Hey There, I have been reading a lot of the prophecies in the Old Testament. One of my favorites is in Isaiah 53 where there was a beautiful prediction of the coming Messiah. One thing a debating atheist told me is that the earliest Old Testament copy we have is after Christ and that all the prophecies were put into the Old Testament later to make the Bible more believable. Is this even a plausible debate? Is it even remotely possible that all these prophecies were put into the Old Testament after the fact?
OT Prophecies Reliability
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Partly. The situation is more complex.
1. There are Christian sources and non-Christian sources of the Old Testament.
(and nobody sane would say Jews edited the OT to favor Christianity, the opposite is true)
2. Its true that most of the OT copies are after Christ (the oldest copy of Septuagint is from 4th century, of masoretic text from 9th century)
3. But it is not true that all OT copies were editable by Christians (for example Dead Sea Scrolls are from the first century and not preserved by Christians)
Dead sea scrolls beg to differ:
The origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written between 150 B.C. and 70 A.D., remains the subject of scholarly debate to this day. According to the prevailing theory, they are the work of a Jewish population that inhabited Qumran until Roman troops destroyed the settlement around 70 A.D.
There are fragments of the Septuagint that are from before Christ, this information is widely accessible online, even wikipedia mentions:
"The oldest manuscripts of the LXX include 2nd century BCE fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Alfred Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943)."
"The oldest manuscripts of the LXX include 2nd century BCE fragments of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Rahlfs nos. 801, 819, and 957), and 1st century BCE fragments of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the Minor Prophets (Alfred Rahlfs nos. 802, 803, 805, 848, 942, and 943)."
Okay well how about the argument that the gospel writers fabricated the story in order to fulfill the prophecies? I would claim that this would be very unlikely considering that a majority of the disciples were put to death for their belief but is there historical proof for these disciples being martyred for their belief in Christ?
Good note, I was talking about whole or almost whole preserved Septuagint copy and forgot there are also fragments, older than that
This is actually not an argument, because he would first have to prove it. So far its just his fantasy.
Also, gospels did not fall from the sky. There were people knowing events, discussing those events, many other writings circling around, not just gospels, living apostles and witnesses etc.
I find it interesting that everyone accepts blindly the documents we have about Plato or Aristotle, and never dispute the historic accuracy. We have much more manuscripts of the New Testament than any other ancient document, yet it is also the most widely disputed. I do not think it is a mere coincidence.
This is total nonsense (I could use some other choice words but will leave it at that) just as atheism is total nonsense, which sometimes leads to tragic results as in Texas recently. The great Isaiah scroll was discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls and dates back to about 200 B.C. It is practically identical to the book of Isaiah in our Bibles. This ignorant atheist should have remembered that, or known about it.
Thats probably because Plato or Aristotle did not make miracles, were not born of a virgin etc. Its logical that any book claiming such things will be more disputed.