Aletheia

Reliability of Scripture: historians and manuscripts

The Bible we have today is not the Bible. The Bible is the original manuscripts written by the original authors. What we have today are but copies of the originals. This leaves open objections that much was lost in translating and copying, but we will get there in a moment. Lets begin with the standards that historians use to determine whether or not a document is historically reliable outside of archaeology.

It is a statement of dogma for historians that there are no original ancient manuscripts after AD 1,000. By ancient they mean well before approximately AD 200 or so and before. After AD 1,000 all ancient documents were copies because the originals had wasted away from age. Therefore, since we won't have any original ancient documents, we have copies. Historians hold that in order for a document to be reliable, they must have 5 copies of it no later than 1,000 after the original document. They have this rule because the accuracy of the copies is determined by cross-referencing. They compare the documents with each other to check for discrepancies and if they find any, the majority rules i.e. if they have 2 that say one thing and 3 that say another, then they consider the 3 to be correct and the other 2 to be erroneous (false). Also, the 5 copies let the historians know 2 things about the original document. One, that it was important and two that it was reliable. No one would copy something unimportant or inaccurate 5 times especially in those times when it took a lifetime to copy a manuscript. One final thing that accounts for the accuracy of a document is if the copy is in the original language. This way, nothing was lost in translation.

Now that we know the standards, lets look at how historians ignore them when claiming historical accuracy of ancient historians. Tacitus was a Roman historian who wrote around the time of AD 116. One copy was made in AD 850. There is an approximate 700-yr. Difference there, no big deal, but there is only one copy, yet historians claim him to be very accurate. Josephus is a very famous Jewish Historian from about AD 70 who is mentioned in most history textbooks. We have 9 copies of his work in Greek hence nothing lost in translation. This is no problem, except that they are all in the 11th and 12th centuries. There is and 1,100 year difference there. That is breaking the rule both of being within 1,000 years of the original and being before AD 1,000. Finally, of Homer's "Illiad" written in 800 BC, we have 650 fragments all copies from the 2nd and 3rd century which would be 1,000 years after the original. Each of these is held to be true by most all people yet the evidence thereof is supremely lacking.

Now that we have seen how the world's history doesn't stand up to historians' standards, lets have a look at the New Testament. To begin with, we have 99 Papyrus copies copied in AD 200 to AD 300 of original documents written in AD 60 to AD 80. They were found in Egypt yet were written in Greek. This attests two things. One, that it was very important because the writings traveled from Jerusalem to Egypt within 30 - 50 years after the original event (that being the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus). Second that it didn't lose anything in translation. These are much more than Josephus' 9 copies and much more recent to the original document. Next, we have the John Riley Papyrus. It is a little 3 x 5 piece of papyrus on which is copied 5 verses from the gospel of John. This was written in Greek and found in Egypt. It was copied between AD 98 and AD 150. Much less than 1,000 years though only one document.

Those were but a few specific examples. The total number of documents we have now is astounding. 306 parchment in Greek copied from 325-350, 2,856 copies in AD 800, 2,403 Lectionaries, 5,664 Greek documents, 8,000 to 10,000 in Latin, and 8000 in Ethiopian, Armenian, and Syrian to mention most. In totality, we have over 24,000 copies well within 1,000 years of the original event. In fact, we even have an entire New Testament that was put together in AD 350 called the Codex Sinaiticus. In summary, the Bible we have today is the most accurate accounted copy of ancient text in the world. Just remember that this in and of itself is nothing to base one's life on. Historical facts are not spiritual truths.

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