The manuscript fragment in question, P52, is almost certainly not as old as the early second century date parroted by apologists. When palaeographers posit dates for mss, they will always provide a range. In this case, Most scholars will say that P52 is "mid-second century," which could land in a 50-year range between 125-175 CE. But, others would actually date this fragment to the "late-second century," positing a date between 150-200 CE. I tend to think that the most sensible assigned date for this ms. is in the range of 175, and I don't know any palaeographers who would venture to suggest that it is actually as old as 125-at least, not with any confidence.
The greatest misinformation in my opinion is the TOTAL NEGLECT of the Jewish Roman war history. The Roman Julian regime was replaced with the Flavian regime beginning with Titus and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70AD. This war lasted from 70AD until 135AD with the end of the Bar Cochba Rebellion. It was in this period and due to these wars that Jewish Christianity and the Hebrew language was lost. That's why we only have Greek manuscripts and fragments beginning from this era. Hadrian ordered the destruction of all Hebrew texts and the end of all jewish practices including circumcision. This is the real reason Anicetus of Rome wants to change the date of the celebration of Passover and is opposed by Polycarp who is in Anatolia in the QUARTODECIMAN CONTROVERSY, circa 132AD. The Jewish Christian is persecuted from both the Gentile side, because of the Roman anti Jewish laws and by the non Christian Jews because they refused to fight under the flag of Bar Cochba whom they consider a false Messiah. Neither Jew nor Gentile can own any scripture written in Hebrew and the New and Old Testament can only be kept in Greek and possibly Aramaic although Aramaic is still under suspicion. This is why the non Christian Jews translate the Hebrew into the Aramaic Targums. During the wars, because Hebrew was not spoken commonly by gentiles, it was used for secure communication between the Jews in the rebellion (see the BAR COCHBA LETTERS, the only remaining Hebrew of the period). Gentile doctrines which won't work in Hebrew such as the trinity then begin to develop and the Jewish Christians who won't accept them are called heretics. This progressed from a separation of jew and gentile because the gentile feared added persecution by association to full blown anti semitism after Nicea (see Chrysostom Homilies Against the Jews where he says there are many of them, jewish christians, among us and wants them expelled). They must hide there jewishness from the gentile and there christianianty from the no christian jews (who consider them traitors to Bar Cochba). Yet we're told the Apostles spoke Greek, they only used the Greek Septuagint and the original NT was in Greek.
Myths take 1 nano second to begin (citation: everyone’s personal life experience). Not sure why years or decades are considered too little time for inaccuracy to be present.
It took a year to make Donald J. Trump a true believer and declared the Anointed Man of God. Not to mention the thousands of prophets that proclaimed him, and the pastors that promoted him as the anointed man of God. Not to mention the entirety of the Southern Baptist Convention. This is just one of the more recent examples.
The Quran's earliest manuscript was completed nearly a decade after Muhammad's death. Using Pearcy's logic, Islam would therefore be true and reliable.
Good point. I would recommend apologists who make such arguments concerning textual criticism to read "Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism"
Randal, there are two big points that should be added here: (1) It's not just about the time between the original text and the copies of that text; it's also about the time between the original text and the events the text is describing. P52 would be about 100 years after Jesus' lifetime. Is that "far too little time" for myths to develop? (Btw, I think false rumors in human societies can sometimes develop pretty fast. It doesn't take hundreds of years. This doesn't mean the Bible is wrong, but her premise is faulty.) (2) There's a difference between texts like Plato, Herodotus, and Caesar that discuss history and philosophy and texts that make claims for divine action and miracles. I'm religious myself, but she's comparing apples and oranges when it comes to reliability.
I suggest you reread Plato and how he describes communing with his internal daemons or Herodotos and how he describes Athenians to have born from the soil of their city. I have not familiarized myself with Ceasars works, but I doubt that a man who held the office of High Priest of Rome for 20 years was somehow 'secular' in his writings. This is why I dont like this argumentation on requiring extra scurity from the Bible, because you cannot find a purely 'secular' accounts of histiry in a culture that does not sharply differentiate the secular and the divine realms. Nor can one strip the supernatural elements away to somehow get to the 'real events" because the meaning and reason for recording the events are within those elements.
@@alttiakujarvi I'm not denying supernatural events, but I am denying that you can say the NT is clearly much more believable than Plato and Herodotus, et al. Now, the issue of (you meant) Socrates and his daimon is fascinating, but how does it compare to biblical claims? If we interpret the daimon metaphorically, does that change the meaning of Platonic philosophy? But if we say that Jesus' miracles were merely symbolic, I imagine that changes quite a bit. Plato's writings do not depend on divine activity, and in fact his work interrogates and doesn't assume the reliability of supernatural claims in this world. (Also, note that a δαιμον is not exactly a θεος.) As for Herodotus, he's saying what the Athenians believed about themselves. But even if he himself believed it, why would this disrupt the reliability of what Herodotus is reporting about Athenian belief? No one is saying that WE believe the Athenians arose that way because of Herodotus. For that matter, if we had texts of Homer from 750 BCE, near when he wrote, would that mean you'd start believing in Zeus and Apollo?
@@l21n18 If we dismiss them it's not on the grounds of how close the writing is to the events. Can you be more specific about what you think might have happened?
The point of this manuscript research is not about 'believability' of the claims made by the text, but about the confidence that the text that we now have correspond to the original texts. If one cannot believe that anything 'supernatural' is possible, this textual history is irrelevant. The textual research can however show, that the supernatural claims are not later additions. The main reason we even need to have the discussion on the reliability of the text is that people use it to rationalize the percieved 'unbelievability' of the text. I think it is worth pointing out, that the textuak reliability of the Bible texts (which ofcourse varies between the 66 books) is actually much higher than anything else we have from the classical period. You mentioned if the miracles of Jesus were 'real' or 'metaphorical', but that is the very question, that cannot be answered with any textual research. The metaphorical signifigance is the reason for why Jesus did his miracles, why they were recorded and why they are recounted in the gospels. The meaning of the recounted event is the reason it is being recounted, and trying to somehow get behind it to some 'real' event removed from that meaning is a fools errand. This is because one will inevitably attach a 'new' meaning to the 'real' event and all one has achieved is to replace the original meaning (to which the writers had full access to) with a new one with no other acces to the event except the original meaning of it. Merry Christmass to anyone reading this!
It is rather surprising that Christians continue to give such an early date for P52. It is now best dated in the range 150-200, with a later date quite possible. There is no reason to place the document at the beginning of the range.
I was thinking for several minutes of this, we're talking about P25 (yes I had the name wrong). I agree this is an incredible overstatement of the case. I do still agree it is good evidence of an upper bound of the writing date for John, if nothing else. I would love to hear what else can be gleaned from it.
Tbf, apologists kind of need to keep the focus on information about the texts and the manuscript sources because the alternative is actually reading the bible and making yourself vulnerable approaches like Deconstruction Zone's of just pointing out Jesus was a liar and a fraud and didn't fulfill any prophecies even if you take the new testament at face value.
If this is a genuine question I personally find the fine tuning arguement, Ontological arguement and the simplicity of theism over atheism as an explanation of how things got here.
@@nyxhighlander9894simplicity of theism over atheism? Never heard that theism is simpler than atheism… it’s always been the other way round, with naturalism being the simpler and more parsimonious explanation.
Experience, not sure what that will be for you but only experiencing God brings real belief. All abstract arguments for or against fall apart somewhere.
@@nyxhighlander9894 First, we're here because we are what this presentation of our universe allows. Certainly not that it was made _just for us._ See the Puddle Analogy. Second, adding a god claim to naturalistic explanations makes them more complex not simpler because now you have to prove your deity did it. See Occam's Razor. Also, it's okay to say _"We don't know"_ when there isn't good evidence for something. Finally, philosophical arguments aren't good evidence because they are vastly subjective.
I would disagree with the suggestion 1 Cor 15 is too early for the assertions contained in it to contain legendary embellishment of or additions to, an initial resurrection claim or claims. The way stories about living or recently dead figures in early US history, the founding fathers, figures in the Old West, gold rush characters developed larger than life status and legendary accretions around real people, and circulated both in the territories where the actions supposedly took place and also filtered back to other parts of the country, is suggestive. Closer in time to jesus, a biography of Simeon Stylites written within his own lifetime while he was still alive, contains both biographical detail and also legendary material. But otherwise, yes, thank you for this corrective to overreaching Christian apologetics. My exposure to such overconfident distorted claims almost certainly increased the impact on me of the type of critical historical scholarship that would be taught at any public university or non sectarian college in the united states, when I began to learn it unfiltered thru through any apologetic lens
1Cor. 15, is eschatology, and gospel fulfilled, by 2 quick passages. Mt. 24:14, note, gospel and end. 1Cor. 15:23-24, simple gospel fulfilled, kingdom delivered up, the END of 24;14. Not by that need for a savior rocket science gospel, with the holy spirit thrown in lengthy complicated, just the simple gospel. Ipse dixit, Jesus said gospel. Mk. 1:14-15, gospel. Thy kingdom come, gospel. Paul too, gospel, Acts 28:31. Those who are preventing the return of Christ with that other gospel, no matter how true, are cursed according to scripture. 😢
This is like saying a copy of "me", in every sense, is my snot on a tissue looked at 200 years from now. It lacks all context except a slice of my booger's DNA. It wouldn't account for anything I've done, my culture, where I lived, etc. It wouldn't tell you about my lifespan, etc. It wouldn't tell you the entirety of my morphology. There's much more that goes into all of what is "me." There's much more to the context of a small amount of script. What was this text surrounded by? Could we even really say it's "John" ? What if this is just a shared portion of some other larger collection that is word-for-word. Don't the other gospels have word-for-word copies but different attributions? It's greedy to say this is conclusively John's.
0:37 - 0:45 This is literally never the case. Available evidence never makes theism (nor Christian theism) being more likely true than false. --- 1:44 - 1:57 Again, no. To argue this means you must do the very same thing those apologists are doing.
How do you know that she is referring to the Gospel of John? The post doesn't show that she is talking about the Gospel of John. Does she mention this elsewhere? While I agree that 25 years is much closer than other estimates I've heard, her basic point is still valid, that is the N.T. documents are all closer to the time of the events than for any other documents of any events in ancient history. This seems more like nit-picking rather than a valid critique. Most other apologists do not use a 25 year range so why single her out? A more valid critique would be if all or most apologists use the 25 year gap. But they don't so again, not a serious criticism.
The actual criticism is that the manuscripts for most of the gospels and the letters of Paul are much younger, at least 200 years after the originals were written. The first "complete“ manuscripts are from the 4th century. I wouldn’t call that nitpicking.
All the fragments have a wide range of dating. Randall's criticism is that in her chart instead of giving a RANGE, she used the lowest estimate to represent the whole NT. The lowest number is from a gospel of john fragment. If she is honest, it should be a range from a min of 25 (Randall pointed out that 30 to 40 yrs is more likely) and up to over 300 (or may be 400) years.
The greatest misinformation in my opinion is the TOTAL NEGLECT of the Jewish Roman war history. The Roman Julian regime was replaced with the Flavian regime beginning with Titus and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70AD. This war lasted from 70AD until 135AD with the end of the Bar Cochba Rebellion. It was in this period and due to these wars that Jewish Christianity and the Hebrew language was lost. That's why we only have Greek manuscripts and fragments beginning from this era. Hadrian ordered the destruction of all Hebrew texts and the end of all jewish practices including circumcision. This is the real reason Anicetus of Rome wants to change the date of the celebration of Passover and is opposed by Polycarp who is in Anatolia in the QUARTODECIMAN CONTROVERSY, circa 132AD. The Jewish Christian is persecuted from both the Gentile side, because of the Roman anti Jewish laws and by the non Christian Jews because they refused to fight under the flag of Bar Cochba whom they consider a false Messiah. Neither Jew nor Gentile can own any scripture written in Hebrew and the New and Old Testament can only be kept in Greek and possibly Aramaic although Aramaic is still under suspicion. This is why the non Christian Jews translate the Hebrew into the Aramaic Targums. During the wars, because Hebrew was not spoken commonly by gentiles, it was used for secure communication between the Jews in the rebellion (see the BAR COCHBA LETTERS, the only remaining Hebrew of the period). Gentile doctrines which won't work in Hebrew such as the trinity then begin to develop and the Jewish Christians who won't accept them are called heretics. This progressed from a separation of jew and gentile because the gentile feared added persecution by association to full blown anti semitism after Nicea (see Chrysostom Homilies Against the Jews where he says there are many of them, jewish christians, among us and wants them expelled). They must hide there jewishness from the gentile and there christianianty from the no christian jews (who consider them traitors to Bar Cochba). Yet we're told the Apostles spoke Greek, they only used the Greek Septuagint and the original NT was in Greek.
Most apologetic arguments either come up empty, or are shown to be fallacious under close scrutiny. I mean fallacious in the formal sense of logical flaws, and also informally in the sense of problems of misapplication, manipulation, and misdirection. Apologetics couldn't exist otherwise, and it makes me wonder if it would be necessary at all if what it's defending were true. If there one true religion, there'd be one source of information - not endlessly conflicting ideas - that wouldn't need defending. God could easily just beam his truth directly into our brains and leave no possible doubt, if he so wanted. All supposed "proofs" for God are fallacious; every single one. This still doesn't prove there's NO God, but it doesn't bode well for any of the religions.
IF YOU DECLARE GOD GAVE MOSES, the ten commandments, you are a LIAR, and should be able to prove you lied with scripture, Moses didn't get the commandments from God. The ten commandments, has been called the law of Moses IN ERROR FOR CENTURIES. Only the laws given to Moses should be called the law of Moses. This is huge, it means Mt. 4:4, is the ten commandments. Every word from the mouth of God, not given to Moses.
The manuscript fragment in question, P52, is almost certainly not as old as the early second century date parroted by apologists. When palaeographers posit dates for mss, they will always provide a range. In this case, Most scholars will say that P52 is "mid-second century," which could land in a 50-year range between 125-175 CE. But, others would actually date this fragment to the "late-second century," positing a date between 150-200 CE. I tend to think that the most sensible assigned date for this ms. is in the range of 175, and I don't know any palaeographers who would venture to suggest that it is actually as old as 125-at least, not with any confidence.
Sure why not
The greatest misinformation in my opinion is the TOTAL NEGLECT of the Jewish Roman war history.
The Roman Julian regime was replaced with the Flavian regime beginning with Titus and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70AD. This war lasted from 70AD until 135AD with the end of the Bar Cochba Rebellion.
It was in this period and due to these wars that Jewish Christianity and the Hebrew language was lost. That's why we only have Greek manuscripts and fragments beginning from this era.
Hadrian ordered the destruction of all Hebrew texts and the end of all jewish practices including circumcision.
This is the real reason Anicetus of Rome wants to change the date of the celebration of Passover and is opposed by Polycarp who is in Anatolia in the QUARTODECIMAN CONTROVERSY, circa 132AD.
The Jewish Christian is persecuted from both the Gentile side, because of the Roman anti Jewish laws and by the non Christian Jews because they refused to fight under the flag of Bar Cochba whom they consider a false Messiah.
Neither Jew nor Gentile can own any scripture written in Hebrew and the New and Old Testament can only be kept in Greek and possibly Aramaic although Aramaic is still under suspicion. This is why the non Christian Jews translate the Hebrew into the Aramaic Targums.
During the wars, because Hebrew was not spoken commonly by gentiles, it was used for secure communication between the Jews in the rebellion (see the BAR COCHBA LETTERS, the only remaining Hebrew of the period).
Gentile doctrines which won't work in Hebrew such as the trinity then begin to develop and the Jewish Christians who won't accept them are called heretics.
This progressed from a separation of jew and gentile because the gentile feared added persecution by association to full blown anti semitism after Nicea (see Chrysostom Homilies Against the Jews where he says there are many of them, jewish christians, among us and wants them expelled).
They must hide there jewishness from the gentile and there christianianty from the no christian jews (who consider them traitors to Bar Cochba).
Yet we're told the Apostles spoke Greek, they only used the Greek Septuagint and the original NT was in Greek.
Myths take 1 nano second to begin (citation: everyone’s personal life experience). Not sure why years or decades are considered too little time for inaccuracy to be present.
It took a year to make Donald J. Trump a true believer and declared the Anointed Man of God. Not to mention the thousands of prophets that proclaimed him, and the pastors that promoted him as the anointed man of God. Not to mention the entirety of the Southern Baptist Convention.
This is just one of the more recent examples.
The Quran's earliest manuscript was completed nearly a decade after Muhammad's death. Using Pearcy's logic, Islam would therefore be true and reliable.
Good point. I would recommend apologists who make such arguments concerning textual criticism to read "Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism"
Randal, there are two big points that should be added here:
(1) It's not just about the time between the original text and the copies of that text; it's also about the time between the original text and the events the text is describing. P52 would be about 100 years after Jesus' lifetime. Is that "far too little time" for myths to develop? (Btw, I think false rumors in human societies can sometimes develop pretty fast. It doesn't take hundreds of years. This doesn't mean the Bible is wrong, but her premise is faulty.)
(2) There's a difference between texts like Plato, Herodotus, and Caesar that discuss history and philosophy and texts that make claims for divine action and miracles. I'm religious myself, but she's comparing apples and oranges when it comes to reliability.
I suggest you reread Plato and how he describes communing with his internal daemons or Herodotos and how he describes Athenians to have born from the soil of their city. I have not familiarized myself with Ceasars works, but I doubt that a man who held the office of High Priest of Rome for 20 years was somehow 'secular' in his writings. This is why I dont like this argumentation on requiring extra scurity from the Bible, because you cannot find a purely 'secular' accounts of histiry in a culture that does not sharply differentiate the secular and the divine realms. Nor can one strip the supernatural elements away to somehow get to the 'real events" because the meaning and reason for recording the events are within those elements.
@@alttiakujarvi I'm not denying supernatural events, but I am denying that you can say the NT is clearly much more believable than Plato and Herodotus, et al. Now, the issue of (you meant) Socrates and his daimon is fascinating, but how does it compare to biblical claims? If we interpret the daimon metaphorically, does that change the meaning of Platonic philosophy? But if we say that Jesus' miracles were merely symbolic, I imagine that changes quite a bit. Plato's writings do not depend on divine activity, and in fact his work interrogates and doesn't assume the reliability of supernatural claims in this world. (Also, note that a δαιμον is not exactly a θεος.) As for Herodotus, he's saying what the Athenians believed about themselves. But even if he himself believed it, why would this disrupt the reliability of what Herodotus is reporting about Athenian belief? No one is saying that WE believe the Athenians arose that way because of Herodotus. For that matter, if we had texts of Homer from 750 BCE, near when he wrote, would that mean you'd start believing in Zeus and Apollo?
@@KingoftheJuice18why can’t have these things happened? Why dismiss other claims either?
@@l21n18 If we dismiss them it's not on the grounds of how close the writing is to the events. Can you be more specific about what you think might have happened?
The point of this manuscript research is not about 'believability' of the claims made by the text, but about the confidence that the text that we now have correspond to the original texts. If one cannot believe that anything 'supernatural' is possible, this textual history is irrelevant. The textual research can however show, that the supernatural claims are not later additions.
The main reason we even need to have the discussion on the reliability of the text is that people use it to rationalize the percieved 'unbelievability' of the text. I think it is worth pointing out, that the textuak reliability of the Bible texts (which ofcourse varies between the 66 books) is actually much higher than anything else we have from the classical period.
You mentioned if the miracles of Jesus were 'real' or 'metaphorical', but that is the very question, that cannot be answered with any textual research. The metaphorical signifigance is the reason for why Jesus did his miracles, why they were recorded and why they are recounted in the gospels. The meaning of the recounted event is the reason it is being recounted, and trying to somehow get behind it to some 'real' event removed from that meaning is a fools errand. This is because one will inevitably attach a 'new' meaning to the 'real' event and all one has achieved is to replace the original meaning (to which the writers had full access to) with a new one with no other acces to the event except the original meaning of it.
Merry Christmass to anyone reading this!
It is rather surprising that Christians continue to give such an early date for P52. It is now best dated in the range 150-200, with a later date quite possible. There is no reason to place the document at the beginning of the range.
I was thinking for several minutes of this, we're talking about P25 (yes I had the name wrong).
I agree this is an incredible overstatement of the case. I do still agree it is good evidence of an upper bound of the writing date for John, if nothing else.
I would love to hear what else can be gleaned from it.
Yeah, we all want to get to the point of absolute certainty but then you can accept something that is not quite true.
Tbf, apologists kind of need to keep the focus on information about the texts and the manuscript sources because the alternative is actually reading the bible and making yourself vulnerable approaches like Deconstruction Zone's of just pointing out Jesus was a liar and a fraud and didn't fulfill any prophecies even if you take the new testament at face value.
What good evidence is there for theistic belief?
If this is a genuine question I personally find the fine tuning arguement, Ontological arguement and the simplicity of theism over atheism as an explanation of how things got here.
@@nyxhighlander9894simplicity of theism over atheism? Never heard that theism is simpler than atheism… it’s always been the other way round, with naturalism being the simpler and more parsimonious explanation.
Experience, not sure what that will be for you but only experiencing God brings real belief. All abstract arguments for or against fall apart somewhere.
@makaveli2.03 I am panentheist so basically merelogical simplicity with the only "real object" is God simpler than a material world/multiverse
@@nyxhighlander9894 First, we're here because we are what this presentation of our universe allows. Certainly not that it was made _just for us._ See the Puddle Analogy.
Second, adding a god claim to naturalistic explanations makes them more complex not simpler because now you have to prove your deity did it. See Occam's Razor.
Also, it's okay to say _"We don't know"_ when there isn't good evidence for something.
Finally, philosophical arguments aren't good evidence because they are vastly subjective.
Randall is fascinating. He’s so honest about the apologetics and yet he still believes in this mythical nonsense.
Yeah, I don't get it. He seems to be slowly shedding his belief, but then again, maybe not.
I would disagree with the suggestion 1 Cor 15 is too early for the assertions contained in it to contain legendary embellishment of or additions to, an initial resurrection claim or claims. The way stories about living or recently dead figures in early US history, the founding fathers, figures in the Old West, gold rush characters developed larger than life status and legendary accretions around real people, and circulated both in the territories where the actions supposedly took place and also filtered back to other parts of the country, is suggestive. Closer in time to jesus, a biography of Simeon Stylites written within his own lifetime while he was still alive, contains both biographical detail and also legendary material.
But otherwise, yes, thank you for this corrective to overreaching Christian apologetics. My exposure to such overconfident distorted claims almost certainly increased the impact on me of the type of critical historical scholarship that would be taught at any public university or non sectarian college in the united states, when I began to learn it unfiltered thru through any apologetic lens
1Cor. 15, is eschatology, and gospel fulfilled, by 2 quick passages.
Mt. 24:14, note, gospel and end.
1Cor. 15:23-24, simple gospel fulfilled, kingdom delivered up, the END of 24;14.
Not by that need for a savior rocket science gospel, with the holy spirit thrown in lengthy complicated, just the simple gospel.
Ipse dixit, Jesus said gospel.
Mk. 1:14-15, gospel.
Thy kingdom come, gospel.
Paul too, gospel, Acts 28:31.
Those who are preventing the return of Christ with that other gospel, no matter how true, are cursed according to scripture. 😢
This is like saying a copy of "me", in every sense, is my snot on a tissue looked at 200 years from now. It lacks all context except a slice of my booger's DNA. It wouldn't account for anything I've done, my culture, where I lived, etc. It wouldn't tell you about my lifespan, etc. It wouldn't tell you the entirety of my morphology. There's much more that goes into all of what is "me." There's much more to the context of a small amount of script. What was this text surrounded by? Could we even really say it's "John" ? What if this is just a shared portion of some other larger collection that is word-for-word. Don't the other gospels have word-for-word copies but different attributions? It's greedy to say this is conclusively John's.
You might think it's a booger, but itsnot
0:37 - 0:45
This is literally never the case.
Available evidence never makes theism (nor Christian theism) being more likely true than false.
---
1:44 - 1:57
Again, no.
To argue this means you must do the very same thing those apologists are doing.
The kesson is make your unsubstantiated claim asap! 🥴
How do you know that she is referring to the Gospel of John? The post doesn't show that she is talking about the Gospel of John. Does she mention this elsewhere? While I agree that 25 years is much closer than other estimates I've heard, her basic point is still valid, that is the N.T. documents are all closer to the time of the events than for any other documents of any events in ancient history. This seems more like nit-picking rather than a valid critique. Most other apologists do not use a 25 year range so why single her out? A more valid critique would be if all or most apologists use the 25 year gap. But they don't so again, not a serious criticism.
The actual criticism is that the manuscripts for most of the gospels and the letters of Paul are much younger, at least 200 years after the originals were written. The first "complete“ manuscripts are from the 4th century.
I wouldn’t call that nitpicking.
All the fragments have a wide range of dating. Randall's criticism is that in her chart instead of giving a RANGE, she used the lowest estimate to represent the whole NT. The lowest number is from a gospel of john fragment.
If she is honest, it should be a range from a min of 25 (Randall pointed out that 30 to 40 yrs is more likely) and up to over 300 (or may be 400) years.
The greatest misinformation in my opinion is the TOTAL NEGLECT of the Jewish Roman war history.
The Roman Julian regime was replaced with the Flavian regime beginning with Titus and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70AD. This war lasted from 70AD until 135AD with the end of the Bar Cochba Rebellion.
It was in this period and due to these wars that Jewish Christianity and the Hebrew language was lost. That's why we only have Greek manuscripts and fragments beginning from this era.
Hadrian ordered the destruction of all Hebrew texts and the end of all jewish practices including circumcision.
This is the real reason Anicetus of Rome wants to change the date of the celebration of Passover and is opposed by Polycarp who is in Anatolia in the QUARTODECIMAN CONTROVERSY, circa 132AD.
The Jewish Christian is persecuted from both the Gentile side, because of the Roman anti Jewish laws and by the non Christian Jews because they refused to fight under the flag of Bar Cochba whom they consider a false Messiah.
Neither Jew nor Gentile can own any scripture written in Hebrew and the New and Old Testament can only be kept in Greek and possibly Aramaic although Aramaic is still under suspicion. This is why the non Christian Jews translate the Hebrew into the Aramaic Targums.
During the wars, because Hebrew was not spoken commonly by gentiles, it was used for secure communication between the Jews in the rebellion (see the BAR COCHBA LETTERS, the only remaining Hebrew of the period).
Gentile doctrines which won't work in Hebrew such as the trinity then begin to develop and the Jewish Christians who won't accept them are called heretics.
This progressed from a separation of jew and gentile because the gentile feared added persecution by association to full blown anti semitism after Nicea (see Chrysostom Homilies Against the Jews where he says there are many of them, jewish christians, among us and wants them expelled).
They must hide there jewishness from the gentile and there christianianty from the no christian jews (who consider them traitors to Bar Cochba).
Yet we're told the Apostles spoke Greek, they only used the Greek Septuagint and the original NT was in Greek.
Most apologetic arguments either come up empty, or are shown to be fallacious under close scrutiny. I mean fallacious in the formal sense of logical flaws, and also informally in the sense of problems of misapplication, manipulation, and misdirection. Apologetics couldn't exist otherwise, and it makes me wonder if it would be necessary at all if what it's defending were true. If there one true religion, there'd be one source of information - not endlessly conflicting ideas - that wouldn't need defending. God could easily just beam his truth directly into our brains and leave no possible doubt, if he so wanted.
All supposed "proofs" for God are fallacious; every single one. This still doesn't prove there's NO God, but it doesn't bode well for any of the religions.
IF YOU DECLARE GOD GAVE MOSES, the ten commandments, you are a LIAR, and should be able to prove you lied with scripture, Moses didn't get the commandments from God.
The ten commandments, has been called the law of Moses IN ERROR FOR CENTURIES.
Only the laws given to Moses should be called the law of Moses.
This is huge, it means Mt. 4:4, is the ten commandments. Every word from the mouth of God, not given to Moses.