(December 23, 2017 at 1:55 pm)Drich Wrote:(December 22, 2017 at 12:36 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Scholars have, to a reasonable degree, reconstructed the original words of the New Testament. Interpolations happened, some known, others unknown. The consensus view is that around 20% of the Gospels contain authentic sayings of the historical Jesus, but his exact words and teachings were not preserved.
We have more hand written manuscripts of Christ than of any other figure in history nearly 25K different examples all of them consistent. No other figure in history comes close. to question the validity of Christ is to question every other person in that time period or rather what we think we know of them.
"Twice nothing is still nothing."
Most of the manuscripts that scholars have are in Latin, which means that they are, at best, a translation from the original Greek manuscripts. Of course, Jesus spoke Aramaic, and he and his disciples were all illiterate, which means that his words were written down by second or third generation Christians scattered about in the Roman Empire some 40 to 80 years after his execution. Here's a list of all of the extant New Testament manuscripts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ne...ent_papyri
As you can see, the earliest are in the 2nd century, over 100 years after Jesus' death.