AntiUtopia@aol.com wrote: > eh, speaking as someone who has studied a bit of theology and looked at the > textual issues surrounding the Christian Scriptures, you've represented just > one viable position among many in your post below. The people who have > adopted that position flatter themselves with the title "The Only Really > Objective Bible Scholars," but I've sat thru their classes and know better > than to believe that... > > The Dead Sea Scrolls are remarkable in that the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures > they contained dated from the time of Christ. Previous to their discovery, > the oldest Hebrew texts we had were the Masoretic texts dating from the 10th > century. Over the course of 900 years, you would be surprised how well > preserved the Hebrew Scriptures were. The DSS contained complete texts of the > book of Isaiah and Deuteronomy, and fragments of all books of the Hebrew > Scriptures except one or two (don't remember what they were). You stop short of acknowledging the Nag Hammadi Library (the Gnostic Gospels), I notice. Malcolm