Hi, I'm Tonus

[Aractus]

Mostly, my views on this are being shaped by books like Karen Armstrong's A History of God and the Bible Contradictions site. I don't know that I'd call it "clear" evidence, as it relies on study of the available archeological evidence, and to my knowledge the very earliest manuscripts of any parts of the Bible have not been found. But it seems that Biblical scholars generally take the view that I stated in my previous post. What I've read so far seems to fit pretty well, but I've got lots of material to read still. Heck, I don't even know what much of it will be, yet.

Well, as for "very earliest" there's the DSS, there's 2nd century greek translations, and for the NT there's an abundance of around 5-6000 individual Greek manuscripts (/fragments) and some are dated to the 2nd century AD. The earlier you go the less you'll find, obviously, but that isn't to say you won't find earlier ones in the future to what we have today - I think we will if we understand where to look and target those areas.