There are very good reasons for believing in the Bible. All of which are accepted in the academic community. We as Christians accept the Bible as truth by our minds, hearts and faith and God proclaimed his word to be true. That is good enough for me. But here are the secular reasons:
- Expositional Consistency.
- Historical Accuracy.
- Prophetically accurate Predictions of 100%.
- Source of unbiased law.
Good reasons to believe any truth.
I believe limiting Bible inerrancy to original Autographs. 20,000 old scribe copied manuscripts have resulted in a number of tiny refinements. There are problems in that Greek and Hebrew words have different meaning when translated into English, also no formatting in the original text existed it was placed in about 900 ad. All issues of faith, Practice and ideological stand inerrant in the manuscripts of the Bible.
The following compares the numbers of secular manuscripts to the numbers of Biblical manuscripts.
Compare Secular Historical manuscripts to Biblical manuscripts:
- Josephus (The Jewish War) 9 complete manuscripts from the 5th century. Four centuries after they were written.
- Tacitus (Annals of Imperial Rome) Roman History around Biblical times. Only 2 manuscripts from the middle ages.
- Thucydides (History) survives in eight copies.
- Caesars (Gallic Wars) 10 copies.
- Herodotus (History) 8 copies.
- Plato only seven copies all dated a millennium from the original.
- Homers (Iliad) 647 existing copies.
For the Bible:
There are 5,500 separate Greek manuscripts represented by early fragments. Of the minuscules (small Greek letters in cursive style) there are 2,795 fragments from the 9th to 15th century comprising 34 complete New Testaments. The New Testament is over 99% pure because there are about 20,000 lines, only 40 are in doubt (about 400 words), and none affects any significant doctrine.
- Uncial manuscripts are comprised of almost complete New Testaments dating back to the 4th century.
- Codex Vaticanus dating to c. 325-350.
- Codex Sinaiticus to c. 340 contains nearly half of the Old Testament and virtually all the New Testament.
- Codex Alexandrius contains the entire Old Testament and nearly complete New Testament from the mid-5th century.
Evidence from the fragments is as follows:
- Chester Beatty Papyri contains the New Testament dated from the mid 3rd century.
- Bodmer Papyri II collection first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John and much of the last seven chapters. Dates from A.D 200 or earlier.
- Rylands Papyri is evidence that a copy of the New Testament reached Egypt 40 years after it was writhen. It is a fragment including John 18:31-33 and dates to or before A.D. 117-138.
In all about 50 manuscripts contain the entire New Testament. The textual evidence is more than sufficient to qualify as a substantial verification of the Bible. Early in Church history the Scriptures were translated into Latin (10,000 copies exist). By the third and fourth century the New Testament was translated into Coptic and Syriac and soon after into Armenian.
A note on errors (Bart Ehrman critical review of errors):
Out of the number of errors (400,000 because of the great number of manuscripts) are spelling. More errors are in abbreviations. Some variations do affect theological issues like (the comma Johanneum) that echos the Trinity. This corruption dates from the 10th century and shows up in four manuscripts. The variation is universally acknowledged to be errant.
Wallace categorizes the errors as follows:
- Spelling differences or nonsense readings
- Inconsequential work order (Christ Jesus vs. Jesus Christ) and synonyms
- Meaningful, though non-viable variants e.g., the Comma Johanneum)
- Variants that are both meaningful and viable (much less than 1%) these are in whole are theologically insignificant
Bart Ehrman says most of these have nothing to do with theology or ideology. His books (Misquoting Jesus, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture) published 2005.
Ehrmans top objections (10 with the first 6 eliminated):
First, six of ten citations he points out do not appear in the earliest manuscripts as noted in the (NASB).
Second, Questionable passages in Luke (22:20, 24:12, 24:51b) are located in uncontestable passages else ware (Matt 26:28, Mark 14:24, John 20:3-7, Acts 1:9,11).
Third, nothing is lost of any theological consequence by striking out any variants Ehrman lists e.g. long ending Mark (16:9-20). The possible non-canonical account of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11).
Finally, his own methods used to critique the New Testament can be used to reconstruct and weed out the variants. In other words he has used reliable text to illuminate the possible variants.
It is unique and has no other writing like it. It contains Prophecy that has been fulfilled to the letter and describes Mans nature to a tee.
