THE RELIABILITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Liberal scholars have long argued that the New Testament cannot be considered reliable as it was, in their opinion, written over 100 years after the events it described. If this were true, considering that the authors claims to have personally witnessed their accounts, the Scriptures must be false, or at least unreliable. So widespread were these sentiments, and so loudly and publicly proclaimed, that even today, after overwhelming documentary evidence proves that these texts were written within 30-35 years of the actual events, many still believe them to be historically inaccurate. Capitalizing on this feeling, many scholars now claim that these Scriptures, while accurate historically, must have been contaminated over the years with additional and erroneous information, accounts and statements by well-meaning believers during the last few decades of the first century. Consider that the modern scholars now possess over 5000 manuscript copies of the New Testament in the original Greek, as well as over 15,000 manuscripts in other languages, all from the first few centuries of this era. No other important historical or religious text has more than a few dozen copies surviving from this time. These 20,000 different texts can be shown to contain some minor differences, in spelling for example, but no difference in even one small fact or single doctrine. These documents give scholars the strongest possible evidence to confirm the accuracy of the New Testament text as well as confirming their widespread distribution among the churches during the last four decades of the first century. That is, within 30-35 years of the actual events. Simply put, if the liberal scholars claims are true, how were ALL these copies of Scripture altered in exactly the same way within only a few decades without any of the devout Christians noticing? In order to counter the assertion that changes had been introduced into the Scriptures during this time, consider a few points: -These Scriptures had been, and were still being, widely distributed throughout the churches during the few years after their being written by the apostles. -Many of the Christians hearing or reading these Scriptures in the churches had personally known the apostles, or Christ Himself, or at least heard them minister. -These Christians would have been keenly aware of any changes in the basic truths these Scriptures presented. -One of Christs original apostles, John, was still alive during this time and was bishop over the seven churches in Turkey until the first few years of the next century. He certainly would have instantly recognized any new or altered portions of the Scriptures that came before him. -The Greek originals of the Scriptures were widely copied into a variety of languages and distributed widely in Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, Coptic, etc. to churches in surrounding areas many years before the turn of the century. These would certainly have proven as impossible to influence as the original Greek. Furthermore, consider the significance of the fact that no Jew or Roman alive at the time ever openly denied the Scriptural record of Jesus Christs life, death, ministry or resurrection. Certainly, with the Christian cult growing so rapidly throughout the regions and even into nearby countries in those early days, anyone having evidence to contradict the Scriptural account would certainly have likely been compelled to present it publicly.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 14:26:09 +0000