Jesus family tree?

[Kommodus]

It is wise to remember that this all occurred 2000 years ago and the writings have been translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to whatever vernacular for the masses. They were submitted to scrutiny of dozens of councils and edited any number times and likely have little resemblance to the original texts.

Aye, therein lies the rub. Where are these 'early' and unedited versions of the scriptures? I do not think anyone has a claim to their possession simply because almost all the most important writings occurred well after the events took place, in some cases as much as 200 years or more.

When it comes to the NT, there are quite a few early manuscripts to help us establish the text of the original Greek (which most of the NT was written in). I just found this site with a helpful summary:

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papy...nuscripts.html

Here's an excerpt:

We now have early and very early evidence for the text of the New Testament. A classified list of the most important manuscripts will make this clear. Numbers preceded by a P refer to papyri, the letters refer to parchment manuscripts.


ca. A.D. 200 250 300 350 450

Matthew P45 B Sin.
Mark P45 B Sin. A
Luke P4,P45,P75 B Sin. A
John P66 P45,P75 B Sin. A
Acts P45 B Sin. A
Romans-Hebrews P46 B Sin. A
James-Jude P72,B Sin. A
Apocalypse P47 Sin. A

As you can see, from the fourth century onwards the material base for establishing the text of the Greek New Testament is very good indeed. The manuscripts Sin. (Sinaiticus), A (Alexandrinus) and B (Vaticanus) are almost complete parchment manuscripts. With the help of the earlier papyrus manuscripts we have been able to establish that the text of these three great manuscripts is to a large extent reliable. The papyrus manuscript P75 was the latest to be published, but it showed a virtually identical text to manuscript B. This settled the vexed question whether we have in the parchment manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries a safe guide to the original text of the New Testament. We have.

You could also have a look at the wikipedia article, which has quite a lot of info and differing viewpoints, but also discusses the dating of the original writings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament

Or you could just do a google search for something like "early new testament texts," which will give you a lot of hits.

In any case, the point is this:

1. It's been established that most of the writings occurred fairly soon after the original events in question.

2. There's quite a bit of early textual evidence for what these writings said.

3. Thus, I wouldn't assume that simply because multiple translations and copies have occurred, that the texts we read now have significantly deviated from the originals. You might assume this if you subscribe to the APAS (Ancient People Are Stupid) assumption, but in this case, there's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

Remember that in the Middle Ages, one of the reasons that church doctrine went so awry was that copies of the Bible were simply not widely available - not because they had been changed to the whims of church leadership. If no one has a copy of the text, you can tell people it says whatever you want it to.

Edit: The formatting of the table in my quote didn't come out right. You'll have to visit the site to see it correctly.