Did You Know #5 - How verifiable the Bible really is?

Did You Know…… how verifiable the Bible really is?

Often as Christians we are faced with questions concerning the ‘veracity’ of the Bible. There are many various objections to being able to ‘trust’ its contents; but here are just a few.

"The Bible has been put into so many different translations, how can we really know the original content?”

Actually the New Testament was written in Greek; and millions still speak Greek today. There are many who read the original, Greek version, of the Bible daily.

“There are no copies of the original writings; so how do we know what it originally said?”

It is true that there are no original writings that came straight from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or Paul’s hands, as they have long since crumbled into dust - but that has little relevance when compared to other ancient writings. When we look to the oldest (i.e. ‘extant’) copy we have, we then see how long it was written after the original. The earliest copy we have of Caesar’s ‘Gallic Wars’ is dated 1,000 years after he wrote it. Demosthenes, the great Greek statesman, wrote his words around 354 BC – the earliest copy we have is from 1200 years later. The earliest copy of Plato’s writings is 1300 years after he wrote them. Homer’s Odyssey? The earliest copy we have is 2200 years from the original. And almost all of these writings have maybe 1-5 copies at most.

Let’s compare the Bible.

The earliest copy that exists of the Gospel of John, the Rylands Manuscript, is dated 125 AD. John wrote it in the 90’s. Hence, the extant copy we have is perhaps 30 years from the time he wrote it. We have many extant copies of manuscripts from the 2nd century – within 100 years from the originals, and even greater lengths of manuscripts from the 3rd century and on. And copies? We have 5,750 early Greek copies of the New Testament; and 25,000 more of other translations. In fact, if we no longer had any copies of the New Testament, we can find over 86,000 references to it in the early writings of the Church Fathers, which still exist. We could reproduce the entire New Testament from them alone.

Since there is no dispute ever raised concerning the veracity of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, or Plato’s Dialogues, Homer’s Odyssey or any other ancient writing – then as Sir Frederic Kenyon of the British Museum has noted – any and all objections to the authenticity and textual reliability of the Bible have been removed. For if we were to throw out the Bible as being ‘unreliable’; then we would have to throw out any and all references to ancient history that we have. The Bible stands on a foundation enormously greater than any of them.

And so.... did YOU know how verifiable the Bible really is?

(Information obtained from “Skeptics Answered” by Dr. James Kennedy)