TERRY'S BAAACK!!!!!!
By the way Terry, you forget to mention that when a book we call the "Bible" was compiled from existing writings, it was still not something most people had access to for well over a thousand years. You need a printing press for cheap dissemination, that would have to wait for a German goldsmith by the name of Gutenberg, and oh, it helps to know how to read also. That's not a luxury most people had in the old days. But good point regardless, the Christians in the early days did not walk around with a copy of the NWT in their briefcase as the be all end all source of their faith.
All the Christian teachings were oral. That's right: oral. Somebody said this and somebody else said that.
Not quite. Many of the Christian teachings were oral, and the NT itself makes mention of these oral traditions. But many of the traditions were also written and disseminated. We've got the books that we know call the Bible, but we also have a slew of other writings from the early Church Fathers as written evidence of what they believed. Take for examble, the Didache, the letters of Clement, and others to name a few.
Christianity pretends there is such a thing as a true Bible. There is not.
There is a true Bible. It is the list of books from among many that were available that the Church defined as inspired and authorized. These same Scriptures have been preserved, with little change over the centuries. The OT texts, for example, show evidence of extraordinary preservation. The Dead Sea scrolls, when discovered, were many centuries older than the oldest available OT texts. However, they are remarkably similar, with little change.
As for me, I cherish that Book.
BTS
