New Testament original texts, where are they?

originally posted by: ketsuko
So, if someone were to destroy every single original document pertaining to your birth, you would more or less have no solid proof that you exist?

This brings up another reason why perhaps the originals are missing...

Anyone see the film "The Book of Eli"?

It is about a post apocalyptic world where all bibles are rounded up and intentionally destroyed except for Eli's.

Is it not possible that this actually happened in the past?

I am convinced that the real agenda behind religion is to to hide the truth about God.

What better way to do that than destroy the word of God.

Wasn't the Bible once on the Roman Catholic's blacklist of forbidden books?

TPTB are constantly rewriting history to serve their own goals and we all know who they bow down to...

As you can see from their own writings the Catholic Church has always opposed the Bible...

www.portlandchristians.net...

"Opened on Thursday alongside the Inquisition archives was the infamous Index of Forbidden Books, which Roman Catholics were forbidden to read or possess on pain of excommunication. They showed that even "the Bible" was once on the blacklist. Translations of the holy book ended up on the bonfires along with other ``heretical'' works...

"Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; ...we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books."

paintingpictures.xanga.com...

a reply to: MurgatroidDenzel Washington right? I tried getting into it it is on once in a while. There are always little clues in movies if you know what to look for.

a reply to: areyousirius360


NO

Romans 3:4 God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.

a reply to: Murgatroid

but in the book of Eli, the key player/actor/character stated he was giving the King James Version but that which was printed out in the end and placed on their library shelf was the New King James Version.

The New King James has over 1,000 changes that remove and revise verses, phrases and words. So that is not the preserved word because it has things omitted.

The truth about God is revealed to those of child like faith and trust.

a reply to: areyousirius360

a reply to: Seede That's my problem. Not even God protected the originals. Never mind people. That's how little it mattered. Not very infallible is it.

It's not only you but many of us probably are just as flustrated as you are. Why doesn't the Creator simply reveal Himself to us and end all of this confusion? Why should we have books upon books to prove anything?

Well at one time we did and it did not last very long (about 1,650years or so) till the Creator had to start all over again. Even after starting all over again it took less than 300 years to mess it up again and 240 years later to get a king over the whole race. So if all of this is true, man is not capable of self government regardless of what the Creator does. Even now if the Creator would openly show himself once more, as He did with His Begotten Son, it would be the same and probably even worse. The only solution that I have found is to live and die by faith. I do not believe that proof will ever be sufficient for all to get on the same page.

a reply to: Seede
Absolutely. The 2 most important things in the NT are the 2 Messianic commandments and the introduction to the Holy Spirit. If
you start there that's also where you'll finish, the power and generosity of the Holy Spirit I will never deny. Ever. You can't go wrong.

originally posted by: areyousirius360
a reply to: UtnapisjtimYour theory doesn't hold up because we have older, written on paper documents oxygen papyrus doesn't matter. How complicated is it to understand that the srory of Jesus and his disciples occurred at a time in history when we ABSOLUTELY had the ability to preserve written documents. It's not a stretch either that God would preserve it if we couldn't. That theory is full of holes and I would lose it.

You must understand that Parchment and Papyrus has a general life expectancy of about 1000 years when handled and stored properly— what you then have to understand is that these books and stories were all illegal. The Romans on their hand would kill you for possessing and spreading anti-Roman propaganda of the kind the NT books of the Bible belong to, and the Jewish establishment would have you killed for blasphemy. You were dead if you were a Christian back then. Dead. Or as good as dead while still farting about. They had to live out their religion in upmost secrecy. They would draw the sign of a fish in the sand or in the air, meet in each others' homes in secret and hide in the sewers of Rome. These books were illegal and you could be killed or worse if you just as much as knew the whereabouts of any such book. They would memorise parts each and come together and they would recite the whole book, each one in his turn and together they made up the corpus of the Living Word of God, they were like living words on their own and a living codex when they came together.

PS: What you call theory is not theories at all, it's called exegesis or hermeneutics btw. Part of a field typically related to Textual Criticism or History. And Hairballism.

PPS: When you write down a book, you don't wrap it up in skins, stuff it into a properly sealed clay jar and then bury the crap. No, you make plenty copies, hey you even develop it, issue new versions and you spread it. The guys at Qumran and in Nag Hammadi however, did just that, they took books, sealed and locked them up and buried them according to all the tricks of the book. Hence the parable about the light, «Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?». In the apocrypha Jesus is known to say to his followers that they should not write down the stories, but memorise them and share them orally. Keep the living word of god alive by memorising it and becoming it, this is the whole mystery really. You hear the word of God, and you remember it, hey, you even live by it if you love it, for it's mostly sensible, and if you love it you will certainly live by it to some extent anyhow whether perfectly or poorly, and that was how they did it, and why the stories are so beautiful. They were made to be remembered and shared, and there are linguistic mechnisms involved to secure the stories' accuracy over time.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim
I understand that your theory is dead, due to the existence of older manuscripts that we have today

a reply to: areyousirius360

You just don't get it. Are you trying to fight science with science or some other dramaqueenish bollocks here? Show me your bloody library of 2000 years' age and tell me the state the manuscripts are in and how and why? The oldest known book/manuscript in the world consists of six leaves of 24 karat gold and is 2,500 years old. Where are your library of these ancient complete and perfect books of yours? They don't exist, there are but fragments, put into later context. The oldest Bible we have is the Sinaiticus, it's 4th century. Written in Greek. Parchment, especially fine vellum, like with some of the oldest books we have, the four Uncials, was extremely expensive and would cost the equivalent of several houses and cars in today's money, just to produce it physically, and then you would have to actually have it written.

en.wikipedia.org... [...] The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings, discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried (Nag Hammadi library) or stored in dry caves (Dead Sea scrolls). Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on palm leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum.

What we have remaining from before Gutenberg is but bits and pieces, and the oldest complete manuscripts aren't really that old, unless in a few miraculous cases. Like the Ephraemi Rescriptus.

en.wikipedia.org... Ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Papyrus has a life of at most a century or two in relatively moist Italian or Greek conditions; only those works copied onto parchment, usually after the general conversion to Christianity, have survived, and by no means all of those.

edit on 2-2-2016 by Utnapisjtim because: (no reason given)

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand?». In the apocrypha Jesus is known to say to his followers that they should not write down the stories, but memorise them and share them orally. Keep the living word of god alive by memorising it and becoming it, this is the whole mystery really. You hear the word of God, and you remember it, hey, you even live by it if you love it, for it's mostly sensible, and if you love it you will certainly live by it to some extent anyhow whether perfectly or poorly, and that was how they did it, and why the stories are so beautiful. They were made to be remembered and shared, and there are linguistic mechnisms involved to secure the stories' accuracy over time.

Lovely explanation of just what "the living Word of God" means. Thank you.

I have read articles that say some memories may be stored in DNA and passed down through generations. When the Divine says the law is written in your hearts and minds, perhaps that is literal in the truest sense of the word. When you hear something that rings true to you, maybe you are remembering a Stone of Truth.

a reply to: queenofswords

The first completely man-made organism, a completely synthesised bacteria, contains a genome where the biggest chunk of DNA tells the story of the organism's origin and who owns it, complete with copyright disclaimer and the names of the scientists involved, coded in ASCII, stored in DNA binaries. We are already there to some extent, life and the word is so much more than just memorising a text in times of difficulty. We are meant to make our own life in the end, step up to the challenge and side with the good lord himself and become word-scientists and program new kinds of life for a new world under a new sky, and perhaps even in another solar system?

Hey everyone if you haven't already figured it out the OP is a Troll who now has five registered accounts. He is originally gnosisisfaith who had his account restricted for bad behaviour and his other three accounts banned from use. This new account under the guise of areyousirius360 is his latest. gnosisisfaith/essence616/33Iam666/369elyon/areyousirius360 are the same person.

He does not like playing by ATS Rules and Regulations and continues to be deceptive and disruptive. The OP title has nothing to do with the OP itself and it has led about with arguments and even some insults and few post of his were removed from this thread for t&c violations.

Just the facts.

a reply to: Utnapisjtimim afraid you don't get it. Ancient Egyptians, Sumerians Canaanites, Babylonians all have preserved records of mythd, religious tales( a lot of them were used to make the old testament) All without the assistance of God in the flesh.
It doesn't matter in the slightest bit what the reason is. The fact remains, it couldn't have been THAT important if it wasn't preserved. A way would have and could have and hell, should have been found to preserve them.
It id for this reason I dismiss your paper decaying premise. They could preserve dead bodies, they could preserve the story of God in the flesh which is certainly more important than the adventures of Tiamat and Baal.
Jesus turned a few fish into thousands not to mention raised the dead, cured diseases, and was himself raised from the dead. All unscientific yet believed.
But now you want to use science to explain why he couldn't make sure his story was preserved from first writing so we could have some proof? No other evidence of him exists outside the bible, and that doesn't prove anything because it wasn't written in his day. They had miracles for proof, the least we could have is a legit historical account.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

It is said that DNA is a language in itself. From creation.com:

DNA is found in every cell of our bodies (in at least some stage of its development) and has a beautiful appearance, having the shape of a spiral staircase. The step (or rungs) are like letters in our alphabet and, ascending or descending the staircase, the letters taken together spell words which have meanings. Altogether, there are around three billion letters in human DNA, which amounts to a lot of information—about a thousand books the size of the Bible. For example, it contains the information needed to grow a baby from a fertilized egg—how to build the heart, lungs, brain and so on. As adults, we need DNA too, as it stores the software that controls much of what goes on inside us.

Do you think that the account of The Tower of Babel may have something to do with "scrambling" or "manipulating" the language of DNA in some way? Just a thought to ponder.

a reply to: queenofswords
Have, im sure you have, noticed how dna double helix looks like two intertwined serpents?
Also genetic memory does exist, in monarch butterflies, hence the name Project Monarch and the butterfly imagery common in pop culture. It's being studied continually. Of course project monarch is about more than that, but that's how it got it's name.

a reply to: UtnapisjtimThe dead sea scrolls are rubbish? They containe multiple copies of the Old Testament, along with 1Enoch minus Esther, plus some prophetic Messianic texts. If you call the oldest Biblical texts in existence rubbish I don't think you have looked into it thoroughly.
It's even used in modern translations as far back as the 60's and has shed light on many things we did not know for sure.

originally posted by: queenofswords
a reply to: Utnapisjtim

It is said that DNA is a language in itself.

The code you'd wrap up using DNA is a sort of dual binary cipher, basically a code instructing mostly bacteria and fungi to build living creatures and plants etc. Only about 10 per cent of the cells in your body are human cells with human DNA in them, while the other 90% are from other lifeforms, bacteria for the most part. Your skeleton is made of metal, a mineral and we were/are mostly built and repaired by bacteria acting according to the code in the host's DNA.

We are self-aware meat robots with a sort of autonomous GUI that makes us experience nature and have a sense about it all. A sense of will and purpose. Our DNA is like our operating system, and the interface produced by our brains for our inner eye (the brain consisting of, for the most part, two main processors, one signal processor and one serial processor) to simulate or mirror our surroundings almost in real time, however what we see or experience through our sensory organs and our nerve system and a bunch of glands and other divine technology-- is an illusion produced by the brain to mimic reality, a composite of recorded events presented to simulate a real life scenario. We live in a dream sort of, only it's real. Well, at least I think it is.....

Do you think that the account of The Tower of Babel may have something to do with "scrambling" or "manipulating" the language of DNA in some way? Just a thought to ponder.

As far as I'm concerned the Tower of Babylon was a whiskey still, and they all got veeery drunk and ended up where they shouldn't be, being all confused and scattered across the area when they quit working the still. There wasn't any sense left after a few hundred years of near free booze.

originally posted by: areyousirius360
a reply to: UtnapisjtimThe dead sea scrolls are rubbish? They containe multiple copies of the Old Testament, along with 1Enoch minus Esther, plus some prophetic Messianic texts. If you call the oldest Biblical texts in existence rubbish I don't think you have looked into it thoroughly.
It's even used in modern translations as far back as the 60's and has shed light on many things we did not know for sure.

Oh dear, you'd be disappointed if you saw the books found at Qumran and the sad state they're in. We are talking about 100,000 fragments from a total of 1400 original documents, 225 of these mostly fragmentary (about 40,000 fragments, bits and pieces) documents are from OT biblical books. All the pieces put together and they have a nearly complete Tannakh or Old Testament. But not quite. And all in all the text they have arrived at is identical to the Stuttgart and Leningrad codices from 11th century.

I love how much your trust is in Archaeology and Science (man) and not in the Lord when it comes to his words.

Oh ye of little faith.

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
I love how much your trust is in Archaeology and Science (man) and not in the Lord when it comes to his words.

Oh ye of little faith.

The oldest complete book made from multiple pages, is about 2,500 years old and is made of six sheets of pure gold (Source). The oldest stories are far older, though, and mostly carried down through history lane from from one generation to the next. We have however found some pretty amazing things in the ground, but compared to all the books that have been produced through about 6,000 years of written language before modern paper and Gutenberg, what we have left is mostly like a deteriorating pile of rubbish and dust with a few amazing exceptions.

Most ancient stories we own have been transmitted orally from one generation to the next, and eventually written down and copied and recopied according to various levels of often strict rules to preserve the texts' accuracy-- and in some nearly unbelievable miracles of wonder stuff like the libraries of Qumran and Nag Hammadi surfaces, all horned and hydra-headed, bringing light to stuff we never knew, and all become suckers, or as is the case with certain Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian manuscripts-- we at least know and can prove they made books and were quite good at it, but nearly all written literature made before the modern printing press was invented-- is lost forever. We do have about enough to get a hunch of who our ancestors were and the stories they told and kept, the laws they lived by and how much bread and beer people owed or had stacked away-- but just the hunch.

Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) contained material belonging to about 1,400 books deteriorated into more than 100,000 pieces. I have about half as many books in my living room alone (and in 2016 that is quite normal), and they're all complete, give or take a handful damaged books. Some people need to realise that even though the Dead Sea Scrolls and stuff like Nag Hammadi and Masada are amazing, it's not really THAT amazing. That said, that ANYTHING AT ALL should survive thousands of years of continuous sectarian conflict and war mostly founded in politics and religion-- is a bloody miracle.