In Part 1, we saw the historical reliability of the Old Testament documents to the extent that the only reason to doubt them is from an a priori bias not based on fact. Are the New Testament documents similarly well attested as to their historical reliability? In evaluating this issue, we again turn to C. Sanders’ work Introduction to Research in English Literary History. He lists and explains the three basic principles of historiography: the bibliographical test, the internal evidence test, and the external evidence.¹

This is an evaluation of the textual transmission by which the documents have reached us. There are now more than 5,686 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Add over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions, and we have close to, if not more than, 25,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament. No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation. In comparison, Homer’s Iliad is second, with only 643 manuscripts that still survive.

The importance of the sheer number of manuscript copies cannot be overstated, because this abundance makes it possible to reconstruct the original with virtually complete accuracy. John Warwick Montgomery says that "to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament."²

Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, who was the director and principal librarian of the British Museum and second to none in authority for issuing statements about manuscripts states that

"besides number, the manuscripts of the New Testament differ from those of the classical authors.... In no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest extant manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament. The books of the New Testament were written in the latter part of the first century; the earliest extant manuscripts (trifling scraps excepted) are of the fourth century – say from 250 to 300 years later. This may sound a considerable interval, but it is nothing to that which parts most of the great classical authors from their earliest manuscripts. We believe that we have in all essentials an accurate text of the seven extant plays of Sophocles; yet the earliest substantial manuscript upon which it is based was written more than 1400 years after the poet’s death."³

F. F. Bruce, in The New Testament Document, gives us the following vivid portrayal of the difference between the New Testament and ancient historical writings:

"Perhaps we can appreciate how wealthy the New Testament is in manuscript attestation if we compare the textual material for other ancient historical works. For Caesar’s Gallic Wars (composed between 58 and 50 B.C.) there are several extant MSS [manuscripts], but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some 900 years later than Caesar’s day. Of the 142 books of the Roman history of Livy (59 B.C. - A.D. 17), only 35 survive; these are know to us from not more than 20 MSS of any consequence, only one of which, and that containing fragments of Books III-VI, is as old as the fourth century. Of the 14 books of the Histories of Tacitus ( c. A.D. 100) only four and a half survive; of the 16 books of his Annals, 10 survive in full and two in part. The text of these extant portions of his two great historical works depends entirely on two MSS, one of the ninth century and one of the eleventh.

"The extant MSS of his minor works (Dialogus de Oratoribus, Agricola, Germania) all descend from a codex of the tenth century. The History of Thucydides ( c. 460-400 B.C.) is known to us from eight MSS, the earliest belonging to c. A.D. 900, and a few papyrus scraps, belonging to about the beginning of the Christian era. The same is true of the History of Herodotus (B.C. 488-428). Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest MSS of their works which are of any use to us are over 1,300 years later that the originals."⁴

And Bruce Metzger summarizes nicely when he 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 New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material."⁵

Thus, for the critic who says he wants more evidence than normal for the New Testament because of the nature of the claims of those of us who believe its contents, the bibliographic data does, in fact, provide abundantly more evidence for the historicity of the source documents than any other document of antiquity.

Here we consider the extent to which the documents’ content itself is free from self-contradiction, known historical inaccuracies, and any other errors of fact. This is where we so often hear that the Bible is full of errors and contradictions, but when pressed for specifics, the speaker usually has none, or has one that was answered a long time ago. This embarrassing situation could have been prevented if they’d only paid attention to the common sense principles to follow.

When we approach the documents, the judicial principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is a logical guide that must be applied to avoid errors of a priori bias that distort the situation. To that end, there are at least fifteen principles to apply that flow from this when approaching apparent discrepancies in the Bible, or any other piece of literature:

1. The unexplained is not necessarily unexplainable.

2. Fallible interpretations do not mean fallible revelation.

3. Understand the context of the passage.

4. Interpret difficult passages in the light of clear ones.

5. Don’t base teaching on obscure passages.

6. The Bible is a human book with human characteristics (this is not a denial of inspiration, but a statement of God’s use of human intermediates to transcribe His revelation).

7. Just because a report is incomplete does not mean it is false.

8. New Testament citations of the Old Testament need not always be exact.

9. The Bible does not necessarily approve of all it records.

10. The Bible uses non-technical, everyday language.

11. The Bible may use round numbers as well as exact numbers.

12. Note when the Bible uses different literary devices.

13. An error in a copy does not equate to an error in the original.

14. General statements don’t necessarily mean universal promises.

15. Later revelation supercedes previous revelation.

Some of these might sound so obvious as to elicit a "well, duh!" but you’d be surprised at how obtuse some critics can be when they are grasping at straws trying to defend their rebellion. Should anyone want an expansion of any of these, let me know in the comments.

Let us apply these principles to an alleged contradiction in the New Testament. Luke records for us two instances of Paul’s conversion experience on the road to Damascus with an interesting apparent discrepancy:

"And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man."
Acts 9:7

 

"And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me."
Act 22:9

In the one passage, those that were with Paul are said to have heard the voice, and in the other, it is said that they did not. Clearly we have here an inconsistency in the form of an outright contradiction, right? Well, if we apply the maxim of innocent until proven guilty, and use rule number one above, we are free to determine if there is an explanation that resolves this. In fact, it is a simple matter of remembering that the New Testament was originally written in Greek, not King James English (or any other English, for that matter). When we examine the Greek, it becomes apparent that these two verses are complementary and not contradictory. The Greek word translated "voice" is the same in both cases, phone. It can mean either "a sound or tone" or "a voice, as in the sound of spoken words." This is somewhat technical, but when used with the verb for hearing (which is also the same in both verses), if the "voice" is in the genitive, as in Acts 9:7, the hearing is merely that of a sound or noise, i.e., the first sense of the word noted above. If the "voice" is in the accusative, as in Acts 22:9, the hearing is extended to the hearing and comprehension of words and their content. Thus, the two passages are complementary: in Acts 9, the narrative is indicating that those accompanying Paul heard the sound of someone talking but did not necessarily understand what was being said. Acts 22 clarifies that though they heard the sound, they could not distinguish the actual message being communicated to Paul by the voice. This is reminiscent of the old Charlie Brown specials on television, when poor ole Charlie was sent to the teacher or the principal. For reasons known only to the creators of these cartoon shows, when these authorities speak, we hear only the "wah-wah-wah" of a saxophone, thus hearing a voice but not hearing the words the voice says. (Yes, I know I just dated myself!)

Beyond this common sense thought process to reading the internal evidence, two additional points can be made here. First, the expert testimony of one of the "experts." F. F. Bruce, the former Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, says, concerning the primary-source value of the New Testament records:

"The earliest preachers of the gospel knew the value of...first-hand testimony, and appealed to it time and again. ‘We are witnesses of these things,’ was their constant and confident assertion. And it can have been by no means so easy as some writers seem to think to invent words and deeds of Jesus in those early years, when so many of his disciples were about, who could remember what had and had not happened.

"And it was not only friendly eyewitnesses that the early preachers had to reckon with; there were others less well disposed who were also conversant with the main facts of the ministry and death of Jesus. The disciples could not afford to risk inaccuracies (not to speak of willful manipulation of the facts), which would at once be exposed by those who would be only too glad to do so. On the contrary, one of the strong points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers; they not only said, ‘We are witnesses of these things,’ but also, ‘As you yourselves also know’ (Acts 2:22). Had there been any tendency to depart from the facts in any material respect, the possible presence of hostile witnesses in the audience would have served as a further corrective."⁶

Many critics attempt to dismiss this kind of evidence by asserting that the New Testament documents were not really written down until a century or more later, and thus exaggerations and outright falsehoods could, indeed, have been incorporated into the text. Data on the historiography of the manuscripts, however, now make that an untenable objection. William Foxwell Albright, one of the world’s foremost biblical archaeologists, said: "We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about A.D. 80, two full generations before the date between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today."⁷

The bottomline is that the New Testament documents likewise pass the internal evidence test of historiography.

In this test we ask the question, what sources are there – other than the literature under analysis – that substantiate its accuracy, reliability, and authenticity?

First, we can look to the witness from within the Church in the form of the writings of what are sometimes called the early Church Fathers. In the works of men like Papias (circa A.D. 130), Irenaeus (circa A.D. 180), Clement of Rome (circa A.D. 95), Ignatius (circa A.D. 70-110), Polycarp (circa A.D. 70-156), and Tatian (circa A.D. 170) we have a multiplicity of citations of New Testament scriptures as well as corroboration of the trustworthiness and high esteem with which those documents were treated.

Early non-Christian confirmation of New Testament history can be found in the works of the first-century Roman, Tacitus, another Roman historian named Suetonius (chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian, who reigned from A.D. 117-138), and, of course, the works of the Jewish historian, Josephus (circa A.D. 37-100). These are just a few such testimonies. The details fill books, so that one can deny the accuracy, reliability, and authenticity of the New Testament only on the basis of gross and willful ignorance or monumental subjective bias, although it is not uncommon to see both in the same critic.

So far, we have not addressed any supernatural content or the claim that these documents are uniquely the Word of the living God. What we have tried to show so far is that the manuscripts of both the Old and New Testaments are historically reliable and accurate in all points that can be tested, that they contain no self-contradictory statements of known historical fact or logic, and that to doubt their historicity and authenticity is to throw out all knowledge of the past, as these documents are uniquely testified to by the data above and beyond any other document of history past. We will next turn to the question of what evidence might be present to suggest the supernatural origin of these texts as our journey continues.

First installment

Previous installment

Next installment

References:

1. Sanders, C. Introduction to Research in English Literary History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1952), p. 143 ff.
2. Montgomery, John W. History and Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1971) p. 29.
3. Kenyon, Frederic G. Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London: Macmillan and Company, 1901), p. 4.
4. Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1964), pp. 16-17.
5. Metzger, Bruce M. The Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 34.
6. Bruce, F. F., op cit., pp. 33, 44-46.
7. Albright, W. F. Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1955), p. 136.