Historical Accuracy of the Bible Part 1 (of 3)

Taken from http://www.xenos.org/teachings/topical/objections/accurate.htm

Has the Bible been transmitted accurately?

WHY IMPORTANT: How can it possibly be a reliable source of spiritual truth if we are unable to determine what it said?

MISCONCEPTION: Its contents have been so distorted by oral transmission and sloppy copyists through the centuries that we can have no assurance that what we now possess even approximates what was originally written (2ND GRADE TEACHER TELLING STORY AROUND CIRCLE).

RESPONSE: The evidence shows that the Bible has been transmitted accurately in a way far surpassing any other ancient work.

OLD TESTAMENT (composed 1400-400 BC)

There are a fairly small number of extant Hebrew manuscripts because the Jewish scribes ceremonially buried imperfect and worn manuscripts, because many manuscripts were destroyed through their turbulent history, and because after the text was standardized (Massoretic) by 6th cent. AD, all manuscripts which deviated from it were eliminated. However:

......Other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) writings evidence a painstaking care in copying any important documents. K. A. Kitchen cites an Egyptian funerary papyrus of about 1400 BC states: "(The book) is completed from its beginning to its end, having been copied, revised, compared and verified sign by sign."[1]

......Because of their reverence for scripture, Jewish scribes exercised extreme care in making new copies of the Old Testament. The number of letters, words and lines were counted, and the middle letters of the Pentateuch and whole Old Testaments were determined. If a single mistake was discovered, the entire manuscript was destroyed. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the 1st century AD, said: "We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own scriptures. For, although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured either to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable."[2]

Striking evidence of this accuracy of transmission is found by the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947). Prior to their discovery, our earliest copies and fragments dated to around 1000 AD - fully 1400 to 2400 years after they were written. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain copies of virtually the whole Old Testament which can be dated to 400 B.C. to 70 A.D. Opponents predicted significant discrepansies between the DSS Old Testament and the Massoretic text. But when the DSS were compared to these documents, they were found to be virtually identical. This demonstrates the accuracy of transmission between c. 200 BC and 1200 AD.

.....World-renowned Old Testament scholar W. F. Albright, says: "We may rest assured that the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, though not infallible, has been preserved with an accuracy perhaps unparalleled in any other Near Eastern literature."[3]

NEW TESTAMENT

The evidence for its accurate transmission is exceptional. We have full copies dated to 325-350 AD, and fragments dated to within 120 AD. The number of ancient copies available, the quality of those copies, and the time span between them and the original documents is unsurpassed among ancient documents. (SEE CHART)

F. F. Bruce: "The evidence for (the accurate transmission of) our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt."[4]

John Warwick Montgomery: "To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament."[5]

Sir Frederick Kenyon, former director and principal librarian of the British Museum and one of the foremost experts on ancient manuscripts: "The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the (New Testament has) come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established."[6]