Ever since the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection first began to be preached there have always been those who have doubted and tried to refute Jesus’ life.  Matthew 28:13 records the lie the soldiers were told to offer after Jesus’ resurrection “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’” (Matthew 28:13, NKJV). In our age of doubt and unbelief such  skeptics and critics stand ever ready to confound and captivate the minds of those looking for reasons to reject obedience to the gospel.  Jesus taught us that there comes a point at which it is futile to seek to turn the minds of those whose hardened hearts stubbornly refuse to hear the truth.    At that point the Christian must “shake the dust off their feet” and turn to others (Matthew 10:14, Acts 13:46).  Yet, for those hungry souls diligently searching for truth, yet puzzled by the claims made by enemies of faith, we have a duty to answer each charge to the best of our ability.  In this spirit, I offer a little “ammunition” to use in the fight!

Manuscript Evidence

     When scholars study ancient manuscripts they use a process known as “textual criticism” to analyze variant readings in order to reasonably ascertain an original reading.  This process is used in both secular and religious writings.  Two factors are important in such a process:  1.)  The numbers of preserved copies of early manuscripts, and 2.)  The time span between the original drafting of the work and the earliest preserved copy.  If a work has many copies produced relatively close to the time when the original was written we can be fairly certain that the original reading is preserved.

     Josh McDowell in his book Evidence that Demands a Verdict offers a number of evidences regarding the reliability of the Bible.  Among these evidences is a chart similar to the one below.  In this chart we see a comparison of the manuscript evidence for a number of secular writings in comparison to the New Testament.  Among the works listed are some works by ancient historians, such as Julius Caesar, Tacitus, Thucydides, Seutonius, etc.  It is from the writings of these men that much of what we know about ancient history has been drawn.  Yet, in terms of actual evidence regarding the accuracy and reliability of their texts there is very little manuscript evidence.  In the case of Caesar we see that only 20 manuscripts have been preserved, the earliest of which dates to 900 A.D. leaving a 1000 year gap between the time the work was actually written and the earliest copy we have.  Even in the case of Homer, one of the most widely read authors of the ancient world while some 643 copies of his work The Iliad have survived, there is a 350 year gap between the time the original text was written and the date of our earliest copy.
 

New Testament Manuscripts

     It has long been suggested by critics of faith that the New Testament was written generations after Jesus lived by those who were not eye witnesses of Jesus’ deeds.  Thus they argue ­ “How can you know that it is what Jesus really taught?”  Such critics have not looked at the evidence!  The fact of the matter is that there are over 24,000+ handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament which have survived to the present.  Over 4000 of these are in Greek, the language in which the New Testament was penned.  There are complete and near complete copies of New Testament books which date to the third and fourth centuries.  Among these are: the Chester Beatty Papyrus (p46),  c. 200 A.D., housed in the University of Michigan and in Dublin, The Bodmer II Papyrus (p66), c. 200 A.D. housed in Cologny Switzerland, The Sinai Manuscript (Hebrew Aleph), c. 300’s A.D., housed in the British museum in London, The Vatican Manuscript (B), c. 300’s A.D., and the Washington Manuscript (W), c.300-400’s A.D.,housed in the Freer Gallery, in Washington D.C. 

    In addition to this there are a number of fragments which date even earlier than these.  The most noted, pictured on the previous page is housed in the John Rylands museum in Manchester England, and known generally as the Rylands Papyrus (p52) shown to the right.    This small fragment contains a small section of the gospel of John.  In paleographic (i.e. the study of handwriting to determine age) studies the style of this fragment matches most closely other works known to date from 94-127 A.D.  This would place place it late in the first century or early in the second.

     In recent years a good deal of attention has been focused on a couple of other manuscripts which some suggest may predate the Rylands Papyrus.  The first of these is actually a group of fragments known as the Magdalen Papyrus (p64), housed in the Magdalen College in Oxford containing a portion of the gospel of Matthew,  shown  below. In the December 24, 1994 edition of the Times of London an article ran entitled “Oxford papyrus is eyewitness record of the life of Christ.” The article presented the claims of scholars Carsten Thiede and Jose O’Callaghan that recent discoveries of Greek handwriting dated to the mid and late first centuries match closely the style found on the Magdalen Papyrus.   Some years back it was determined that two fragments in Barcelona (p67), which also contain a part of the gospel of Matthew with the Magdalen Papyrus are actually fragments of the same work. If this claim is correct it would give us five fragments dating sometime in the first century.

   The second manuscript which has drawn some attention is a small fragment, pictured to the right, discovered in one of the caves at Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.  This fragment known as 7Q5 was found in a cave believed to house works written before 68 A.D. when the Romans destroyed the site.  Some argue that this fragment contains portions of a line from Mark 6:52,53. If this is correct it would give us a fragment of the gospel of Mark dating to the mid-First century.