While the church councils began in the fourth century, we have copies of the Bible and the writings of the church fathers beginning no later Why it can be stated that the claims of those who say that the Bible has been rewritten or edited by this or that church council are simply not supported by the evidence. Quotes act as a second witness for the text. These early quotations, nearly the entire New Testament can be reconstructed. The early churchįathers wrote frequently, and when they wrote they often quoted Scripture. We also have another way by which we can confirm these texts. For the New Testament, we have thousands of copies,īeginning tens of years after they were written.īesides the thousands of early manuscripts of The text of the New Testament is much more established than any of these works.įor most of the ancient writers, we have tens of copies made a thousand yearsĪfter they were written. For any single work of Aristotle we have about 50 copies, writtenĪbout 1400 years after his death. We haveĪbout 7 copies of the works of Plato that date approximately 1200 years after We have about 10 copies, made about 1000 years after Caesar wrote them. Was written, Julius Caesar wrote his account of the Gaulic Wars. Vulgate, provide a truly phenomenal record of the text of the New Testament. These manuscripts, along withĪbout 20,000 translations, which include over 10,000 copies of the Latin Greek manuscript portions of the New Testament. Byġ989, scholars had catalogued 5488 3F (5) early Stands up to the examination of other scholars, what is clear is that the textual evidence for the New Testament isįar and away stronger than for any other ancient work. Whether or not the work of O’Callaghan, ThiedeĪnd other scholars who support the early date of these Least second generation copies and gives usĪn indication of how rapidly the Gospels were copied and spread throughout the Roman world, which as we shall see shortly is important for establishing their reliability. (similar to a book) and not from a scroll This indicates that these are at Significant aspects of the Magdalen fragments is that they are from a codex (4) Again,Īs with O’Callaghan’s identification of 7Q5 with Mark, this has causedĬonsiderable controversy for the range of dates given for Matthew are from theĤ0s to 90s with most liberal scholars dating Matthew in the 70s and mostĬonservative scholars dating it in the 60s. Papyrus, which contain portions of the Gospel of Matthew Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, Germany,Īnnounced a startling discovery about a different manuscript. In late 1994, Carsten Thiede, Director of the (those specifically trained in this area) there is growing support for Recent examinations using advance technology have show n that the disputed letter is in fact a nu and thus is consistent with the text of Mark. The problem is that much of the right hand portion of the letter is missing and to some it looks like an itoa (I), which would not match the text of Mark. Greek letter nu ( N ) then the text would be consistent with the text of Mark. The case for the identification of 7Q5 with Mark was strengthened recently when the fragment was examine d using special equipment. As such, O’Callaghan's identification caused a lot of controversy, and inįact was largely rejected by New Testament scholars whoĬlaimed this was just too early and that the manuscriptįragment was too small to make such identification If correct, this would be truly astounding since the range of dates for Mark run from the mid 40s to the mid 70, with most scholars dating Mark during the 60s. (Mark 6:52-53) and was copied somewhere between A.D. Papyrologist Jose O’Callaghan claimed that a small manuscript fragment found inĪmong the Dead Sea Scrolls(called 7Q5) was actually from the Gospel of Mark (2) OtherĮarly manuscripts of the Bible continue to be found. Is less than 40 years after John wrote it. Manuscript, which contains a portion of the book of John (18:31-33, 37-38). That the oldest fragment of the New Testament we have is the John Rylands If we look at portions of the New Testament, we This shows that only a few hundred yearsĪfter the books of the New Testament were written, they were already beingĬollected as a complete unit. Located in the Vatican, it is believed to It to be even stronger than that for the Old Testament. When we examine the New Testament, we find the evidence for The Text of the New Testament (Adapted from Evidence for the Bible by Elgin L.
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