June 15 WT- Scrolls "Probably most Christians could not carry many with them for preaching"

by LostGeneration 31 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  wobble

  I don't think anyone has mentioned that of course the gospels were not written till late in the 1st Cent. (Mark may have been as early as say 60CE, but a number of scholars feel it is later)

  So, in the decades after Jesus death the Good News of the Kingdom must have come from the O.T, any witness about Jesus must have been oral.

  So, a question comes to mind , the WT claims to be preaching what the Apostles and disciples taught in the 1st. Cent., so why do they not eschew using the N.T and just stick to the Hebrew Scriptures as their Ist. Cent. pioneers did?
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  AnnOMaly

  I know I'm late in the day (again) but FWIW I pieced the partial Millard quotes from the Google preview together (supplementing maninthemiddle's sources):

  p. 165 - "It is very difficult to estimate the price of a book, but if a roll of Isaiah, a long one (see Chapter 1, p. 26), took two or three days to complete, then a little over three days' wages might be an appropriate figure, plus the cost of the roll. As the casual workman's wage in Palestine was one denarius or drachma according to Matthew's Gospel (20.2), and that may be an exemplary rather than a real figure, and we may suppose a scribe might expect a slightly higher rate, we can guess at a price of six to ten denarii for a copy of Isaiah 12. While that is not cheap, it would not put books out of the reach of the reasonably well-to-do."

  Evidently then ;-) if the first century Christians were wanting to carry around satchels of scrolls with them, as so many of them were lower class and low paid and not 'well-to-do,' the cost of acquiring these scrolls would have been prohibitive.