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 For comparison to another historical document, the most recent copies of Homer’s Iliad are over 500 years old, and we only have a few hundred copies at best.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

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