Page 24 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible Student Textbook
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an accomplished conductor. Why should we think any differently in regard to the Bible, which is far
more complex in content and scope than any symphonic score?
The Bible is unique in its textual reliability. Because original manuscripts rarely exist for the world’s
most important ancient literary works, the question must be asked of any ancient book, “Do the earliest
copies in existence today accurately convey the content of the original document?
The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work of literature,
with over 5,600 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, catalogued 10,000 Latin manuscripts and
9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic
nd
and Armenian. Of all the manuscripts or parts of manuscripts we have of the Bible, some back to the 2
Century, 99.5% of all of them agree 100%. That means that the copyists were careful not to change the
text throughout the ages of time. Also, there are really only 400 variants that affected the sense of the
passage, and only 50 of these have doctrinal significance.
Here is a chart showing the ancient works of various individuals, the date they were written, the time
between writing and the copies
Author Date Earliest Approximate Time Span Number of Accuracy of
Written Copy between original & copy Copies Copies
died 55 or 53
Lucretius 1100 yrs 2 ----
B.C.
Pliny A.D. 61-113 A.D. 850 750 yrs 7 ----
Plato 427-347 B.C. A.D. 900 1200 yrs 7 ----
Demosthenes 4th Cent. B.C. A.D. 1100 800 yrs 8 ----
Herodotus 480-425 B.C. A.D. 900 1300 yrs 8 ----
Suetonius A.D. 75-160 A.D. 950 800 yrs 8 ----
Thucydides 460-400 B.C. A.D. 900 1300 yrs 8 ----
Euripides 480-406 B.C. A.D. 1100 1300 yrs 9 ----
Aristophanes 450-385 B.C. A.D. 900 1200 10 ----
Caesar 100-44 B.C. A.D. 900 1000 10 ----
Livy 59 BC-AD 17 ---- ??? 20 ----
Tacitus circa A.D. 100 A.D. 1100 1000 yrs 20 ----
Aristotle 384-322 B.C. A.D. 1100 1400 49 ----
Sophocles 496-406 B.C. A.D. 1000 1400 yrs 193 ----
Homer (Iliad) 900 B.C. 400 B.C. 500 yrs 643 95%
2nd Cent.
New 1st Cent. A.D. A.D.
Testament (A.D. 50-100) (c. A.D. less than 100 years 5600 99.5%
130 f.)
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