@neologist,
neologist wrote:Whatever may be said about the original writings, the copyists were scrupulously accurate.
It is glaringly obvious that Origen was using a badly corrupted copy of the Septuagint. How do you account for that? How can you, on the one hand, admit to textual differences, and on the other claim that your copyists are scrupulously accurate?
But that is certainly an understandable argument coming from those disposed to believe all manner of superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
The synoptic gospels don't appear, even in fragmentary form, until the second century. They are not referred to as "gospels" until near the end of that century. There would be every good reason to want to assure that they tell the same story (synopsis), and until they were widely enough distributed (in an age without printing presses), making changes would be very easy. It only becomes difficult after large numbers of people are familiar with the texts. Even then, major changes can be made through interpolation--inserting passages which don't otherwise alter the basic text. That would in fact be the best way to make the synoptic gospels look synoptic.
But more than that, even early church writers could not agree on basic facts. Papias, Origen and others claim that Matthew wrote in Hebrew (an hilarious claim when on considers that he would ahve been writing for an audience who, if literate at all, would have been speakers of either Aramaic or Koine Greek). Nor could they agree on the order in which they were written, nor account for the divergence of narrative an content between John and the synoptic writers.
Any god powerful enough to inspire the scriptures would be powerful enough not to ignore or even to inflict capricious and arbitrary suffering on literally billions of humans over the last ten thousand years. Don't drag your superstitious maundering into such a discussion.
