Page 97 - Countering Trinitarian Arguments With Historical Reference
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The papyrus scraps had been housed at the library of Magdalen College for more than 90 years, the gift of a British chaplain, Rev. Charles Huleatt, who bought them at an antiquities market in Luxor, Egypt. Using new tools such as a scanning laser microscope along with more conventional handwriting analysis, Thiede re-dates the fragments, previously dated in the mid- to late second century, to sometime between 30 and 70 A.D. In three places on the Magdalen Papyrus, the name of Jesus is written as “KS”, an abbreviation of the Greek word Kyrios, or *Lord. Thiede considers this to be evidence that first century Christians considered Jesus to be divine. [Or God] This use of an abbreviated “sacred name” is similar to the way the Old Testament writers emphasized the holiness of God’s name by shortening it [from Paleo Hebrew: Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh or “I AM that I AM”] to “YHWH” (the Tetragrammaton).
If Thiede is correct, the gospel of Matthew is not the secondhand account of copyists who wrote it decades later than the time of Jesus, as the higher critics claim. [However there have been some Arian and Trinitarian interpolations added] Rather, it means that the fragments contain eyewitness testimony by people who lived at the same time as Jesus.”
Dr. Thiede further states that: “Thus the perception of Jesus as divine was not a later development of Christian faith but a firm belief of the early church.” Below, the fragments thought to date around 66 to 70 AD. Other scholars believe them to be from around 200 AD.
Despite false claims of some Trinitarian proponents, nothing on these supposedly oldest NT Scripture fragments supports a Trinity Doctrine. Rather we see that the early Church believed and Scriptures promoted Jesus as God. As you can see for yourself translated:
Fragment 1, left side, from Matthew 26:7-8: “...poured it on his head as he was at the table. When they saw this, the disciples said indignantly...”
Fragment 2, left side, from Matthew 26:10: “...KS=Lord/God Jesus noticed this and said, ‘Why are you upsetting the woman? What she has done for me...”
Fragment 3, left-side, from Matthew 26:14-15: “...Then one of the Twelve, the man called Judas Is’cariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you prepared to give...”
Fragment 1, right-side, from Matthew 26:31: “...KS=Lord/God Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away from me tonight, for the scripture says...”
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