WildBlueYonder said:
Since this post is long I will make my words in red, so readers know what I am saying.
Those are good points against the GOB. As I said, I don't say that it is right but I don't say it is wrong. It can be right in some places while wrong in the others, just as I believe the Bible to be.
Now I would like to put up my argument against the current Bible.
"The original copies of the NT books have, of course, long since disappeared. This fact should not cause surprise. In the first place, they were written on papyrus, a very fragile and persihable material. In the second place, and probably of even more importance, the original copies of the NT books were not looked upon as scripture by those of the early Christian communities." [George Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 1, pp. 599 (Under Text, NT).]
So first point, the ORIGINAL aren't there, I'm sure you knew that. So how do the scholars try to get "close" to the originals when they don't know what the originals were?
"It is well known that the primitive Christian Gospel was initially transmitted by word of mouth and that this oral tradition resulted in variant reporting of word and deed. It is equally true that when the Christian record was committed to writing it continued to be the subject of verbal variation. Involuntary and intentional, at the hands of scribes and editors" [Peake's Commentary on the Bible, p. 633]
Now my second point is that this Bible you have was transmitted ORALLY and was put in written form in later times. I will try to check what is the earliest date of the manuscripts we have today.
Third point is as my quote says that there were "verbal variations", and also "intentional" changes made by the scribes. If this is the case then to say that this is the Original Bible is a stupid remark.
Lets go further on this point.
"In any event, none of [the original manuscripts of the books of the Bible] now survive. What do survive are copies made over the course of centuries, or more accurately, copies of the copies of the copies, some 5,366 of them in the Greek language alone, that date from the second century down to the sixteenth.
Strikingly, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two of these copies are exactly alike in their particulars. No one knows how many differences, or variant readings, occur among the surviving witnesses, but they must number in the hundreds of thousands." [The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 27]
"THE PROBLEM. The NT is now known, whole or in part, in nearly five thousand Greek MSS alone. Every one of these handwritten copics differ from every other one. In addition to these Greek MSS, the NT has been preserved in more than ten thousand MSS of the early versions and in thousands of quotations of the Church Fathers. These MSS of the versions and quotations of the Church Fathers differ from one another just as widely as do the Greek MSS. Only a fraction of this great mass of material has been fully collated and carefully studied. Until this task is completed, the uncertainty regarding the text of the NT will remain.
It has been estimated that these MSS and quotations differ among themselves between 150,000 and 250,000 times. The actual figure is, perhaps, much higher. A study of 150 Greek MSS of the Gospel of Luke has revealed more than 30,000 different readings. It is true, of course, that the addition of the readings from another 150 MSS of Luke would not add another 30,000 readings to the list. But each MS studied does add substantially to the list of variants. It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the NT in which the MS tradition is wholly uniform. Many thousands of these different readings are variants in orthography or grammar or style and however effect upon the meaning of the text. But there are many thousands which have a definite effect upon the meaning of the text. It is true that not one of these variant readings affects the substance of Christian dogma. It is equally true that many of them do have theological significance and were introduced into the text intentionally. It may not, e.g., affect the substance of Christian dogma to accept the reading "Jacob the father of Joseph, and Joseph (to whom the virgin Mary was betrothed) the father of Jesus who is called 'Christ'" (Matt. 1:16), as does the Sinaitic Syriac; but it gives rise to a theological problem. It has been said that the great majority of the variant readings in the text of the NT arose before the books of the NT were canonized and that after those books were canonized, they were very carefully copied because they were scripture. This, however, is far from being the case.
It is true, of course, that many variants arose in the very earliest period. There is no reason to suppose, e.g., that the first person who ever made a copy of the autograph of thc Gospel of Luke did not change his copy to conform to the particular tradition with which he was familiar.
But he was under no compulsion to do so. Once the Gospel of Luke had become scripture, however, the picture was changed completely.
Then the copyist was under compulsion to change his copy, to correct it. Because it was scripture, it had to be right." [George Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 4, 1962 (1996 Print), Abingdon Press, Nashville, pp. 594-595 (Under Text, NT).]
"Many thousands of the variants which are found in the MSS of the NT were put there deliberately. They are not merely the result of error or of careless handling of the text. Many were created for theological or dogmatic reasons (even though they may not affect the substance of Christian dogma). It is because the books of the NT are religious books, sacred books, canonical books, that they were changed to conform to what the copyist believed to be the true reading. His interest was not in the "original reading but in the "true reading." This is precisely the attitude toward the NT which prevailed from the earliest times to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the invention of printing. The thousands of Greek MSS, MSS of the versions, and quotations of the Church Fathers provide the source for our knowledge of the earliest or original text of the NT and of the history of the transmission of that text before the invention of printing." [George Arthur Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, Volume 4, 1962 (1996 Print), Abingdon Press, Nashville, pp. 594-595 (Under Text, NT).]
Now well the scholars admit that some variants were put intentionally, and the scribes changed the text to what they "believed" was the correct reading. And for this reason there are many variants and discrepancies. As it is said by Kenyon:
"
Besides the larger discrepancies, such as these, there is scarcely a verse in which there is not some variation of phrase in some copies [of the ancient manuscripts from which the Bible has been collected]. No one can say that these additions or omissions or alterations are matters of mere indifference" [Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, Dr. Frederic Kenyon, Eyre and Spottiswoode, p. 3]
"[the New Testament had] in many passages undergone such serious modification of meaning as to
leave us in painful uncertainty as to what the Apostles had actually written" [Secrets of Mount Sinai, James Bentley, p. 117]
So one must wonder that if there are so many variants and discrepancies in the Bible manuscripts, how do we get our current Bible?
Well this following quote should help us determine that:
"Occasionally it is evident that the text has suffered in the transmission and that
none of the versions provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can
only follow the best judgment of competent scholars as to the most probable reconstruction of the original text" [Introduction of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Oxford press]
Ok!!!!! They "follow the best judgement"!!!! What nonsense is this. They are Christians, their best judgement is OBVIOUSLY going to follow their Christian beliefs!!! You put me on the table and I will throw all of Paul's words out 
"The New Testament manuscripts were not produced impersonally by machines capable of flawless reproduction. They were copied by hand, by living, breathing human beings who were deeply rooted in the conditions and controversies of their day.
Did the scribes' polemical contexts influence the way they transcribed their sacred Scriptures? The burden of the present study is that they did, that theological disputes, specifically disputes over Christology, prompted Christian scribes to alter the words of Scripture in order to make them more serviceable for the polemical task. Scribes modified their manuscripts to make them more patently 'orthodox' and less susceptible to 'abuse' by the opponents of orthodoxy." [The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 3-4]
Now you tell me what was the Roman Empire? And what religion was Constantine? and others. I have an idea , Pagan, and Jews mostly. So did the scribes change the "scripture" to somewhat paganism, by involving the Trinity?
Here is another nice verse. (not really)
"Within the pages of the New Testament there are textual variations that have not yet been satisfactorily resolved and that have profound effects, not just on a word here or there, but on the entire meaning of entire books and their portrayals of Jesus, e.g., the angry Jesus of Mark, the imperturbable Jesus of Luke, and the forsaken Jesus of Hebrews. These textual problems cannot simply be swept under the table and ignored. Commentators, interpreters, preachers, and general readers of the Bible must recognize their existence and realize the stakes involved in solving them." ["Text and Tradition: The Role of New Testament Manuscripts in Early Christian Studies." The Kenneth W. Clark Lectures Duke Divinity School 1997 Lecture One: "Text and Interpretation: The Exegetical Significance of the "Original" Text" Delievered by Bart Ehram]
So we have problems even regarding Jesus!!!! Who is the center of this religion!!! This is great, we are doomed.
"In the 3rd century AD Origen attempted to clear up copyists' errors that had crept into the text of the Septuagint,
which by then varied widely from copy to copy. Other scholars also consulted the Hebrew text in order to make the Septuagint text more accurate. But it was the Septuagint, not the original Hebrew, that was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and part of the Arabic translations of the Old Testament. It has never ceased to be the standard version of the Old Testament in the Greek church, and from it Jerome began his translation of the Vulgate Old Testament."
Right so what the heck is going on. And what the problem is, problems keeping coming. As I go on now.
"Early tradition ascribed this Gospel to the apostle Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all reject this view. The author whom we can still conveniently call Mathew has plainly drawn on the mysterious 'Q', which may have been a collection of oral traditions." [The True Message of Jesus Christ, pg. 23]
Ok so who wrote the so-called "Gospels" According to the so-called "Matthew"?
In his book "Who's Who in the Bible?" Peter Calvocressi writes:
" In early times the authorship of the Gospel was ascribed to the apostle Matthew, but since this view has been demolished we are left with an evangelist who, distinct from the apostle, must nevertheless continue to be called Matthew since we have no other name for him."
Right!!! So if the scholars agree it wasn't Matthew, then why don't you throw it out of the Bible?!!! Wait maybe because all the synopitc so-called "gospels" have the same problem. If they do this there really wouldn't be much left of the NT.
Here is just a little bit more of the same on the so-called Gospel of the so-called Matthew.
Raymond Brown in his commentary on the infancy Narratives in Matthew writes:
"There would be nearly unanimous agreement in scientific circles today that the evangelist is Unknown, although we continue the custom of referring to him as "Matthew". His dependence upon Mark indicates that he was not an eyewitness of the ministry of Jesus." [The Birth of the Messiah, pg. 45]
He concludes by writing in the footnote:
"Roman Catholics were among the last to give up defending officially the view that the Gospel was written by Matthew, one of the twelve." [Ibid. pg. 45]
Ok the so-called Gospel of Luke.
"The author has been identified with Luke, "the beloved physician," Paul's companion on his journeys, presumably a Gentile (Col. 4:14 and 11; cf. II Tim. 4:11, Philem. 24). There is no Papias fragment concerning Luke, and only late 2nd century traditions claim (somewhat ambiguously) that Paul was the guarantor of Luke's Gospel traditions. The Muratorian Canon refers to Luke, the physician, Paul's companion; Irenaeus depicts Luke as a follower of Paul's gospel. Eusebius has Luke as an Antiochene physician who was with Paul in order to give the Gospel apostolic authority. References are often made to Luke's medical language, but there is no evidence of such language beyond that to which any educated Greek might have been exposed. Of more import is the fact that in the writings of Luke specifically Pauline ideas are significantly missing; while Paul speaks of the death of Christ, Luke speaks rather of the suffering, and there are other differing and discrepant ideas on Law and eschatology. In short, the author of this gospel remains unknown." [Biblical Literature and Its Critical Interpretation, The Gospel According to Luke.]
Oh Paul was the gaurantor!!! A man walking to Damascus and persecuting Christians, and turned Christian, and claimed that Law was a curse. hmm... Oh well we will just see the conclusion then.
The conclusions of Biblical scholarship are recorded by the Encyclopedia Biblica:
Luke: "This tradition [that Luke was the author of the third gospel and of Acts] cannot be traced farther back than towards the end of the second century (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and the Muratorian fragment). ... It has been shown that it is impossible to regard Luke with any certainty as the writer even of the ‘we’ sections of Acts, not to speak of the whole book of Acts, or of the Third Gospel. ... If Luke cannot have been the author of Acts, neither can he have been the author of the Third Gospel." [EB. ii, 1893, 2831.]
"On his own admission Luke has carefully compared and edited existing material, but it would seem that he had access to a good deal of additional material, and we can reasonably guess at some of the sources from which he drew. Furthermore the New Encyclopedia Britannica gives references to the writings of Irenaeus and Eusibius where
Luke is depicted as a follower of Paul's gospel. In the Muratorian Canon Luke is identified as a companion of Paul, but even this identification is widely questioned because of the author's inaccuracies about Paul's career. (The Birth of the Messiah, Raymond Brown, pg. 236)
Nice, this stuff is making me feel good that the Bible is extremely reliable!!!
Regarding the Gospel of John, Encyclopedia Britannica writes:
"From internal evidence the Gospel was written by a beloved disciple whose name is unknown. Because both external and internal evidence are doubtful, a working hypothesis is that John and the Johannine letters were written and edited somewhere in the East (perhaps Ephesus) as the product of a "school," or Johannine circle, at the end of the 1st century." [Biblical Literature and Its Critical Interpretation, THE FOURTH GOSPEL: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN, Uniqueness of John.]
"The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church", regarding the Gospel of John:
"The Apostolic origin of the book, however, is contested by a large body of modern scholars whose position
vary from a complete rejection of both its authenticity and its historicity to the admission of Apostolic inspiration and a certain historical value. The unity of the book has been disputed esp. by German scholars, e.g. J. Wellhausen, R. Bultmann. Where its unity is admitted, its attribution to John the Presbyter is favoured." [The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, John The Apostle, 1974, pg. 743]
"Peakes Commentary on the Bible", the introduction of the Gospel of John starts with the following words:
"The origin of this Gospel is
veiled in obscurity." [Peakes Commentary on the Bible, C. K. Barrett, "John", Nelson 1967]
"The conviction has grown that the Gospel was not written by a single author, but is an outcome of a long process of growth in which the distinction between author and redactor/editor was not clear. This conclusion militates
against the traditional view that the author was the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, and the disciple whom Jesus loved (John 13:23)." [An Introduction to the Bible, pg. 122]
"St." Paul's writings are the earliest Christian writings of the NT. The Gospels were written after the writings of St. Paul, so one should not be surprised if the ideas of St. Paul are found in the Gospels as well. Rather we have already seen the admission of scholars that the Gospels were written by anonymous authors, by any Tom, Dick or Harry, and that they also went through the process of evolution and were deliberately altered by the scribes for theological reasons etc. We know that these Gospels are NOT the earliest Christian NT writings, its the letters of St Paul that are the oldest and ideas from Pauls letters have been borrowed by the ananymous Gospel writers. All Gospels were written after Pauls writings.
Rev. Charles Anderson Scott has the following to say:
"It is highly probable that not one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) was in existence in the form which we have it, prior to the death of Paul. And were the documents to be taken in strict order of chronology, the Pauline Epistles would come before the synoptic Gospels." [History of Christianity in the Light of Modern Knowledge, Rev. Charles Anderson Scott, p.338]
So what do we got here. Paul's writing are the first of the NT. Oh the Pauline Christianity, should just rightly be called Paulinity!!!
Oh and now the famous interpolations of the Bible proving the extent of corruption and variations which occured in the Bible.
The text about the three heavenly witnesses (I John 5:7 KJV) is not an authentic part of the NT." [The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 4, p.711, Abingdon Press.]
"1 John 5:7 in the KJV reads: 'There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one' but this is an interpolation of which there is no trace before the late fourth century." [The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 4, p. 871, Abingdon Press.]
"1 John 5:7 in the Textus Receptus (represented in the KJV) makes it appear that John had arrived at the doctrine of the trinity in explicit form ('the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost'), but this text is clearly an interpolation since no genuine Greek manuscript contains it." [The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, Edited by Allen C. Myers, p. 1020]
Peake's Commentary on the Bible says:
"The famous interpolation after 'three witnesses' is not printed even in RSVn, and rightly. It cites the heavenly testimony of the Father, the logos, and the Holy Spirit, but is never used in the early Trinitarian controversies. No respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late 4th-cent. Latin text, it entered the Vulgate and finally the NT of Erasmus."
This verse 1John 5:7 obviously changes the concept of God to the Trinity. Good thing it was a fabrication!!!! So this proves that the Bible has been corrupted to such an extent that even the concept of God is in danger of being changed!!!!!.
Now the Trinity.
".......It is difficult in the second half of the 20th century to offer a clear, objective and straightforward account of the revelation, doctrinal evolution, and theological elaboration of the Mystery of the trinity. Trinitarian discussion, Roman Catholic as well as other, present a somewhat unsteady silhouette. Two things have happened. There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualification. There is also the closely parallel recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins to, say,
the last quadrant of the 4th century. It was only then that what might be called the definitive Trinitarian dogma 'One God in three Persons' became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought ... it was the product of 3 centuries of doctrinal development" (emphasis added). "The New Catholic Encyclopedia" Volume XIV, p. 295.
The LAST QUADRANT of the 4th CENTURY!!!!!! A PRODUCT OF 3 CENTURIES!!!!!
Well I'll end now with one quote about the Trinity.
"Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost third. Each of these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten--just the same before as after. Christ is just as old as his father, and the father is just as young as his son. The Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the Father and Son before he proceeded, that is to say, before he existed, but he is of the same age as the other two. So it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son and the Holy Ghost God, and these three Gods make one God. According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three time one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar: if we add two to one we have but one. Each one equal to himself and to the other two.
Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity." [Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 4, p. 266-67].
Now how do we believe the Bible in it's current form?
Peace be unto you 