So some people think, that since we do not have the original manuscripts or documents, the reliability of the Biblical documents and copies we do have is thus in doubt. Can this be correct?

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New Testament Manuscripts:

The Bible was initially made up of many manuscripts. Which is actually one of the reasons that we can trust in it. Because as with many things the more witnesses that we have to any event the easier it is for us to ascertain what the true story is or was.

This fact holds true for the Bible in todays world. For with such a large number of manuscripts available to be compared with each other we can in fact gain a very accurate account of what the Christian Community beleived and taught in the first 100 or so years of its history.

This is very much like a witness to any event. If we have only one witness to go by then there is the great possibility that what we are going by is that witnesses personnal account, or agenda. Or we could be deceived by exagerations or even out right lies. But if we have many witnesses, the probability that they all got it wrong becomes less and in the face of many witnesses then the probability of these all being wrong becomes minute. Now I am sure that all can see the logic and truth in this....

Time Period

But we must remember with the number of years involved and the natural aging and decay of all thingsmany of the historical documents from the past have few surviving manuscripts that we can look to and examine.

As an example: Of all the historical works of Herodotus, written around 480-425 BC, only eight have made it through the years to us today. Of those written by Aristotle there are a mere 5 copies that have lasted to the 20th century, with just 10 copies of the writings of Caesar. And then from the 1st Century BC of the historians Tacitus, and Pliny, only 20 and 7 manuscripts have survived through all those years.

Now from this we can see that about 50 manuscripts of all that these men wrote have survived for us to examine and learn from all these years later. Yet strangely, these manuscripts are not questioned by the world or Islam but are often used in attempts to discredit the validity of the “religious” manuscripts.

However, when it comes to the Bible there are at present thousands of partial manuscripts that have come to us from the 1st Century BC onward. And of all these approximately 200-300 are older than 600 BC.

There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, somewhere in the region of 10,000 Latin vulgates and a staggering 9,300 that are earlier manuscripts. In other words there are in excess of 24,000 documents that are available to us for comparison and research.

True we do not have any complete originals, but with so much documentation at our disposal we are able to compare them, and can from them attain the message that all those documents together contain. Which in turn has led those invovled in this research to formulate an accurate picture and understanding of what the message was that Jesus spoke to those of his time.

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