and you are wrong (regarding the fact that some reputable scholars doubt the existence of Jesus) that is all this comment is worth.
Any comment, even an ignorant one, is worth more than that. It’s worth a demonstration of why it’s wrong, otherwise we can never get anywhere in discussion. For example, in order to demonstrate that your claim that no reputable scholar doubts Jesus’ existence is wrong, I can point to an example of a scholar that doubts Jesus’ existence.
Thomas L. Thompson, until last year, was professor of Theology at the University of Copenhagen. He believes that the Jesus story was never meant to be a report of something that really happened, but rather that it’s a myth that teaches us important lessons about salvation — a parable, if you will. He also thinks this would have been clearly understood by people at the time, but was misinterpreted by subsequent generations.
thats how little you seem to know about the OT and the discoveries that have beenmade. the silver scrolls date to the 6th-7th centuiry BC and they are exactly like the modern day correct translations. no change in 2,400 years. the DSS have shown how accurate the modern correct versions are today and these scrolls date back to the 2nd century BC approx. forgotten the exact centuries, could be older.
Having never heard of the silver scrolls, I dutifully went and looked them up. It turns out that they contain, not a complete account of the Bible identical to modern translations, but two verses from one book — Deuteronomy — containing a priestly blessing. This, in the King James’ translation, is the sum total of their contents:
quote:
The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
So, assuming the dating of the scrolls is accurate, all that has been established here is that the Bible contains a general-sounding prayer which had been about since at least the 7th century AD. In no sense does this amount to evidence of the historical accuracy of the Bible, nor evidence for the antiquity of any of the other writings contained in the Bible.
The Dead Sea Scrolls o not date from earlier than the second century BC, usually being dated to between 70 and 150 BC. Oddly enough, the scholars who’ve studied these scrolls have very different interpretations than you do about whether or not they support the idea that the Old Testament has remained unchanging through the years. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology has this to sy (from wikipedia):
quote:
While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic, or traditional, Hebrew text of the Old Testament, some manuscripts of the books of Exodus and Samuel found in Cave Four exhibit dramatic differences in both language and content. In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the Old Testament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around A.D. 100
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