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What about translations of the bible, by the way? I'm guessing here that you probably don't read Greek, and even the Greek texts were translations of older texts that have not been preserved. What if something super important got left out or mangled?
I believe I mentioned earlier in this thread that translations are not considered infallible, only the origional text. The super important stuff is not isolated to only one or two passages, though, so we can be fairly certain that they are accurate.

But even at that, the Bible has been remarkably preserved with many early copies still in existence that can be studied today. Even where there are discrepencies, there are enough copies to determine with a high reliability what the origional text said and the discrepencies alter no doctrine significanly (things like "Christ Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ"). There are two passages that are not found in the earliest texts we have, and both of these are almost always noted in the translations.

Of course, any time you read a translation you need to be aware of how that translation was done- some types of translations are better suited to specific purposes than others. For instance, the some translations attempt to translate sentences and concepts, reordering words to make the meaning more clear, where others try to be more literal and translate word for word. With the former you are depending on the interpretation of the translator to some extent, but they can be easier to understand than the latter.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.