➲ It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but the reality is that ✎we don't have the ✎originals—so saying they were inspired doesn't help me much, unless ✎I can reconstruct the originals.
➲ Moreover, the vast majority of Christians for the ✎entire history of the church ✎have not had access to the originals, making their inspiration something of a moot point.
➲ Not only do ✎we not have the originals, we don't have the ✎first copies of the originals. We ✎don't even have copies of the copies of the originals, or ✎copies of the ✎copies of the ✎copies of the originals.
➲ What we have are ✎copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from ✎one another, in many ✎thousands of places
➲ These ✎copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how ✎many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in Comparative terms: there are ✎more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the ✎New Testament.
BART D. EHRMAN IN MISQUOTING JESUS
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