We are often told that the transmission of Scripture was like the Telephone game... you know, the game where we line up kids and whisper a complex sentence into the ear of the first kid, who whispers it to the second, and so on, until the last kid in the line tries to say the sentence out loud and we all laugh at the distortion of it.
I was a Boy Scout in the 80s and the early 90s. And we were at a campout event. We had ten boys (including myself) in our patrol, and when we lined up, I was the first boy. The camp counselor whipsered the following sentence into my ear:
"The somewhat slick sassafras stick slides super smoothly through the super slimy snake snot."
No doubt the alliteration was meant to be a mnemonic, to help us remember. But the tenth boy in the line said "stick... snot."
The first sentence was 14 words. The result was two words.
If the Scriptures were actually transmitted in this way, the differences wouldn't be how many women appeared at the tomb or the color of Jesus' robe at the trial... the corruption in the gospels would be massive and irreconcilable.
It is not.
In his zeal to discredit the Gospels, Dr. Bart Ehrman has given me a very good argument FOR their preservation. Thanks, Doc.
