Chapter 3 thoughts

Wow, it's sunday already.
Chapter 3 (is the bible reliable) was pretty solid :) It's really cool to learn about how ancient manuscripts work and how rare they are. At the same time, just how many consistent copies of scripture are found. There's only a couple of copies of Plato and other old stuff found, but there's thousands of Jesus stuff and so many of them can be dated within 50 years of the events they describe whereas copies of the philosophers and stuff are found 100s of years after their life time.

I guess more of the conversation should come not from whether the bible is reliable, but more on the truth of the bible. But personally i feel like if an event can spark the largest distribution of literature that continues even today (bible is constantly the best seller) that there must be something to it.

A lot of times I worry about whether the bible was changed. In high school, it was the first time this was brought to my attention when my friend told me about how there were books written that were excluded from the bible canon. This scared me so much. It made me wonder though, would God let His word be distorted? As much interpretation as there is even today, what drove the church leaders of passed to exclude or include certain books from the bible? It could be the difference between Mormon and Protestant or Catholic and Baptist. Could you make the same argument for Christianity and Judaism? That's why I feel that bible reading alone is not the be-all, end-all in spiritual discipline. We should understand scripture, where it comes from, how it got there, but we still must recognize God working in our lives today. That's the difference between Homer's Iliad and Matthew's gospel. Deep down I believe that God won't let His word be completely distorted again after Jesus, because Jesus was sent to fulfill the law (the same law that already got distorted).

Happy WIVES day! sorry i didnt go