Re: Source Code for OS?

[Roy and/or Janet Miller <millers@inetnebr.com>]

"ruud.dingemans" wrote:

>  (and
> remember,
> the bible has been handed down by man right thru the ages, so by now
> it's *highly* unreliable...)

Oh, really? Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copies
of the OT dated from c. 900 A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls date, depending on
the scroll, and the "guesses" of the scholars who date ancient documents,
between 250 B.C. and 70 A.D. The copy of the book of Isaiah has been dated
between 100 and 200 B.C. It is virtually identical with the next oldest
copy, more than a 1000 years later. The fact is that the Bible is the best
attested of any literature from the ancient world. Far better than the
works of Plato, Homer, Aristotle, or Caesar, for example. If you were right
about the Bible being *highly* unreliable, then no literature from the
first millennium B.C. is even that reliable. In short, if we don't have a
reliable Old Testament, then we don't have any literature from that time
period.

As for the New Testament, fragments dating from as little as 40 years after
the original was written have been found, and intact copies from as little
as 150 years after original composition exist. The fact is that there are
more than 5000 manuscripts of the NT, or portions thereof, more than 10
times as many as the next best attested ancient work, with the "gap"
between composition and oldest extant copies being as little as 1/10th as
other ancient works.

I can give more facts, but the short answer is this: for more than two
centuries, people have assumed the Bible to be unreliable, but when tested
it has stood. You did know, of course, that is has been proved to be far
more accurate a source of ancient history and archeology than the Greeks?

Roy

>
>
> Meanwhile, does any of this have anything really to do with old Apples?
> I guess not.
>
> Regards, Ruud