The dark age

 * The dark age

- The first and most important problem - or if you like, say a calamity - that Christians faced while trying to prove the infallibility and authenticity of their book was that they were surprised that the most important period in determining the canon of the books of the New Testament and knowing the names and numbers of its books was a period of dark features, unknown information, and without reliable evidence; which destroyed the reliability of the text that appeared after it ... the text of the Holy Bible!! - And even the

originals from which the discovered manuscripts were copied; scholars acknowledged the possibility of errors that were not corrected; ( The possibility must always be kept open that the very first copy of the original MS, from which all others derived, had some uncorrected errors .) STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND METHOD OF NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM, BY ELDON JAY EPP AND GORDON D. FEE . (1993), pg 6-7 Despite the discovery of thousands of anonymous New Testament manuscripts, the most knowledgeable Christian scholars do not know what is the correct text that represents the lost original text ! This opens the door to all the possibilities of transmission and reason that are sufficient to destroy the reliability of the text of the New Testament . Reliability is proven with certainty, but for unreliability, it is sufficient to open the door to all possibilities to an extent that the defenders of reliability are unable to deny the possibility of those possibilities occurring . .. ; The text that disappeared for hundreds of years and then suddenly emerges from the womb of the unknown, different in quantity and quality in discovered papyri and scattered manuscripts that have not, and will not, ever agree on defining the “ absent text ” is certainly a “ foundling ” text! - * BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT says, describing the early period of Christianity, which extends from the year 70 to the year 170 , as the dark period in the history of Christianity, and there are no reliable sources for it : - From the book General survey of the history of the canon of NT Chap 3, 283 (it cannot be too often repeated that the period which has been examined is truly the dark age of the church- history. In the absence of all trustworthy guidance every step requires to be secured by painful investigation) * And we read from the critical newspaper that the time interval between the original text and the oldest surviving manuscript of some books of the New Testament reaches 200 years ! -





















We must reckon with the reality that the temporal gap between the autograph and earliest extant witness for some books of the NT is over two hundred years and that manuscript loss is considerable even as the manuscript base is quite rich - Pg. 3 (We must take into account that the temporal gap between the autograph and earliest extant witness for some books of the NT is over
two





hundred years . This is a significant loss despite the abundance of manuscripts .)

Link /
http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/v19/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2qq0VgqxmM_cVNdwOqBhZmmW3IsQ 6zDbLP9Al_nLCXSCy1xyjZ2vVPyOU

... ,
- This dark period between the current books and the lost original text of the New Testament varies from book to book; Some books do not have manuscripts until the fourth century, and some until the end of the third century ...
and all of them do not have manuscripts ( containing a significant amount of texts ) before the third century except for the Gospel of John !!


Despite the discovery of more than 22 thousand manuscripts of the New Testament; until this day there is not even one manuscript that represents the text of the New Testament in the hands of Christians today !!!

* Textual critics Eldon Ebb and Jordan say in their book
STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND METHOD OF NEW TESTAMENT:
( Until the ninth century there are 274 manuscripts of the capital letters, only one of them preserves the entire New Testament - Sinaiticus - in addition to the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas , pg 5.)
from the fourth to the ninth century continued... There are currently 274 known uncials, many of them preserved without blemish. Only one, however, Codex Sinaiticus (X, ca. AD 350), preserves the entire NT. (It also contains the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas

Where is the original text?
How did the discovered manuscripts differ from their lost originals in terms of quantity and quality?
What is the criterion by which we will know what agrees with the unknown original and what does not?

No one knows, no one has known, and no one will know; the only thing that has reached us from the Christians’ book is what men discovered and what the sands have provided of unknown manuscripts !!