The concept of a set of divine books/letters started with the Torah

1. Bible: Derived through Latin from the Greek word biblia, which is diminutive of biblios, which denotes any kind of written document, but originally one written on papyrus. Testament: From the Latin testamentum (Greek diatheke) which means “covenant” The concept of a set of divine books/letters started with the Torah Inerrancy: That the Bible contains neither errors of fact (material errors) nor internal contradictions (formal errors). Infallibility: is the subjective consequence of divine inspiration; that is, it is reliable and trustworthy to all who turn to it in search of God’s truth.

2. Today in our society the Bible is demoted to the level of myth The media gives ample time to the opposition of the Bible, and next to nothing to the defense of it “The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don't want to go there.” ― Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God Dr. Bart Erhman (apostate)  He is the most used source against the Bible and it’s accuracy. His works are used amply by Muslims to attack the reliability of the Bible

3. New Testament Where did it come from? Is it accurate? How many contradictions have crept in? Of the 2,000 years it has existed, there was 1600 years of hand written traditions before the printing press was available What are the claims often made by “skeptics” Critics claim there are around 400,000 variations between manuscripts of the New Testament That is pretty amazing isn’t it? Considering there are only 138,000 words in the New Testament.

4. What they do not tell you.. 99% do not impact the meaning of the text Spelling errors and word misplacing Most only impact Greek and not translations 1% of 400,000 = 4,000 significant errors between the texts Out of those 4,000 though, only 1,500-2,000 are viable That’s because many of the problems came into the Bible a thousand years after it originated, and we know those are not correct That works out to around %1.5 of the text

5. But this is brings up another issue… the more manuscripts you have… the more variation you will automatically have How many variants would you have if you only have one manuscript. 5780 Greek manuscripts exist Not complete manuscripts of the New Testament… Average is 200 pages long. Think how hard it would be to carry around a hand written New Testament When you work this out to how many errors happen per manuscript page: 0.1346153%

6. Were do these errors come from? Reason: Scribal Errors… That covers most all of it Think about it… You sitting at home… with AC… in a nice house… with good lighting… on a computer… still would make mistakes copying a book. Now think about the scribes… they are in a hot, humid, non air-conditioned room… with mosquitoes… on papyri. When you look at all the evidence… And all the information… There is a great amount of consistency

7. Following is a list of the types of errors that have crept into the Bible: Dittography - Writing twice what should have been written once. A good example would be writing "latter" instead of "later." "Latter" means nearest the end. "Later" means after something else. Fission - Improperly dividing one word into two words. Example: "nowhere" into "now here." Fusion - Combining the last letter of one word with the first letter of the next word. "Look it is there in the cabinet... or Look it is therein the cabinet." Haplography - Writing once what should have been written twice. A good example would be "later" instead of "latter." "Later" means after something else. "Latter" means nearest the end. Homophony - Writing a word with a different meaning for another word when both words have the exact same pronunciation. Meat and meet have the exact same sound but different meanings. Also, there and their and they're are another example. Metathesis - An improper exchange in the order of letters. Instead of writing "mast," someone writes "mats," or "cast" and cats."

8. Example of how we identify accidental errors 1 John 3:1 (KJV) “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.” 1 John 3:1 (ESV) “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him”. The Greek text used for the TR lacked the phrase This is easily identified due to similar endings of words – the Greek is all caps with no spacing so its easy to understand why

9. Did the Bible get change later on with Constantine (272-337 A.D.)? Problem: The text was so widely spread before Constantine that there is no way that he could get a hold of them all and change them. Reading of the New Testament before Constantine do not vary from the New Testament manuscripts after him The mass variety of texts (Which causes all these “errors) is the price to pay to avoid someone being able to change the text like what happened with the Quran

10. Compared to other ancient works

11. Let’s look at some manuscript Early are called papyri text. Velum came later on. This text is interesting… It is a fragment of Revelation 13 (P.115) One of the two Greek early papyri manuscripts of this that exist Revelation 13:18 18This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666. That isn’t what it says though…

12. P.72, 1 Peter 2 Peter And Jude 3rd/4th Century text that has been written in very poor handwriting This manuscript was written by a layman at the time that the church was under heavy persecution… the writer of this manuscript would have been killed if they had caught him doing this.

13. P.75 Written 175-200 A.D. End of the Book of Luke and the book of John are contained in these texts This is significant because it contains one of the most definite chapters that establish the deity of Jesus Christ from so early on… John 1 Same is true of P.66

14. P.46 manuscript Written between the years of 175-200 A.D. It contains almost all of Paul's writings to some extent It says “To the Philippians” on the front of it below the text The interesting thing is it contains the book of Hebrews in it… and every other known Pauline Apostle

15. The oldest portion of a manuscript The Jesus Papyri – P. Magdalen Greek 17/P64: A segment of the Greek text of Matthew’s Gospel has been dated before 66 AD. Three fragments, text on both sides, a total of 24 lines, segment of Matthew 26:23, 31 (Agrees with the Textus Receptus)

16. Dr. Carsten Thiede, using a scanning laser microscope, and comparing with four other manuscripts: • At Qumran (dated to 58 AD) • At Herculaneum (dated prior to 79AD) • At Masada (dated to between 73-74 AD) • At Egyptian town of Oxyrynchus (65-66 D) He has concluded that this one is either an original of Matthew’s Gospel, or an immediate copy, written while Matthew and other disciples and other eyewitnesses were still alive. Guess what the most attested and least attested books are in the Bible?

17. People ask weather or not we have the originals of the Bible… or if we really just have copies, off of copies, off of copies, off of copies of the original? One of the big problems is they always assume translations work like the game of telephone works… It is nothing like that When you look at the texts that we do have, it’s not as if we have 950 out of 1,000 pieces to the New Testament puzzle… It’s like we have 1,010 pieces of the 1,000 piece puzzle The original is there, it’s just determining which one – And generally that’s pretty easy to figure out

18. Non-Biblical sources from Bible times • Flavius Josephus (AD 37?-101?) mentions Jesus - Antiquities, Book 18, ch. 3, par. 3. • Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.  He was [the] Christ.  And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, (9) those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; (10) as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.  

19. Flavius Josephus (AD 37?-101?, a Jewish historian) mentions John the Baptist and Herod - Antiquities, Book 18, ch. 5, par. 2) • "Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism…

20. Flavius Josephus mentions James, the brother of Jesus - Antiquities, Book 20, ch. 9. • "Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done."

21. High priest named Ananias? Acts 23:2 “And the high priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth.” • Flavius Josephus • “Now as soon as Albinus was come to the city of Jerusalem, he used all his endeavors and care that the country might be kept in peace, and this by destroying many of the Sicarii.  But as for the high priest, Ananias (25)”

22. Tacitus (A.D. c.55-A.D. c.117, Roman historian) - Annals 15.44 • "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, • Pontius Pilatus…”

23. Thallus (Circa AD 52, eclipse of the sun) Thallus wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean world from the Trojan War to his own time.  His writings are only found as citations by others.  Julius Africanus, who wrote about AD 221, mentioned Thallus' account of an eclipse of the sun. • "On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down.  This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun." Confirmation of what the Bible says in Luke 23:44-45

24. Pliny the Younger mentioned Christ. Pliny was governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor.  Pliny wrote ten books.  The tenth around AD 112. • "They (the Christians) were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ…” • Lucian (circa 120-after 180) mentions Jesus. Greek writer and rhetorician. • "The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account

25. Writings of the early church fathers there are over 86,000 quotations of the New Testament in the early church fathers writings. Its been estimated that the entire New Testament with the exception of 11 verses could be reconstructed through their writings. There are many non-Biblical sources for the Bible!

26. Manuscripts belong to different “Families” During the nineteenth century, manuscripts came to light that were considerably older than the Byzantine manuscripts, notably Codex Vaticanus (which had been hidden away in the Vatican) and Codex Sinaiticus (which was discovered in a monastery at Mt. Sinai). Then, mostly in the twentieth century, even older papyrus texts were discovered in Egypt (where they had been preserved by the dry climate). These older manuscripts generally agreed with each other against the Byzantine tradition, and their type of text became known as Alexandrian (since they were of Egyptian origin).

27. New Testament specialist Daniel Wallace notes that although there are about 300,000 individual variations of the text of the New Testament, this number is very misleading… A side by side comparison between the two main text families (the Majority Text and the modern critical text) shows agreement a full 98% of the time. This is extremely significant, because it means the most different texts types in the manuscript record are only 2% different from each other

28. When dealing with this topic we must learn to demythologize scholarship There are “Scholars” who will tell you anything! There are Scholars that said that Mohammad never even existed! Often times those opposing the Bible try to make you feel un-qualified to make decisions for yourself, this should not be the case! You are able to think for yourself and evaluate the topics

29. When we look at the New Testament, we see the incredible manuscript tradition that we’ve been given! Memory Verse: 2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,”