If we only have copies, why should we trust the Bible?

Today, we're going to talk about an extension of what we started talking about last week. Now, if you'll recall from last week, we talked about why publishers change how the Bible translates different original-language manuscripts. The Old Testament is largely written in Hebrew; the New Testament is almost entirely written in Greek. Well, we don't read those languages, so we need to read a translation.

We discussed that a good translation accurately and faithfully represents the original, but I did mention that we are discovering more things about the ancient world and its languages that lead us to translate things differently, and sometimes, we actually discover older and better manuscripts. Well, this raises the question, how do you go from a manuscript to the Bible on your nightstand? How do you know which manuscripts should be included, and which are authoritative, and which are true?

Now, before you start saying, "Okay, we're talking about manuscripts, that's a little too intellectual, I'm checking out," consider this: If you believe the Bible is God's word to us, then you should know how we got it. You should know the history of this thing to which you ascribe so much authority in your life. We need to know how to demonstrate that it is reasonable to believe that the Bible is true. Because often, the non-Christian will say, "Well, you can't trust the Bible, you just have copies, you only base your life on copies."

There is a quick way to maybe address this. You could ask the person, "When have you ever read the original penned version of a manuscript by an author?" Hardly anyone has ever done this. We have all looked at copies of books. The chemist doesn't say, "Oh, I can't figure out how to make this drug, because my chemistry textbook is not the original one penned by the author; I can't know if it's true." We shouldn't allow people to put the Bible in a secondary category where that type of claim can apply to it either, because the Bible makes claims about history, and as such, it talks about the way the world really is, and it's either true or false in that regard, just like your chemistry textbook either accurately describes the physical world or it doesn’t. The fact that it's a copy has nothing to do with its truthfulness.

It is true, we do not have original manuscripts of the Bible, we have copies, but far from being a problem, this is actually a helpful type of thing. We have over 5,800 partial copies of the New Testament and that's just for the Greek ones. If you include the Latin, Coptic, and Syriac versions, we have tens of thousands of more.

All these copies are an interesting problem, because they're not all exactly the same. I don't want to lead you on and make you think that they are; there are some differences, but at the very least, let's just take a moment and consider the amount of evidence for the New Testament. Like I said, 5,800 copies. Let's compare that to the next greatest work of antiquity, which would be Homer, which has 1,757 copies. Plato only has 210, Herodotus only has 60, and Tacitus only has 31, so we have so much more data to work with for the New Testament.

Another thing to point out is that you don't copy something, if you're a 1st-century scribe, unless it's important. I remember being in school, and one of my punishments when I acted out (which never happened) was to write something or copy a story. That was tedious and painful. I hated it; it was a great punishment. This was at school. My mother, as an English teacher, did not make me write for a punishment; she didn't want to make me hate writing. Anyways, enough about that.

My point is, you don't copy something and spend the time on it unless it's i…