Bible preserved (Manuscript Evidence)
Christian and Ayhse discuss the wealth of manuscript evidence there is for the Bible.
Ayhse: Hi there, can I ask you a question?
Christian: Of course.
Ayhse: I see you are out here today on the streets sharing with people about Christianity. The thing is that everyone knows that the Bible is corrupted. One of our scholars was telling us that your original manuscripts are full of errors and that you don’t even have the original copies.
Christian: Well, yes, you are right to say there are many differences between the earliest manuscripts of the NT, and you are 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 dating to the early 2nd century.
Ayhse: So, you admit then that the New Testament is corrupt then?
Christian: Well, no, actually, the opposite is true.
Ayhse: 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 many different places. Of course, some mistakes were made when copying, like the spelling of names and places, and the order of words. The reason there are so many differences, is that we have tens of thousands of manuscripts and pages of the New Testament.
Ayhse: 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 affect anything we believe about Jesus. In fact, whenever there is a difference significant enough to mention, it is footnoted in our Bibles. No difference affects any key teaching of Christianity.
Ayhse: The way our scholar was explaining it, it sounded much worse than that.
Christian: Actually, there is more evidence to show the New Testament is reliable. Once the New Testament was written, it was translated into other languages like Syriac, Coptic, and Latin and those translations where also copied and distributed to many different places. The text of the New Testament was also written down as lectionaries, special texts used as part of church services in the earliest centuries of the church. Also, from 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 96% of John’s Gospel can be reconstructed from their writings. When we study all of these sources we see that a single text has been preserved. We also have a complete copy of the New Testament called Codex Sinaiticus dating back to 325 AD, hundreds of years before Islam.
Ayhse: 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 it’s the thing, if someone did want to change it, they would have to go back and change all of these manuscripts and copies, in many languages. That wouldn’t have been possible…