Ep 404 | Is The Bible Text Reliable? - Noah Howard 7-23-21

Good evening, my friends. It's so wonderful to be here

with you and to worship god with you this evening.

I met many of you before services, but if we haven't met

before, let me introduce myself. My name is Noah Howard, and I

hail from Oklahoma, but right now, I'm living in Florida in

the city of Tallahassee and working with the church there.

And I want to thank you so much for holding this meeting and for

inviting me to speak for you. From the word of God tonight I

want to talk to you some about the Bible.

You know, the Bible is really the most influential book in

history. There's never been a book quite

like the Bible. If you think about it since

1947, the United Bible Society has handed out over nine billion

Bibles. Now to put that into

perspective, Harry Potter book, Seven, which is one of the most

printed books of all time. It's sold 12 million copies

worldwide. When it came out, 25 million

copies of the Bible are sold every year in the us alone, the

Bible is the most shoplifted book of all time, friends people

are interested in the Bible. They want to know what the Bible

has to say, they can't get enough of it.

We do at the same time. There's never been a book that

was. So viciously attacked either.

And that's because it's no ordinary book.

It's like the psalmist said, the psalmist said about God's word.

It's laws are perfect converting the soul its judgments are

righteous. It's words sweeter than honey.

And as people find the demands of the Bible are uncompromising

in, this makes the Bible. Jeurys, there is a war on, in

the hearts and minds of men over the Bible either.

The Bible is everything that it claims to be as far as being the

word of God, or it's the greatest scam in human history

and there's no in-between. So, friends, we need to be ready

to give a defense about what we believe about the Bible and

that's what I want to do through this sermon.

This Evening. I would like to test and to

examine and to prove the Bible as no ordinary book but the

inspired word of God and to that end I want to answer this

question is the Bible text reliable.

How often have you heard people say something like we can't

really be sure that we have the Bible.

I mean just look at all the different copies.

Look at all the different translations and they All seem

to differ with each other, don't they?

In fact, Muslims say that the Bible has been corrupted, and

only the Quran is fully God's word.

The Mormons will say that the Bible is corrupted, except where

the Bible is corrupted, in places where it differs from The

Book of Mormon and then you know, there's liberal

theologians and Skeptics who Attack.

The Bible and insist that it has been altered as it has been

passed down through history. Now, we believe that the Bible

is the supernaturally inspired word of God as it says, 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.

Second Timothy, 3:16 and 17. But the question is, can we

prove that and can we prove it with more than just saying?

Well, the Bible says it's inspired and so therefore it is

inspired. This is going to be a little bit

of a different study than I normally give.

There's not as many scriptures in here as I usually use and

that's because I want to share with you some of the history and

some of the archaeology behind The Bible and I think you're

going to see that even before we open the pages of the Bible,

it's not just another book, it really is the word of God.

So I want to answer this question, is the Bible text

reliable? Maybe you've never considered

that question before, but I'm sure it's going to come up in

your conversations with your friends and with your neighbors.

So let's be ready to give an answer.

To that question. When you take and you hold an

English Bible in your hands. What is this that you are

holding? I think most of us here would

answer that this is the word of God and you would be right about

that. When we say that the Bible is

the word of God. We mean that its production was

inspired and overseen by the Holy Spirit.

And that means, therefore that the Bible is free from errors

and its contents are authoritative to our lives

today. See, but there's a problem.

God did not drop this Bible that I'm holding right here out of

the sky and into my hands. It's the product of human

Publishers. And so we have some questions,

for example, was the typesetting in the printing.

Process inspired by the Holy Spirit and therefore free from

error. Well I think a lot of us would

answer. No, the things like the page

numbers and the margin notes and the verse the verse numbers,

they weren't inspired by the Holy Spirit and they might

contain typos that might have mistakes.

What about the translators of say?

The new King James version were they inspired By the Holy

Spirit. Well, for being honest again, we

have to answer. No, the new King James

translators were uninspired and capable of making mistakes and

if we're being honest, sometimes they did make mistakes and how

they translated things. What about the scribes who made

copies of the original Greek and Hebrew writings that make up the

Bible where they overseen by the Holy Spirit, Again, we have to

answer, no, because of the more than 5,000 New Testament,

manuscripts that have been Unearthed.

None of them are exactly alike. They contain differences and

sometimes these men who copied the Bible made mistakes.

Now, what about those original documents that were written by

the apostles and the prophets? Were they overseen by the holy

spirit? So as Has to be free from error

and authoritative for us. The answer is.

Yes, absolutely. There were no errors or

contradictions or problems with the originals.

So yes, the Bible is the word of God.

And its contents are inherent are instructive and

authoritative and inerrant. But you see this English Bible

that we have. It was the product of men who

were uninspired and who could make mistakes.

They worked very valiantly to make the inspired word of God

available to us in a language. We can understand but at the end

of the day sometimes they made mistakes.

So the question is how do we know that no significant changes

or errors were made in this process of copying the

scriptures and preserving these documents over the centuries.

You know, this problem would be Be easy to solve.

If we had the originals those original manuscripts written by

the apostles and the prophets, but as far as we know, we don't

have those today. They're not available for us to

compare to see if errors have entered in.

But I want you to know the issues that face.

The Bible are not unique to the Bible.

In fact, many other ancient historical.

Documents have been copied and The Originals have been lost

over time. Let's look at a few examples.

Homer's famous work. The Iliad.

Maybe you read that in school, we don't have the original copy

of that. All we have are copies of copies

of copies Herodotus is histories.

One of the only sources we have about the Persian and the early

Greek. Empires Julius Caesar's history

about his Conquest, in Gaul, Livy's History of Rome which

covers nearly seven hundred seventy years of Roman history

and tacitus is history which picks up where Livy left off.

We don't have the originals for any of these ancient works and

yet, modern Scholars have successfully reconstructed their

contents from the surviving copies.

And you know, they might Debate over the opinions of the riders

or the intentions of the Riders. But as for the contents, there's

no question. They accept these texts and

that's because they use What's called the bibliographic test

and the questions on this test. Look at how a text is

transmitted over time and it helps us establish whether it's

reliable or not. It can Help us figure out if the

copies are faithful representatives of the original.

And there are four questions raised by this test.

First of all, how many copies of the document are available?

Of course, we want as many copies as we can get our hands

on so that we can compare them to see where they differ in

which version of the text is most accurate.

Second of all where were these copies found?

If they all came from One place, perhaps they were purposefully

altered, but if they came from places far removed in time, and

in location, then it's unlikely that their contents may have

been changed. The third question is what

length of time passed between the original document and the

earliest copies, if the earliest copy we have was written a

thousand years after the original, a lot of changes could

have entered in That we're not aware of but if there's a short

interval of time there, it increases our assurance that the

text is accurate. And then fourth, what kind of

variances exists between the copies?

If all the copies that you have are filled with significant

differences than it, might not be possible to know what the

original said, but if the variances are few in minor, then

you can be assured that the Sense of copying over.

The years, was faithful to the original.

Now, how do you think the New Testament Stacks up?

If we apply these questions to it?

How do you think the New Testament compares to some of

these other historical documents while I want to show you today,

that not only does the New Testament passed the test, but

it passes with flying colors, in fact, it puts the competition to

shame. Shame.

Let's look at this first question.

How many copies of the documents are available?

As far as the competition? Goes, The Iliad, we have 1800

existing copies there, about four Herodotus histories, 109,

Caesar's gallic Wars, 251 Livy's History of Rome about 60 copies

and tacitus has history about 31 copies.

Now, what about the new It. Well, the current number of New

Testament. Greek manuscripts stands at

almost 6000 and let's break this number down so you can see what

these different sources are. There's a few different sources

for New Testament copies. First of all, there is papyri

now, papyri are fragments of the New Testament written on an

early form of of paper. What they would do is they would

take this plant, call the Papyrus plant, it's a read.

They would cut it into thin strips and weave the strip's

together to form a lattice work, and then they would dry it out

and it forms a sort of paper. And you can glue several sheets

of this paper together and turn it into a scroll.

Now, the problem is that Papyrus gets brittle as it gets older

and it can Centigrate very easily.

That's why we don't have very many papyri just 128 or so, but

the ones that we do have are some of the oldest copies of the

New Testament. Dating back to the early 2nd

Century and to the third Century.

So that's the first kind we have.

We also have unseals, these come a little bit later in history

and this is a type of parchment. Moment.

Parchment is leather made from dried animal skin.

As you can imagine that makes it a little sturdier than Papyrus

and so it survives the passage of time a little better but also

this form of writing came later than the earlier papyri.

Now, we also have miniscule xand.

These came right after unseals in the Middle Ages and that

explains why we have so many of them.

Because they were produced in the Middle Ages.

Their younger copies and therefore in better shape.

We also have lectionaries from the Middle Ages and election.

Airy is a compilation of scripture reading, that would be

used in a Catholic or Orthodox church, and when you find a

lectionary, you know, it's coming from the Middle Ages, the

10th to the 15th centuries. So, when we combine these four

kinds of Documents. We end up with about 5,000, 838

different copies of the New Testament, either in part or in

whole. Now, that already is a huge

number by which you can reconstruct the New Testament.

But there's two other kinds of documents.

We haven't even mentioned yet. You know, Greek was the common

language of the Mediterranean World during the first century,

but as you can imagine, Not everybody spoke Greek or we're

not native speakers and they wanted the Bible in their own

native tongue. And so very early on

translations of the New Testament were made into other

languages like Latin and Coptic which is one of the languages of

Egypt. Arminian Arabic people were

making ancient translations of the Bible.

And so, when you account for these ancient versions and you

compare them to the Greek manuscripts of the New

Testament. Now, the number comes up to

24,000 362 thereabouts, but there's a third and a very

important Source from which we construct reconstruct.

The New Testament called the patristic citations.

Now what that means is you see there were Jewell's, who were

Christians living in the third Century or the second century?

And they produced commentaries and sermons and books and other

such writings on the New Testament.

Maybe you've heard of men like Augustine and tertullian and

eusebius. Now these men were uninspired

but we can look at their sermons and where they quote the new And

we can compare that to those Greek manuscripts and the

ancient translations, and we have yet another way to

reconstruct the New Testament. Now we have nearly 36,000

quotations from these men of the New Testament.

In fact, Scholars say that if you didn't have the Greek

manuscripts and the ancient versions, you could still

reconstruct the New Testament. Just from quotations from these

men, sir. Sermons and commentaries when we

add the numbers up, now we're at nearly 60,000 651 New Testament.

Manuscripts, we have a huge number of sources from which to

reconstruct the New Testament. Now, what about where these

copies were found? We found manuscripts all over

the Mediterranean region from Greece to Egypt, Palestine

Syria. A turkey Italy they've been

found in Egyptian burial tombs and monastic libraries in caves

and all sorts of hiding places. Now Skeptics have tried to

suggest that such a large number of copies must mean that the

Bible's been subsist septuple to editing by all sorts of, you

know, groups with malicious purposes.

But really, there's so many copies coming from so many

varied locations. Ins in the world, it would have

been essentially impossible for anyone to try to collaborate and

to change these copies of the scriptures to promote a certain

reading of the text. Now about the length of time,

that's passed between these copies again.

Let's compare some other ancient historical Works.

We've got the Iliad and there is 400 years between when the

original was written. And the earliest surviving copy,

that we have Herodotus histories, 1350 years, gallic

wars 950 years, Livy's History of Rome, 400 years, and tacitus

is history of Rome 950 years. Now, when we look at the New

Testament, we have copies of the New Testament in part that date

back to within 50. To 100 Years of when the

originals were written, that's amazing.

In fact, here's some pictures. This is the Chester BT, papyri

papyri a portion of this dates, back to the 3rd Century, very

close to the beginning. The John rylands papyri contains

verses from John chapter 18, which date back to about ad 130.

John 18 · chapter mention

Now think about that, John's gospel.

Written. Very likely near the end of the

first century we have this papyri from the beginning of the

second century. This manuscript is old enough to

be one of the first copies of the Book of John.

That's amazing. Now admittedly, you can see

these fragments are incomplete but we have several very nearly

complete New Testament manuscripts within 300, to 400.

Years of The Originals. For example, this is the Codex

signee Atticus, dates back to ad 350 and it has the entire New

Testament and most of the Septuagint, that's the Old

Testament from which Jesus quoted when he preached.

And so, again, the New Testament is beating these works of

antiquity by a very large margin.

What about that? Fourth question, let's talk

about those variances in the Differences that exist between

the New Testament manuscripts. You know you often hear Skeptics

raise objections on this point. They like to bring up.

You know there's hundreds of thousands of differences between

all these copies and that must therefore enshroud the true

authentic text of the Bible. Maybe you've heard somebody

protest. How would you even know if you

were reading an altered version of the Bible, You know, it's

true that errors and problems can happen in any stage of a

human work. Even the production and printing

of the Bible, but I want you to know that these are not the

crippling errors, that Skeptics make them out to be.

I want to give you an example here, back in 1631, there was

one edition of the King James version, which included a

Dramatic and unfortunate typo that led to it being called The

Wicked Bible. You see the printer accidentally

omitted, the word not from Exodus 20 verse 14, which caused

Exodus 20:14

the passage to read Thou shalt commit adultery.

Now obviously there's a major problem here, there's a

significant difference between Thou shalt not commit adultery

and thou shalt commit adultery But you know, this misprint

didn't cause any major disruption to Christian

theology. It didn't cause a split in the

church because people very easily identified, this as a

mistake and they dismissed it The pure original text was still

discernible here and that's because although about 1,000

copies of the wicked Bible were distributed.

There were millions of Bibles that didn't have the misprint

and furthermore no Bible printed before 1631 included it.

And furthermore, no Bible outside of the English language,

included it and then the reading was inconsistent.

With the text. It's very strange to go from

Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery,

Thou shalt not steal and so on people saw that it didn't fit.

And people also saw that it was contrary to the clear teaching

of other scriptures. If this scripture was right,

then other parts of the scripture were wrong and

contradictory. So all of these points helped

people identify the error. Our and to disregard it.

And so, friends were not troubled by the wicked Bible.

We're not troubled by version such as the slave Bible, which

slave owners produced in order to remove scriptures.

That condemned the practice of New World slavery, these sorts

of versions. Don't undermine the inerrancy

and the authority of the scriptures.

Because the problems with the translation, it's not with the

original Scriptures written by the apostles and the prophets.

In fact, when it comes to the transmission of the Bible

Integrity has been the rule rather than the exception I want

to read you a quote. From a Jewish scribe, describing

the process of copying the Bible.

You know a lot of people get worried about this idea that for

1400 years before the birth of Jesus to 1,400 years, after the

birth of Jesus, when the printing press was invented, the

only method of making copies of a book was by handwriting it and

people get Worried about that. But I want to remind you that

extreme efforts were made by these folks who were doing this

to preserve the Integrity of the text.

These were professional scribes or they were believers who were

convinced that the accuracy of their work was a matter of

eternal life and death. Listen, to this quote, about the

scribal process, it says in making copies of he Manuscripts,

which are the precious Heritage of the church.

Today the Jewish scribes exercise, the greatest possible

care even to the point of superstition counting, not only

the words, but every letter noting how many times each

particular letter occurred and destroying at once the sheet on

which a mistake was detected in their anxiety, to avoid the

introduction of the least error into the sacred scripture, which

they prize, Is so highly and held in such reverent awe, each

new copy had to be made from an approved manuscript written with

a special. Kind of ink upon sheets made

from the skin of a clean animal. The Riders also had to pronounce

allowed each word before riding it and on no account was a

single word to be written from memory.

They were to reverently wipe their pain before writing the

name of God in any form and to wash their whole Bodies before

riding Yahweh, bless the Holy Name, be tainted.

Even in the writing, the new copy was then carefully examined

with the original almost immediately.

And it is said that, if only one incorrect letter was discovered,

the whole copy was destroyed. It's recorded how one reverent

Rabbi, solemnly, warm Warren described.

Thus take heed. How thou doest thy Work for thy.

Work, is the work of Heaven. Lest thou drop or add a letter

of the manuscript and so, become a destroyer of the world

friends. The people who were doing this

copy were concerned with the Integrity of their work.

They took great pains to make sure mistakes and errors didn't

enter in to the text. But you know, like we said,

mistakes happen, even in human endeavors.

And they did happen from time to time in this process of copying

the Bible. In fact, there's a whole field

of study on this topic called textual criticism and there are

Scholars who spend their whole lives identifying and sorting

through these variants and accounting for them, I want you

to know that responsible Scholars of this field do not

consider these. Variants problematic.

In fact, most of them are accounted for as simply typos.

You know, earlier, we mentioned how sometimes people number.

The amount of variances between the manuscripts is over 400,000,

hundreds of thousands of errors. And it's important to note that

a lot of people dispute, the accuracy of that number.

It's a bit disingenuous. In fact, the majority of these

variants are of no concern Concerned, there are things like

punctuation and word order in significant phrasing,

differences repetition of words and obvious misspellings phrases

from one part of the Bible, accidentally being inserted into

another party words or phrases that were accidentally skipped

and differences over what to call a person or a place.

These are very minor differences and there's virtually no.

No impact from these differences on matters of morality or ethics

or Christian theology. In fact, you know when we set

these aside The agreement between these more than 5,000

New Testament, manuscripts and 9,000 manuscripts, and other

languages, and 36,000 quotations, from the early

church fathers. Comes to more than 99% in other

words. The questionable passages

represent less than half of one percent of the New Testament

text. Now, considering that these

manuscripts are coming from thousands of different copyists

over dozens of different regions, spanning 1300 years of

History. Friends.

This degree of accuracy is unprecedented.

In fact, an honest, scholar will admit that this is uncanny.

Josh McDowell who was a former agnostic wrote this, he said

after trying to shatter the history, the historicity and

validity of the scripture. I came to the conclusion that

they are historically trustworthy.

If one discards the Bible as being Reliable.

Then he must discard almost all literature of antiquity.

One problem I constantly face is the desire on the part of many

to apply one standard or test to secular literature and others to

the Bible, one needs to apply the same test.

Whether the literature under investigation is secular or

religious having done this, I believe one can hold the

scriptures in his hand. And say the Bible is trustworthy

and historically reliable. You see, friends the New

Testament, not only Stacks up with other accepted historical

documents from the same time period but it puts the

competition to shame and that's because it's no ordinary book.

We're talking about the inspired inerrant infallible,

authoritative word of God, Now, between us and those Originals

written by the apostles. And the prophets that contained

no error, there's hundreds of years of human effort to inspire

and to, to preserve the word of God.

And to make it available to Ordinary People in a language

that they can read and can understand.

And in those human efforts, mistakes have been made and must

be overcome in our efforts to understand the scriptures.

But the truth is, you can identify these mistakes and you

can overcome them and no mistake has been so serious as to cast

doubt. On the Christian faith, friends.

This is a complicated subject. It's a whole field of study for

Scholars and I rely upon their expertise.

But the important thing to understand is that by God's

Providence, his word has remained accessible to people.

These problems can be overcome. The truth can be known and

believed and obeyed and friends. That's the point of this study.

Don't miss the conclusion of this study.

Everything we've just talked about the point is You can have

confidence that the Bible. You are holding in your hands

has not been corrupted. The Integrity of the text is not

in doubt. This really is the testimony of

men like Peter and Paul and James and John.

And countless others who encountered Jesus Christ and

whose lives were changed forever.

And they invite you To read and to examine their testimony and

to weigh the evidence. And to prove the Bible is the

word of God for yourself. You know, the sermon was really

inspired by an old poem. Called Old hammers.

I'd like to read it to you. I think it sums up the issues.

We've talked about here very well.

It says, last Eve I paused beside the blacksmith's door and

heard the Anvil ring. The Vsepr chime.

Then looking in upon the floor, I saw old hammers worn with

beating years of Time. How many anvils have you had

said I to wear and batter all these hammers.

So Just one said he and then with twinkling, I the Anvil.

Where's the Hammers out? You know.

And so I thought the Anvil of God's word for ages skeptic

blows have beat upon yet though the noise of falling blows was

heard the Anvil is unharmed the Hammers gone and friends.

That's right. Countless attacks have been

mounted. Countless efforts have been made

to destroy or to discredit the Pictures opponents have come and

gone but friends, it's still here.

The Bible Still Remains and friends.

That's no coincidence because it really is the inspired word of

God. It's no ordinary book.

And so the question to you this evening is, what are you going

to do about it? You see everything that the

Bible has to say about the danger of Of sin and the urgency

of Eternal judgment and salvation in Jesus Christ, it's

all true. So what's holding you back from

becoming a Christian? The testimony is real As Jesus

said in John 3 verse 5, unless you are born of water and the

John 3:5

spirit, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven friends.

That's the call to you this evening, as we close our study,

we want to invite you to become a Christian.

If you're not, it's time to take this seriously, because the

Bible is no ordinary book. It's time for you to open it up

and to weigh the testimony, To believe that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God and to obey him in baptism as he described in.

Mark 16 verse 16, he who believes and is baptized will be

Mark 16:16

saved. Only then, can you have the

Assurance of eternal life in heaven?

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