Bible Preserved (Manuscript Evidence)
Christian and Ayshe discuss the wealth of manuscript evidence there is for the Bible.
Ayshe: Hi there, can I ask you a question?
Christian: Of course.
Ayshe: I see you’re out here today, on the streets, sharing with people about Christianity. The thing is, everyone knows that the Bible is corrupted. One of our scholars was telling us that your earliest manuscripts are full of errors and that you don’t even have the original copies.
Christian: Well, yes, you’re right to say there are many differences between the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament. You’re also right in saying that we don’t have the original copies. But, actually, we have many thousands of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Some date to the early second century.
Ayshe: So, you admit that the New Testament is corrupted, then?
Christian: Well, no. Actually, the opposite is true.
Ayshe: How can that be? I thought you said there have been many changes made to the New Testament.
Christian: Well, what you have to realise is that, when the New Testament was first written, it was copied many times and sent to lots of different places. Of course, some mistakes were made when copying, like the spellings of names and places, and with the order of words. The reason for so many differences is that we have tens of thousands of manuscripts and pages of the New Testament.
Ayshe: So, are there any manuscripts that say that Jesus isn’t God, or that he didn’t rise from the dead?
Christian: No. None of the changes affects anything we believe about Jesus. In fact, whenever there is a difference significant enough to mention, it’s footnoted in our Bibles. No difference affects any key teaching of Christianity.
Ayshe: Our scholar made it sound much worse than that!
Christian: Actually, there is more evidence to show the New Testament is reliable. Once it was written, it was translated into other languages, like Syriac, Coptic and Latin, and those translations were copied and distributed to many different places. The text of the New Testament was also written down in lectionaries: special texts used in services in the earliest centuries of the church. Also, within the lifetime of the disciples of Jesus, God raised up other men, called the Church Fathers, who wrote many books and letters defending Christianity from false teachers. When they wrote, they quoted the Bible many, many times. In fact, ninety-six per cent of John’s Gospel can be reconstructed from their writings. When we study all these sources, we can see that a single text has been preserved. We also have a complete copy of the New Testament called the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates back to 325 AD – hundreds of years before Islam began.
Ayshe: If I’m honest, that does seem like a lot of evidence – more than we have for the Quran.
Christian: It is a lot. And here’s the thing: if someone did want to change it, they would have to go back and change all those manuscripts and copies, in many languages. That wouldn’t be possible.