You can't buy original autograph manuscripts of the Bible on Ebay....NONE exist because they had no VALUE in atuality OR somebody would have fought to preserve them. They were just more STUFF at one time.
Please. The Christian church, very early on, went through priods of vicious persecution where people were giving their lives to retain biblical manuscripts. Doesn't it seem more likely that the originals failed to survive the persecutions than that people who were willing to die for the Word of God decided they were of no value and used them as kindling?
There were countless writings by innumerable persons foisting their opinions off as heavenly and nobody paid any attention. For good reason.
It was all crap.
Of course you will believe what supports your own view. However, the persecution of one Christian group visiting intolerance upon another one was as great as the external Roman pressures.
The rather obvious fact is that NOTHING has ever been preserved that is HOLY per se. Lots of fakes appeared to be sold to the naive.
The original tablets of Moses? Gone.
The jar of manna? Gone.
The Ark of the Covenant? Gone.
Noah's Ark? Gone. (I know, I know...it is perpetually "disocovered" and lost again by charlatans.)
The "true cross" was conserved by Helena (Constantine's mother) and yet--it is gone.
The Pope has a splinter of it in his ring.....wink wink...nudge nudge!
There are knuckle bones of Saints, the Shroud of Turin and other ridiculous objects of unprovable mysterioso "out there" to be wondered at, of course.
My point (which is obviously lost on certain readers) is that what is very mundane, ordinary and negligible of itself comes to be considered as EXTRAordinary because people inflate life with the numinous imagination.
Your first girlfriend now is a passionate longing.
The old house you lived in as a child....a paradise......
Blah blah blah.
The reverse takes place just as easily, by the way....
Take a few minutes and look at the list of top ten favorite celebrated books, movies, songs from the 1930's through about 1970. See how many were held up to be genius and how few have stood the test of time.
Human opinion does all the magic.
Classics are made classics not only by the sheer dint of creative acumen. A great deal of social pressure goes into the making of legends.
Marilyn Monroe and James Dean remain as ICONS.
Do you know how many actors were infinitely better than Marilyn or Dean were but who are by now forgotten.
Hype wins the day!
Orson Welles was touted as a genius too late to save his bacon.
Picasso spent his last decade as a hack slogging out crap.
So too, Salvador Dali. A whore of monumental proportions in his twilight years.
Elvis is the King of Rock and Roll? Really?? Maybe for three years....until the godawful schlock years took over his career.
You see....it works both ways.
li / 