Down through the last few hundred years many have scoffed at the reliability of the Bible. Comments such as how can we trust a 2,000 year-old book to be an accurate copy of the original, are often heard? But if the Bible is a supernatural book, as we Christians contend it is, then we should expect that God can preserve His word – even 2,000+ years after it was written. In order to see if the New Testament (NT) has stood the test of time we need to subject it to one of the main tests that historians use – the bibliographical test.
Simply put the bibliographical test is used to examine the historicity of ancient documents such as the Bible. Since we don’t have the original manuscripts of any of the 66 books of the Bible (called autographs) we must rely on copies to examine the textural transmission by which the NT documents have come down to us. The bibliographical test therefore seeks to examine how reliable are the copies we do have in relationship to the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time interval between the original and the currently existing copies? So, it stands to reason that the greater the number of copies and the earlier they are to the date of the original (extant) manuscript the better equipped we are to establish and reconstruct a text closer to the original; as well as identify possible errors or differences in subsequent copies.
As we will see below the NT passes the bibliographical test far better than any other literature from ancient times. Not only that but the men who copied the NT documents, the scribes, were so meticulous in their copying art that it defies description. These scribes were not ordinary copyists. Whether they copied the Old or New Testament documents, Christian theologian, Bernard Ramm said: “Jews preserved it as no other manuscript has ever been preserved. With their massora (counting methods) they kept tabs on every letter, syllable, word and paragraph. They had special classes of men within their culture whose sole duty was to preserve and transmit these documents with practically perfect fidelity – scribes, lawyers, massoretes. Whoever counted the letters and syllables and words of Plato or Aristotle? Cicero or Seneca?”1
For an excellent discussion of the bibliographical test of the NT I refer you to an article by Josh McDowell and Clay Jones.2 While the number of manuscripts and the time intervals are always changing, thanks to new discoveries, their chart (dated August 2014) gives us some of the data on both the NT and ancient literature. For example, Caesar compiled his history of the Gallic Wars between 100 and 44 B.C. However, we only know of this event from 251 copies that date 900 years after he lived. Plato wrote his Tetralogies around 400 B.C. We know of them from only 210 copies, the earliest existing from 895 A.D. some 1,300 years later. And we could go on. But when we examine the New Testament documents we see that in comparison to McDowell and Jones’ chart of other ancient literature we have an embarrassment of riches.
When we consider the number of extant manuscripts of the New Testament that are in existence today, the numbers are almost too incredible to imagine. Scholars today possess almost 6,000 ancient Greek New Testament copies and another 18,500 manuscripts of the NT translated into other languages. That totals 24,500 manuscript copies of the New Testament and all of them essentially agree. And the time gap from the original MSS to the earliest extant copies is only about 50 to 100 years. The great New Testament authority Dr. F. J. A. Hort stated that only about one word in a thousand is in sufficient question to require a textural critic to discern the correct reading.3
So, if we say we can’t trust the NT then we might as well not trust any other ancient literature. According to biblical scholar, John Warwick Montgomery: “To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.”4
So, in addition to the vast wealth of early MSS of the NT and the meticulous transcribing work of scribes, we have a huge number of quotations available from the writings of the early church fathers. According to Metzger and Ehrman: “Besides textual evidence derived from New Testament Greek manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic has available the numerous scriptural quotations included in the commentaries, sermons, and other treatises written by the early Church fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.”5
Without a doubt the New Testament has been established with greater certainty than any other ancient book ever penned. Imagine over 24,500 ancient manuscripts are presently in existence. They were written in different languages, during different time periods, in different cultural settings, and by many different people – yet all are almost identical!
1 Bible History (worthyofpraise.org)
2 Bibliographical-Test-Update-08.13.14.pdf (josh.org)
3 Howard F. Vos, Beginnings in Bible Archaeology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1978), pp. 47-48.
4 Is the New Testament Historically Reliable? Part 1 – Greg Enos
When it comes down to it, all of the sinful behavior among unbelievers and believers is a heart attitude of not taking the Word of God seriously and as the absolute standard for living.
For example, if a Christian teen tells her parents she is “gay” or having sex with her boyfriend or doing drugs or getting drunk every weekend, allowing sin in her heart is the problem. But, what is sin? It’s the transgression of the law of God I John 3:4. Where do we find that authoritative law? The Bible. If she is not convinced the Bible is the Word of God and is to be believed and obeyed, she might wander into sin without feeling accountable to the authority of the law. In other words, she will not fear God.
The same is true for the unbeliever but he cannot obey the law. According to Romans 8, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.”
In either case, it comes back to God’s law being believed and obeyed; therefore, a devotion like today’s is a seminal consideration for all discussions about what we believe, what we allow, how we live and who we answer to. Think Garden of Eden. Do you want to love, trust, obey and live for the God of the Bible or do you want to be like God, thinking you are in charge? Taste and see that the Lord is good or take the wrong bite and runaway in shame. Your life depends on what say you about this book.
“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me”
John 5:39
Curt…you might enjoy reading David Jeremiah’s book “Agents of Babylon”, which describes in detail prophecys which came true hundreds of years later.