Question 33 – How do you know that we are using the original Bible?

The confession of Christians stands or falls on the Biblical manuscripts. If you overturn the reliability of the writings or Jesus' resurrection, Christianity collapses. Therefore, let us focus on the Bible from the viewpoint of literary evidence. We are going to judge each part, the Old and New Testaments, separately because each one has its own tradition. Because of a lack of space, the main focus will be on the New Testament. The Old Testament will be dealt with marginally.

The Old Testament (from this point on only OT)

The OT cannon had already been recognized 2,000 years ago and there was not much conjecture concerning it. Despite this fact, our Bible comes from handwritten copies that are quite new. The oldest source available came from approximately 1008 AD (the Leningrad Codex). This is a long time from the recording of the events. It is no surprise that Biblical sceptics attacked and accused it of being entirely untrustworthy. According to them, a gap of such a long time could not keep the text of the OT faithful to its original. Except, what happened? An archaeological find of unprecedented proportions was made a relatively short time ago [1,p 152]. The Dead Sea Scrolls are being referred to here (also known as the Qumran Scrolls). Expansive parts of OT books, including the book of Esther were found among them. They were dated at over 1,000 years closer to the originals than the copies from which the then Bible were taken! The fascinating fact is that they are almost the same and contain only negligible differences (for example various pronunciations/spellings). This is truly amazing!

Let us try to arrive at how it was possible for the reliability of these texts to have been kept. At the time when the OT was copied, the scribes considered this work to be a holy profession. They had very strict rules for copying each work. They were not allowed to, for example, copy anything from memory and they always had to say each word aloud. If any kind of mistake was found in a scroll, they set it aside. However, what is the most interesting fact of all is that after finishing a scroll, every letter was counted to ensure its accuracy with the original. By these extremely strict measures, they were able to identify the exact letter and word which had to be found in the middle of the scroll. If it was found that the number did not agree, the scroll was set aside/ destroyed. It is not possible to apply this to every scroll that exists today but the majority were dealt with in just such a detailed and careful way.

The New Testament (further only NT)

In the time of the NT, people did not have the Internet, or newspapers. Access to printed materials was more of a rarity and required the work of an experienced scribe. If someone wanted to write a work or letter, he had to call a scribe who captured the original in a copy. When someone else was interested in the work, the scribe was called again and made a copy of the copy. This is how a text was spread further. The more copies that were made, the more the transcripts were generally further from the original and contained various deviations from the original. So, the trustworthiness/accuracy of the document was gradually lessened from the original. This situation does not even include efforts to purposefully falsify the original.

The problem in this is such, that at this time we do not have any original documents from antiquity, including Biblical documents. The reason is simple – the ravages of time have destroyed what was used to record the texts. We must then rely on copies and fragments of reports that are at our disposal. By using this underlying fact, many sceptics are given to frequent objections and biased opinions and cast doubt on the reality that we have the same Bible in the 21st century as people did 2,000 years ago. Despite all of the facts described above, we can, however, to a great extent, confidently claim that the NT is entirely and completely the most trustworthy ancient literature on our planet. The more copies (from many different geographic areas) we have, the easier it is to discover the earliest wording of the original. When assessing this bold claim, we will look at three questions that scientists use as a basic test as to the reliability of any historical document [5, p.27; 1, p.100; 6, pp 235-245]. For example, Dr. Don Bierle in his book Surprised by Faith, shows from these questions that it is possible to trust the Bible from the viewpoint of its historicity.

1) How many manuscripts of a specific work exist?

The first question that historians are generally interested in is the number of copies that have been found. The rule, "The more the better." applies here. That is, if you have many copies, and better still, many copies from various regions, it will be much easier to identify deviations/errors and their origin. Above all, you will be able to work out the original wording. The more copies that exist, the more impossible it would be for someone to falsify or destroy the original work. First of all, let us acquaint ourselves with the historicity and veracity of the most well-known manuscripts of ancient classics which are widely accepted by historians. From the viewpoint of the first criterion, the shining example is Homer's Iliad, of which there are 643 manuscripts. All other works are incomparably worse in this respect. For example, only 10 manuscripts of Caesar's records of the Gallic Wars have been preserved. There are 7 manuscripts of Plato's Dialogues, the Tetralogies or 20 manuscripts of Livy's History of Rome.

What about the NT? More than 24,000 manuscripts exist! More than 5,000 manuscripts in the original language (Greek) and the rest in various translations, for example Syrian, Latin, Aramaic, Armenian etc. exist. It is therefore possible to quite easily find the original text to the highest accuracy because of this very great number of manuscripts that had been spread throughout the then-known world. In addition to these facts, we can also mention the role of the Church Fathers. These men in the second and third centuries quoted the NT so many times (more than 35,000 quotes), that the whole of the NT can be reconstructed within a few sentences on the basis of these alone.

British scholar F. F. Bruce has come to the following conclusion on the basis of this data:

"There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament."[5]

2) The time lapse between the first copy and the original manuscript

Historians are also interested in the amount of time that exists between the original event and a copy of the specific document. Once again, a direct ratio applies – the further the copy is from the original, the less reliable it is. On the other hand, the closer the copy is to the original, the more reliable it is. The New Testament is often considered to be a collection of myths and fairy tales

that were written many decades (even centuries) after the described events. Even the most influential atheist "missionaries" and opponents of Christianity, for example Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion, have accepted these arguments:

"Ever since the nineteenth century, scholarly theologians have made an overwhelming case that the gospels are not reliable accounts of what happened in history of the real world." He adds that, "All were written long after the death of Jesus" [7]

If we keep in mind the fact that the professor is referring to theologians whose arguments have been disproved by 20th century archaeological discoveries, we can show that this and similar statements are not based on the truth. These arguments which even uninformed people today refer to are from the work of theologians who dated the oldest gospels to the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd centuries. They knew very well that legends and myths cannot arise over one generation but that a longer period of time is necessary because eye-witnesses could appear and challenge such legends [8]. This had nothing to do with proof but rather with a belief based on the conviction that the facts given in the Bible simply could not have happened.

Caesar wrote his records concerning the Gallic Wars in approximately 50BC. However, the copies of these writings are from the 9th century, which presents a gap of around 900 years. The gap between Plato's writings is about 1,250 years. The long and the short of it is, that there is a gap of 800-1,500 years between copies of all these literary works. These are extremely high numbers and times, giving rise to serious doubts as to whether or not the works have kept true to the original writing. Even in the case of the gaps in time, the NT is in an appreciably better position and the case for the Bible is at an advantage. Archaeological finds show the oldest preserved manuscripts come from the first half of the 2nd century [for example, fragments of the Gospel of John have been dated by some scholars to the time of the reign of Emperor Hadrian at a minimum which is from117-138AD or even to the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117AD)] [2, p.56]. If we consider the fact that the Gospel of John was written between 80-90AD, the time between the oldest manuscript of the NT and the creation of the original is ridiculously short (possibly even a maximum of 20 years). For other different fragments, the time is longer (for example, 100,150, 200 years and so on). Nevertheless, the fact is that when we join them with the witness and written sources of the church fathers who lived in the first and second centuries and described the same events that are found in the Bible, we obtain a very trustworthy source of uniform information that is very close to the written events and recent to the time of living eye witnesses to these events.

On the basis of various pieces of evidence and the analysis of textual critics, we can, then, reliably suppose that the gospels, including other NT writings were written during the life time of eye witnesses of Jesus Christ. There was not room, therefore, for the formation of legends, myths, or any other changes as a result of the stories being passed on by word-of-mouth. The gospels were almost certainly written before 100AD. Some scholars date them around 70AD. Many others, however, document them to be even earlier than 70AD!

Sir Frederic Kenyon, a long-time director of the British Museum and a leading expert in old manuscripts said,

"The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established." [9]

3) How precise were the rules for copying?

Another important question is the number of distortions that were made in the scrolls in comparison to the original writing. How consistent were the scribes in copying and to what extent were forgers able to harm the texts? Even here, many critics believe that the original meaning of the texts were changed and embellished. The author of Surprised by Faith, mentions this topic in the case of Dr. Bruce Metzger, a professor at Princeton University, who analysed the question of precision in copying historic texts. For this purpose, he made a comparison of Homer's Iliad, a religious text from ancient Greek, The Mahabharata, which is a religious Hindu text, and the New Testament. Approximately 5% of the text of the Iliad was distorted and approximately 10% of the Mahabharata was distorted. You are probably not surprised that, once again, the New Testament passed the test with excellence. The results were almost unbelievable! There were distortions in 40 out of 2,000 verses, which works out at 0.2%. What is even more important is that the distortions do not bring into question any of the historical facts or basic dogmas of the Christian faith! It is important to realise that today's scholars know about every disputed place thanks to the amount of textual material that there is of the New Testament. If an uncertainty exists, we know about it. Many of these so called "mistakes" are mainly caused by a grammatical difference or the use of a synonym, whereas the "mistakes" that would be worth mentioning in the context of importance form a very negligible percentage and do not create any tension on any Christian doctrine.

Scholar FF Bruce came to the following conclusion on the basis of these facts,

"The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt. [5]

Other supporting arguments

There are still other lines of argument that support the trustworthiness of the Bible. For example, many critics and uninformed people attack the NT gospel. They ask how it is possible for the authors to remember Jesus' words and many concrete situations years later when Jesus himself did not leave any written record. I would like to react in the following way:

- A culture of oral tradition – in the past, the written word was rare. It was not possible to easily access a document. Passages from the Bible were read in the synagogue. Therefore, people were forced to memorise things. People knew whole books from memory and their memorization was rock solid.

- Jesus' words were "unforgettable". The Bible confirms the testimony of people who said, "No one ever spoke like this man!" (John 7:46) Therefore, we can assume that his words were not lost in a sea of often and familiar phrases and information.

- Jesus' words were "melodious". In today's translations of the Bible, this fact is lost. We do not read the Bible in the language in which it was spoken by Jesus. Jesus' words were easily remembered, like a melody. He often used poetic expressions. One example is parallelism, which made memorization easier.

- Jesus repeated his teachings on many occasions and in various places. Many people had the opportunity to remember Jesus' words better.

God's leading played a role

This is probably the most important argument of all. I am, however, presenting it in the final place in order to stress that even without theological arguments, it is still possible to support the trustworthiness of the Bible. If the Bible truly is the Word of God, then it is logical that God himself is the guarantor that His Word will be delivered to us entirely and intact. Therefore, for me, the previous points of evidence already presented are not authoritative. They are though an encouragement and confirmation of that which I already believe – that God is all-powerful and sovereign and that it is possible to trust Him.

Dr. Clark H. Pinnock, a professor of systematic theology at Regent College states:

"There exists no document from the ancient world witnessed by so excellent a set of textual and historical testimonies... Skepticism regarding the historical credentials of Christianity is based upon an irrational bias." [10]

Summation

On the basis of the facts presented above, we can, with a great measure of certainty claim that we have an ample amount of documented material with a very short time period between the events themselves and the written accounts, and with a negligible degree of error. All of this evidence in and of itself does not prove the authenticity of the events described, however they are a strong argument in the case of the Bible's claims.