Nyheter

Two question that a rationally thinking person ought to ask about the Bible, and any written document are: 1) Is what we have here, the same as what was written in the original manuscripts? Or was it changed along the line? 2) Even if it is the same – Is it true?

Lets start with question 1. Is it the same as the original, or has it changed?

Historians and archologists apply historiography and something called the bibliographical test.

The first question that they ask is: How long time is there between the original writing (the Autágrapha), and the oldest manuscripts that we have? The shorter the timespan, the more reliable. (Now Im not gonna go into the details of how you determine the age of a manuscript; but its not difficult. Historians can pretty easily determine how old a manuscrip is).

We need to compare The New Testament with other litterature of antiquity, to see if there is more or less reason to trust The New Testament, than the rest of mankind’s history:

Pliny the Younger (Plinius Secundus 61 AD – 112 AD) from the time he wrote to the earliest surviving manuscripts, there’s a timespan of 750 years. Ceacar wrote the Gallic Wars in the first century. The earliest manuscript is from 1000 years after. With Plato the earliest manuscript from the time he wrote is 1200 years after. Aristoteles wrote his works atoun 340 b.c. The earliest manuscripts are from 1100 AD, that 1400 years after. Socrates 1400 years… Euripides 1500 years,

But when it comes to The New Testament our earliest documents are from 25-75 years after the original. So just timewise, looking at the time between the original and the earliest surviving documents, The New Testament, has 10-20 times better evidence than the rest of history.

The second question we ask is, how many manuscripts do we have from that period? The greater number of copies you have, the easier it is to with certainty reconstruct the original, cause you can compare them with each other, and see if there is any disagreement.

Cecar and the Gallic Wars – we’ve got 10 manucripts. (which are all from a 1000 years after the original). 10! But noone at a University questions the authencity of the document. Plato – we’ve got 7 manuscripts (which are 1200 years older than the original. 7! Tacitus – the Roman historian – less than 20 manuscripts. Theucidites – concidered one of the most acuurate historians of antiquities, we’ve got only 7 manuscripts. All a 1300 years after he died. Heurodites – 8 manuscripts. Pliny the Younger – 7 manuscripts. Sofacles 193, Europedes 9, Aristotilus 49. All of these with more than a 1000 years after the original. It’s what we base our entire knowledge of ancient history of. Yet, they are all concider authentic and reliable.

The New Testament has more than 24.600 manuscripts dating from 25-100 after the original. Now how unique is that? Well, the number two book in manuscript authority in all of history is The Illiad, by Homer with 643 manuscripts. Just numberwise there are more evidence to examine for the authencicity of The New Testament, than any ten pieces of ancient work combined.

The the evidence for The New Testament is actually so strong, that you could take every Bible and destroy it and every manuscript and burn it. And within 300 years of Christ – closer than any other piece of ancient litterature, one could reconstruct the Bible completely except for 11 verses, just from non-biblical references. Because other manuscript quote the Bible in their work. The Church-Fathers, for example, would quote the Bible extensively, often entire chapters, when they wrote letters or gave sermons. Just from the early church fathers there are more than 86000 quotations of The New Testament. So, without any Bible or any manuscript, just from these 86000 quotations from the church father, you could reconstruct the entire New testament.

So time-wise, and number-wise, the Bible stands alone. There is more evidence for the authencity of the New Testament, than any other litterature of antiquity.

Dan Hegelund