New Testament original texts, where are they?

God has manifested in the same way as we do, minus the sex, and refers to himself as his Son, fine. It's great that it happened and our salvation depends on it.
I Imagine God himself becoming HUMAN, was outrageous at the time, as the unfolding events indicate. I mean God came to earth and was executed by the government at the behest of his "chosen" people.
I can live with that, we are an odd species perfectly capable of such an atrocity. My only question here is why is his Divinely inspired, infallible, guaranteed by the church to be true testimony by people who were there document not immune to bad record keeping, or whatever it is that is the true reason why we don't have the original first issues of the account of the most important thing to ever happen.
We have written works from times long before the common era, A.D., long before. So, what gives?

originally posted by: areyousirius360

We have written works from times long before the common era, A.D., long before. So, what gives?

We do not have the original copies of anything. except in those cases where they were literally carved in stone.
Papyrus crumbles more quickly than paper, so we only possess copies of copies, if we possess anything at all.

a reply to: DISRAELI

Are the dead sea scrolls not original new testament documents
(Thats a genuine question)

a reply to: DISRAELI
Yes. So many texts we have from around the world are copies of copies of copies. The bible is by no means unique in this respect. But I think the OP is asking why the originals of such allegedly important texts have not been preserved intact by god himself, if by no one else.

a reply to: errorcode
OK, those are a possible exception to my sweeping statement, though they were not in a very good condition when found.
As far as I know, though, they are not NT documents.

a reply to: Klassified
In that case, I suppose the answer would be "That's not how he chooses to work". Just as he doesn't choose to contact every human individually, which is another demand which people make on these boards.
For some reason, he seems to make his own decisions about the best way to do things, instead of following whatever rules we might dream up on his behalf.

The text of the Bible is the most reliably established of all the ancient writings.

In fact, no one has ever been able to prove that it has been tampered with.

Manuscript evidence for the New Testament is remarkable, far surpassing that which exists for any other ancient book. And those who work with these ancient copies (called "textual critics") are convinced that they have been able to recover a Greek New Testament which is virtually identical to the original.

This evidence does not prove that the Bible is the word of God. But it does demonstrate conclusively that the Bible you have is the same which was first written by its authors. When Teabing (the Da Vinci Code's "historian") asserts, "History has never had a definitive version of the book" and claims that scholars cannot confirm the authenticity of the Bible, he's simply wrong.

Is the Bible true?

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
...the manuscripts used to compile the KJV are still in the british museum. that means that these original texts are available to check on the good editors of the KJV and other version's editors. Furthermore in the case of the old testament because of the nature of hebrew every line has a checksum. it cannot be edited or typo'ed without it showing up as a checksum error and of course things like ancient fragmentary copies of isaiah show practically no divergence from our modern copies of it.

a reply to: DISRAELI
But this is God's first human incarnation I think people would have cleaned up their act to preserve the first of everything that had to do with God, people's salvation is at stake.
That aside we had the capability to preserve it, didn't, and I would like to know, why?
Infallibility doesn't apply to the originals? It is a serious claim, infallibility, and needs to backed up when asserted.

a reply to: areyousirius360

If your question is about preservation of the oldest copies of New Testament texts see:
en.wikipedia.org...

Scroll down to the part about the New Testament.
"Parts of the New Testament have been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work, having over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian. The dates of these manuscripts range from c. 125 (the mathfrak[P]52 papyrus, oldest copy of John fragments) to the introduction of printing in Germany in the 15th century. "

And:
Biblical scholar Gary Habermas adds, "What is usually meant is that the New Testament has far more manuscript evidence from a far earlier period than other classical works. There are just under 6000 NT manuscripts, with copies of most of the NT dating from just 100 years or so after its writing

a reply to: MurgatroidThat's not true tampering is evident if you look into to it casually. I would site as an example, Sons of God being replaced with sons of Israel. That is a laughable statement

a reply to: TonyS
The oldest NT is from around 300 ad. And in Greek. There is nothing older, even individual books.

originally posted by: areyousirius360
That aside we had the capability to preserve it, didn't, and I would like to know, why?

Because they did NOT have the capacity to preserve papyrus documents indefinitely. That's why people made copies.

What you are doing is making an arbitrary and artificial definition of what OUGHT to happen, in the hope of proving God false because nobody chooses to live up to the definition you have created. A very common technique on these boards.
It's a way of scoring cheap and meaningless debating points, but it has no other value.

Where are the originals. This is Gods word. Divine. Yet the first edition doesn't exist and no attempt was made to preserve it. Cite every scholar and statistic, and mention quotes of people who say they are in abundance, there is nothing from before roughly 300 AD and the Vatican would not even say that there is. They are the ones saying it.

a reply to: DISRAELI
GOD. GOD. not a human being. GOD, can do everything BUT preserve the original account of his life on earth. Common tactic or sense?

a reply to: DISRAELI
Your using tactics. I'm thinking logically. Leave the slander for another topic, logic is a perfectly acceptable way to get a picture of what is going on.

originally posted by: areyousirius360
a reply to: DISRAELI
But this is God's first human incarceration I think people would have cleaned up their act to preserve the first of everything that had to do with God, people's salvation is at stake.
That aside we had the capability to preserve it, didn't, and I would like to know, why?
Infallibility doesn't apply to the originals? It is a serious claim, infallibility, and needs to backed up when asserted.

I would reject the idea that people would do any such thing.
Since we are assuming for the sake of argument that God is in fact real and his texts were true, hence the stated reason why people would want to clean up their act and preserve them, we must assume that what is written in the text is accurate as well.

That being the case we read all through the Bible of people having God manifest directly in front of them and they still don't do what they are supposed to.
Jesus said in John

John 4:46
46 So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum.
47 When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death.
48 Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.

We see an angel of the lord leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. They see all kinds of miracles on their trip but as soon as Moses is Gone a little over a month they already start looking elsewhere.

Basically mankind seems to have a "what have you done for me lately" approach to God.

a reply to: errorcode
No they are b.c. Messianic texts and copies of the Tanakh minus Esther

a reply to: errorcode

Plus 1 Enoch

a reply to: Klassified

That's EXACTLY what I am asking.

a reply to: areyousirius360

Don't you find it curious that Jesus, himself, wrote down nothing. As a matter of fact, someone that supposedly wrote some of his words down while they were telling his story, said that Jesus said to beware of the scribes and Pharisees (publishers and lawyers).

God's word is written in your heart. You just need to have "eyes to see and ears to hear" to access it.