Is the New Testament Historically Reliable? Part 1
Introduction
The short answer is yes. An exceptional number of copies, along with compelling internal evidence, brings very high confidence that the New Testament is historically accurate.
The New Testament is made up of twenty-seven documents by some nine different writers. To determine if it is historically reliable, we need to ask ourselves two questions:
- Is our New Testament an accurate copy of the original documents?
- Did the original documents tell the truth?
In this article we will explore the first question. In part two, we will look at the second question.
Do We Have Accurate Copies of the Original Documents?
This is a good question because we don’t have the originals (known as autographs) anymore. They were written on papyrus, which does not last more than a couple of hundred years. This is common for literature of that time period and not necessarily a problem.
What historians like to see are as many copies (known as extant manuscripts) as possible. Also, they like to see as many copies that date back to as close to when the autographs were written, as possible. Then using the sophisticated discipline of textual criticism, they will put together the content of the original documents. Many early manuscripts can give historians very high confidence that they know what the original documents said.
Suppose you discovered that a couple of pages in your morning newspaper got wet and damaged. Maybe a section is missing. You don’t have the original; the original is somewhere at the newspaper office. But if you found just a few other copies of the paper, you would know what the original said.
The Number of Copies
Scholars have more than 5,700 Greek manuscripts that contain portions of the New Testament.[1] If we consider other languages, such as Latin, Slavic, Syriac, and Ethiopian, we have more that 25,000.[2] This is extraordinary and gives historians exceptionally high confidence in knowing what the originals said. In fact, no other literature of the period comes remotely close.
Three non-Biblical writers from about the same time period are the Roman historians Tacitus (c. 56-120 AD) and Suetonius (c. 69-122 AD); and the Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37-100 AD). The histories of Tacitus exist today in only 3 manuscripts, none of which contain all of his writings.[3] Of Suetonius we have some 200 manuscripts. And of Josephus, 133.[4] Yet, as far as historians are concerned, these are enough to reliably reconstruct the originals.
The Time Gap
Let’s consider the time gap between the earliest copies and when the original documents were written. The oldest known New Testament fragment contains a small portion of the Gospel of John, dated to around AD 117-138.[5] Since the original Gospel is dated at about AD 95, the fragment is within a generation of the original. Many more manuscripts become available as we move into the second and third centuries. The Bodmer Papyrus II (AD 150-200) contains most of the Gospel of John.[6] And the Chester Beatty Papyri (AD 200) contains most of the New Testament.[7] This is, conservatively, about 150 years after the New Testament was completed.
In contrast, the oldest manuscripts of Tacitus and Suetonius come from the ninth century.[8] Those of Josephus date back only to the eleventh century.[9] These represent a time gap of 800 to 1000 years. In fact, it is typical for most books of the ancient world to have a time gap of nearly a thousand years between the original writing and the first known copy.
Scholars Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman (a non-Christian) have said that, “In contrast with [the numbers of other ancient works], the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by a wealth of material.”[10]
What About the Telephone Game?
Isn’t our New Testament a translation of a translation, a copy of a copy, and so forth going back in time? No. Our modern translations are put together by teams of scholars who use the earliest available Greek manuscripts. The introductions in these Bibles will explain their source texts as well as translation methodologies.
What About Copy Errors?
Skeptic Bart Ehrman claims that the nearly 6,000 Greek New Testament manuscripts contain some 400,000 errors.[11] There are some mistakes to be sure, but this does not describe the situation fairly. Considering the huge number of manuscripts, we would expect to see a lot of little differences. And these differences are not errors, but variants.
About 75% of the variants are simply differences in spelling, like John and Johnn. Others are synonyms such as Jesus, Lord, and He. Only about 1% are related to meaning, but they are negligible. For example in 1 John 1:4 we have “so that our joy may be complete” or “so that your joy may be complete.” Most modern translations will footnote textual differences found in source manuscripts so that readers can be aware of them.
In the final analysis, scholars consider the New Testament to be 99.5% pure, with absolutely no doubt concerning any Christian doctrines.[12]
In Their Own Words
British manuscript expert Sir Frederick Kenyon (1863-1952) wrote,
“It cannot be too strongly asserted…that the text of the Bible is certain… The number of manuscripts of the New Testament… is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading is preserved. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world… The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.”[13]
Biblical scholar John Warwick Montgomery says,
“To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.”[14]
In other words, to doubt our New Testament, one would have to be willing to throw away all of the world’s classical literature. But this kind of extreme skepticism is just not found among mainstream classical scholars and historians today.[15] If scholars can accept other classical literature as historically reliable, we must accept the New Testament because its manuscript support is far superior to anything else.
Conclusion
We’ve answered our first question. The abundance of early manuscript evidence provides very high confidence that we have accurate copies of the originals. But we still have to ask: did those original documents tell the truth? We’ll answer that question in part two, our next post.
[1]Mark D. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels? Investigating the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2007), 31.
[2]For a thorough treatment of the manuscript evidence, see Dr. Clay Jones, “The Bibliographic Test Updated,” Christian Research Journal, volume 35, number 03, 2013; available at https://www.equip.org/article/the-bibliographical-test-updated/; accessed 8/27/20.
[3]Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4thed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 50-51; cited in Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels, 31.
[4]J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: What the Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2006), 71; cited in Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels, 31.
[5]Norman L. Geisler, 12 Points That Show Christianity Is True, A Handbook on Defending the Christian Faith (Indian Trail, NC: NGIM, 2016), 78.
[6]Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 39.
[7]Ibid., 39.
[8]Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 71; cited in Roberts,Can We Trust the Gospels, 30.
[9]“Josephus” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, David Noel Freedman, ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1992); cited in Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels, 30.
[10]Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford, 2005), 51.
[11]Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus(New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2005), 10; cited in Geisler and Brooks, When Skeptics Ask,172.
[12]Geisler and Brooks, When Skeptics Ask,79.
[13]Fredrick Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts(London: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 288 and 55; cited in Geisler, 12 Points That Show Christianity Is True, 79-80.
[14]John W. Montgomery, History and Christianity(Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1964), 29; cited in McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, 35.
[15]Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels, 31.