In our last study we found out that the Bible does in-fact claims to be the word of God. So, where does that leave us now? Can we actually trust the Bible we read today?It is true that we do not posses the original documents that comprise the Bible to fall back on. Many critics say that the integrity of the Bible has been compromised through the many translations from language to language over thousands of years. The argument is, when you translate a document from language to language you will lose the original meaning, especially when it comes to ancient languages. Another argument we hear from critics is the fact that the printing press was not around during ancient times, people had to transcribe the scriptures by hand which gave room for many errors. These do sound like very valid arguments which we will take a closer look at in this study, along with comparing the scriptures to other ancient manuscripts to test the validity of the Bible.
The Bible is comprised of sixty six separate books, written over a sixteen hundred year period. The old testament contains thirty nine books written from 1500 to 400 BC, and the new testament contains twenty seven books written from 40 to 90 AD. A total of forty people from kings to servants authored the Bible, and all sixty six books come together perfectly to tell one complete story with no contradictions. This last fact is disputed by many non-believers, but as we will find out in a future study, there are no contradictions in the Bible. Right now we will focus our attention on the copies we posses, and the transcription method.
Before the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400's AD, the scriptures had to be copied by hand. The transcription system they used was extremely accurate, they had developed this incredibly intricate system of counting letters, words and paragraphs to insure that no copying errors were made. If a single error was made the entire scroll would be destroyed, and they would start again from the beginning. These scribes would dedicate their entire lives to performing this single job. Thanks to the discovery of the dead sea scrolls we can see just how reliable this scribal system was. We will take a closer look at the dead sea scroll's in a future study.
Now that we see the original scribal system was very reliable, let's take a look at the copies we have to work with. It is true that in the 200s AD the new testament was translated from Greek into Latin, Coptic, Syriac and much later into English. Many people believe that much of the true meaning could be lost through the many translations, but the problem with this argument is, we still have copies of the text in it's original language of Greek. In fact, there are over twenty four thousand copies of the new testament, five thousand three hundred nine of which are in Greek. Many people today speak the Greek language, and anybody can learn it. All Bible colleges offer classes in Greek and Hebrew. The old testament has over six thousand copies in the Hebrew language that we can fall back on. If we compare this to other ancient manuscripts we find that the Bible stands alone in it's reliability. Take for instance, Homer's lliad in which we only posses six hundred forty three copies of. We do not have the original, and the earliest known copy is removed by twenty two hundred years from the original. Herodotus is another trusted ancient manuscript with only eight existing copies removed from the original by thirteen hundred years. Julius Ceasar, Gallic wars is removed by one thousand years with only ten copies. These manuscripts are trusted among schollars of today, but they don't come close to the reliability of the Bible. As we said before, the new testament has twenty four thousand copies, and the earliest known copy dates back to 125 AD, which is only removed from the original by thirty five years.
As you can see, no other ancient writing comes close to the reliablility of the Bible, yet many people will put their trust in these other ancient writings rather than the Bible. Our next study is going to look at archeology, and how it enforces the reliability of the Bible.
