The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

[Randy Carson]

Not so, PT.

The gospels and the epistles were written in Greek.

My English translation was made from the Greek and not from some intermediary language(s).

Yes Dear, but Jesus and his disciples  spoke Aramaic, not Greek.  So that's one translation right there.

You have no idea how many hours I have spent making that very point to Protestants. Why? Because Jesus actually said, "You are kepha, and on this kepha I will build my Church." Kepha is Aramaic for rock and there is no distinction between a small kepha and a large kepha. Protestants argue that there is a distinction between a petra (large rock) and a petros (small rock), and since "Peter" comes from petros, they claim Peter was only a small rock.

However, Jesus and the disciples were probably bi-lingual, and the shift from Aramaic to Greek in the mind of the author would not be too large.

And there were many retellings of the story before it was ever written down.  How far off our version is from the original Greek text ignores the question of how reliable the Greek original was.

It's an interesting point. Oral cultures had memory skills that are largely forgotten in modern times. Even today, there are some ancient stories of more than 100,000 lines that have been memorized, and the audiences know the story well enough to discern whether the storyteller has deviated from the original. Additionally, the Qur'an has been memorized in its entirety by many.

So, I think the argument regarding the oral tradition of the gospels actually works in favor of the reliability of the NT.