Sublime

The greater the number of manuscripts, the easier it is to detect a “variant” or mistake in one of the copies.

These three early texts give us evidence from outside the Bible that Jesus was a Jewish leader in the early 1st century, that he claimed to be the Christ, that he was executed by the Romans between AD 26 and 36, and that he was subsequently worshiped by his followers as God.

For example, the story of Jesus’ suffering and death, commonly called the passion story, was probably not originally written by Mark. Rather Mark used a source for this narrative.

But all of this is obscured when the Guy at the Front waves his Bible around, claiming to announce the simple, unadulterated Word of God. No. What he is offering is his interpretation of God’s Word. What he does not offer (often because he does not realize it) is that he inherited this interpretation from some pastor or teacher himself. Nor does he

As Williams so carefully documented, when the many manuscripts and movements usually categorized as Gnosticism are examined closely, various clusters of characteristics can be identified, but the only element common to all is that each is remarkably heretical, which is how they were quite properly judged by their contemporaries—not just “one heresy

sources. Jesus of Nazareth is referred to in a range of ancient sources inside and outside the New Testament, including Christian, Roman, and Jewish sources.[1]

It is useful to observe that of all the works that have come down to us from the ancient world, the New Testament is the most amply attested in textual evidence.