• @FourPacketsOfPeanuts
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    4 months ago

    Yes. But the graphic is painting the idea that the text can’t have been transmitted accurately. Whereas it’s most likely we have good portions of what Paul actually taught, less so the historical Jesus but some parts more likely than others. The OT is different given it’s largely legendary. But, even so, it’s transmission from the post exile communities that first authored it is surprisingly accurate. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in the late 1940s pushed back the earliest OT texts we have a full thousand years from ~900ad to ~100bc. The level to which they were accurate copies was astonishing showing that textual transmission in the ancient world was more reliable than previously thought.

    This isn’t a religious point of view, but rather one of secular scholarship.