I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman L. Geisler

Author:Norman L. Geisler [Geisler, Norman L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781581345612
Amazon: 1433580756
Barnesnoble: 1433580756
Goodreads: 40985
Publisher: Crossway Books
Published: 2004-03-12T06:00:00+00:00

Do We Have Early Testimony About Jesus ?

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uments of the New Testament have been discovered. We have only copies of the original writings, called manuscripts. Will this prevent us from knowing what the originals said?

Not at all. In fact, all significant literature from the ancient world is reconstructed into its original form by comparing the manuscripts that survive. To reconstruct the original, it helps to have a large number of manuscripts that are written not long after the original. More manuscripts and earlier manuscripts usually provide more trustworthy testimony and enable a more accurate reconstruction.

How do the New Testament documents fare in this regard? Extremely well, and far better than anything else from the ancient world. In fact, the New Testament documents have more manuscripts, earlier manuscripts, and more abundantly supported manuscripts than the best ten pieces of classical literature combined. Here’s what we mean:

More Manuscripts —At last count, there are nearly 5,700 handwritten Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. In addition, there are more than 9,000 manuscripts in other languages (e.g., Syriac, Coptic, Latin, Arabic). Some of these nearly 15,000 manuscripts are complete Bibles, others are books or pages, and a few are just fragments. As shown in fig. 9.1 on the next page, there is nothing from the ancient world that even comes close in terms of manuscript support. The next closest work is the Iliad by Homer, with 643 manuscripts. Most other ancient works survive on fewer than a dozen manuscripts , 8 yet few historians question the historicity of the events those works describe.

Earlier Manuscripts —Not only does the New Testament enjoy abundant manuscript support, but it also has manuscripts that were written soon after the originals. The earliest undisputed manuscript is a segment of John 18:31-33, 37-38 known as the John Rylands fragment (because it’s housed in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England). Scholars date it between A.D. 117-138, but some say it is even earlier. It was found in Egypt—across the Mediterranean from its probable place of composition in Asia Minor—demonstrating that John’s Gospel was copied and had spread quite some distance by the early second century.

Even earlier than the John Rylands fragment are nine disputed fragments that date from A.D. 50 to 70, found with the Dead Sea Scrolls . 9

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