When you begin building an argument on your own presuppositions you will always arrive at the answers you seek.
Shining One has never examined the bedrock.
He has assumed it is bedrock and proceeds on that assumption.
For many many years I made exactly the same assertions about scripture. I always assumed that "scholarship" had established this and that for which I could be confident and not have to do any dirty work myself.
This is the heart of mysticism! The difference between a reasonable and rational mind and a plunge into mysticism is at the crossroads between "I KNOW" and "THEY SAY".
Shining One is on the road of "They Say" with "they" being "scholars".
Well, a scholar is as a scholar does.
There are all kinds of professions in this world peopled by all sorts of competency levels. There are doctors who leave sponges and operating tools sewn up inside patients. There are auto mechanics who gyp you. There are professors who can't teach and ballplayers who swing and miss repeatedly.
You see, Shining One, you can't lump ALL SCHOLARS into an amorphous category called "SCHOLARSHIP" and think your argument is settled. It isn't intellectually honest. That is like eating an apple with a worm in it. You have not yet searched for the worm and removed it from your arguments.
There are all sorts of scholars with all manner of agenda. If you cherry pick your scholars you get one conclusion and if you go another direction....well, you get my drift.
I would urge you to do what I finally had to knuckle down and do for myself; examine a wide range of writing on the subject of how the bible came to exist in the form we have it today.
That entails at least three things.
1.Read what sort of "documents" exist from which interpretations have been extracted. Conversely, read about what sort of documents were rejected and who did the rejecting of them. Why were the __other__writings not only rejected, but, destroyed?
2.Read who the men were who were the historians of the church and what their agenda consisted of. Give Eusebius, for example, a really close reading and see what sort of person you are dealing with. What was his evaluation of Constantine, his opponents, the operations of the Catholic Church, etc.
3.Look very closely at the thousands and thousands of proved instances of fraud in copying, rewriting and interpreting scripture. Ask yourself "why" men of spiritual commitment found it necessary (in their mind) to drastically change something or add something to what they had dedicated their life to defending and preserving. What sort of mentality was at work?
It takes some soul searching work to do what I suggest here. You have to begin with the premise that you will let the chips fall where they may. You have to be willing to be wrong if that is where the evidence takes you.
When the Watchtower's own Freddy Franz began the New World Translation do you suppose he ever announced to anybody (or even himself) "There are some dishonest changes I will be making for the wonderful purpose of supporting my own religious views!" ??
No. Pious fraud exists in otherwise honest and spiritually mature men for a pretty good reason. They cannot give up their illusory view of what scripture is SUPPOSED to be. They will damage the actual document anytime they feel it necessary if it means preserving their own point of view. It is a kind of metaphorical abortion where the mother is willing to destroy the life of her child for the sake of her own health. It is a terrible sort of self-justification decided on no whim, but, after heart-rending soul-searching. It is a tragic and pathetic trade-off. The more righteous the believer; the more powerful becomes their desire to force their orthodoxy on others---even if it takes a resort to larceny with documents.
The Watchtower, near and dear to each of us here, is a crystal clear example of this sort of scholarly license. When quoting secular experts on any important matter of discussion (evolution, dates, exegesis, etc.) they are not above selective quoting and selective omission of true contexts and actual wording if it serves their purposes.
All through history (BEGINNING WITH THE ORIGINAL ATTEMPTS AT CANONICITY) men have worked their zeal into selective personal and selfish manipulation of any document purporting to represent the actual viewpoint or words of God.
It is an inescapable fact.
If there is one thing above all else Shining One will have to do it is to drop his emotional addiction to the unsupportable illusion that the Bible is anything other than a manmade manipulation of sundry source material that has been sifted, cut and pasted and resorted through a long stretch of time.
Consequently, the so-called "scholarship" pertaining to this damaged hearsay is irrelevent as to content representing God's mind on things.
It is a dead end.
I invite Shining One to take a moment to represent here and now a brief explanation of how HE THINKS the production of the Bible escaped damage other than taking the amorphous dodge of mystical dismissal "God wouldn't let His Word be destroyed".
God has been all too lax in allowing anyone and anything representing him be utterly ruined at any time. He didn't spare the "people for his name" from the Holacaust nor His son from crucifixtion. Why would he be more fastidious with old manuscripts found rotting in jars or buried in desolate wasteheaps?
What you see when you hold a bible (any bible) in your hand is largely the result of the Catholic Church early on. And even that has been run through the ringer of Protestant maniacs and shredded of intent.
The least understandable book on the face of the earth is the Bible because of this constant process of damage over a long long course of historical tug-of-war by ideologues, fanatics and politicians eager for power.
Prove me wrong!
Terry