{"id":704,"date":"2015-11-16T18:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T00:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/?p=704"},"modified":"2015-11-10T10:45:38","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T16:45:38","slug":"practical-apologetics-reliability-of-the-bible-part-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/?p=704","title":{"rendered":"Practical Apologetics &#8211; Reliability of the Bible, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Practical-Apologetics-Graphic-e1447173892523.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-739 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Practical-Apologetics-Graphic-e1447173892523-300x159.jpg?resize=300%2C159\" alt=\"Practical Apologetics Graphic\" width=\"300\" height=\"159\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Practical-Apologetics-Graphic-e1447173892523.jpg?resize=300%2C159 300w, https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Practical-Apologetics-Graphic-e1447173892523.jpg?resize=1024%2C544 1024w, https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Practical-Apologetics-Graphic-e1447173892523.jpg?w=1637 1637w, https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Practical-Apologetics-Graphic-e1447173892523.jpg?w=1228 1228w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>Welcome to the first topic of what I hope will be a series of articles on &#8220;Practical Apologetics.&#8221;\u00a0 This series is <strong>not<\/strong> intended to be any sort of a scholarly work.\u00a0 Its goal is to be a source of practical application for the layman in simple articles that can be easily digested.\u00a0 To prepare against the hit pieces making their way through the various documentary channels (especially since it is Christmas\u00a0season as I write), this first article addresses a favorite attack made against Christians; the reliability of the Bible.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Frankly, I find it amazing that biblical reliability is even a direction of attack any more.\u00a0 There have been so many books, archeological findings and academic papers written on the subject that one would think the subject closed.\u00a0 Sadly, far too few Christian leaders have taken the effort to train people in defending even the most basic attack.\u00a0 For me, the difficulty is not in defending scripture but that there is so much information that it can be difficult to avoid overwhelming the student.\u00a0 Hopefully, I can find that middle ground of useful information without glazing over people&#8217;s eyes.<\/p>\n<p>I am going to focus on three areas that seem to be the biggest target areas for biblical reliability in the popular culture and provide some answers to each of these challenges.\u00a0 These are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The preservation of the original manuscripts.<\/li>\n<li>The authorship of the books of the Bible.<\/li>\n<li>What books make up, or should make up, the Bible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are certainly many other areas of attack, but these have been the most common in my experience.\u00a0 I will take each of these topics as a single article.\u00a0 In this first article we will discuss the preservation of the Bible through history.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Challenge<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The obvious issue on the preservation of the Bible is that it was originally written a very long time ago.\u00a0 So long ago that we no longer have the original copies by the original authors.\u00a0 All we have to go from are copies of copies that were made long after the originals.\u00a0 There is the additional problem that all of these copies were done by hand.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not difficult to see that a lot of errors could have slipped in between the time that the words were first written and the copy that is in our hands on Sunday at church.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Preservation of the Old Testament<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Attacks against the Bible almost always start with the question of, &#8220;How do we know the Bible we have today accurately reflects what was written thousands of years ago?&#8221;\u00a0 Asked in an honest manner, this is actually an excellent questions; one every Christian should be able to answer.\u00a0 How <em>do<\/em> we know if today&#8217;s texts reflect the originals?\u00a0 Can we know this with any sense of certainty?<\/p>\n<p>The answer is an easy, &#8220;Yes.&#8221;\u00a0 And for many reasons.<\/p>\n<p>For the Old Testament, archeology and Jewish reverence of scripture have come to our assistance.\u00a0 The Jewish priesthood was meticulous in its method of preserving scripture.\u00a0 In the last 100 years, especially, archeological finds have been able to test how well the Jews did in this preservation.<\/p>\n<p>To copy scripture, Jewish scribes had very strict rules.\u00a0 Some of these rules involved aspects of ritual bathing for purification or special rules in writing the name of God (YWYH).\u00a0 There were rules governing the types of inks and scrolls used.\u00a0 Rules such as these, not only showed a reverence to God, but also placed the copyist in a mindset that encouraged accuracy of his work.<\/p>\n<p>Other rules were specific to ensuring an accurate copy.\u00a0 Scrolls had to be a specific size so that, for example, the last line of the Torah would be on the last line of the scroll.\u00a0 There were strict rules on both line and letter spacing.\u00a0 Copyists were not allowed to copy from memory and repeated the words aloud as they worked. \u00a0Touch, vision and sound all worked together to prevent mistakes.\u00a0 <strong><em>Any<\/em><\/strong> mistake on the page made during the copying resulted in the entire page being destroyed and the scribe starting over.\u00a0 Three such mistakes on the scroll and the entire scroll was destroyed.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most fascinating rule for me was that every letter had a numeric value.\u00a0 Once completed, the text would be counted, not just to see if the word totals and character totals was correct, but the scribe would also verify that the total of the <em>values<\/em> of the characters were correct.\u00a0 This type of check is a method that computer programmers use <strong><u>today<\/u><\/strong> to ensure that files have been copied correctly.<\/p>\n<p>Do we have any evidence as to how well these precautions worked?\u00a0 After all, the copying was done by imperfect humans over the course of many centuries, so errors could have slipped in.\u00a0 To make it even more challenging, for a long time our oldest complete Hebrew Old Testament (called the Masoretic Text) dated back only to the 10th century (i.e. 900 A.D.).<\/p>\n<p><em>Is there a way to test this?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Yes!\u00a0 The way came about beginning in 1946.\u00a0 This was the year a young shepherd boy discovered what would become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.\u00a0 Dating the various scrolls put their age between 200 B.C. to 1 A.D. \u00a0We now have a source 1000 years older against which we can compare our copies.\u00a0 This also brings us 500 years or closer to the original manuscripts by the God-inspired authors.\u00a0 The scrolls include all or parts of all but one of the books of the Old Testament.\u00a0 Only the book of Esther is missing.<\/p>\n<p><em>So how does the comparison fare?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The comparisons were extremely accurate.\u00a0 One of the great Bible scholars of the 20th century, Gleason Archer, described it as, &#8220;Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave 1 near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscripts previously known (A.D. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the test.\u00a0 The five percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slops of the pen and variations in spelling.&#8221;\u00a0 More important, there are no doctrinal changes in <strong><em>any<\/em><\/strong> of the variations of the texts.<\/p>\n<p>Again, this is but one example.\u00a0 The study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, has given a consistent message of the accuracy of the Old Testament.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Preservation of the New Testament<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In many ways we have an easier time with the New Testament.\u00a0 Being more recent documents we should expect to have more sources available.\u00a0 There should be fewer gaps between when the original was written and our earliest copies.\u00a0 There should also be less variation between copies.\u00a0 Before we look at the actual numbers for the New Testament, let&#8217;s consider some other well known and important ancient documents.\u00a0 Josh McDowell&#8217;s <em>Evidence That Demands a Verdict<\/em> has an excellent table that compiles the number of copies and the time gap between the original and our earliest copies.\u00a0 It is based on these numbers that these ancient works accurately preserved.\u00a0 Just consider a few of them:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\"><strong>Author<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><strong>Book<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\"><strong>Date <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Written<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"252\"><strong>Earliest Copies<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"126\"><strong>Time Gap<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"117\"><strong>No. of Copies<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\">Plato<\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\">400 B.C.<\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~900 A.D.<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~1,300 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\">7<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\">Caesar<\/td>\n<td width=\"144\">Gallic Wars<\/td>\n<td width=\"148\">100-44 B.C.<\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~900 A.D.<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~1,000 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\">10<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\">Pliny Secundus<\/td>\n<td width=\"144\">Natural History<\/td>\n<td width=\"148\">31-135 A.D.<\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~850 A.D.<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~750 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\">7<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\">Tacitus<\/td>\n<td width=\"144\">Annals<\/td>\n<td width=\"148\">100 A.D.<\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~1100 A.D.<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~1,000 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\">20<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Notice that the time gap is huge, often a thousand years and more, between the time the books were written and the earliest copies (or partial copies) that still exist.\u00a0 It is also important to notice that there is typically only a handful of copies.\u00a0 Yet we consider these works accurately persevered.\u00a0 This is only a sampling, too.\u00a0 If you look into this on your own you will find this trend repeated over and over.<\/p>\n<p>Next, let&#8217;s consider the second best preserved book in human history.\u00a0 This would be <em>The Iliad<\/em> by Homer.\u00a0 <em>The Iliad<\/em> plus <em>The Odyssey<\/em> comprise the greatest epics of Greek literature.\u00a0 There has been a lot of debate amongst experts regarding details of the author or extent to which it represents history, but there would be little argument that this is the most important piece of literature to the ancient Greeks.\u00a0 For this important work, we find these dates:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\"><strong>Author<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><strong>Book<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\"><strong>Date <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Written<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"252\"><strong>Earliest Copies<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"126\"><strong>Time Gap<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"117\"><strong>No. of Copies<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\">Homer<\/td>\n<td width=\"144\">Iliad<\/td>\n<td width=\"148\">800 B.C.<\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~400 B.C.<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~400 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\">643<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>I should point out that the earliest <em>complete<\/em> copy is dated around the 10th century (i.e. 900 A.D.) which is a gap of approximately 1,700 years.\u00a0 Nevertheless, with the sheer number of copies available, I doubt that anyone would question whether <em>The Iliad<\/em> has been accurately preserved.<\/p>\n<p>How, then, does the New Testament fare when compared to this standard?\u00a0 The numbers speak for themselves:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\"><strong>Author<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><strong>Book<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\"><strong>Date <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Written<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"252\"><strong>Earliest Copies<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"126\"><strong>Time Gap<\/strong><\/td>\n<td width=\"117\"><strong>No. of Copies<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\">New Testament<\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\">50-100 A.D.<\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~114 A.D. (Fragments)<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~50+ yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~200 A.D. (Books)<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~100 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~250 A.D. (most of NT)<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~150 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"151\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"144\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"148\"><\/td>\n<td width=\"252\">~325 A.D. (complete NT)<\/td>\n<td width=\"126\">~225 yrs<\/td>\n<td width=\"117\">&gt;5,600<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>To answer the most obvious question; no, the number of copies is not an error.\u00a0 There are more than five thousand, six hundred copies and partial copies of the New Testament books available, with the oldest complete New Testament only 325 years after the various books and letters that make up the New Testament were written.<\/p>\n<p>Ok, I am not being entirely accurate here.\u00a0 That&#8217;s 5,600 copies in Greek, the original language in which the New Testament books were written.\u00a0 The New Testament was translated into other languages in the ancient world.\u00a0 Often.\u00a0 <strong><em><u>If you include translations into languages like Latin, Syraic, Arabaic, etc. then the number of copies increases to more than 25,000!\u00a0 <\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But not only is it well preserved, there is a strong case for it being preserved <em>accurately<\/em>.\u00a0 The simple fact that the earliest copies has such a short gap in time from the originals means that there is far less likelihood of error.\u00a0 The incredible number of copies allow us to cross-reference the text and further filter out any possible errors.\u00a0 Closely related to this, we can use the many translations to also cross-check accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>There is still another check we can make on the New Testament.\u00a0 Not only do we have the many copies, but we find extensive quotes from the New Testament in letters by the early church fathers.\u00a0 Obviously, these are not as good as going back to primary copies.\u00a0 Just like us, early writers may have used paraphrases or inexact quotes.\u00a0 Still, they are worth looking at from the perspective of strengthening our case.\u00a0 According to theologian Norman Geisler, there are more than 36,000 citations from New Testament scripture that date prior to the first Council of Nicaea in 335 A.D.\u00a0 In fact, the quotations are so extensive that we could accurately reconstruct the entire New Testament.\u00a0 Again, I would caution people that this is not so much an argument to <em>establish<\/em> accuracy but to help <em>confirm<\/em> it.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line is that the New Testament books were originally written very close to the date of the events.\u00a0 This is clear from the dates of our earliest copies and we will discuss this further when we talk about the authors of the books and which books belong in the New Testament.\u00a0 The gap between events is very short compared to any other ancient work of history.\u00a0 As we see later this degree of preservation will play a role in establishing the accuracy of the events recorded.\u00a0 In parts two and three, we will take a look at some of these arguments.<\/p>\n<p>To conclude, I would strongly urge readers to investigate these matters on their own.\u00a0 In this paper, I have tried to keep the information at a simpler level to help people new to the subject.\u00a0 There are many more &#8211; and much more advanced &#8211; resources on this subject available.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the first topic of what I hope will be a series of articles on &#8220;Practical Apologetics.&#8221;\u00a0 This series is not intended to be any sort of a scholarly work.\u00a0 Its goal is to be a source of practical application for the layman in simple articles that can be easily digested.\u00a0 To prepare against [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Practical Apologetics - Reliability of the Bible, Part 1.  Why can we trust it?","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[16,108,76,20,21,109,73,30,110,50],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ymfK-bm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechristiangeek.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}