"And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."
(ESV) ---2 Peter 1:19-21
To answer the questions in my previous post two issues need to be explored, the transmission, and self-attestation of scripture. For clarification purposes what I mean by transmission is the accurate representation of the original manuscripts (the Autographs). The first issue will be addressed in this post. A follow up post will explore what scripture says about its own transmission in the New and Old Testaments.
Christians do not have the original autographs, however we do have a large number of existing manuscripts. We know the autographs existed at some point, and our existing manuscripts are based upon them as they were faithfully handed down by Jewish scribes. I say faithfully handed down because of the care the Jews took in their scribal tradition to reproduce the sacred writings. To become a scribe required formal training. Such great care was taken in reproducing the originals that Christians can claim a degree of accuracy greater than any other book from the ancient world, 99% accurate.
The primary Old Testament witness comes from several places. The Masoretic Text (the Jewish scribes), the Targums (Aramaic translations and commentary), and the Septuagint (LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament). The LXX has a date close to the first century and tells us what the original Hebrew would have read. For more information see this link by Craig Davis: http://www.datingtheoldtestament.com/Texts.htm
Another witness to the Old Testament are the Dead Sea Scrolls. See: http://www.centuryone.com/25dssfacts.html They are significant because they provide dating to about 150 BC. They contain every book except Esther and they prove to be accurate with noticeably little difference from the Masoretic texts. This Manuscript evidence demonstrates that the Old Testament text has been well preserved, and accurately represented in our Modern Bible.
The New Testament remains the best attested document in the ancient world with manuscripts available from the third and fourth centuries, as well as some fragments dating into the late first century. God in his providence has preserved His word for us. Some of the witnesses to the New Testament are the Greek Manuscripts, Ancient translations such as the Vulgate, and Quotations from the early Church Fathers who in their writing quoted thousands of verses in Greek and Latin that can help reconstruct the original writings. Most books from the ancient world have 10-20 manuscripts to boast their claim of authenticity, which date from a thousand or more years after the original was written. The New Testament has two important manuscripts available. The Chester Beatty Papyri was copied around 250 http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/papyri_bruce.pdf , and Vaticanus http://www.bible-researcher.com/codex-b.html which was copied around 325 containing a majority of the New Testament. For more on this you can read work by Normal L. Geisler starting with: Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics.
Although it could be argued that within these manuscripts there are variant readings due to a slip of the hand (misspelling, or omitting a word) none of the variant readings affect the central theological message presented throughout the Bible. This is because the themes are widespread and do not hang on just one verse. Today's Bible based on the manuscripts handed down to us present an accurate and faithful representation of the original autographs.
for further information see this paper by R.A Baker: http://www.churchhistory101.com/docs/New-Testament-Canon.pdf
My next post will explore what scripture says about its transmission. Any ideas about what I will say?
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