(May 14, 2015 at 4:24 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: There are some variants such as the one you have highlighted, and I appreciate your illustration of the work that can be done by scholars in comparing manuscripts.
There are two OLDER (fourth century) manuscripts that do not contain Mark 16:9-20, but there are MORE manuscripts which do.
As for whether the gospels are fiction, that will be covered in future posts.
So, should we consider the oldest manuscripts to be more accurate? Or go by the later ones, for which we have more?
I'm sorry, but any text that has talking animals, men living in fish for 3 days, the sun going black for 3 hours (and no one else on the planet noticing), zombies climbing out of their graves and walking around Jerusalem (without any historian of the time taking notice), dragons living in Babylon, curing leprosy with the blood of some birds, breeding stripped goats by using stripped posts, etc., should be taken as fictional by default.
You wouldn't accept the same types of stories in any other religious text, why do you make special case for yours? Never mind, Rhetorical question, no need to answer.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
