Is the New Testament Reliable?

Is the New Testament reliable? I’m not asking if the New Testament at this point is inerrant or inspired. Just is it reliable? The reason I ask that question is because many people ask that question and they say no, and you may be one of them. Even Christians will question whether or not the New Testament is reliable. So, I’m going to tackle this question from two different perspectives.

Here in this video, I’ll be asking the question is the New Testament reliable in terms of its transmission? Again, people say, no, they don’t think so. They would maybe say it’s something like this. If we were to compare the original writings to the original autographs with the copies that followed in the years or the decades or even the centuries that follow, we would find a drastic difference.

Or to put it another way, they would say, we have no idea what was in those original writings. There was too much time between the original writings and the copy, too much time, too many differences, too many additions or whatever. Since we do not have the original, is it possible that we can figure out what the originals said based on the copies that we do have?

So, let’s lay down some ground rules here. And these are ground rules that are used by, the scholars to ask and try to answer these kinds of questions. And, and the first ground rule is this. And I’m simply going to quote from one of these, New Testament scholars. And this man happens to be not a Christian, and this is what he says.

This is ground rule number one. The more manuscripts you have, the more likely it is that you can figure out what the authors originally said. So how many copies do we have? Well, let’s first of all, for comparison’s sake, look at some of the other ancient writings that we have you go to, for example, Homer’s Iliad. It’s quite amazing.

We have about 1800 copies, some say only 700, but a lot of people say about 1800 copies. What about the other ancient writings? Well, it goes downhill from there. Whether you’re talking about Plato or Aristotle’s or Sophocles or Josephus or Tacitus, when we go down to those other writers, we have maybe at the very most for several of them, close to 500, some, maybe 300, but you jump down to 100 or less, sometimes only ten, or maybe only a few.
So not very many copies or manuscripts.

What about the New Testament? For the New Testament, we have about 5800 copies or manuscripts, and that’s only including the Greek copies. If we include the Coptic or the Syriac or the Latin copies, we’re talking about 25,000 to 35,000 copies. And so, this number just blows the others out of the water.

Let me quote again from that prominent non-Christian scholar. Here’s what he said.

We have more manuscripts for the New Testament than for any other book from the ancient world. Many, many more manuscripts than we have for the writings of Homer, Plato, Cicero, or any other important author. That is good news. The more manuscripts you have, the more likely it is you can figure out what the authors originally said.

All right, now let’s go to the second ground rule. The narrower the gap between the original writings and the earliest copy, the more narrow it is, the better it is to try to figure out what the original writers wrote. So again, going back to those ancient, writings outside of Scripture, Homer again, the Iliad, it’s really quite amazing.

There’s a time gap between when he originally wrote the Iliad and the earliest copy of about 400 years, 400 years. But then you look at the other ancient writings, and you’re looking at anywhere from 750 years to 1400 years, with an average being close to about a thousand years between the original and the earliest copy. Now, it’s interesting that these scholars are still convinced that they can come really, really close to what the original writers wrote based on the copies they do have even though you have this time gap.

What about the New Testament? What kind of time gap do we have there? Well, we have, you know, thousands of copies that date from 400 years or later than the original writings. But we also have literally dozens and dozens and dozens of copies that date within 400 years. And you have about 100 copies that date within 300 years. You have about 50 copies that date even earlier. And then you have several copies that date between 50 and 100 years after the original. So, you have a very narrow time gap between the originals and the earliest copies. And again, none of the other ancient writings come close to that.

Let’s go to the third ground rule. The copies that exist must show a high degree of consistency. And if there are differences or variants, as we call them, they cannot be significant. And here’s where some might say, “aha! There must be a transmission reliability problem for the New Testament because we have thousands of variants.”

And we Christians, we say, yeah, we do. We do have all those variants. As Christians, we believe it’s the originals, the original writings, the original autographs that were inspired and inerrant. Those who copied them were humans and so they’re bound to make mistakes, make changes and so forth. But the question is not how many variants there are, but the kind of variants there are, and are they significant?

Here’s what the New Testament scholars, both Christian and non-Christian, agree upon. They say that 95% of the variants are things like spelling mistakes, or a different way of spelling the same word, or a change in the word order or synonyms. For example, one early copy might say something like “and he said,” and then a later copy says, “and Jesus said.”

Now, it’s obvious that they both mean exactly the same thing. And then there’s another 4.4% of the variants that are slightly more meaningful. And these are the kind of variants that you might find in the footnotes in your Bible. A footnote that might say something like “another manuscript says,” in other words, there can be differences in words. One copyist might put down one word, another copyist might put down a different word, and they might have different meanings, or they might have somewhat similar meanings. But here again, when you look at these differences that are, you know, somewhat meaningful, they make absolutely no difference whatsoever in terms of content or history or teachings.

So now we’re accounting for 99.4% of the variants. And that leaves us with 0.6% of the variants. And the scholars, the critical scholars call these 0.6% variants, they call them meaningful and viable. Well, what would they include? They just add just a few things. For example, they include Mark chapter 16 and where it ends. Some of the older copies end with verses beyond verse eight, some of the earlier copies end at verse eight. Does it make a difference? It doesn’t make a difference whatsoever. The copies that include verses beyond verse eight just add a few more details. Another example would be the woman caught in adultery from John chapter eight. Some of the copies don’t include that account of the woman caught in adultery and some of the later copies do.

Does that make a difference? Well, it might make a difference in terms of whether or not that event really occurred, but it doesn’t make a difference whatsoever in the content, the teachings, or the history of the New Testament. Whether you look at the earliest copies or the copies made hundreds of years later there is complete consistency. There’s no evolution. We would say the content, the history and the teachings are there from the earliest to the latest copies.

Here’s what the New Testament critical scholars, conclude. And again, I’m going to quote from this very prominent non-Christian scholar, this is what he says. Scholars are convinced that we can construct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable, although not with 100% accuracy. Well, 99.4% accuracy. That’s pretty good.

And so, what does this mean? It means if you are a Christian, you can be confident that what you read is what was originally written. And it also means that because you believe that these words were inspired by the Holy Spirit, that you are forgiven over your doubts. You’re forgiven of all sins you’ve committed or ever will commit.

Because the heart and center of the New Testament is Jesus of Nazareth, who he is, what he taught, what was done to him, what he did, and of course, what he wants you to know more than anything: that you are a forgiven Child of God.

If you are not a Christian, you’re invited to become one. But that is a very humbling thing, because the Holy Spirit will have to bring you to understand and confess your sinfulness. But it’s also the most comforting thing, because the Holy Spirit will then bring to you the forgiveness of all your sins accomplished by Christ alone. You don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any. But it would be true. And that’s why we call it Amazing Grace.

In the meantime, I would encourage you to consider this amazing reliability of the transmission of the New Testament, and then also to consider whether or not what is written there is true what it says about you, but it says about heaven and hell, what it says about Jesus.

This is David Thompson, the director for the center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for joining us.