1 of 10

Slide Notes

DownloadGo Live

Cottrell&LawrencePresentation

Published on Dec 03, 2015

No Description

PRESENTATION OUTLINE

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE

COURTNEY COTTRELL & BRITTAIN lAWRENCE

The amount and consistency of the manuscript evidence for the Bible is far superior to unquestioned ancient documents, testifying to its reliability.

MANUSCRIPT COPIES

  • 643 ancient manuscripts of Homer's Iliad
  • 10 copies of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars
  • 8 copies of Historical Works of Herodotus
  • 24,000+ manuscripts of New Testament
  • 86,000 NT quotations from early church fathers

TEXTUAL ACCURACY

  • Hindu Mahabharata - 90% accurate
  • Homer's Illiad - 95% accurate
  • Today's Bible - 99.5% accurate

4 steps OF textual criticism

  • Take the older reading.
  • Support from ancient witnesses.
  • Reconstruct historical background.
  • Quality over quantity of witnesses.

TIME GAP

  • Illiad written 500 years after original manuscript
  • Herodotus - 1300 years
  • Gallic Wars - 1000 years
  • Thucydides - 1300 years
  • New Testament - 250 years

UNCIALS

  • Manuscript written in all caps
  • Not as fragmentary
  • Codex Vaticanus - most significant
  • Codex Sinaiticus - most dramatic (found on Mount Sinai)
  • Washington Codex - contains only the gospels

PAPYRI

  • Roland's Papyrus - earliest fragment (portion of John)
  • Bodmer Papyrus - earliest significant length (also the Gospel of John)
  • Chester Beatty papyri - most significant collection (several NT books)

DEAD sEA sCROLLS

  • Discovered at Qumran in 1947
  • OT manuscripts from 150 B.C.
  • Full copy of Isaiah found
  • Identical to copies from 1000 years earlier
  • "Son of God Scroll" contains exact wording from Luke