On Jul 17, 9:35 am, EskWI...@spamblock.panix.com wrote:

If I spent two semesters preparing a paper on just this subject, then
the fact/figures/references from that report would be my advocate. It
is from that research that I proceeded from. In that I never got
anything
below a B at that school and that my prof was, at the time, very
involved
in the DSS manuscripts, a personal friend of Golda Meir, often a guest
of the state, a real stickler for factuality, I stand by what I wrote.

No I didn't. It's just that you disagree with what I reported.

The only thing that needs to be noted, is the facts of the case.
Check Philip Schaff's comments in the Encyclopaedia of Religious
Knowledge, former president of the American committee involved
in the revision of the English Bible and his comments on variants.
His comment is that only 50 of the 150,000 have any significant
importance.

Refer to Gaussen's, "Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures" and his
comments on the variants in Romans. A world class scholar
and often noted in theo journal articles on manuscript research,
states that of the 433 vs which contain 96 Gk words that are
unique in NT usage, only four word variants are deemed to
present any interpretive modification.

Rene Pache, "Inspiration and Authority of Scripture," notes
4000+ manuscripts that "were written a fairly short time after the
original." A manuscript of the Gospel of John dates very early
in 2nd C. The Chester Beatty Papyri with the whole NT canon
of the 3rd C. 4th to 8th C adds yet another 2400 manuscripts
along with 1600+ lectionaries. There are roughly 1000 translated
texts and at least 8000 Vulgate manuscripts.

Griesbach had 335 Gospel manuscripts to work from
Scholtz had 674 Gospel manuscripts and another 200+ for Acts,
256 Pauline manuscripts and 93 manuscripts of Rev.
Westcott and Hort had over 4000 manuscripts, Hort commenting
that scarcely more than a 1000th part of these texts can be
classified as being substantially variant.

BB Warfield, "The Greek Testament of Westcott and Hort,"
quotes those scholars as to veracity of Gk NT in regards
to variants, we have "in substance the original text."

This is really the point that was made. There are no other
works of antiquity that have the documentation and verification
that the Christian Bible has. Compare Julius Caesar and the
"Gallic Wars" or the "Histories of Tacitus," or either the
"History of Thucydides" or "History of Herodotus." Pache
writes, "No scholar would question the authenticity of
Herodotus or of Thucydides merely because the only
usable manuscripts of their works are 1300 years more
recent than the originals." The works of Sophocles,
there is but one manuscript, it being transcribe 1400
yrs after his death.

The point was that the Bible stands unique in transmission
and preservation.

Here I will freely admit to have been mistaken. There are 4000+
manuscripts
but not entire Greek NTs.

read, "Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek
Palaeography" by Bruce Metzger and the discussions on the dating of
Greek manuscripts.