Biblical Reliability          Home

Eyewitness Accounts

2 Peter 1:16
We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

I John 1:3
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

Supporting Documents

Number of available manuscripts – What matters is the number of early manuscripts and how close to the time of the original they are

•  2^nd most reliable is the Illiad by Homer: 643 manuscripts; earliest manuscripts are dated 400 years after Homer wrote the Illiad.

• New testament has 5366 copies, some copies dating to within 50 years!

• Overall almost 25,000 copies and fragments of the New Testament exist today.

• Shakespeare’s works, only 208 years old, are much more in dispute than the text of the New Testament, now over 18 centuries old. P9

• No other book even comes CLOSE to the Bible and especially the New Testament in historical reliability.

Dead sea scrolls

• Discovered after 1900 years

• Previously the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript was dated 900 AD on. 

• The dead sea scrolls date to 125 BC and confirm the later manuscripts we have.

• Virtually identical copy of Isaiah

• History of the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Scripture contained in other writings

• Even without any old copies of scripture, enough scripture has been quoted or contained in other writings to re-create the entire NT except for (11 verses)

Historically Reliability - Supporting archeology or "Historicity"

• No archeological discovery has ever disproved any Biblical reference, but rather quite the contrary.

• Luke, considered by many to be one of the greatest historians of all time, names 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands all without error

• Paul mentions Erastus in Romans as being the city treasurer.  In 1929 when the City of Corinth was excavated a pavement was found with the inscription “Erastus, curator of public buildings, laid this pavement at his own expense.”  Below is an image of this pavement:
  
  (Image(s) courtesy of  www.HolyLandPhotos.org)

Uniqueness
No other book like it in the world

Continuity

• Written over 1500 years

• Over 40 authors from every walk of life (kings, military leaders, peasants, philosophers, fisherman, tax collectors, shepherds etc.)

• Written in many different places (wilderness, jails, on an island)

• Written on 3 different continents (Asia, Africa, Europe)

• Written in 3 different languages (Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic)

Circulation

• Rare to find books with tens of millions of copies – the Bible has been printed into the billions of copies (1 billion = 1000 million)  The United Bible Societies alone distributed more than 585 Million copies or portions of copies – in 1998 alone!

Translation

• Rare to find another book translated into dozens of languages; the bible is in 2200 languages, more than any other book. 

Survival

• For over 1800 years all kinds of people have been trying to destroy and get rid of the Bible, yet today it is more widely distributed and read than any other and more rock solid than ever.

• In 1778 French philosopher Voltaire said that Christianity would be gone in 100 years.  Just 50 years later, the Geneva Bible Society were using his house and printing presses to produce stacks of Bibles!

Single Message 

• Despite all the uniqueness, it presents a single well-connected story about Jesus, the Christ.

Prophesy 

• Over 300 prophecies about the messiah in the Old Testament were fulfilled by Jesus Christ.  Could not have happened by chance.

(Source: “The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict”, Josh McDowell, Nelson publishers.)