Intro to apologetics series: Can we really trust the scriptures?


              So we have covered the objections to the resurrection of Jesus, objections to the historicity of Jesus, and now we get to one of the most popular objections to Christianity. The objection goes something like this, the scribes for the Bible have made small mistakes over time, so there is no possible way that the Bibles we have today are the same as the scriptures that were originally written. What I would like to do today is present the evidence for the case that our scriptures that we have today in our bookstores/Christian supply stores are 99.999% identical to the earliest manuscripts that we have recovered from archaeological sites.
              First, we should consider all of the ancient copies of scriptures that we have recovered and their dates. The events of the new testament are thought to have been originally written down between A.D. 50-100. We have portions of copies of these documents dated to around A.D. 100-150. We also have plenty of complete copies of scriptures, incomplete fragments, and quotations from other documents. This gives us thousands of ancient documents to give us an idea of what the earliest available manuscripts were saying. For comparison to another historical document, the most recent copies of Homer’s Iliad are over 500 years old, and we only have a few hundred copies at best.
              Now that we have a dating of the documents, how do they compare to the newer copies that we can go buy at LifeWay? They are almost exactly the same, excepting for the translations into modern English of course. Granted, there are some variances between different scriptures, but there are no significant changes that affect the doctrines of Christianity. This is due to the fact that, until recently, all copies were written by hand. It is reasonable that mistakes were made in the copying. However, we can put together a reasonable picture as to what the original message was by comparing between all available copies, so it stands to reason that we have the same scriptures that the early church had. This is held by Christian scholars, and even skeptics like Bart Ehrman.
              So there we have it, we have confidence that the scriptures that we have today are based off numerous early sources, unlike Homer’s Iliad, or even the Quran (which was put together after a massive internal struggle 500 years after Muhammed passed away). With this latest topic, I think we have covered what I think is “the big 3” of objections to Christianity. Obviously there are more, and probably the next most often objections have to do with the content of scripture, which I might get to as an “Intermediate” apologetics series later this year. For now though, I will call this series complete, and pray that God blesses you and gives you a great rest of your day.
References:
https://carm.org/manuscript-evidence
https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/when-it-comes-to-ancient-texts-the-more-copies-we-have-the-more-confidence-we-have/
https://carm.org/new-testament-corrupted

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First post in 2 years, catching up on life, reflections on fatherhood

          To those of you who are still following me and came back to see this post, thank you for stopping in. It has been 2 years since I last posted anything to this page (little over actually since my animal suffering post was July 10, 2021). I fell off writing because my wife and I were going through one of our biggest challenges we have faced, the supposed impending death and miscarriage of our second child, Austin. I say supposed because God is good and Austin survived long odds to not only make it to term, but he is a happy almost 2 year old now. Our daughter Abby is also doing great, almost 4 now, and she loves her brother fiercely. This particular post won’t necessarily be focusing on an apologetics topic (I hope to tackle the origin and uses of different Bible translations soon), I want to do use this post to tell that story of Austin’s miraculous turn around in the womb, and reflect on what all God has shown me and grown me in during almost 4 years of being a father. I to
Read more

Evidence to Support Creation/Intelligent Design

                During my post concerning education, I made comments over how evolution can be taught in a classroom without affecting the worldview of the students. Thanks to the comment from someone on the article, I got to thinking about the opposite side, creationism/intelligent design. How could one introduce these theories and ideas without imposing a worldview on your students? Now unfortunately I cannot think of a way to introduce these views without introducing some sort of God, but they can be introduced by using the Deistic God, who is an impersonal being that started the universe and then left everything alone within this creation.   A deistic god does not push a specific worldview per say, but it does point toward a supernatural being that cannot be scientifically proven in the classical sense, so some people may already be throwing up their hands and claim multiple problems with teaching these ideas in school. The two big objections that pop into my head are by usi
Read more

The Loud Absence: Why does a good God allow suffering?

                Ask any Christian what the most common objection to their faith or God from the outside is, and I would be willing to bet one of the top objections would be: “If God is so good and loving, why does He allow suffering and evil in the world?” This question is probably one of the hardest ones to answer. I will not insult anyone by saying that I have a set of simplistic answers to deal with any form of suffering. For me to write about this, I have to appeal much to the love of God and the mind of God, which I have experienced only a sliver of His infinite love and wisdom. I hope that by my admitting my shortcomings at the beginning, I have not already shut some of your minds to what I have to say.                 So to start, we should break down the suffering that people deal with. I would say that there are two types of suffering: one caused by people inflicting suffering on others, which is called moral evil, and the suffering inflicted on people by natural even
Read more