"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching,rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." II Timothy 3:16-17
One of the questions that raises doubts about the veracity of the Bible is some variation of this, "With all the times the Bible has been copied from one language to another, how reliable can it be?"
Yesterday I shared that new Bible translations are not copies of a previous edition of a copy but each new copy of the Bible is translated from original documents.
I showed you how meticulously the Old Testament was copied in the early days and though the methods have changed with modern technology, the integrity with which translation is done has not changed.
This morning you will discover that the documents from which the New Testament is translated are even BETTER than the highly reliable Old Testament originals.
While this gets a bit technical, you will find great encouragement from this morning's facts about how solid the foundation is that supports the New Testament!
Your faith is only as the truths and principles it is based upon, so knowing the Bible is one of the most reliably documents in all of Human History should be reassuring!
Historians and religious scholars use three criteria to rate the reliability of a historical document:
1) The number of manuscripts available
2) The time interval between the date of the original writing and the date when the new manuscript is copied. The shorter the interval the more reliable the document is deemed to be.
3) The quality of the original manuscript from which the subsequent copies have been made is exceptional.
Here are some facts that meet and surpass the standards of reliability!
Historians have great confidence that Emperor Julius Caesar conquered Gaul because they have in their possession ten ancient manuscripts of Caesar's writing on The Gallic Wars. Likewise, there is a high degree of confidence that Socrates lived, that he taught, and that he was executed by drinking hemlock because there exist seven ancient manuscript of Plato's Tetralogies, in which he documents the death of his beloved teacher and mentor.
With those truths in mind, consider how the New Testament compared these additional highly regarded writings:
AUTHOR WHEN WRITTEN EARLIEST COPY TIME SPAN COPIES
Caesar 100-44 BC AD 900 1,000 Years 10
Plato 27-347 BC AD 900 1,200 Years 7
Tacticus AD 100 AD 1,100 1,000 Years 20
Thucydides 460-400 BC AD 900 1,300 Years 8
Aristotle 384-322 BC AD 1,100 1,400 Years 49
Homer (Illiad) 900 BC 400 BC 500 Years 643
New Testament AD 40-100 AD 125 25 Years 24,000
Blind faith? I think not!
By their own standards of reliability, the New Testament has far more veracity that other ancient documents they readily consider classic historical literature!
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