Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion
Message-ID: <562@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Jun-85 15:02:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.562
Posted: Mon Jun  3 15:02:15 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 04:21:45 EDT
References: <2006@decwrl.UUCP> <749@rayssd.UUCP> <323@scgvaxd.UUCP> <324@scgvaxd.UUCP> <325@scgvaxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37

In article <325@scgvaxd.UUCP> dan@scgvaxd.UUCP (Dan Boscovitch) writes:
> 
> 		    Reliability of The New Testament
> 
>  It is true that Christianity views the bible as God's revealed word
>  to mankind. Those who oppose this view object that the biblical
>  account can not be deemed reliable. It is argued that the accounts
>  would become distorted during their textual transmission.

Your last sentence is a straw man.  All the skeptics I know feel that
the unreliability of the NT predates its writing.  I, personally, place
the fraud in the lap of JC and/or his apostles.

>  No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers
>  and attestation. In comparison, the "Iliad", by Homer, is second with
>  only 643 manuscripts that still survive.

Funny you should pick a largely fictional work to compare the bible to.
Perhaps fictional works survive better?
 
>  In all of these thousands of manuscripts, there is a discrepency rate
>  of less than 1 per cent while there is five per cent textual corruption
>  in the Iliad. 40 lines of the New Testament in question as compared to
>  764 lines in the Iliad.

Greater care has been taken to ensure accurate transmission of the New
Testament than for the Illiad.  A copiest may try to improve epic
poetry, but had better not dare with sacred texts.  So?

>  The New Testament has been transmitted to us with no or next to no
>  variation; and even the most corrupt form in which it has appeared,
>  the real text of the sacred writers is competently exact.

So?  How does this constitute evidence for religion?
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh