Re: Christianity
A lot of the manuscripts are also fragments of texts. There are very few that survived wholly intact. A text could be faded over time or overlooked a missed a jot or tittle and change the meaning totally. It's an incredibly hard job to decipher letters that are unclear or completely missing for long stretches of verse. Thats why many manuscripts typically are referred to in order to establish the meaning of one chapter, for instance. Languages often do not translate well into other languages. Its just not that straight forward sometimes. What do you do when a language just doesn't have a word for an ancient word? Greek is a very discriptive language and well suited for literature. For example, the Greeks had six words for "love". Often they would differ about which word was correct but also the most appropriate form of that word. So all you can really do is find the best scholars you can to interpret the manuscripts, and the best manuscripts available and have at it.
By the way, Jesus never wrote anything in the bible's new testament. His words were spoken only. His disciples wrote down His teachings later (in the Gospels), but Paul the Apostle wrote most of them as letters to the churches in various regions. Remember, the "church" was considered a cult at that time. It wasn't until Augustine in 325AD that the persecution ceased toward Christians.
Not all books of the bible are from the prophets either. The books of Chronicles, for instance are straight out of the "town clerk's office" in Jerusalem! I always tell that to Christians who like to say that the entire Bible is the inspired word of God, but this is an example where it clearly does not originate from the "mouth of God". And they hate it when I tell them that.
But it is what it is.
A lot of the manuscripts are also fragments of texts. There are very few that survived wholly intact. A text could be faded over time or overlooked a missed a jot or tittle and change the meaning totally. It's an incredibly hard job to decipher letters that are unclear or completely missing for long stretches of verse. Thats why many manuscripts typically are referred to in order to establish the meaning of one chapter, for instance. Languages often do not translate well into other languages. Its just not that straight forward sometimes. What do you do when a language just doesn't have a word for an ancient word? Greek is a very discriptive language and well suited for literature. For example, the Greeks had six words for "love". Often they would differ about which word was correct but also the most appropriate form of that word. So all you can really do is find the best scholars you can to interpret the manuscripts, and the best manuscripts available and have at it.
By the way, Jesus never wrote anything in the bible's new testament. His words were spoken only. His disciples wrote down His teachings later (in the Gospels), but Paul the Apostle wrote most of them as letters to the churches in various regions. Remember, the "church" was considered a cult at that time. It wasn't until Augustine in 325AD that the persecution ceased toward Christians.
Not all books of the bible are from the prophets either. The books of Chronicles, for instance are straight out of the "town clerk's office" in Jerusalem! I always tell that to Christians who like to say that the entire Bible is the inspired word of God, but this is an example where it clearly does not originate from the "mouth of God". And they hate it when I tell them that.
But it is what it is.