The problem today is that people have opinions about the scriptures, and
yet, do not know anything about their origin and transmission. The New
Testament is constantly under attack and its reliability and accuracy are
often contested by individuals. But, if these persons want to set aside the
New Testament, then ‘they must’ also disregard other ancient writings:
for example, those by Plato, Aristotle, and Homer.
Now the reason for this is that the New Testament documents are better
preserved and more numerous than any other ancient
writing. Because the copies are so numerous, they can be cross checked
for accuracy.
This checking process, ‘ textual criticism ’ as it is called, has determined
that the biblical documents are extremely consistent and accurate. There
are presently 6000 Greek manuscripts in existence today of the New
Testament. If we were to compare the number of New Testament
manuscripts to other ancient writings, we find that the New Testament
manuscripts far outweigh the others in quantity.
As you will see, there are thousands more New Testament Greek
manuscripts than any other ancient writing. The internal consistency of the
New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure. That is an
amazing accuracy.
In addition there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and
Aramaic languages. The total supporting New Testament manuscript base
is over 24,000. The New Testament documents were all written before the
close of the first century and Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and the epistles
were written before AD 70.
This is important because it means there were plenty of people around
when the New Testament documents were penned who could have
contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents
knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have been
around to point it out.
We have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the
first century that contest the New Testament texts.
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