephus." Could you please, for the jury, point to which of these historians was alive during the time of Jesus?

Hm. It seems contradictory, then, that you believe modern historians as they tell about Alexander and Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan and Isaac Newton, when none of them were alive at the times either. The work of a good historian doesn't necessitate contemporaneity (as much of an advantage as that would be, maybe). Sometimes, as we all know, distance in time boosts objectivity rather than decreases it. The quality of Obama's presidency may be something we know better 30 years from now than presently.

> It means the evidence of what he said and did is suspect.

I agree that we should investigate the text (and the person) with a professional and inquisitive eye. But is history guilty until proved innocent, or innocent until proved guilty? Maybe that depends on your presuppositions, but possibly they are objective. We must all be wary of bias as we study these things.

> For example, evidence is really compelling that entire sections of Mark were "tacked on" by a later writer

They almost certainly were, particularly Mark 16.9-20 and John 8.1.11. These blocks of texts are not authentic, and it is the evidence that led us to that conclusion.

> providing evidence that is woefully inadequate

I, for one, wish there were more, but we have to deal with what we have. Hopefully more will be discovered to help us along that path. But the paucity of documentation shouldn't cause us to automatically and cavalierly disregard the documentation we have.

> a book, compiled centuries after the fact

Its compilation centuries later under one cover is no critique of its reliability as individual units.

> with the closest gospel being decades after the fact (At most generous), copied by hand

"Decades" is a small space of time to still render a reliable record. We could easily still assemble reliable records of Vietnam, Watergate, the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and the 1991 invasion of Iraq, even though we are decades removed from the events. There are still plenty of eyewitnesses around to grant us access to valid and trustworthy knowledge.

> copied by hand, again and again, for milennia, by people who, as you have said, had no expectation of consistency or reliability

Oh my goodness. There were CERTAINLY expectations of consistency and reliability, but their culture allowed for certain flex in certain details in the telling. Luke, for one, in Lk. 1.3-4 tells us about "careful investigation," "orderly account," and "certainty of the things." But in his book of Acts, he gives three different renderings of the conversion of Saul/Paul. Now, was he an idiot or a liar? Neither. We have to understand that the rhetorical style of Luke's day preferred variations in the minor particulars because it promoted more interesting story-telling.