[Muafrica]

[KENNETH MATIBA]

Hello Brethren;

Liberal scholars of many groups, Islamic scholars and the leaders of many other religious organizations question whether the Bible has been accurately handed down to us. It's been over 50 years since I studied textual criticism so this little synopsis may not be in keeping with the latest science, but it's the best I can do from memory.

Undoubtedly some friendly Greek -- Hebrew scholar or conservative textual critic will bring any additions or corrections to my attention via e-mail.

Some believe the Bible has been corrupted over time. It isn't true and here is how we know it isn't.

The last books of the New Testament were written by about 100 A.D. by the apostle John who was still alive at that time. We have over 5300 partial or complete manuscripts of the New Testament penned prior to fourth century A.D. Though not assembled into what we now know now as the New Testament until 300 A.D., those canonical writings of Jesus' apostles were being read all over the known world. Though it is disputed by some Messianic Jews, the New Testament manuscripts were originally written in Koine` Greek and then copied by early Christians into every language known to the world. Our major manuscripts are in Greek, yes, but we also have important early manuscripts in Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, Hebrew, and several other lesser-known languages. We have one small piece of the Gospel of John, found on the Egyptian island of Elephantine, that is early enough to be a piece of the original.

It is impossible to support any kind of later corrupting when we have those 5300 early manuscripts that prove otherwise. In fact, because of this breadth of early manuscript support, textual scholars have concluded -- that for all practical purposes -- we have the original documents themselves. For a claim of tampering to be seriously considered, one would have to show that scribes from Syria, Babylonia, Galatia, Asia, India, Rome, India, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Tarshish and Macedonia -- to name a few -- all made the same mistake, at the same time, for the same doctrinal purpose. An utterly ridiculous idea.

We have similar textual support for the authenticity of the Old Testament. Until a few years ago, the earliest documents we had for the Old Testament were later copies of a 70 B.C. Septuigent in Greek and a Massoretic Text in Hebrew that could be positively dated to the ninth century A.D.. However, with manuscript discoveries at Qumran made in the late 1940s (the Isaiah scroll, the book of Daniel, the book of Jubilees, the Temple scrolls, etc. etc.), some of which could be dated to the third century B.C.. Internal evidence within one Daniel scroll dates it at 350 B.C. As a result, we can now state with some certainty that there has been no tampering with the canonical Old Testament manuscripts between 300 B.C. and 900 A.D..

Despite the span of over a thousand years, the canonical manuscripts are virtually identical !!!!

To suggest there was tampering to the Old Testament documents prior to 300 B.C. shows a misunderstanding of Israelite scribal methodology and of their reverence for the Scriptures. First of all, biblical scrolls were written on the inside only to prevent any smudging or smearing that might lead to a missreading of the text. When being copied -- besides many parallel readings -- the copy was compared with the original in every way humanly possible.

The words in each column were counted and then the letters. The first, last, and middle letter and word in each column had to be identical to the original. If the number of words or the number of letters of the copy differed from the original, the copy was destroyed. Then they counted the words and letters in the whole document. They divided the document into quarters and into eighths. The first, last and middle letter in each section had to be the same. The number of words and the number of letters in each section had to be the same.The middle word and the middle letter in each section had to be the same, and they had to be the same for the whole document. If not, the copy was destroyed. Not corrected, but destroyed!

Since there is absolutely no textual or historic evidence that the Old Testament was ever corrupted, any claim of editing must have been made by those religious authorities who didn't like what the Old Testament taught. There are some who claim late-dating for Old Testament prophets, but that claim is unfounded, as well. The books of Moses, originally penned in the 15th century B.C. contain Egyptian words and idioms that fell out on the usage a few centuries later. When the Hebrews entered Canaan, Canaanite words appeared in Scripture, when in contact with the Assyrians, Assyrian words appeared in Scripture. During the Babylonian captivity, when Daniel and Ezekiel were written, Babylonian words and Babylonian idioms appeared in Scripture. So rest assured, these canonical books were contemporary books, written when the prophets claimed they were, and they remain unchanged to this day.

[KENNETH MATIBA]

Is the Bible reliable?



One of the most important questions asked by non-Christians as they look into Christianity is whether or not the Bible is trustworthy. Can the Bible be trusted. If it has been corrupted, then we cannot trust what is attributed to Jesus' words and deeds. So, is the Bible reliable or not?
Yes, the Bible was reliable. The original writings of the Bible have been lost. But before they were lost, they were copied. These copies were incredibly accurate, very meticulous, and very precise. The people who copied them were extremely dedicated to God and their copying tasks. They took great care when copying the original manuscripts. This copying method is so exact, and so precise, that the New Testament alone is considered to be 99.5% textually pure. This means that of the 6000 Greek copies (the New Testament was written in Greek), and the additional 21,000 copies in other languages, there is only one half of 1% variation. Of this very slight number, the great majority of the variants are easily corrected by comparing them to other copies that don't have the "typos" or by simply reading the context. You should know that copying mistakes occur in such ways as word repetition, spelling, or a single word omission due to the copyist missing something when moving his eyes from one line to another. The variants are very minor. Nothing affects doctrinal truth and the words and deeds of Christ are superbly reliably transmitted to us.
The science of studying ancient literature and its accuracy of transmission to is called historicity. The Bible is so exceedingly accurate in its transmission from the originals to the present copies, that if you compare it to any other ancient writing, the Bible is light years ahead in terms of number of manuscripts and accuracy. If the Bible were to be discredited as being unreliable, then it would be necessary to discard the writings of Homer, Plato, and Aristotle as also unreliable since they are far far less well preserved than the Bible.
The Bible was written by those who were inspired to God. When we look at the New Testament we realize that it was written by those who either knew Jesus personally, or were under the direction of those who did. They wrote what they saw. They wrote about the resurrection of Christ. They recorded His miracles and His sayings. It comes down to whether or not you believe what it says about Christ. Do you?

For more information on the Bible and its reliability, please go to the bible.

[KENNETH MATIBA]

Are the Biblical Documents Reliable?
Jimmy Williams

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Introduction
How do we know that the Bible we have today is even close to the original? Haven't copiers down through the centuries inserted and deleted and embellished the documents so that the original message of the Bible has been obscured? These questions are frequently asked to discredit the sources of information from which the Christian faith has come to us.

Three Errors To Avoid
Do not assume inspiration or infallibility of the documents, with the intent of attempting to prove the inspiration or infallibility of the documents. Do not say the bible is inspired or infallible simply because it claims to be. This is circular reasoning.
When considering the original documents, forget about the present form of your Bible and regard them as the collection of ancient source documents that they are.
Do not start with modern "authorities" and then move to the documents to see if the authorities were right. Begin with the documents themselves.
Procedure for Testing a Document's Validity
In his book, Introduction in Research in English Literary History, C. Sanders sets forth three tests of reliability employed in general historiography and literary criticism.{1} These tests are:

Bibliographical (i.e., the textual tradition from the original document to the copies and manuscripts of that document we possess today)
Internal evidence (what the document claims for itself)
External evidence (how the document squares or aligns itself with facts, dates, persons from its own contemporary world).
It might be noteworthy to mention that Sanders is a professor of military history, not a theologian. He uses these three tests of reliability in his own study of historical military events.

We will look now at the bibliographical, or textual evidence for the Bible's reliability.


The Old Testament
For both Old and New Testaments, the crucial question is: "Not having any original copies or scraps of the Bible, can we reconstruct them well enough from the oldest manuscript evidence we do have so they give us a true, undistorted view of actual people, places and events?"

The Scribe
The scribe was considered a professional person in antiquity. No printing presses existed, so people were trained to copy documents. The task was usually undertaken by a devout Jew. The Scribes believed they were dealing with the very Word of God and were therefore extremely careful in copying. They did not just hastily write things down. The earliest complete copy of the Hebrew Old Testament dates from c. 900 A.D.

The Massoretic Text
During the early part of the tenth century (916 A.D.), there was a group of Jews called the Massoretes. These Jews were meticulous in their copying. The texts they had were all in capital letters, and there was no punctuation or paragraphs. The Massoretes would copy Isaiah, for example, and when they were through, they would total up the number of letters. Then they would find the middle letter of the book. If it was not the same, they made a new copy. All of the present copies of the Hebrew text which come from this period are in remarkable agreement. Comparisons of the Massoretic text with earlier Latin and Greek versions have also revealed careful copying and little deviation during the thousand years from 100 B.C. to 900 A.D. But until this century, there was scant material written in Hebrew from antiquity which could be compared to the Masoretic texts of the tenth century A.D.

The Dead Sea Scrolls
In 1947, a young Bedouin goat herdsman found some strange clay jars in caves near the valley of the Dead Sea. Inside the jars were some leather scrolls. The discovery of these "Dead Sea Scrolls" at Qumran has been hailed as the outstanding archeological discovery of the twentieth century. The scrolls have revealed that a commune of monastic farmers flourished in the valley from 150 B.C. to 70 A.D. It is believed that when they saw the Romans invade the land they put their cherished leather scrolls in the jars and hid them in the caves on the cliffs northwest of the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include a complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, a fragmented copy of Isaiah, containing much of Isaiah 38-6, and fragments of almost every book in the Old Testament. The majority of the fragments are from Isaiah and the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). The books of Samuel, in a tattered copy, were also found and also two complete chapters of the book of Habakkuk. In addition, there were a number of nonbiblical scrolls related to the commune found.

These materials are dated around 100 B.C. The significance of the find, and particularly the copy of Isaiah, was recognized by Merrill F. Unger when he said, "This complete document of Isaiah quite understandably created a sensation since it was the first major Biblical manuscript of great antiquity ever to be recovered. Interest in it was especially keen since it antedates by more than a thousand years the oldest Hebrew texts preserved in the Massoretic tradition."{2}

Are the Biblical Documents Reliable?

[KENNETH MATIBA]

Mike Taylor - Why Is the Bible Reliable?

How reliable are the documents that make up the New Testament in the Bible?

[Muafrica]

I know you have been brain washed.......If you cant speak the truth....I suggest quit this religious nonsense.....my advice....lol