THE BIBLE AND YOU
Do We Have Valid Testimony to the Life of Christ? The story of Jesus Christ and His early followers is found in the New Testament. But has this source been faithfully passed on to us? And can we believe what is written? What does the evidence tell us?. by Peter Eddington
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he collection of ancient books and letters known as the New Testament or Apostolic Scriptures presents the amazing story of the birth, life, ministry, teachings, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, proclaiming Him the longawaited Messiah or Christ foretold in Old Testament prophecies. Note this bold claim from one of its writers: “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Peter 1:16, emphasis added throughout). But can we trust this statement and the rest of the Apostolic Scriptures? Bible critics have long rejected the New Testament, along with the rest of the Bible, arguing that there’s no way its accounts and teachings as we have them today accurately reflect what was originally written, and even that these weren’t accurate to start with or written by whom they were claimed to be. But is there substance to such criticisms? Is there a way to really know? The short answer is that no, the criticism does not prove substantive, and yes, there are many valid reasons to accept that the New Testament we have today has been faithfully preserved and passed on to us from Jesus’ early followers. This is very important to establish if we are to believe what the Apostolic Scriptures actually say about Jesus, His life and His resurrection. We will briefly go through just four reasons to support the position that we do have an accurate copy of the New Testament along with some other factors to consider. (You could easily research this yourself and come up with more than four.) Many early manuscripts of the Bible To quote from biblical scholars Norman Geisler and Frank Turek in their book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist: “At last count, there are nearly 5,700 hand-written Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. In addition, there are more than 9,000 manuscripts in other languages, (e.g., Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Arabic). Some of 16 Beyond Today
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the nearly 15,000 manuscripts are complete Bibles, others are books or pages, and a few are just fragments . . . “There is nothing in the ancient world that even comes close in terms of manuscript support. The next closest work is the Iliad by Homer, with 643 manuscripts. Most other ancient works survive on fewer than a dozen manuscripts, yet few historians question the historicity of the events those works describe” (2004, p. 225). So we see that there are numerous manuscripts of the New Testament—thousands more than any other writings from the ancient world. For example, people believe that Alexander the Great existed, even though the historical record is relatively sparse. Why shouldn’t we believe that Jesus existed and that we have a reliable record of His life, considering there is so much more evidence for Him than for anyone else in ancient history? Very early manuscripts As Drs. Geisler and Turek further state: “Not only does the New Testament enjoy abundant manuscript support, but it also has manuscripts that were written soon after the originals. The earliest undisputed manuscript is a segment from John 18 . . . Scholars date it between A.D. 117-138, but some say it is even earlier” (p. 226). Some even earlier fragments have been dated to as early as A.D. 50 to 70, although some dispute these claims. Even the most conservative estimates on early New Testament copies of the Bible are dated within 100 years of the original books being penned by the authors. Geisler and Turek point out: “The time gap between the original and the first surviving copy [of the New Testament] is still vastly shorter than anything else from the ancient world. The Iliad has the next shortest gap at about 500 years, most other works are 1,000 years or more from the original. The New Testament gap is about 25 years and may be less” (p. 227). Thus, the earliest known New Testament manuscripts are copies made of the original apostolic manuscripts very soon after they were first written—just a couple of decades or so. For other ancient works the earliest copies we have
