Page 18 - Bibliology - Textbook w videos short

These people were moved by the Holy Spirit to write down God’s revelation to them for us. While over
40 authors wrote the Bible, the canon (measuring rod) was brought together as one Book, one doctrinal
system, one moral standard, one plan of salvation, one program for the ages. And among all the
authors, there is neither one inconsistency nor disagreement. There are no contradictions or errors in
the unity of the books; each supplements the other.

Like the instruments in a symphony, each writer of the Bible is quite different from the others. When
you hear an orchestra playing with flawless harmony, you naturally assume that it is being directed by
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 Number Accuracy
Written Copy Span between of Copies of Copies
original & copy
died 55 or
Lucretius 1100 yrs 2 ----
53 B.C.
A.D. 61-
Pliny A.D. 850 750 yrs 7 ----
113
427-347
Plato A.D. 900 1200 yrs 7 ----
B.C.
4th Cent. A.D.
Demosthenes 800 yrs 8 ----
B.C. 1100
480-425
Herodotus A.D. 900 1300 yrs 8 ----
B.C.
A.D. 75-
Suetonius A.D. 950 800 yrs 8 ----
160
460-400
Thucydides A.D. 900 1300 yrs 8 ----
B.C.
480-406 A.D.
Euripides 1300 yrs 9 ----
B.C. 1100

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