FreeBibleStudy.org
Welcome!  "It has really changed my life."Andrew, Michigan
Home
 
Lesson 3 - Is the Bible reliable?

The Original Manuscripts

scroll
Dead Sea Scroll
Ancient books, like the Bible, typically or totally do not have any surviving original manuscripts. As you will see below, only varying quantities of ancient copies of them exist. So then there are no known original manuscripts of any of the books of the Bible. All we have are ancient copies of the originals. Why have the original manuscripts perished? Here are some very likely reasons why they did not survive. They needed recopying because the material on which they were written degraded and deteriorated. They were destroyed by the copyists after they made a new copy from them. One thing we know for sure is that the Good News message within the Bible is more important than the technicalities of how we actually got a copy of it. For example, the Bible says, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” (Ro 10:17) This verse teaches that a person can learn to trust God by hearing or reading about the Messiah for themselves, and not primarily by studying historical evidence or lack thereof. Faith comes by hearing, not by seeing (Ro 10:17). After reading the Bible for yourself, then by faith you may begin to trust that the Bible is from God. It is the message in it that convicts and convinces people that the Bible is true, reliable, and trustworthy. Belief in the Son of God does not come by any other means than hearing the message of Him.

Ancient Copy Proofs

Compared to any other ancient book, the Bible is by far, overwhelmingly, and beyond a doubt, the best preserved textually and best supported with ancient copies. For example:

1. Consider & Compare the Total Surviving Copies, Not Originals, of Various Ancient Books

AUTHOR		# OF EXTANT COPIES
Caesar Gallic Wars	10 copies
Livy Roman History   	20 copies
Tacitus Annals	        20 copies
Pliny Secundus History	7 copies
Thucydides History	8 copies
Suetonius de Vita Caesarun	8 copies
Herodotus History	8 copies
Lucretius		2 copies
Catullus		3 copies
Euripides		9 copies
Sophocles		193 copies
Demosthenes	        200 copies (all from one copy)
Aristotle		49 copies (of any one work)
Aristophanes	        10 copies
Professor Metzger reports, “In the entire range of ancient Greek and Latin literature, the ILIAD ranks next to the New Testament in possessing the greatest amount of manuscript testimony.” [(Metzger, 144) Metzger, Bruce M., Chapters in the History of the New Testament Textual Criticism, Grand Rapids MI,Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1963] How many extant copies are there from Homer’s ILIAD? 
Homer ILIAD	        643 copies
That is a remarkable figure. It results partly from the Greeks esteem for the ILIAD, which they regarded as holy. Now consider the even more amazing number of ancient copies available for the N.T. 
New Testament   over 5000 Greek copies				
                over 10,000 copies in Latin
		over 4,000 copies in Slavic
		over 2,000 copies in Ethioptic
		over 2,000 copies in Armenian
		over 350 copies in Syriac; etc.
Lest we seem to exaggerate, we have understated figures in this chart. The authoritative Kurzgefasste Liste der grieschischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (1994), edited by Kurt and Barbara Aland, lists the following figures for Greek manuscripts of the New Testament: papyri 99; uncials 306; miniscules 2855; lectionaries 2396; total: 5656 (McDowell, NEDV, 36). More recent research by journalist Lee Strobel shows the following: papyri 99; uncials 306; miniscules 2856; lectionaries 2403; total: 5664. [(Strobel, 62-63), Strobel, Lee, The Case for Christ, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998] Counts may vary slightly depending on how fragments are classified.

.... more about this in the Introduction to the Bible for Believers & Skeptics