The questions you are asked:

1. The questions you are asked: -It was written by a bunch of people thousands of years ago. -It’s just a book. There have got to be mistakes in it. -Don’t you know that the Bible has been changed through the years? -How can you say that one book was inspired by God? -Every religion has their holy books. What makes yours any different? -Don’t you think it is a little naïve to let an ancient book like that determine the course of your life?

2. Can you Trust the Bible?

3. Time to put on your thinking cap. Responding to questions that people have about Christianity sometimes takes work.

4. The ways you can respond 1) Ask them if they have ever read it? 2) Ask them if they have ever found any errors in it? 3) Ask them if they are just repeating things they have heard before but never checked into.

5. An ancient manuscript copy of the New Testament.

6. What is a Manuscript Copy? A manuscript copy is just an ancient copy of a book or letter. No original writing exists for almost any book (99% of them) written before the invention of the printing press in the 1430’s AD, and no originals exist at all for any book written before about 1000 AD. Scholars rely on copies of ancient books to determine the original writing.

7. The Bibliographic Test 1) How many ancient copies of this manuscript have been found? 2) How far removed are they in years from the original writing?

8. Important to Remember! In general, an ancient document must have between 5-10 ancient copies for historians to regard it as credible. Much of our knowledge of ancient history comes from a few ancient copies of old writings: Plato, Aristotle, Tacitus, Homer, Pliny the younger, Caesars Gallic Wars, and others rest on a few well attested manuscript copies.

9. What is the manuscript evidence for Plato’s works? Except for the Timaeus, all of Plato's works were lost to the Western world until medieval times, preserved only by Muslim scholars in the Middle East. For some of Plato’s books, we have 9-10 manuscript copies and they date about 1,000 years after the original writing.

10. Manuscripts or partial copies of the New Testament Greek = 6,000 Syriac, Coptic, Latin = over 17,000 Total = over 23,000ancient manuscripts.

11. What about the time interval between the original writing and the copies we have now? The time interval for the NT is the shortest for any ancient document around. Period. If some of the NT was written around 65-75 AD, and we have complete copies from 275 AD, the time interval is 200 years.

12. The John Ryland’s Papyri Five Verses from John 18 written in Coptic. Dates from 115-135 AD. Found in Egypt in 1920.

13. The codex Sinaiticus A complete manuscript of the New Testament from 325 A.D.

14. Sir Frederick G. Kenyon,formerly director and principle librarian of the British Museum: The interval, then, between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant (available) evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as firmly established. -The Bible and Archelology, 1940.

15. PLUS….. Even if we didn’t possess ONE manuscript copy of the NT, we could reproduce it, minus a few verses, from the manuscripts of the writings of the Church Fathers, (100-500 AD) that we currently posses.

16. The Results for the Bilbliographic Test. 1) How many ancient copies of this manuscript have been found? Over 23,000. That is the best for any ancient manuscript ever. 2) How far removed are they in years from the original writing? We possess fragments of the New Testament less than 100 years after it was written. That is the closest time span for any ancient document ever.

17. What about the Old Testament? • The manuscript evidence for the Old Testament is not as good as for the New Testament in terms of the amount of copies and the distance from the originals. However, a few things must be kept in mind: • Parts of the Old Testament were written 1,500 years before Jesus. That is 3,500 years ago. That’s OLD. • 2) The Dead Sea Scrolls have remarkably confirmed the manuscripts that we do have: Example) There is an almost complete copy of the book of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls that matches up 98.5% with your modern English copy of Isaiah.

18. The study of Biblical Manuscripts T W Like a tree with four or five main branches, so it is with the main manuscript traditions of the New Testament. We have the: -Alexandrian Canon, -Caesarean Canon, - Western Text -manuscripts from Antioch/modern Turkey. C A

19. The Ancient Middle Eastern World W A C A

20. Summary The New Testament is the most well attested (read: reliably preserved) ancient document in history. At one time, ancient manuscript copies of the NT outnumbered all the rest of the ancient manuscript copies in the world, combined.

21. The Internal Test Did the author himself believe that what he was writing was factual? Notice: the question is not whether it was factual or not, but whether the author believed it to be factual.

22. The NT Authors speak for themselves • I John 1:1-5 - John • II Peter 1:16 – Peter • I Corinthians 15: 1-9 – Paul • Luke 1:1-3, Acts 1:1 – Friend of Paul • These are the testimonies of the authors of 22 out of the 27 New Testament books.

23. The Truthfulness of the Gospels Would a fiction account have Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to somehow be relieved of the cross?

24. The Truthfulness of the Gospels Would a fiction account have women as the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus?

25. The Truthfulness of the Gospels Would a fiction account consistently portray the disciples as stupid before the cross?

26. Dr. Simon Greenleaf Professor of Law at Harvard, 1833-1848 Author of the three volume set A Treatise on the Law of Evidence. Referred to by the Supreme Court of America for generations as to what evidence is admissible in a court of law. Writer of The Testimony of the Evangelists

27. What does all this mean? You are reading in modern English exactly what the apostles wrote to us about Jesus. You can know for sure that what they wrote is what you are reading.

28. How do we share this information? Humbly. In response to a question of doubt. Make a lower claim that you can support rather than an outrageous claim that is harder to verify.

29. The External Test Do outside sources confirm or deny the ancient manuscript in question? In ancient history, outside sources are archeology and other ancient writings.

30. Archeology Not your typical biblical archeologist.

31. Archeology is like a Polaroid, not a video.

32. This is a Tell Tell is an Arabic word for “Mount.” A mound of earth usually represents something underneath.

33. Many ancient cities were re-built on the same spot.

34. The Biblical site of Gerar in Genesis, Genesis 20:2

35. Clay Pot Clay pots can be dated by their substance and their style.

36. Bronze Age Pottery 3000 – 1500 B.C.

37. Iron Age Pottery • 1200 – 500 B.C.

38. Roman Age Pottery 300 B.C. – 300 A.D.

39. Does Archeology confirm the Bible? Dr. Nelson Gluek one of the greatest authorities on Israeli archeology says this, “no archeological discovery has ever controverted a single biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible. And by the same token, proper evaluation of biblical descriptions has often led to amazing discoveries. Quoted from Rivers in the Desert. Farrar, Strous and Cudahy, 1959, p. 136.

40. A tablet that gives the victories of the Egyptian King Merenptah. The next to last line of the inscription reads, “Israel is laid waste.” The Merneptah Stele 1230 B.C.

41. Luxor Egypt 1300 – 900 B.C. One of the walls in the temple commemorates a victory of Pharaoh Shishak over Israel shortly after king Solomon died. This event is also recorded in II Chronicles 12:1-5 Karnack Temple in Egypt

42. The Moabite Stone Mentions Kings Omri and Ahab of Israel from I Kings 16:28 The inscription states: “as for king Omri of Israel, he humbled Moab many years, for Chemosh(a moabite god) was angry at his land. And his son (Ahab) followed him and he also said, ‘I will humble Moab.’”

43. The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser Memorial of the King of Assyria. Shows king Jehu of Israel bowing in tribute and even records the amount of the gifts he gave to the Assyrian King. Shalmaneser is mentioned in II Kings 17:1-6

44. The House of Yahweh Ostracon “According to your order, Ashya-hu the king, to give by the hand of Zekaryahu silver of Tarshish for the house of Yahweh, 3 shekels Pottery shard receipt from the Temple of Solomon, about 800 BC.

45. Gallio Proconsul of Achaia. He is mentioned in Acts 18:12-17. The Inscription reads: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augusts Germanicus…………….Lucius Junius Gallio, my friend, and the proconsul of Achaia. Scholars date this inscription to 52 AD.

46. John 5:1-2 Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches.

47. The Pool of Bethesda, John 5:1-5 Excavations have revealed 5 covered porches “colonnaded walkways” just as the gospel of John mentions.

48. John 9:7 He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing!

49. The Pool of Siloam, John 9:1-11

50. Sir William Ramsey The first Professor of Classical Archeology at Oxford, started out trying to disprove the New Testament, thinking it had been written after 125 AD. After much study, he found Luke to be the most historically accurate writer of the 1st century AD (35-75 AD). He came to rely on Luke’s writings as a guidebook to 1st century places.