[Context_free]

> adhering to scriptural literalism

What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscripts - a resurrection was tacked on later. The story of the adulteress Jesus refused to condemn is not found in the earliest scriptures. And on and on. Much of contemporary scripture were things invented centuries after the events recorded.

[throwawaygal7]

Scholars are pretty divided on the long ending of mark , it's TRUE to say the oldest codices do not include it, but some old manuscripts do.

There's also some slight of hand being done by Erhman, the codex Vaticanus does not include the ending but the scribe has left space for it at the end of the chapter, showing that they had access to it and were debating putting it in... So you can say 'oldest manuscripts don't have it' but that isnt as conclusive as one might assume... This slight of hand is extremely common in Erhmans work.

As far as the woman taken in adultery, this passage is found in early manuscripts/lectuonaries but its position is being moved around d. Erhman is more committed to selling books and impressing undergrad baptists at UNC than be is with nuanced treatment of the facts...and his background as a low church protestant shines through all his work.... From an easterner perspective it's far less persuasive

[throwaway0b1]

I suppose maybe I'm missing something, but this seems a bit on the vague side. Furthermore, I am far from an expert on the history of biblical texts; to be quite frank there's a general text (okay, maybe two) that's accepted by every Christian church I know of. I'll try to answer your point regardless. While over several millenia there certainly may have been some minor changes to the text, I would like to break this down into two major points:

1. The Bible is has (to my knowledge) by far the largest corpus of ancient texts compared to pretty much anything prior to the invention of the printing press. The existence of so many ancient texts (both directly, translations, and quotations in other materials) spanning so far both geographically and temporally with fairly minor differences is rather compelling evidence for the accuracy of many biblical manuscripts. A similar interplay is found within the Bible itself. I can think of numerous other passages commonly used to support the doctrine of the trinity from both the Old and New Testaments. Similarly, there are several accounts of as well as numerous prophecies of Jesus' resurrection. The adultress in Mark is actually found in a significant portion of ancient manuscripts; that it is not found in all is noted in most translations I've seen.

2. I stated this somewhere below, but put simply: God isn't going to let the Bible change contradictory to its original meaning (cf. Isaiah 55:11, although I could probably find a better reference for this).

[throwaway0b1]

See also 1 Peter 1:25 and Mark 13:31.