format_quote Originally Posted by
samah12
This is where the thread started, I asked if people could tell me the whereabouts and age of the oldest Quran, Bible and Torah. In this day and age of technology there must be a way to compare the oldest to the current. Surely this would stop the argument once and for all?
Here's a link on some of the biblical texts. All the oldest texts available do not differ significantly in meaning. Yes, the apocrypha books are not in included in the non catholic bible, but the message is not changed. It wouldn't matter how old of manuscripts were found. If it differs from the Qur'an, it's still corrupt in the Muslim perspective.
http://www.religion-cults.com/Judaism/escript.htm
1- The "Greek Bible", the "Septuagint":
From the third century before Christ, is the oldest document we have: It is the Greek translation made in Alexandria by a Group of 72 rabbis (6 from each one of the 12 Tribes of Israel), and hence the name of "Septuagint" given to the translation. It has 46 books, like the Catholic Bibles, and it was the common version of the Bible among the Jews well after Christ; the one used and quoted by the Evangelists and Apostles when they wrote the New Testament, and the one mostly quoted in the Talmud.
- It was then translated to Syriac in the 1st century AC, to Coptic in the 3rd century AC, and to Latin in the 4th century AC (the "Vulgata").
2- The "Hebrew Bible", the "Masoretic Text":
Written in the 6th to 10th centuries after Christ, by a Group of scholars from Babylon and Palestine, the Karaites, introducing vowels and accent signs to the original Hebrew. It has 39 books, and it is the one mostly used by Protestants.
3- The "Dead See Scrolls":
Very important, because they are in Hebrew, dating from 300 "before Christ", when the oldest Hebrew Bible we had, the Masoretic, is from 700 "after Christ"... it pushed back the curtain 1,000 years on the earliest known surviving Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament.
Only from the Cave IV of the Qumran finds, there are fragments of 382 manuscripts. Every book of the Bible, except Esther, is represented, and same books by many copies. Seven scrolls are in Israel, at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. But most of them are in Jordan at the Palestine Archeological Museum of Jerusalem.
All manuscripts are with a remarkable similarity to those Greek and Hebrew we had!... and they have been qualified as "the most important discovery ever made in Old Testament manuscripts", also very valuables in New Testament studies.
"Codex":
The Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, are kept in several "Codex": The "Codex Vaticanus", the oldest, from the 4th century AC, in the Vatican Library, Rome. In the British Museum of London are kept the "Codex Sinaiticus" of the 4th century AC, and the "Codex Alexandrinus" of the 5th century. In Cambridge, the "Codex Bezae" of the 5th century AC.
There are also fragments of the Bible kept in "papiry" in Manchester and Oxford (England), in Washington (USA), and Geneva (Switzerland).