This item has been flagged as inapproriate content. Are you sure you want to view it?
Yes, I want to view it!

Not thinking it necessary to re-invent the wheel, these studies speak for themselves regarding the reliability of Biblical manuscripts.  The closer the copy to the time of the creation of the original autograph, the greater the degree of accurancy.  In light of this established principle alone, there is not one ancient documant that can come near to the accurancy and reliablity of the biblical manuscripts. Manuscript evidence for superior New Testament reliability The New Testament is constantly under attack and its reliability and accuracy are often contested by critics. But, if the critics want to disregard the New Testament, then they must also disregard other ancient writings by Plato, Aristotle, and Homer. This is because the New Testament documents are better preserved and more numerous than any other ancient writing. Because the copies are so numerous, they can be cross checked for accuracy. This process has determined that the biblical documents are extremely consistent and accurate. There are presently 5,686 Greek manuscripts in existence today for the New Testament. If we were to compare the number of New Testament manuscripts to other ancient writings, we find that the New Testament manuscripts far outweigh the others in quantity. Author -Date Written - Earliest Copy -Time Span between original & copy -  #of Copies - Accuracy of Copies Lucretius                     died 55 or 53 B.C.         1100 yrs                      2 ---- Pliny                61-113 A.D.         850 A.D.          750 yrs                         7 ---- Plato             427-347 B.C.        900 A.D.          1200 yrs                       7 ---- Demosthenes   4th Cent. B.C.   1100 A.D.       800 yrs                       8 ---- Herodotus   480-425 B.C.         900 A.D.         1300 yrs                       8 ---- Suetonius        75-160 A.D.       950 A.D.           800 yrs                        8 ---- Thucydides       460-400 B.C.   900 A.D.         1300 yrs                       8 ---- Euripides      480-406 B.C.      1100 A.D.         1300 yrs                       9 ---- Aristophanes     450-385 B.C.  900 A.D.         1200 yrs                      10 ---- Caesar       100-44 B.C.              900 A.D.         1000 yrs                      10 ---- Livy          59 BC-AD 17 ---- ???                                                               20 ---- Tacitus   circa 100 A.D.             1100 A.D.         1000 yrs                     20 ---- Aristotle   384-322 B.C.            1100 A.D.         1400 yrs                     49 ---- Sophocles   496-406 B.C.        1000 A.D.         1400 yrs                     193 ---- Homer (Iliad)     900 B.C.             400 B.C.           500 yrs                     643                    95% New Testament 1st Cent. A.D. (50-100 A.D). 2nd Cent. A.D. (c. 130 A.D. f.) less than 100 years 5600    99.5% As you can see, there are thousands more New Testament Greek manuscripts than any other ancient writing. The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure. That is an amazing accuracy. In addition there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages. The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over 24,000. Almost all biblical scholars agree that the New Testament documents were all written before the close of the first century. If Jesus was crucified in 30 A.D., then that means that the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years. This is important because it means there were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the first century that contest the New Testament texts. Furthermore, another important aspect of this discussion is the fact that we have a fragment of the gospel of John that dates back to around 29 years from the original writing. This is extremely close to the original writing date. This is simply unheard of in any other ancient writing and it demonstrates that the Gospel of John is a first century document. Below is a chart with some of the oldest extant New Testament manuscripts compared to when they were originally penned. Compare these time spans with the next closest which is Homer's Iliad where the closest copy from the original is 500 years later. Undoubtedly, that period of time allows for more textual corruption in its transmission. How much less so for the New Testament documents? Important                           Date                MSS Date           Approx Time Span          Location Manuscript                                                 Original Papyri                                                          Written p52  (John Rylands   /  / 96AD     /          125A.D.     /             29 years         /            John Rylands Library Fragment)3                                                                                                                        Manchester, Eng P46  (Chester Beatty/   50's-70's circa  /  200 AD   /           150 years      / Chester Betty Museum, Dublin, Papyrus)                                                                                                               Michigan, Univ of Michigan Libr. P66 (Bodmer Papyrus)     /   70's circa   /      200 AD     /             130 years     /   Cologne, Geneva P67                              /     60's circa  /      200 AD    /              130 years    /    Barcelona, Fundacion, San Lucas If the critics of the Bible dismiss the New Testament as reliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the other authors mentioned in the chart at the beginning of the paper. On the other hand, if the critics acknowledge the historicity and writings of those other individuals, then they must also retain the historicity and writings of the New Testament authors; after all, the evidence for the New Testament's reliability is far greater than the others. The Christian has substantially superior criteria for affirming the New Testament documents than he does for any other ancient writing. It is good evidence on which to base the trust in the reliability of the New Testament. Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament There are more than 24,000 partial and complete manuscript copies of the New Testament. These manuscript copies are very ancient and they are available for inspection now. There are also some 86,000 quotations from the early church fathers and several thousand Lectionaries (church-service books containing Scripture quotations used in the early centuries of Christianity). Bottom line: the New Testament has an overwhelming amount of evidence supporting its reliability. The Variants in the New Testament Manuscripts Are Minimal In the many thousands of manuscript copies we possess of the New Testament, scholars have discovered that there are some 150,000 "variants." This may seem like a staggering figure to the uninformed mind. But to those who study the issue, the numbers are not so damning as it may initially appear. Indeed, a look at the hard evidence shows that the New Testament manuscripts are amazingly accurate and trustworthy. To begin, we must emphasize that out of these 150,000 variants, 99 percent hold virtually no significance whatsoever. Many of these variants simply involve a missing letter in a word; some involve reversing the order of two words (such as "Christ Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ"); some may involve the absence of one or more insignificant words. Really, when all the facts are put on the table, only about 50 of the variants have any real significance - and even then, no doctrine of the Christian faith or any moral commandment is effected by them. For more than ninety-nine percent of the cases the original text can be reconstructed to a practical certainty. Even in the few cases where some perplexity remains, this does not impinge on the meaning of Scripture to the point of clouding a tenet of the faith or a mandate of life. Thus, in the Bible as we have it (and as it is conveyed to us through faithful translations) we do have for practical purposes the very Word of God, inasmuch as the manuscripts do convey to us the complete vital truth of the originals. By practicing the science of textual criticism - comparing all the available manuscripts with each other - we can come to an assurance regarding what the original document must have said. Let us suppose we have five manuscript copies of an original document that no longer exists. Each of the manuscript copies are different. Our goal is to compare the manuscript copies and ascertain what the original must have said. Here are the five copies: Manuscript #1: Jesus Christ is the Savior of the whole worl. Manuscript #2: Christ Jesus is the Savior of the whole world. Manuscript #3: Jesus Christ s the Savior of the whole world. Manuscript #4: Jesus Christ is th Savior of the whle world. Manuscript #5: Jesus Christ is the Savor of the whole wrld. Could you, by comparing the manuscript copies, ascertain what the original document said with a high degree of certainty that you are correct? Of course you could. This illustration may be extremely simplistic, but a great majority of the 150,000 variants are solved by the above methodology. By comparing the various manuscripts, all of which contain very minor differences like the above, it becomes fairly clear what the original must have said. Most of the manuscript variations concern matters of spelling, word order, tenses, and the like; no single doctrine is affected by them in any way. We must also emphasize that the sheer volume of manuscripts we possess greatly narrows the margin of doubt regarding what the original biblical document said. If the number of [manuscripts] increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small. The New Testament Versus Other Ancient Books By comparing the manuscript support for the Bible with manuscript support for other ancient documents and books, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that no other ancient piece of literature can stand up to the Bible. Manuscript support for the Bible is unparalleled! There are more [New Testament] manuscripts copied with greater accuracy and earlier dating than for any secular classic from antiquity. Rene Pache adds, "The historical books of antiquity have a documentation infinitely less solid." Dr. Benjamin Warfield concludes, "If we compare the present state of the text of the New Testament with that of no matter what other ancient work, we must...declare it marvelously exact." Norman Geisler makes several key observations for our consideration: No other book is even a close second to the Bible on either the number or early dating of the copies. The average secular work from antiquity survives on only a handful of manuscripts; the New Testament boasts thousands. The average gap between the original composition and the earliest copy is over 1,000 years for other books. The New Testament, however, has a fragment within one generation from its original composition, whole books within about 100 years from the time of the autograph [original manuscript], most of the New Testament in less than 200 years, and the entire New Testament within 250 years from the date of its completion. The degree of accuracy of the copies is greater for the New Testament than for other books that can be compared. Most books do not survive with enough manuscripts that make comparison possible. From this documentary evidence, then, it is clear that the New Testament writings are superior to comparable ancient writings. "The records for the New Testament are vastly more abundant, clearly more ancient, and considerably more accurate in their text."