Apologetics in Manchester 8 th May, 2010 Brenda Lewis

Introduction Ravi Zacharias: ‘the Christian message stands or falls upon the authenticity or spuriousness of the Bible.’ Richard Dawkins says: ‘Much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries.’

Assessing the Evidence M - Manuscript evidence A - Archaeological evidence P - Prophecy S – Statistical Probability Hank Hanegraaff

Manuscript Evidence Bibliographical Internal evidence External evidence

Bibliographical evidence How many copies do we have? What is the time interval between the original and the copy? How accurate has the copying been?

How many manuscripts have we? NT: manuscript portions 10% of all Greek documents are bible documents Secular: see the chart attached to the handout! Bruce Metzger says: ‘The works of several ancient authors are preserved to us by the thinnest possible thread of transmission... in contrast... the textual critic of the NT is embarrassed by the wealth of his material.’

Old Testament Manuscripts We have very little, but what we have is good quality The Dead Sea Scrolls contain a complete copy of all of Isaiah, dated to 125 BC 95% same as Masoretic Text

What are these NT manuscripts? Papyrii a) John Rylands papyrus, earliest, 125 AD 5 verses of John. Manchester b) Bodmer II – most of John. Switzerland c) Chester Beatty – most of the NT d) Bodmer p14/15 – most of Luke and John Parchments, earliest late 2 nd century Codices – bound books, earliest beginning 2 nd century

Dead Sea Scrolls (1) Written and collected by Essenes from 300BC to 100AD in monastery at the Dead Sea 253 scrolls Between and inscribed fragments 2 copies of Isaiah Whole copies of I Samuel and II Samuel Hidden by Essenes from the Romans in 68AD Discovered by an Arab boy in 1947

Families of Translations Alexandrian Egyptian. Includes translations into Coptic and Ethopian, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus Early, but some errors. Basis of modern translations. Byzantine 90% of all mss, careful and accurate Underlies the KJV New Testament Western Various, mostly derived, although includes Syriac Less weight given to most of its mss

External Evidence – Church Fathers citations of NT by church fathers before 325 AD Clement and Ignatius ( AD) quote 15 NT books Between them the fathers quote every verse, bar20 Eusebius refers to every book in the canon They do not accept gnostic gospels and epistles

External: Early Translations Many early translations over a wide area Syriac Armenian Georgian Arabic Gothic Coptic Ethiopian Anglo-Saxon

How accurately has it been transmitted? NT: 97%-98% certain No NT variant affects doctrine to variants among the mss - the NT only has words! Westcott and Hort say: ‘If you remove trivialities... the words... still subject to doubt hardly amount to more than a thousandth part of the NT.’

Variants Accidental typos Deliberate fixes Smoothing 38 places in NT with 10 or more words changed: End of Mark No-one has I John 5: verses missing from the Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus Differences between Alexandrian and Byzantine translations account for 20% of all variants

Weighting given to variants Earlier the better – usually If a difficult reading has been retained – better Smoothing is suspect Byzantine mss generally seen as more accurate Early attestations – e.g. cited in that form by church father

Different pages – same document? Handwriting Page layout Punctuation Provenance Thickness of pen strokes Colour of ink Which sacred abbreviations?

Other tests Manuscripts are regarded as more reliable if they are: Personal letters or written to a small group Unpolished Include trivia/details

Internal Evidence Nature of contradictions – some minor ones which suggest eyewitness accounts Sufficient witnesses – NT has 9 writers, 6 of whom had witnessed the miracles and the resurrection Truthful – risked damnation; persecuted, martyred Prejudiced – nothing to gain, included material which did not reflect well on themselves or on Jesus

Eyewitness accounts 3 objections: 1. Church lost interest in historicity of Jesus and invented freely 2. Eyewitness accounts had no importance then 3. They could not have remembered accurately the teaching of Jesus

Marks of the historicity of the gospels Jesus’ sayings are poetic – easily remembered They show a single mind Jesus uses unique vocab and phrasing He alone tells parables Material has been translated from Aramaic Includes material irrelevant to later church Includes counter-productive material

How do we date the manuscripts? Mass spectrometer carbon dating – e.g John Rylands Sometimes dated or mentions dateable event Handwriting Scrolls versus Books Papyrus versus parchment

Internal evidence – dating the gospels In the past scholars dated all gospels after 70AD But Acts was probably written before 61 AD Luke wrote his gospel before he wrote Acts He uses Matthew and Mark as sources Mark is earlier than Matthew Mark uses some earlier sources still – almost back to the resurrection!

Dating material in Acts Speeches in Acts 1-12 originally in Aramaic These speeches emphasise Jesus as Messiah, so must be spoken in Jewish context Therefore this part of Acts cannot have been invented freely at the end of the first century by the Greek- speaking church Preaching begins 7 weeks after the resurrection – bad inventing! – lacks dramatic impact

Confirmation from Secular Writers Thallus – darkness at crucifixion Jospehus – many people mentioned in the bible, the crucifixion under Pilate, resurrection, disciples Tacitus – Christ put to death during the reign of Tiberius by Pilate. Christianity spread quickly to Rome Pliny – Christians met once a week, sang to Christ as to a god, righteous living, probably communion BabylonianTalmud – Jesus hanged on eve of Passover after a six-week warning

Archaeological evidence which corroborates the NT No evidence refutes the bible 1000s of finds support the bible, e.g: Pool of Siloam (1897) Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judaea – inscription (1961) Ossuary of Caiaphas (1990) Pool of Bethesda 1995

The canon Popular idea that powerful Roman Catholics kept out many other worthy manuscripts, and chose the canon to suit themselves in the 4 th century But Church fathers for 300 years had cited whole NT canon They did not cite heretical documents as scripture The canon was only confirmed at Hippo and Carthage The apostles, as witnesses, were probably the real guardians of the NT material

Apocrypha In the LXX Repudiated by Jews at Council of Jamnia, 90AD Translated into the Vulgate by Jerome, but later he called it untrue and tried to suppress it Augustine championed its acceptance at Carthage, 397AD Roman Catholics, using the Vulgate, accept it In KJV bible of 1611, but not 1644 C of E: useful for ‘example of life and instruction in manners, but are not a source of doctrine’.

Summary Dawkins’ charge is unfounded The bible was written by 40 writers, in 3 continents over more than 9 centuries But A single purpose, an overarching meaning A mass of evidence that the bible has been transmitted accurately

Further Information from Why Trust the Bible? Amy Orr-Ewing What the Da Vinci Code Does Not Tell You – Michael Green (New) Evidence That Demands a Verdict – Josh McDowell Norman Geisler ppt – 12 Points that Prove Christianity is True – CD available from Bethinking.org.uk Biblequery.org