[quote=@DarkwolfX37] That depends on what you mean by "the layman." The problem with your definition of the early church is that at the time that I think you're referring to, several of the common canon works hadn't even been written yet, and several came from other areas where those people would not have access to the works from yet. The latter part of that is only problematic for the OT, since there have been variations in the... I'm blanking on the accurate term at the moment, so I'll substitute "jewish" for it, the jewish canon between the first writings in the NT and latter writings, some of which then affected the christian canon. Further, there's the issue ARAMAIC WAS THE WORD, I'm 75% sure. The jewish and growths from judaism that the holy books for which were written in aramaic languages, specifically. The further issue is that the group you're referring to is after the jewish bible had been translated to and then from latin with some changes before becoming the OT that was used. This leads to the creation of Hell as a concept in place of the judaic afterlife, the integration of every hasatan into the singular Satan (name) due to the King Solomon passages, and a few minor and varying in importance translation issues. Though since this only included the OT and very earliest NT stories, it's not really worth a tangent and we've been over them before anyway. I believe one example, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the removal of the story of the death of Cain. As far as I'm aware, it was either not included in that compilation or was removed since then, and is a good example of such instances. Then came the issue of the apostle who I can never remember which one, who occasionally made up words which have then been translated with varying accuracy. Not a big issue, but surprisingly important in the issue of homosexuality as it is the only mention of it being wrong in the NT that was not a repeating of the OT, barring some variations like we're talking about. But yes, if you consider the literary canon to begin at that compilation, then you'd have a strong case against many of my previous point in other discussions, since they occurred before that time and therefor you could consider to not be "christian canon," depending on the variant texts we're discussing. [/quote] "Early Church" in this context is everything up to the Council of Nicaea. The OT canon is based on Jewish acceptance of scripture beyond the Torah, so fortunately, that acceptance is rather stable. I'm going to have to disageee with your assertions on changes made to the Old Testament. We have original Hebrew documents before Latin translations to cross-reference to determine accuracy. It is entirely possible that documents exist with this additional information, but it is significantly more likely that these are isolated corruptions of the original texts without evidence that they were the initial depiction of biblical texts. In fact, I have access to a collection of the original Hebrew documents as well as a direct word-by-word translation of those documents (which makes it difficult to read, but there is no translator interpretation at play). You have books such as the Book of Enoch with additional information, but these are not considered authentic documents that would be accepted by Jewish or Christian scholars. I disagree with your interpretation of the biblical texts' stance on God's intention of human sexuality. Before what compilation? Your words suggest that the documents were heavily edited before being accepted into theological canon. As far as I am concerned, heavily edited documents have zero authority in regards to religious direction. If the current version of either Old or New Testament scripture (bearing in mind that this is referring to untranslated text) is not exactly the same as the original (other than minor variations in spelling and such minor discrepancies based on region), then for all intents and purposes, they are fictitious, fallible, and frankly not worth studying as evidence of historical or cultural information of the previous age. Can you provide any documentation that asserts or provides evidence for these supposedly heavily edited texts and reasons that historians do not tend to accept this as accurate?