On the New Testament and the Telephone Game...

Living_stone · Apr 20, 2006

A former professor and still good friend of mine wrote this in his book about "The Da Vinci Code". Some of you may have heard this before, but I liked it. It's written in a Q&A form:

But the Da Vinci Code says the bible evolved though countless additions and revisions. After all, there weren't printing presses or copy machines in the ancient world. How do we know that the New Testament we have today is an accurate representation of the original NT?

...Let's compare the NT manuscript traditions to the second best attested work of antiquity: The Iliad, the ancient Greek epic by Homer. Homer wrote The Iliad around 800 BC, but we have no original manuscript of the work. Or modern day editions of this classical work are based on manuscripts that date from long after Homer's lifetime. Of the approzimately 650 extant manuscripts of The Iliad, the oldest dates from around AD 200 to 300 - about 1000 years after Homer's lifetime! Nevertheless, most scholars recognize that these very late copies of The Iliad are reliable representations of Homer's original work, even through they date from more than a millenium after Homer himself.

The New Testament has a much stonger manuscript tradition than The Iliad. First, there are many more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament: we have well over 5000 manuscript copies of the New Testament in whole or in part. Second, these manuscripts are much closer in date to the originals. The New Testament was written within the first century AD, and we have copies of some of those New Testament writings within just a few decades after they were composed.

We have fragments and major portions of individual New Testament books dating from the second and thrid centuries, AD, and we ahve bond copies of the entire NT from the 4th and 5th centuries. So there are only 200 to 300 years between the copies and their original manuscripts. But with the very reliable Iliad, there's a 1000 year gap between Homer and the earliest extant copies of the work. Therefore the NT has a much stonger manuscript history than any other work of the ancient world.
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Okay. But how do we know these NT manuscripts faithfully represnent the original texts?

...When you place those 5000 or so existing NT manuscripts side by side, they match up almost perfectly. It's importaint to note that these manuscripts were copied by many different people, from various parts of the world, at different times. Yet scholars have shown how these 5000 copies are 99.5% a match with each other on all major points. There may be some minor variations in terms of spelling or word order or vocabulary, but nothing that changes the sense of a particular verse or passage - nothing affecting matters of doctrine or morals.

This remarkably low rate of variation between the thousands of NT manuscripts should not surprise us. Remember the early Chritains who passed on the Scriptures were copying the sacred texts they used fo rteachign, praying and worship. Indeed, they believed they were copying the very Word of God Himself. These manuscripts were copied with great care and reverence. In sum, the NT is the most relyable text we have from antiquity...

If the New Testament is not trustworthy, then no writings from the ancient world can be considered relyable - not Cicero, not Homer, not Plato, not Caesar. If we can't trust the NT manuscripts, then all university history and classics departments across the country should be shut down because they have no relyable documents from which to teach!
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Living_stone · Apr 20, 2006

Taken from this book.

BobRyan · Apr 22, 2006

Proof that the members of the RCC do some things to promote the cause of the Gospel - I applaud their work

SpyHunter · Apr 23, 2006

And how did they do that? By burning Bibles in the common tongue?

On the New Testament and the Telephone Game...

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