The Christian Bible
(Can it be Trusted?)
The Holy Bible of the Christians contains 66 ‘books’ – some long (Isaiah has 66 chapters totaling nearly 95 pages), and some short (one of John’s letters has only 13 verses). It is divided into two parts – the Old Testament (which were the Jewish Scriptures), and the New Testament. The latter consists of the Gospels (identified as the Injeel, which tell the story of Jesus), [1] the book of Acts (which describes the activities of the apostles and early Christians), a series of letters (written for the most part by the apostle Paul addressing churches in Palestine, Asia Minor, and Rome), and lastly, the book of Revelation (visions God gave the apostle John while in exile on the island of Patmos).
The Bible was written in three languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic), over a period of about 1,400 years, by between 30-40 authors who lived and wrote in a variety of settings and cultures (from Rome in the west to Persia in the east, with Asia and Palestine in between). It covers a wide variety of topics and includes a variety of literary genre (law, lyric poetry, history, personal correspondence, didactic treatises, biography, prophecy, etc.).
The basic message of the Bible is that God, in love for mankind, has made a way for them to be reconciled to Himself and cleansed of their impurity. It begins by telling of how they came to be alienated from him and defiled because of their sin – first because Adam disobeyed God, but also because we sin against Him every day of our lives. [2]
Immediately following the story of Adam came a prophecy that God would send someone who would destroy Satan (Genesis 3:15), which is followed by many other prophecies which provided additional details about that One, known as the Messiah. The Old Testament also fore-shadowed the coming Messiah, first by historical events that had great symbolic significance – like the story of Abraham sacrificing his son (a picture of how God sacrificed His Son, Jesus). Secondly, the Jewish rituals prescribed in the Law of Moses (Taurat) pointed to Messiah – like the Passover or the sacrifices on Yom Kippur.
The great message of God redeeming mankind was brought to completion, and the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament fulfilled, with the coming of Jesus Christ. After describing His birth (by a virgin), the Gospels focus on the public ministry of Jesus, giving the greatest amount of attention to his suffering, death, and resurrection. For example, the last week in the life of Jesus occupies ½ of the Gospel of John. [3]
But how do we know that the Scriptures Christians possess today accurately reflect those that were originally given and the events in the life of Jesus? After all, it is suggested that several centuries elapsed before they were actually committed to writing. In addition, it is said that the Christians and Jews deliberately corrupted the Gospel, that Jesus never died on the cross, but was substituted by someone else (An-Nisa 4:157).
First – The burden of proof lies with those who make such claims. It is asserted that Christians and Jews corrupted the New Testament, but there is no historical evidence to support such a claim. One should note that neither Mohammed nor the Qur’an state explicitly that the text of the New Testament was corrupted. It was later, in the Hadith, that the doctrine of tahrif was set forth. To the contrary, Mohammed actually appealed to it (2:136 3:2-3 5:44-49, 67-71 10:94), and Qur’anic teaching suggests that God would not allow His Word to be changed (6:34, 115-16 10:64/5).
Second – the evidence compels us to believe that the New Testament as possessed by Christians today is identical to the original Gospels.
On the one hand, the four Gospels were written between A.D. 60 and the end of the first century (John somewhere between 90-100). These are the primary sources provid-ing information about Jesus of Nazareth, who died about A.D. 33. Note: the time gap between the writing of the Gospels and the events they describe was very brief.
On the other hand, there are no known copies of the original manuscripts of the New Testament in existence today, but there is a ‘paper trail’ by which we can trace our current texts to the originals. This ‘trail’ consists of several things: manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, translations into other languages, the writings of the early church fathers, and Lectionaries (Scripture texts collected and arranged for use in public worship).
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Translations
Jesus commanded His disciples to take His message to every nation. This required that the Gospel be translated into other languages, which was undertaken from virtually the very beginning. The first translations were into Latin and Syriac, followed by Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Ethopic, and Gothic. Some of the Syriac and Latin translations date to the 2nd and 3rd centuries (the Vulgate – the most famous Latin translation was commissioned in 382), and Coptic to the 3rd century. A comparison between the Scriptures we possess and these early translations confirm their accuracy.
Patristic Writings [the early church fathers]
The early ‘fathers’ of the Christian faith were prolific writers, and in their writings they quoted frequently from the New Testament. In fact, there are so many citations from it in their writings that if all the copies we have of the New Testament were lost, we could reconstruct all but a few verses from their works. Since these ‘fathers’ all lived prior to the 5th century, [4] their citations are very important in confirming the accuracy of our Bible.
New Testament Manuscripts
We have in our possession thousands of manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, [5] the best of which date back to about A.D. 350. The two most important are Codex Vaticanus (in the Vatican library), and Codex Sinaiticus (British Museum). In addition to these are the fragment remains of papyrus copies of books of the NT which are even older, some dating to within a lifetime of the original composition. [6]
In conclusion . . .
# 1 the ‘evidence’ we have cited is a matter of public record. It is not a matter of personal opinion, but concrete, objective evidence – consisting of thousands of manuscripts – that speaks for itself.
When the manuscript evidence for the New Testament is compared with that for other works of antiquity, the student of the New Testament is, according to Princeton scholar Bruce Metzger, “embarrassed by the wealth of his material.” [7]
# 2 The evidence demonstrates conclusively that the authenticity of the New Testament is beyond question.
It simply cannot be said – with intellectual integrity – that the Gospels distort our understanding of who Jesus was, that they were written hundreds of years after He lived, or that they were deliberately corrupted.
The Jesus of the Gospels claimed to be God in the flesh, that He came to offer Himself as a sacrifice for our sins, and that only through Him can we have peace with God, moral cleansing, and assurance of life in paradise.
NOTES
1 There are four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) – in keeping with Jewish tradition that multiple witnesses were required for a matter to be established in a court of law
2 “Behold, the LORD’S hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters wickedness.” – the holy prophet Isaiah (59:1-2)
3 Luke devotes ¼ of his Gospel to this week, while Matthew and Mark devote 1/3 to the same.
4 Some lived in the 2nd century – Justin was burned to death in the year 165.
5 Princeton Professor Bruce Metzger sets the number at 5,366
6 A couple of the most important are: P52 (p = papyrus), which until recently was the oldest known fragment of the New Testament, dating to between A.D. 100 – 150 (housed in the John Rylands library in Manchester, England); The Magdalen papyrus containing part of Matthew 26, dating to the last quarter of 1st century (Magdalen College: Oxford Uinversity); p45 – 17 pages from the Gospels of Mark and Luke dating back to the year 250 (preserved in Dublin) ; and 7Q5, found in Qumran, a possible portion of the Gospel of Mark. Its identity is uncertain, but if it is indeed from the Gospel of Mark, it would be the oldest fragment of the NT in our possession, because the Qumran community disbanded around A.D. 68 when the Romans invaded Palestine.
7 p. 34 The Text of the New Testament Bruce Metzger