"Statistically how?" "I would disagree with that assertion." "Of course, this is just your opinion."
When I said statistically, I actually meant it
The stats I use here are from a paper I got about a year ago, so the numbers may have changed by 1 or 2 since then, but unless there have been some major findings this year, they should be good enough.
"Historians evaluate the textual reliability of ancient literature according to two standards: (1) what the time interval is between the original and the earliest copy; and (2) how many manuscripts are available"
For anyone who doesn't understand the reasoning behind this, the time interval is important because the longer the interval between the original writing and the first copy we have, the more time there was for mistakes and for details to be changed. The number of manuscripts is also a good indicator of reliability because if someone wrote a history book that everyone
knew was fake, nobody would have made copies.
I can post the whole chart if I have to, but for the sake of saving time, I will just list a few key stats. According to the chart, one of the best (historically reliable) works of ancient literature is Homer's Iliad. We have 643 manuscipts, the earliest of which was written a mere 400 years after the Iliad. Other more literal histories actually pale in comparison; for example we have one partial copy of Livy's History of Rome that was witten 400 years after the original, our other 19 copies were written over 1000 years after Livy. Pliny Secundus wrote his Natural History from 61-113 A.D., and the earliest of seven known copies was written c.850 A.D. And our seven copies of the works of Plato, that famed philosopher whose Wikipedia page is nearly endless, were written over 1,300 years after Plato.
Now compare that to the New Testament. We have fragments of these books written just over 50 years after the recorded events happened. Not 500, just 50. We have full books from about 200 A.D. (100 years after the N.T. was finished) and most of the New Testament by 250. There are over 5600 Greek manuscripts from 325 A.D., only 225 years after the original. In other words, over 8 times the number of manuscripts of the Iliad in almost half the time. The Latin Vulgate translation was completed in 384 (284 years after) and we have +19,000 translated N.T.s from 400-500 A.D. When added up, there are more than 24,600 known manuscripts of the New Testament ranging from 50-400 years after it was completed. Remember, the earliest Iliad was written 400 years after the original, and we have 643 copies from then on. The Iliad is, to the extent of my limited knowledge on the subject, considered an authouritative history on the Trojan war. 643 copies of a book written at least four centuries after the original (and although I may have no idea what I'm talking about, I think that the original was written a very long time after the events took place), and it is considered a legitimate source of history. So why do people doubt the Bible as a historical document? Why? 24,600 copies written less, not more, less than 400 years after the original, and people suggest it is a matter of opinion? Statistically (that's the word that started this long-winded rant), the New Testament is more than 38 times as reliable as the Iliad, way more than 2,460 times as reliable as Julius Caesar's Gallic wars, once again way more than 3514 times the reliability Pliny's Natural History, and even more than that many times as reliable as Plato. As I said before, these resurrections are recorded in the book that is statistically the most reliable historic document in existence.
"Give thanks to the lord for he is good, his faithful love endures forever" Psalms 107:1
