The Book, Part 2

In my last post I touched on the incredible uniqueness of the Bible.  I also lamented the fact that so many people believe that this amazing book is riddled with inaccuracies and historical inconsistencies.  This belief (interesting choice of words) is based largely on ignorance. In an effort to dispel some of this ignorance I devoted most of the post to evidence for the reliability of the Old Testament.  This post is focused on the New Testament's reliability.  Once again, this information is adapted from Josh McDowell's excellent book The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict.

Is the New Testament Historical?

Tests for the Reliability of Ancient Literature

C. Sanders, in Introduction to Research in English Literary History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1952, pg. 143), lists and explains the three basic principles of historiography.  These are:

1. The Bibliographical Test
2. The Internal Evidence Test, and
3. The External Evidence Test

The Bibliographical Test

Extant Greek Manuscripts
Uncials	307
Minuscules	2,860
Lectionaries	2,410
Papyri	109
Subtotal	5,686
Manuscripts in Other Languages
Latin Vulgate	10,000+
Ethiopic	2,000+
Slavic	4,101
Armenian	2,587
Syriac Pashetta	350+
Bohairic	100
Arabic	75
Old Latin	50
Anglo Saxon	7
Gothic	6
Sogdian	3
Old Syriac	2
Persian	2
Frankish	1
Subtotal	19,284+
Total All MSS	24,970+
Information gathered from the following sources: Michael Welte of the Institute for New Testament Studies in Munster, Germany; Kurt Aland’s Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 87, 1968; Kurt Aland’s Kurzgefasste Liste der Griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, 1963; Kurt Aland’s “Neve Nevtestamentliche Papyri III,” New Testament Studies, July, 1976; Bruce Metzger’s The Early Versions of the New Testament, Clarendon Press, 1977; New Testament Manuscript Studies, (eds.) Merrill M. Parvis and Allen Wikgren, The University of Chicago Press, 1950; Eroll F. Rhodes’s An Annotated List of Armenian New Testament Manuscripts, Tokyo, Ikeburo, 1959; The Bible and Modern Scholarship, (ed.) J. Phillip Hyatt, Abingdon Press, 1965.

This test is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us.  In other words, since we do not have the original documents, how reliable are the copies we have in regard to the number of manuscripts (MSS), or handwritten copies, and the time interval between the original and extant (currently existing) copies?

F. E. Peters states that “on the basis of manuscript tradition alone, the works that made up the Christians’ New Testament (NT) were the most frequently copied and widely circulated books of antiquity.” (Peters, F. E. The Harvest of Hellenism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971, pg. 50)  As a result, the fidelity of the NT text rests on a multitude of manuscript evidence. Counting Greek copies alone, the NT is preserved in some 5,686 partial and complete manuscript portions that were copied by hand from the second through the fifteenth centuries (Geisler, Norman L. and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986, pg. 385)

The table to the right summarizes these MSS as well as those we have from other (non-Greek) languages.  All told we have more that 25,000 manuscript copies of portions of the NT in existence today. No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation.  In comparison, Homer’s Iliad is second, with only 643 manuscripts that still survive.  The first complete preserved text of Homer dates from the thirteenth century. (Leach, Charles. Our Bible. How We Got It. Chicago: Moody Press, 1898, pg. 145)

The importance of the sheer number of manuscript copies cannot be overstated.  As with other documents of ancient literature, there are no known extant (currently existing) original manuscripts of the Bible (e.g., letters in Paul’s own handwriting).  However, the abundance of manuscript copies makes it possible to reconstruct the original with virtually complete accuracy. (Geisler, Norman L. and William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986, pg. 386)  In the case of the NT, this could be compared to having 25,000 eyewitnesses to an event, the event in this case being the original texts.

John Warwick Montgomery says that “to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.” (Montgomery, John W. History and Christianity. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1964. pg. 29)

Sir Frederick G. Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum and second to none in authority for issuing statements about MSS, states that

Besides number, the manuscripts of the New Testament differ from those of the classical authors….  In no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest extant manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament.  The books of the New Testament were written in the latter part of the first century; the earliest extant manuscripts (trifling scraps excepted) are of the fourth century – say from 250 to 300 years later.  This may sound a considerable interval, but it is nothing to that which parts most of the great classical authors from their earliest manuscripts.  We believe that we have in all essentials an accurate text of the seven extant plays of Sophocles; yet the earliest substantial manuscript upon which it is based was written more that 1400 years after the poet’s death. (Kenyon, Frederick G. Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. London: Macmillan and Company, 1901, pg. 4)

Kenyon continues in The Bible and Archeology: “The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has been removed.  Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.” (Kenyon, Frederick G. The Bible and Archeology. New York: Harper & Row, 1940, pg. 288)

In Josh McDowell's book, this goes on for another 10 pages, but you get the picture.

Internal Evidence Test

This is a very broad and detailed subject.  Here I will offer only a few considerations, but rest assured that there are many more where this came from.

He was known around the seminary as the man who had learned over thirty languages, most of them languages of Old Testament times in the Middle Eastern world. Dr. Gleason Archer, who taught for over thirty years at the graduate seminary level in the field of biblical criticism, gives the following modest description of his qualifications to discern the meaning of difficult biblical texts:

As an undergraduate at Harvard, I was fascinated by apologetics and biblical evidences; so I labored to obtain a knowledge of the languages and cultures that have any bearing on biblical scholarship.  As a classics major in college, I received training in Latin and Greek, also in French and German. At seminary I majored in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic; and in post-graduate years I became involved in Syriac and Akkadian, to the extent of teaching elective courses in each of these subjects.  Earlier, during my final two years of high school, I had acquired a special interest in Middle Kingdom Egyptian studies, which was furthered as I later taught courses in this field.  At the Oriental Institute in Chicago, I did specialized study in Eighteenth Dynasty historical records and also studied Coptic and Sumerian.  Combined with this work in ancient languages was a full course of training at law school, after which I was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1939.  This gave me a thorough grounding in the field of legal evidences.

Dr. Archer, in the forward to his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, gives this testimony about the internal consistency of the Bible:

As I have dealt with one apparent discrepancy after another and have studied the alleged contradictions between the biblical record and the evidence of linguistics, archaeology, or science, my confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture has been repeatedly verified and strengthened by the discovery that almost every problem in Scripture that has ever been discovered by man, from ancient times until now, has been dealt with in a completely satisfactory manner by the biblical text itself—or else by objective archaeological information.  The deductions that may be validly drawn from ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, or Akkadian documents all harmonize with the biblical record; and no properly trained evangelical scholar has anything to fear from the hostile arguments and challenges of humanistic rationalists or detractors of any and every persuasions.

Dr. Archer concludes, “There is a good and sufficient answer in Scripture itself to refute every charge that has ever been leveled against it.  But this is only to be expected from the kind of book the Bible asserts itself to be, the inscripturation of the infallible, inerrant Work of the Living God.” (Archer, Gleason L., Jr. Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982, pg. 12)

There are many other excellent sources available for this section, but the following stands out.  Many liberal scholars are being forced to consider earlier dates for the New Testament’s original sources.  Dr. John A. T. Robinson, no conservative himself, comes to some startling conclusions in his groundbreaking book Redating the New Testament.  His research has led to his conclusion that the whole of the New Testament was written before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. (Robinson, John A. T. Redating the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976)

External Evidence Test

Do other historical materials confirm or deny the internal testimony provided by the documents themselves?  There are a number of extra-biblical sources that confirm the events and people of the New Testament.  Here are a few:

Christian sources

• Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History III.39, preserves writings of Papias, bishop of Heirapolis (AD 130)
• Irenaeus, Biship of Lyons (AD 180) Against Heresies III
• Clement of Rome (AD 95)
• Ignatius (AD 70-110)
• Polycarp (AD 70-156) a disciple of John; martyred for refusing to recant
• Tatian (AD 170)

Non-Christian sources

• Tacitus (first century Roman historian)
• Suetonius, chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138)
• Josephus (AD 37-100) a Pharisee of the priestly line and Jewish historian working under Roman authority.  Probably the single most prominent extra-biblical, non-Christian source.
• Thallus (AD 52) as quoted by Julius Africanus (AD 221)
• Pliny the Younger (AD 112)
• Emperor Trajan (AD 112)
• The Talmud (AD 70-200)
• Lucian (2^nd century)
• Mara Bar-Serapion (late first and early third centuries)
• The Gospel of Truth (Gnostic gospel written perhaps by Valentinus AD 135-160)
• The Acts of Pontius Pilate (a missing document referred to  by Justin Martyr, AD 150, and Tertullian, AD 200)

Dr. Geisler summarizes the information to be gleaned from these sources:

The primary sources for the life of Christ are the four Gospels. However there are considerable reports from non-Christian sources that supplement and confirm the Gospel accounts.  These come largely from Greek, Roman, Jewish and Sameritan sources of the first century. In brief they inform us that:

1.     Jesus was from Nazareth;

2.     He lived a wise and virtuous life;

3.     He was crucified in Palestine under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar at Passover time, being considered the Jewish King;

4.     He was believed by his disciples to have been raised from the dead three days later;

5.     His enemies acknowledged that he performed unusual feats they called ‘sorcery’;

6.     His small band of disciples multiplied rapidly, spreading even as far a Rome;

7.     His disciples denied polytheism, lived moral lives, and worshiped Christ as Divine.

This picture confirms the view of Christ presented in the New Testament Gospels. (Geisler, Norman L. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998, pg. 384-385)

For Further Study

J. N. D. Anderson, Christianity: The Witness of History

F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

F. F. Bruce, Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament

Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, C. F. Cruse, trans.

Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews

Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, He Walked Among Us

G. Habermas, The Historical Jesus, chapter 9

Lucian of Samosata, The Works of Lucian of Samosata

Origen, Contra Celsus

Pliny the Younger, Letters. W. Melmoth, trans.

A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers

Suetonius, Life of Claudius

Suetonius, Life of Nero

Tacitus, Annals

A Final Quote on Archaeology:

Nelson Glueck, the renowned Jewish archaeologist, wrote: “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.  …the almost incredibly accurate historical memory of the Bible, and particularly so when it is fortified by archaeological fact.” (Glueck, Nelson. Rivers in the Desert: History of Negev. New York: Farrar, Stratus, and Cadahy, 1959, pg. 31)

Wrapping It Up
It is popular for critics of the Bible and the belief systems it chronicles to assert that the early adherents of these beliefs took poetic license over the years with these texts in order to achieve their religious ends.  The facts tell a different story.  Christians can stand tall on the books of the Bible with an assurance that they accurately reflect the original writings of their authors unpolluted by transmission through the ages.  Whether these authors ran fast and loose with the truth is another issue, but let's put to rest these ridiculous notions regarding inaccuracies due to the transmission of the scriptures over the years.