The Shroud of Turin - Authentic Again!!!

[Sigurd]

I don't think we are that far off in our general views on Christianity.
I might be wrong but I get the impression that you will not accept any canonised or non-canonised texts describing the events around the origin of the Christian religion as factual or written by eye witnesses. I am not far off myself, but I have left room for doubts.
I am full aware of the many opportunities to, and most certainly practised tampering these texts have gone through. You can take the book of Isaiah as an example. There are about 3000 differences between the full copy found at Qumran and the one found in the Vulgate.
I think I remember this right… I am going by memory here.
We know that Jerome translated from the Septuagint, a very old Greek version of the Old Testament.
You are quite bombastic in you assertion that nothing was written concerning Christianity until the 3rd century. The only writings from that era are those scraps of papyri found in Egypt and more specifically those you mentioned (P46 [Chester Beatty Lib.] I believe).
I have only memory to go by here, but I distinctly remember that other fragments found that clearly have NT references were found and dated before the 2nd century.
If I am not totally off I would suggest the P52 and P64 fragments with 120AD and <70AD respectively. There are other fragments from the Qumran library that the scholars suggest are NT texts, but the last I heard they were questionable at the least.
A scientific dating says they are from around 70AD but that the writing is taken from Mark, Timothy or James is a stretch at best.

My view is somewhat akin to yours on the following points:

- Some events transpired in 33 AD
- There was an organisation led by Apostles a few years after the events.
- A new organisation took over and used these events to create Christianity.
- They kept some of the artefacts, books, manuscripts from that era.
- They changed them to suit their view.
- They hid or destroyed the originals (pre-200AD)
- There are some problems today regarding scriptural content and willingness to lend evidence to science.