During a recent debate on Nightline, Bishop Carlton Pearson attacked the historical reliability of the Bible, saying people are free to pick and choose what they want to believe from it. His argument was based on the Bible’s separation from us by language, culture and time. He claimed it had gone from Hebrew, to Aramaic, to Greek, to Latin, to German, and finally to English, over more than a thousand years.
But thanks to a science called textual criticism, we can be sure that our Bible is reliable, factual, and is perhaps one of the best-preserved historical documents – ever.
First, it is not true English translations of the Bible passed through all those languages to get what we have now, (as if it were some sort of text-based rumor). As a rule, modern translators go back to the earliest extant manuscripts to make up modern English translations. And since there are thousands of extant manuscripts in the original language, (Hebrew and some Aramaic for the Old Testament, and Greek for the New Testament) our English translations are pulled right from the ancient text.
There are currently more than 3,000 extant Hebrew manuscripts from the OT, about 8,000 in the Latin Vulgate and more than 1,500 from the Septuagint (Greek OT translated around 200 B.C.). More than 200 of the extant Hebrew manuscripts date as far back as 250 B.C. [ESV 2586]. Out of all these manuscripts, all agree with each other, in that the meaning of the texts don’t change or contradict. Areas where wording differs is very minimal, (less than one percent), “and even among that 1 percent there are no variants that would change any part of the doctrine” (2587). The sheer quantity of these texts alone is a remarkable testimony that the Word has been accurately passed down.
Since the NT was written later, those manuscripts are even more prevalent. There are more than 5,700 extant Greek NT manuscripts, some of them are fragments dating so far back the authors who wrote them were possibly still alive when they were copied (second century A.D.). Also, there are nearly 25,000 NT manuscripts available in other ancient languages. The ESV Study Bible notes that “if all these were destroyed, the NT text could be reproduced almost in its entirety by quotations of it in sermons, tracts and commentaries written by ancient teachers” (2587). This not only shows that it was well preserved, but that it was considered holy writ by the contemporaries of the authors.
In fact, the high view of scripture is one of the reasons it is so well preserved. Those who copied the OT (scribes) made a whole career just out of meticulously copying and preserving the OT. When scrolls wore out, they expressed reverence by having a ritual burial for them (2585). The exactness of the scriptures was taken very seriously, and not treated as some sort of bedtime tale.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is good evidence for the near perfection of scripture preservation. Before they were discovered in 1947, the Masoretic texts were the oldest extant OT Manuscripts, dating back to 1008 A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls represent more than a thousand-year gap, and when compared to Dead Sea Scrolls scholars found Masoretic texts to be “very accurate” (2586).
Compared to classical ancient manuscripts, the Bible far exceeds them in number and proximity to original manuscripts. The average number of manuscripts from ancient Greek or Latin authors is less than twenty! (2587). Also, the average extant classical manuscripts are more than 500 years separated from the original writing. But there are extant NT manuscripts only seventy years separated from original writings (this is a conservative estimate) [2588].
On top of all this, if you speak English, you are more likely to have a better understanding of the original manuscripts based on the large diversity of words in this language. Author Bill Bryson calls English “The Mother Tongue” because there are more than 200,000 words in common use, (excluding scientific and technical terms). By comparison Bryson points out German has 184,000 words in common use and French has only about 100,000. English is also the only language big enough that it needs and has books devoted to synonyms. Therefore English “is able to capture nuances better and more often because there are more words to describe subtle differences” (Ragan).
The Bible has been carefully preserved, mainly because its stewards always considered it inspired by God. No other book in the world is translated into more languages. Therefore, we know it to be God’s Words – and we would expect that a God who loves people and wants to reach them, would have provided a way for all the world to know him. He has done this through the Bible.
References:
English Standard Version of the Holy Bible. Wheaton: Crossway, 2008.
Ragan Communications Inc. “First Draft” newsletter, March 2009 issue
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1 comment:
"The Bible has been carefully preserved, mainly because its stewards always considered it inspired by God. No other book in the world is translated into more languages. Therefore, we know it to be God’s Words"
Not "therefore". You're conclusion doesn't follow from your premises, which merely show that some people have held the Bible in very high regard and that they have been relatively successful at disseminating it.
There is also an internal contradiction. You claim that NT texts have credibility (compared to Classical texts) partly because the oldest extant manuscripts were written no more than 70 years after the original writing. However, the oldest extant manuscripts of the OT (according to you) come from around 250 BCE, which is about 1000 years after the Torah was supposedly transcribed by Moses. If 70 years from origination lends support to the NT, doesn't 1000 yr from origination reduce support of the OT?
The accuracy of reproduction and translation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for credibility. If archeologists found an original edition of the Koran or the Odyssey, I doubt you would become a Muslim or worship Zeus.
"and we would expect that a God who loves people and wants to reach them, would have provided a way for all the world to know him. He has done this through the Bible."
This is precisely the reason I don't believe in the Bible. Human beings in most societies throughout history have believed in the supposed revelations of their holy books about the supernatural. These revelations generally contradict each other in important particulars (Hindu gods versus the God of the Bible), and so most of them must be untrue. I have heard Jews, Christians, and Muslims argue why their religion is correct and the others are not correct, but none of these arguments are well-founded. In any case, most people believe in the religion they happen to be born into.
Since trusting written revelation is a bad way to learn the truth about God--since most of them must be wrong, and it's hard to distinguish the credibility of one from the other--it seems very implausible that a God that wanted me to know of "his" existence would use this method of informing me. On the other hand, given that we know that humans have historically believed in religions which are untrue (we don't have to name them, we can just refer to all the ones which you don't believe in), it is very plausible that the same human characteristics which caused people to believe in and spread these religions are operating in any religion you DO believe in.
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