Can We Trust Our English Bibles?

Introduction

But this morning I have a special purpose. Because we’re talking this morning about our English versions of the Bible. Can we trust them? We have the Bible in our hands in a very convenient form, in the language we all speak. I’m presuming in this discussion that everybody in here speaks English. If not, we’re in trouble. We need a translator. But we have our Bibles in the English language. And you have them in your hands. You may or may not be aware that the Bible has been translated into more languages than any book by far that’s ever existed. This little pie chart that you see before you on the screen comes from this book called How the Bible Came to Us. I’d highly recommend it to you.

Excuse me, it’s written for younger children. But I found it fascinating. It’s not too young for any of you. And included in it is a whole host of discussions about how we got our Bible in its present condition. It’s put out by the American Bible Society, and this chart illustrates a very interesting fact, which I think most people do not know. I don’t know how well you can read it, but there are 262 languages that already have the Bible published completely in those languages. And this is as of a few years ago. This book is a little bit dated. There are 582 other languages that already have a published New Testament. And then there are 1,167 languages that were translation is in progress. But what I want you to note is the other part of that pie chart, this huge part over here, 2,715 languages where there’s a possible need still to have the Bible translated.

There are 827 languages where there’s a definite need, and there’s 352 where the need is unlikely, and 201 that are nearly extinct. Can you see that we still haven’t translated the Bible into most languages on earth? And yet it’s by far the most translated book ever in the history of mankind. Now you can make another pie chart and show that the languages into which it has been translated cover most of the population of the earth. Because most people speak certain fundamental languages. But there are an awful lot of dialects and languages into which the scripture has not been translated. And so there’s much work still to be done. And one of the reasons for this book here is to encourage people to help the American Bible Society and other Bible societies around the world that are in the process of translating the Bible into other languages.

I hope maybe some of you in this audience will get involved in supporting the translation of the Bible into some of these languages in which it is not found. So that’s my first reason for having you hold this book in your hand. Do you realize, beloved, that you have God’s word in your language in your hands? Many languages on earth do not have that. That’s a great blessing. In addition to that, continue to hold this in your hand. The Council of Toulouse met in 1229. It was a council called by the Roman pontiff. Most of you know surely that in the 1200s the Roman Catholic Church dominated the Western world. They were in control. They were not only in control religiously, they were in controlally and politically, and had great power, so much so that the life of a man from the time he was born until his death and after was under the control of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the Council of Toulouse, one of the reasons it was called was to prepare a series of canons, canons, church laws, 45 of which were passed for the extinction of heresy and the reestablishment of peace in the church. The reason for it was there were many people in various parts of the Western world saying there’s something wrong. And they were doing things heretical according to the Roman Catholic Church. The first of those 45 canons forbade the scriptures to the laity. And if you don’t know what laity is, that’s us, the common folk. The clergy appointed by the church were the only ones, according to them, who should have access to this book. So this council of Toulouse made the following statement in the canon, the first canon.

I’ll read it to you carefully while you hold your Bible in your hand. We also forbid the laity to possess any of the books of the old or new testaments, except perhaps the Psalter or abbreviary for the divine offices, or the hours of the Blessed Virgin, which some out of devotion wish to have. Let me interrupt the quotation just a moment and tell you that those books, which they would allow you to have, were in Latin, not English. Now back to the quote. But having any of these books translated into the vulgar tongue, we strictly forbid. So here’s the church, the dominant church in the Middle Ages, forbidding common folk like you and I to have any part of the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue.

Now the word vulgar has come to mean something in our language a little different than it meant then. Vulgar then meant common. English, ladies and gentlemen, is a common language. The high language was considered to be Latin. And so for you to have a book like this in your hand and be able to use it on a daily basis, could have very well brought death to you in the 1200s. And I might add that that same councils canon continued in effect for many centuries after that. It hasn’t been that long, beloved, that you and I, the laity, were privileged to have the Bible in our possession. I hope you understand the preciousness of what you have in your hand. Now read with me from 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 14.

But as for you, continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. What I have just done, beloved, I hope you realize the significance. I’ve just turned to a passage, and every one of you turned your Bible to the same passage very quickly. And we all read together in our vulgar tongue what God said. And we have the privilege in this age of using this book with our children from the time they’re babies and helping them comprehend what God wants them to know from the time they’re little children.

We can do it in our own homes. The other thing I want to emphasize right here is we have this book in such a form that we can just flip from one page to another. It’s all organized very neatly for us, divided up into books and chapters and verses. We have it at our disposal every single day. And if you don’t remember anything else from this lesson this morning, I hope you and I will be impressed once again with what God has provided for us in our age, which most ages never had. How then can we, as privileged as we are, neglect the opportunity in our homes to just open this book and read what God says.

So how did we get our Bibles that are so available and usable today? It’s a long and fascinating story, which obviously we’ll not have the time to tell. I hope that you yourself will do a little research and learn a little bit more about how you got this privilege to have a Bible in English in such convenient form. The Old and New Testaments, as most of you know, were written originally in Hebrew, some small parts of it in Aramaic, and the New Testament in Greek by about 40 different writers over a period of about 1,600 years, collected together for us to give us the words of God. What you may or may not know is that we do not possess any of the original autographs of either the old or the new testament.

That surprises some people. We do not have the original documents that were penned by the apostles and prophets, by the great men of old. None of them. So how can we then, and I think this question is a reasonable question. How can we be confident that our modern versions are accurate given that so much time has passed and so many things have happened since they were written? The last of the books of the New Testament, I believe, was written at the end of the first century in the 90s A.D. The earliest books of the Old Testament written some 1,500 years before Christ. I repeat, we have none of those documents in our possession anywhere on earth. So how can we know that this book in English in the 21st century is an accurate reflection of what was written in those books so many years ago?

1. The Bible Claims God Will Preserve His Word

Can we trust our English versions? That’s the question of this lesson. And I would say to you, it’s a good question and a reasonable question. I wonder how many of you Christians, however long you’ve been Christians, could help someone with the answer to that question. I hope if you’re not well informed, at least we will touch the hem of the garment today and stir your interest. Not to take this book for granted. So let’s start with the Bible itself. The Bible claims God will preserve his word. Let’s look at some passages. We won’t have time to do them all, but I’ll start with Psalm 119 and verse 152. It says, Concerning your testimonies, I have known of old that you have founded them forever. And verse 160 says, the entirety of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous judgments endures forever.

That expression you find throughout the Old and New Testaments. The word of God is going to last according to God’s own word. We’ll not turn to this one, but in Mark chapter 13, verse 31, Jesus said, Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall never pass away. The Bible says its teachings would be eternal. They would not pass away. But let’s turn to 1 Peter chapter 1. Verse 22 beginning.

The apostle says, Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit and sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever. All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man is the flower of the grass, the grass withers and its flower falls away. But the word of the Lord endures forever. A quote from the book of Isaiah, chapter 40. Restated in 1 Peter chapter 1. Now, this is the word which by the gospel was preached unto you. Yes, it’s very clear in the New Testament and the Old Testament that the Bible claims for itself that God’s word will not pass away.

Other things will, but the word of God will not. Let us examine at least in part how God and his providence brought this about. It is a long and fascinating story, and I wish we had more time to unfold it for you, but we must simply touch the highlights today. Now I want to recommend, I want to recommend this book to you. I’ve already said it, How the Bible Came to Us by Meryl Doney, put out by the American Bible Society. And I want to recommend this little book by Neil Lightfoot called How We Got the Bible. Both of which need to be added to your library if you don’t have them. And hopefully research somewhat so you can get a better understanding of this subject.

2. The Transmission of the Old Testament

So let’s talk first about the Old Testament. You see the title at the top, the transmission of the Old Testament. How did we get our Old Testament in the shape it’s in today? Well, first of all, it was scribes. Scribes, people who very carefully wrote copies of the Old Testament. Again, I’ll not take the time to turn to these passages because our time is so restricted today. But in Joshua, the first chapter, 40 years after Moses, the first one who began writing the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. Joshua is told by God, you keep the book of the law in your possession, keep it close to you, and learn it, study it, and use it. Joshua chapter 1. So we know the book was preserved until that point in time.

The 23rd chapter of Joshua is some 60 years later, after the conquest of Canaan. The book of the law was challenged to the people of God. Joshua said to them, You keep this book and you follow it. Many years later, when David was speaking to his son Solomon, some 320 years after Moses, he says to Solomon, You keep the book of the law, and you follow its commandments, and you do what God says, and God will be with you. Clearly the book had been preserved for that amount of time. Then, 2 Chronicles 34, some 675 years later, at the end of the period of the divided kingdom, the book of the law was found by Josiah in the house of the Lord. It had been lost.

But they found it when they cleaned up the house. And Josiah reinstituted what God wanted the people to do. But I want you to turn with me to the book of Nehemiah, chapter 8. 830 years after Moses, we now find the children of Israel after the captivity back in Israel again. Nehemiah has led the reconstruction of the wall of Jerusalem. The temple has been rebuilt. And now, after all of those events, he gathers all the people of Israel together in Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 1, beginning. Now all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the water gate, and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded Israel.

So Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation of men and women and all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month. And then he read it in the open square that was in front of the water gate from morning until midday before the men and women and those who can understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. So the Ezra the scribe stood on a platform of wood, kind of like I’m doing now. And that was probably the first pulpit. He stood up above the people, and at his right hand stood all these different people, and his left hand some other ones, and up verse 5. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people, and when he opened it, all the people stood up.

You didn’t stand up when I started reading.

Sometimes we stand up when we sing, we stand up when we pray.

They stood up out of respect and reverence. So I hope you’re standing in your mind as we read the Word of God together. These portions that date back thousands of years to when God spoke his will to the people of Israel. So they read distinctly from the book, verse 8 says, in the law of God, and they gave the sense and helped them understand the reading. What I’m saying to you this morning is from the time of Moses when the first books of the law were written until the time of Nehemiah, some 830 years, the book was preserved. They still had it in their possession. They could read it to people. Believe me, it didn’t look like this. But they had it in written form. And here’s one of the reasons.

This man bent over his table, writing with a pen on a scroll. You can see the scroll rolled up over here. Some of those scrolls, folks, were 20 feet long. And the scribe would roll it out, and in front of him would be a previous scroll that had been handwritten. And he would very carefully write letter by letter precisely what was on the one in front of him. And every letter had to match exactly. There are pages in this book I recommended to you that describe how these things were to be done. I don’t have time to read it to you. But those scribes were told precisely how to write every letter, just to give you a little feel. There was to be one hair’s breadth between every letter.

There was to be several hairs’ breadth between each word, each group of words, each two words. And then there were to be several other breadth at the end of lines and at the end of sections. Precise. They were to be written in a certain form of ink. They had to follow a certain prescribed format, and they had it so finely tuned that they knew precisely what was the middle of every page, what was the middle of every book, and what was the middle of the entire document. And they knew how many lines there were going to be, and precisely how many letters on each line, and if any of that was wrong, they threw it away. You ask, how did you get the book in this shape?

It was in large measure to do to men like this, who spent their entire lifetime copying by hand the Old Testament. And I might add the New Testament as well. For many, many centuries.

No vowels at all. Until about 500 AD, when some forms were written into the text so that you could imply what the vowels were. Imagine trying to read English when we read this book and remove all the vowels. So, for example, we were reading in Nehemiah chapter 8. You would have M W L L T H P P L G T H R D for those first few words. And that’s all you’d have. Becomes a little difficult over generations of time to remember how you read that text. But that’s exactly the way Hebrew was. In addition to that, writing Hebrew letters could be very meticulous because the Hebrew letter R and the Hebrew letter in are very similar. And if you’re not careful in writing, you might think the R is an N, which is precisely what happened in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, which all of you know as Nebuchadnezzar, right?

His name is Nebuchadrezar, based on the best ancient text. But R looks very much like Enoch. In the 500s, approximately, men began to write Hebrew with added vowel points above and below the line. They didn’t change one thing about what was written. They added points above and below the line to give you an idea of what the vowels were in the Hebrew language. The ones who were primarily responsible for that were called the Masoretes. They were a group of scribes named after Masorah, the authoritative tradition. Extremely meticulous the Masoretes were. They did not want one single jot or one single tittle to be changed from previous copies. The Masoretic texts from A.D. 500 to AD 1000 became the standard for the Hebrew Bible. Sometimes this thing doesn’t want to go, Bob.

There we go. Prior to A.D. 1947, the oldest available manuscripts of the Old Testament were, and I’m going to tell you this in just a moment, but I want to emphasize that point. Prior to 1947, some of us were alive then. I was two years old. Some of you don’t remember that, because you didn’t exist. But some of us do. Folks, in our lifetime, early part of our lifetime, the oldest manuscript in existence for the Old Testament were the following. The Cairo Codex of the former and latter prophets dated to 895 A.D. You say, what do you mean by former and latter prophets? Well, you may not be aware that the Jews collected their Old Testament differently than we do. Can you say the books of the Old Testament?

I won’t ask you to do it right now. But we have a certain order for those books. We started Genesis and we go through Malachi, don’t we? We have certain orders. The Old Testament in the Jewish collection was not collected that way. They had one scroll that contained the books of the law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Torah, the Pentateuch, was on one scroll. Then they had the former prophets, which were Joshua Judges, 12 Samuel, and 12 Kings. That was on a scroll. And then they had the latter prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the book of the 12, which we call the minor prophets. Those books were collected together in one scroll, or sometimes a group of scrolls. Then they had a third set of writings that they called the writings.

Or the Psalms, and named after the first one of those writings. They had Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah in 12 Chronicles. That’s why Jesus in Luke 24 said to his disciples, I’m opening up your mind to all that was written in the law and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. You remember that? Those three great divisions of the Old Testament is how the Jews collected the Bible. Our oldest manuscript of the Old Testament up until 1947 dated to 895 A.D., ladies and gentlemen. And it only contained the former and latter prophets. The oldest complete text of the Old Testament dates to 1008 A.D. It is called the Leningrad Codex, one of the Masoretic texts.

Now, what do I mean by a manuscript? Manu means hand script means written. A manuscript is a handwritten document. Now, we’re going to have a test at the end of this period. So I hope you’re listening, taking notes. Manuscripts have come to mean in the form in the area of textual criticism, not just handwritten, but handwritten in the original language. So that’s going to be your first question on the quiz. I’m telling you ahead of time. What’s a manuscript? It’s a handwritten copy in the original language. So what would that have been for the Old Testament? It would have been a handwritten copy in Hebrew and partly in Aramaic. I want to say again what I’ve just said. Up until 1947, the most ancient copy of the entire New Testament in Hebrew, dated to 1008 A.D.

But you say to yourself, but the Old Testament was finished about 400 years BC. So why do we have a manuscript that dates almost 1400 years later? Well, there’s a good reason for that. Why are these manuscripts of such late date and so few in number in comparison with the New Testament materials, which we’ll get to in a minute? Here’s the reason. Jews were very superstitious about copies of the Old Testament. Because those copies contained the name of God. And so if those copies became old or worn, not usable anymore, they gave them a ceremonial burial, destroyed them so that nobody could use them improperly because they had the name of God on them. Tell you how serious a scribe was told to be with regard to writing the name of Jehovah.

He was told if he was in the process of writing the name of Jehovah on one of those copies, and the king walked in, he was to ignore him while he was writing the name of Jehovah. Most of the ancient manuscripts of Hebrew have been destroyed because of that tradition. So many copies were lost. And we don’t have the rich heritage for the Old Testament that we do for the New. Then came 1947. Well, let’s go to this first.

3. Then Came the Dead Sea Scrolls

It was translated somewhere between 250 and 100 BC. It is the most often quoted by inspired writers in the New Testament. You look at the quotations in the New Testament from the Old Testament, you’ll find they’re very closely akin to the Septuagint version, the Greek Old Testament. First translated between 250 and 100 B.C. Extremely important witness to the ancient document of the Old Testament. But it is in Greek, not in Hebrew. Then came the Dead Sea Scrolls. Is there anyone in this audience who’s never heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Be honest. Has anybody never heard of them? Okay, let me tell you just briefly about the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the first place, they are scrolls. Like that document you saw in the picture a while ago, rolled up on poles.

In the second place, they were found near the Dead Sea in the land of Canaan. That’s why they’re called the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are over 800 different documents that were found. There’s a long and fascinating story about this, which I wish I had the time to tell you, but I’ll tell you this much. They were happened on accidentally by a little Arabic shepherd boy who was taking his sheep up on the sides of the mountains near the Dead Sea, and he walked down into one of the caves or looked down in there. Some say he knocked a rock down in and heard it hit something. And he got down in that cave and discovered a bunch of urns with scrolls in them. Ancient animal skin scrolls.

Didn’t think much of it, but he at least took some of them back home. And eventually they ended up with some of the important scholars in Jerusalem. And they studied them. It turns out, ladies and gentlemen, that that’s one of the greatest finds in the history of the text of the Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls. Over 800 different documents. They were Jewish literature, religious literature preserved by the Qumran community of the Essenes. It is thought that they put these in that dry climate in the caves near the Dead Sea so that when they came back later, they could still have the Word of God. Because that community came under attack several different times. And it is believed they put these there to preserve them for future generations.

We’re so thankful they did. Discovered between A.D. 1947 and 1956. We’re into modern times here, folks. Every book of the Old Testament is represented among those scrolls, except the book of Esther. There are 15 copies of the book of Genesis, 25 copies of the book of Deuteronomy, 30 copies of the Psalms, and there are two copies of the ancient book of Isaiah. I want to focus in just a little bit on that. Much more could be said about these. But the long and short of it is when I tell you a little bit about the book of Isaiah, that will be representative of all the other books that are found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now, how old are the Dead Sea Scrolls? It is guesstimated that those copies were made sometime between 250 BC and the year zero.

Sometime in that time frame. So they date back way far back from our ancient document that was dated 1008, aren’t they? In fact, let’s do a little arithmetic. The oldest document we had was the Leningrad Codex of 1008. Now we found some documents that date back to 200 BC. That’s 1,200 years older. Wonder what this old copy from way back looks like compared to these Masoretic texts of 1008. And I can tell you that’s exactly what people have been doing. They’ve been pouring over these ancient documents and comparing them to the later copies. Well, let’s talk about it a little bit. There’s a copy of one part, one column of the Dead Sea Scroll, the book of Isaiah. So you can get a little feel for how that looks.

We write from left to right, don’t we? In Hebrew, they wrote their text from right to left. And you’ll notice all the carefully formed letters there with a little more space between the words and a little space between lines. Beautiful text, carefully written of the book of Isaiah. Now, what did they find when they took this text of Isaiah, which that is a part of it, and they compared it to the Leningrad text? I’ll just read you from this little book what they said. The best known of the Dead Sea manuscripts already referred to are the two scrolls of the book of Isaiah. One is complete, except for a few words, and is known as Isaiah A. And that’s a part of Isaiah A right there.

It’s a complete copy of the book of Isaiah with the exception of a few words. The other one known as Isaiah B is not complete, but contains considerable portions of material from the book.

Here are scrolls that are over a thousand years earlier than the oldest previous Hebrew manuscripts in our possession. So what do they reveal about our text? How do they compare with the manuscripts of the Masoretic text which from separated was separated from them by many centuries? Do these newly discovered manuscripts demand such changes in the text that require changes in our faith? In other words, how true was that ancient text of a thousand and eight to the one of 200 BC? Well, again, I don’t have time to describe it to you in detail, but here’s a good way of summarizing. With the complete scroll of Isaiah A in hand, the revision committee of the revised Standard Version of 1952 adopted only 13 variant readings in the entire book of Isaiah.

You obviously didn’t get that. They only made 13 minor changes in the entire book of Isaiah when they compared this ancient document from 200 BC to the one of a thousand eight. What that means, folks, is over 1,200 years of making copy after copy after copy after copy. There are hardly any differences. And I might add to that, of these 13, Miller Burr, is a member of the translating committee from the beginning of first rank authority on Scrolls later confessed, he personally felt that some of those departures from the Masoretic text were a mistake. So he didn’t even agree with all the 13 changes. So what that says to us, ladies and gentlemen, is with regard to the Old Testament text based on what documents we have today, the Dead Sea Scroll’s testimony is those scribes were unbelievably accurate.

Some might say almost as good as Xerox. But it was all done by hand. Very meticulous.

4. For the New Testament, Manuscripts Are Overwhelming

The ancient documents of Livy, his history of Rome, there are only about 20 manuscripts left. Dates back to about the same time as Christ. And the earliest of those manuscripts is 500 years after the fact. They have none of the originals. Caesar’s Gallic Wars, which date a little before the time of Christ. There are 10 manuscripts left. The earliest one we have is 900 years after the fact. And we have none of the originals. This is pretty typical. Tacitus’ annals of Roman history. There are two manuscripts left, and the earliest one is 800 years after the fact. How many for the New Testament? 5,656 plus. I put it in red for emphasis. The New Testament is by far the best attested ancient document by light years.

And the earliest one dates some 40 years after it was written, after the original was written. So, ladies and gentlemen, for the New Testament, manuscripts are overwhelming. What about those manuscripts? The earliest one is the Rylands fragment of a papyrus. Dates to A.D. 125. That’s some 40 years after the book of John was written. It’s a part of the book of John. Vaticanus dates to 325 A.D. in the fourth century. It’s called Vanicatus because it’s stored in the Vatican. There’s a copy of it or a picture of it. You can’t see it very well, but there it is. It contains almost the entire Bible, and in particular the New Testament in Greek. Handwritten. The Sinaiticus discovered on Mount Sinai in a monastery. Dates back to about 350 A.D.

And the Alexandrian dates back to about 400 A.D. That plus another 5,652 plus manuscripts are the documents we have that we can attest to the New Testament text. And they date back within 40 years of the beginning of the actual writing of the New Testament. There’s a picture of the Alexandrian. It’s in the British Museum. If you ever get to go to the British Museum in London, go see those ancient copies. The Sinaiticus and the Alexandrian are both in that museum. And you can stand there and look at texts that date back to 300 and 400 A.D. of the entire Bible. Now, very quickly. Among those 5,656 manuscripts, would you suspect there are variations between them? They were handwritten. Folks, some say there are over 200,000 variations.

There’s lots of variations between those manuscripts. But what I want you to understand this morning is, and some people will tell you, because of all those variations, there’s no way you can know that this New Testament is accurate. The exact opposite is true. Listen to me. With 5,656 manuscripts to compare with each other, it is very certain that we can come up with what the original said. 86% of the material in the New Testament, there is no variation whatsoever among all those manuscripts. Oops. Another 12% of the variations are spelling. So what I like to do is take up the New Testament here. So here it is in my Bible. Here’s the New Testament. 86% of it, I’ll exactly get 86%. There are no disagreements among the manuscripts.

Another 12% is spelling variations. Do you think you might misspell something if you copy things over 1,200 years? So a lot of spelling variations. That’s another 12%. That’s another 30.5 pages out of the 253 in my Bible. Then another 3.25 pages, well, I’m down to almost nothing, are minor variations. Let me tell you what those are like. The Lord Jesus Christ, or Christ Jesus the Lord. One manuscript will have it one way, another manuscript will have it another way. Minor variations in the text that make no difference to what it teaches is another 1.5%, which leaves us, ladies and gentlemen, with significant variations of equivalent of 1.25 pages out of the whole New Testament, on which there are significant variations. Among all these 5,656 manuscripts. And out of all of those minor variations that have something to do with the text, no doctrinal issue is affected at all by any of them.

I hope that chart will stay in your mind. Any textual critic worth his salt will tell you you can feel great confidence that in our language you have the New Testament accurately reflected as God spoken. Now, what about English? This is the Greek text. And we’re going to stop, I guess, because that’s the second bell in it. Alright, we’ll do a little more here. I haven’t even told you about versions. Versions are translations of the New Testament into other languages. There are a bunch of them. You see, the old Syriac dates back to the 100s. The translation into Syrian. The old Latin version dates back to the 100s. Translation. In addition to that, the church fathers quoted the New Testament so much that it is said if you lost all the manuscripts and all the versions, you could reproduce the New Testament just from their quotes.

Conclusion

So we have three great witnesses to the New Testament manuscripts, versions, and the quotations of the Bible in the church fathers of the first two centuries. Put all those together, beloved, and you have a heavy weight of testimony that we can be reading what God himself said. And maybe that’s a good place to break. Thank you for your good attention.