What consequences does a reduction to writing involve? What really happens when one makes use of writing? It has too often been asserted from insufficient knowledge of the oral practice within ancient cultures that the reduction to writing involves the first literary treatment of the traditions, the editing and grouping of a formless mass of tradition...Far nearer to the truth are those who claim that a reduction to writing means inthe main only that a tradition in a more or less fortuitous formis fixed on paper."
it got me thinking that there is one other piece of evidence tat supports the biblical record--time. you see, in archaeology, there really is one real copy of the gilgamesh epic, and it was lost and the only reproductins that are available are the copies that have been printed since its discovery. there is a large gap between the original and the copies and there is little evidence, if any, to say that that lone copy is the original and in its original form.
There is nothing to substantiate that that surviving carving is genuine but, once people slap a date on it, that antiquity seems to magically guarentee its infallibility and that it must be truer than the Bible. BUT the Bible has had scrolls and copies of scrollsand copies of scrolls downthrough the ages and it is virtually impossible to find any difference between the verses of antiquity and the modern verses. example:
and for more reading here is the link:The larger of the two scrolls was only about three inches long when it was unrolled. The smaller one was just over two inches long. Barkay said the thin fragile silver of each scroll was etched with 19 lines of tiny, Hebrew script. It was years before researchers realized that the inscription was an almost exact representation of the priestly blessing found in Numbers. Careful study revealed that the Hebrew characters used were distinctive of the 7th century B.C.
http://www.crystalinks.com/scrollsilver.html
if the Bible wasn't true, then there would be no reason for such consistency.
