Can We Rely on the Bible? (Part 1)

Have you ever been asked, “Why do you believe what you believe?” If so, then you most likely would have responded with something like, “I believe what the Word of God teaches. That is, I believe that God’s will is revealed in the Bible and I try my best to follow its teachings.” Of course, a logical follow up question to this would be, “Well, how do you know the Bible accurately relates God’s will?” Now that is a much tougher question. One to which I fear we may not be well enough equipped to give such a solid, substantive answer. Not only is this a tough question, but it is also a fair question, and as such deserves our attention. Far too often in the church people never question the authenticity or the reliability of the Scriptures as we have them today. Now I don’t want to diminish the faith that anyone has in the Bible by any means. However, when we haven’t reached a solid conclusion, based upon factual evidence, that the Scriptures are the authentic and reliable word of God, how can we possibly be able to help others develop their own faith and confidence in the Scriptures? So the question that we would like to investigate briefly is, “How do we know the Bible accurately preserves God’s will?”

The Original Documents

Much could be said on this topic, but for sake of time and space we will focus our investigation on the writings of the New Testament. Let us begin by looking at the time frame in which these books were originally written. It is important to note that all 27 books were not written at the same time or in the same place, nor were they all written by the same person. However, all the books of our New Testament were written and in circulation before the close of the 1^st Century (50–100 A.D.). This is significant because it means that these writings were being circulated and read during the lifetime of those who were reported to be eyewitnesses of the events that were recorded. The facts and accounts portrayed in the books of the New Testament could easily be verified by speaking to the actual eyewitnesses of those events. Of the gospels, it is generally accepted by scholars that Mark’s account was the first to be written and even the most  liberal scholars will not date it any later than having been composed in the 70’s, Matthew and Luke in the 80’s, and John in the 90’s. By these estimates, the accounts of Jesus’ life were written within 40 to 60 years of His death. Certainly this falls within a time frame that would allow the facts to be corroborated or denied by those who had actually seen the events firsthand.

But it gets even better. There is a reasonable argument to be made that the Gospels can actually be dated much earlier than this. It is interesting to note that the book of Acts ends rather abruptly while Paul, the main character, is under house arrest in Rome (Acts 28:30-31). Because of this, Craig L. Blomberg, Ph.D., one of the country’s leading authorities on the New Testament gospels, states that the book of “Acts cannot be dated any later than 62 A.D. Having established that, we can then move backward from there. Since Acts is the second of a two-part work, we know the first part – the gospel of Luke – must have been written earlier than that. And since Luke incorporates parts of the gospel of Mark, that means Mark is even earlier.”[1] This means that Mark could have been written as early as the late 50’s, less than 30 years after the death and resurrection of Christ. It is also important to know that though we can date the gospel accounts this close to the life of Christ, they were not the first books of our New Testament to be written. The Epistles, or letters to the early Christians, date back as early as the mid 40’s, the Epistle of James being one of the first, followed by the majority of Paul’s letters which were completed during the 50’s.

The New Testament vs. Other Ancient Histories

It is also worth mentioning that as far as ancient histories go, there are very few that can compare to the New Testament in regards to the close proximity of the event and the original documents that make a record of it. For example the “two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy.”[2] And so, given that the New Testament documents were originally composed during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses of the events themselves, it is not surprising that these writings were accepted by those in the 1^st Century as being accurate accounts of what actually transpired. But what is more, they also believed these documents to be inspired by God.

Well, we may all agree that the original writings of the Apostles and other inspired men in the 1^st Century were in fact accurate and the words of God, but how do we know that what we have preserved for us today, represented in our modern translations, is the same as what was originally written back then? To answer this we must look into how copies of the Bible have been handed down from generation to generation. Clearly the disciples couldn’t run down to Kinko’s and make a photocopy of their New Testament. Before the time of the printing press (c. 1450 A.D.) the only way to make a copy of any document was to copy it by hand. Someone would have to painstakingly transcribe the whole document—word by word, line by line, and page by page—to the best of their human ability, until a duplicate was produced. This was how copies of the New Testament documents were produced during the first fourteen centuries of the church’s existence, and throughout this time period, literally thousands of copies of the New Testament were produced in this way. In fact, today there are more than 5,800 known manuscripts of the New Testament dating from the 2^nd to the 15^th Century. Understand that not all of these manuscripts are complete copies of all 27 books of the New Testament, but all contain at least portions of the New Testament text.

This is impressive when compared to all other ancient historical documents. No other ancient historical document can boast this number of ancient manuscripts, especially complete or near complete copies dating so close to the time of the originals. For example the earliest complete copy of the works of Homer (composed prior to the 7^th Century B.C.) date only as far back as 1300 A.D. There are no complete copies of Herodotus (composed in the 5^th Century B.C.) dating earlier than 1000 A.D. The Roman historian, Tacitus, wrote his Annals of Imperial Rome around the year 116 A.D. Of the original sixteen volumes, we only possess manuscripts for twelve, the earliest copy dating only as far back as 850 A.D.; quite a span of time. The Jewish Wars, one of the works of Josephus, the famous Jewish historian, compiled in the 1^st Century can only boast nine manuscripts dating from the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th Centuries. By comparison the New Testament has over 300 manuscripts that date prior to the beginning of the 9^th century. Most of these are in the category of manuscripts known as uncials. These manuscripts derive their name from the type of letters used, that being all capital letters with no spacing or punctuation. The three most complete manuscripts of the Bible all date prior to the 5^th Century and belong to this category of manuscripts.

The Big Three

The oldest, nearly complete uncial manuscript of the Bible is referred to as Codex Vaticanus or the Vatican Manuscript (also abbreviated Codex B). As its name implies it is housed in the Vatican Library in Rome, Italy. This manuscript dates back to the beginning of the 4^th Century (A.D. 300) and contains almost the entirety of both the Old and New Testaments in Greek (Genesis 1:1-46:28; Psalms 106-138; Hebrews 9:14-end; and the letters to Timothy, Titus and Revelation are missing). Though there are some missing portions, Codex Vaticanus is considered the most accurate copy of the New Testament. Because of its accuracy most Greek New Testaments rely heavily upon its contents.

Codex Sinaiticus is the second oldest uncial manuscript, dating back the mid-4^th Century (A.D. 350). It is also referred to as the Sinaitic Manuscript and is abbreviated Codex Aleph. As its name hints, it was originally discovered in St. Catherine’s Monastery (located at the traditional site of Mt. Sinai) and is now housed in the manuscript room of the British Museum. Though it at one time was a complete copy of the Old and New Testaments much of the Old Testament has been lost. It is however the only complete copy of the New Testament (all 27 books contained within a single volume). The Codex Sinaiticus is considered on an almost equal level as the Codex Vaticanus, which together are the two greatest witnesses of the Greek New Testament.

The third manuscript of note is Codex Alexandrinus (abbreviated Codex A). This manuscript dates back to the 5^th Century and was originally located in Alexandria, Egypt. It was offered as a gift from the Greek Church to Charles I, King of England, in 1627. It is now housed in the British Museum along with Codex Sinaiticus. Though this manuscript does not quite measure up to the standard of the Sinaiticus or the Vaticanus, it was the first of the three to be discovered and made available for use in translation. Consequently, many older translations of the Bible were largely based on this uncial manuscript.

Over the years, hundreds of other manuscripts have been discovered. Some, though not complete, date back before any of the great uncials. Today there are over 5,800 manuscripts on record. The oldest of these is a papyrus fragment containing a portion of the gospel of John designated P⁵². At first glance it would be overlooked as a small scrap of papyri only two and a half by three and a half inches in size. But, after a closer examination one would notice that it contains five verses from the eighteenth chapter of John’s gospel. This little scrap can be dated back, possibly, as early as the reign of Emperor Trajan, who ruled from A.D. 98-117. In addition to this great wealth of Greek manuscript evidence, we also possess roughly ten thousand Latin manuscripts and roughly nine thousand manuscripts in various other ancient languages including: Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. The Bible is, by historical standards and without doubt, one of the most well preserved books of antiquity.