Pastor, Pastor Tippin, I enjoyed
the last service and I'm delighted to be here. I think I was here
a year and a half ago teaching apologetic issues and other issues
I think we dealt with, which I think is very important because
it's important for the Christian to know how to defend their faith.
It's important for the Christian to know how to accurately affirm
one's faith. And the primary reason for so
much false teachings out there is simply a faulty harmonetic
or a faulty method of interpretation. And every Christian should have
a solid understanding of why their interpretation is correct
before they apply it. Everyone under the sun virtually
will say Jesus is Lord, but so many people have a completely
different meaning. You can use terms like gospel
and faith and other Christian terms. But unless you define
what you are saying, you and another person that you're trying
to evangelize or proclaiming the gospel to, can be talking
two different languages. It's very important for Christians
to define their term. In 2 Peter 3.16, Peter says some
of Paul's writings are hard to understand. that the ignorant
and unstable twist to their own destruction. The word there,
ignorant, in some translations is amethyst, which literally
means unstudied, which is a better interpretation of that term.
So, as Christians, we don't want to be amethyst. We don't want
to be unstudied when it comes to basic theology, because there's
a world of non-believers who are demanding answers of you.
There's a world of non-Christian cults who proclaim Jesus as Lord
with a decidedly different gospel, different spirit, different Lord.
When I say Jesus is Lord, I mean He's God in the flesh, second
person of the Holy Trinity. When a Jehovah Witness says Jesus
is Lord, he means that Jesus is the one who is King, but He's
not Jehovah Almighty. In fact, He was the first of
Jehovah's creatures. So the point I'm making is we
need to define our term. Now, I deal a lot with Muslims. I do public debate in which Jehovah's
Witnesses will not do public debate because they won't step
foot in a church. Mormons sometimes will. But Muslims
will. And it's a chance to Contrast
the differences between Christianity and Islamic theology. In front
of Muslims who come to the debates, they will come to a church to
watch debate. And one of the primary attacks. Upon Muslims. Is the reliability
of the New Testament. Like everyone opened their Bibles
to second Timothy. 215 You know, it's interesting in Romans
115, I am eager to preach the gospel to you. And when I first
read that passage to think, why is Paul eager to preach to a
Christian church? It says the gospel. What book
in the New Testament, let me ask you, what book in the New
Testament is written to non-believers? Does anyone know? I'm looking. None of them. They're all written to Christians.
So why is Paul eager to preach to Christians? Because Christians
have a lot of distorted views. We're not talking about sufficient
theology. But we're talking about things
It's outrageous some of the things that Christians even hold to.
Paul says, I'm eager to preach the gospel to you, lest you be
ignorant, unstudied and unstable in your presentation. Because
what happens when we're unstudied or we give an inaccurate presentation
to somebody? We're misrepresenting the Word
of God. It's the gospel, Paul says in
the next passage in Romans, that has the power of salvation. but it's the accurate presentation
of the Gospel. You can mention all the Christian
terms you want. You can mention Jesus as Lord
until you're blue in the face, but unless you're talking about
the Jesus of biblical revelation, you're simply given a falsity
or a false presentation of who Christ is. You should always
mention the deity of Christ, and I will always say this in
virtually every message, always include the deity of Christ in
your presentation. Why? Because Jesus said in John
8, 24, unless you believe that, what? I am. Translators will
put a italicized he there. I am he. Or what is worse, the
NIV has this bracketed clause. The one I claim to be. But they
do this, the translators, to show you that the he is not in
the text. Jesus claimed, unless you believe that ego eimi, I
am, you will perish in your sins. And there's too many non-Christian
cults who will assert Jesus is Lord while denying that He was
God in the flesh. This is the Jesus of biblical
revelation. This is the Jesus that saves.
If you're not communicating the deity of Christ that He was God-man,
then you're doing somewhat of a half-job communicating the
gospel according to Scripture. The deity of Christ is mentioned
in virtually every epistle. Paul says in Titus 2.13, he talks
about the second coming of the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, we can be here for hours
talking about the deity of Christ, but here's the point. It was
important to the Holy Spirit that you know that He was God,
because it's mentioned in virtually every New Testament book and
a whole cadre of Old Testament books as well. So you must include
the deity of Christ. You must include His work on
the cross. We are saved by His life. We
are saved by His death. He lived the perfect life that
we could not live. He obeyed the law perfectly.
And He died the death that we deserve. We're saved by His life.
We're saved by His death. And He was God in the flesh,
second person of the Holy Trinity. If you're not mentioning these
distinctives, then your message is going to get merged in with
something that a Mormon will tell you or one is Pentecostal
or a Jehovah's Witness. When a Jehovah's Witness or a
Mormon comes, if they hear something of Christianity, they should
hear a difference. Second, Timothy 2.15. He tells
Timothy to be diligent. To present yourself approved
by God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. accurately
handling the word of truth. Since scripture is God breathes
out, God breathes out, our gospel presentation must be accurate. Handle it accurately. It's sacred. It's God's word. Now, tonight, we're not going
to discuss, we're not going to have an apologetic discussion.
But we're going to discuss something that's utterly attacked, as I
said before, probably the chief attack. Of Christianity, and
that's the biblical manuscripts, primarily the New Testament text.
We're not talking about translations. We are dealing with manuscripts.
Now, of all the manuscripts, and I'll say it up front. Of
all the five thousand six hundred eighty six Greek manuscripts
that we have, and I'll explain what a manuscript is in a second.
There is no substantive difference of any manuscripts. They all
preach sufficient theology, so we're talking about the manuscripts,
the reliability of the New Testament. In other words, can we trust
it? Can we trust it? Second Timothy. Like us, since
we're in Timothy, let's go to 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 15. Paul says to young Timothy, that
from childhood you have known the sacred writings and able
to give, which is able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation
through faith, which is in Christ Jesus in verse 16. All scripture
is theophanous literally God breathed out. My translation
says inspired, but I don't think that's an accurate word to the
translation to the Greek text. Theophanous, that's literally
God breathed out all of it and is profitable for teaching, reproof,
correction, training and righteousness in order that the man of God
may be adequately, exartio, adequately equipped for every good work. We do not need extra biblical
literature. We do not need Mary Baker Eddy,
Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Charles Taze Russell. We don't
need them. We have Scripture alone. And
every single non-Christian cult has some reason why Scripture
alone, sola scriptura, doesn't work. Every single cult has a
reason why it doesn't work. From Roman Catholicism, to Jehovah's
Witnesses, to Mormonism, they all have extra-biblical writings. Why? Well, because if you allow
the scriptures to read for itself and use it alone, it's going
to contradict their theology. So they must provide extra biblical
material to help you understand the real meaning behind scripture. There was a you know, we see
these and these weren't here last year, but it's often these
solas that came from the Reformation. Of course, it wasn't the first
time that people believed in Scripture alone, grace alone,
faith alone, to the glory of God alone. But they were enunciated
and made popular around the time of the Reformation in light of
the perversion of the Roman Catholic Church. Well, there was another
principle, and it was called the principle of perspicuity,
and the Reformers would say every basic truth of Scripture can
be apprehended or can be understood by any literate person. You do
not have to go to Greek exegesis or Hebrew or languages to understand
the basic truths of Scripture. Jesus Christ was God. Jesus died
on the cross. He took the penalty on behalf
of His people. He was physically resurrected
from the dead. He was born a virgin. There is
one God revealed in three distinct persons. Any recognized translation
will communicate that. Well, if Scripture communicates
these essential truths, if Scripture communicates who Jesus is and
that if you don't have Christ, you're simply lost. And again,
we didn't write it. We're just repeating what we
can read. Well, then how do we know what we're reading in our
hands, these Bibles that we have, accurately represent what the
authors actually wrote. As mentioned before, every debate
I do with a Muslim, that issue always comes up. Well, we can't
trust John. The Gospel of John was written
by a pagan. Maybe Papias wrote it. John didn't
write it. But yet they will use John to
try to disprove the deity of Christ. And I always point that
out. Why would you use a gospel that
you don't believe? Normally, they would quote liberal
theologians like Bert Ehrman, who calls himself a happy agnostic,
to attack the Bible, in which my response to that, why would
you quote Bert Ehrman, who would look at the Koran as a ridiculous
piece of work? Because he doesn't believe in
divine revelation. Scripture is attacked, particularly
the New Testament. Now, John is attacked most. Why
do you think? Why do you think a Unitarian
group like the Muslims, Unitarian meaning holding to a concept
that God is one person, unipersonal, why would they attack the Gospel
of John most? Because it emphasizes what? The
deity of Christ. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God. And Phaos, Hain, Halagos, God
was the Word. Does it get more clear than that? Well, I like to discuss just
some basics in the area of reliability of the New Testament text. First
of all, the word manuscript comes from a Latin word, which means
hand manual, which means hand. And then the other word script
term means written. When we're talking about a manuscript,
we're talking about something that was handwritten in the same
language. What language was the New Testament
written in? The evidence points to Greek.
We don't have any evidence that shows otherwise that I'm aware
of. I was speaking at this elementary
school. I forgot what I was the topic
I was speaking on and Christian school. And I asked the question,
who knows what the new test, what language the New Testament
was written in? And this little boy just raises his hand, raises
his hand. Yes, it was written in Coptic.
And he was Coptic. I said, no, it was, you know,
written in Greek. We went on. And I said, what
language did they speak? He raises his hand. They spoke
Coptic. I mean, everything was Coptic.
It's really funny. The evidence shows it was written
in Greek. Unfortunately, Sometimes pastors
have a tendency to either downplay or. Preach on. Very scarce information that
they do not have, and they will assert that the New Testament
is written in vulgar Greek, the understandable language and so
on and so forth. That is true to extent, but there was different
forms of Koine Greek. Koine means common. There was
different forms. The highest form was literary Greek. It was
a beautiful language, beautiful style. virtually impeccable,
infallible grammar and style. And we see that demonstrated
in Luke and Acts. We see that demonstrated in James
and Jude and Hebrews. Beautiful Greek. And then the
bottom of the barrel Greek, the real vulgar or common Greek with
some scribal or some grammatical difficulties, we see that demonstrated
with John and Mark. And also, we see that demonstrate
in second Peter, and that was one of the reasons that will
deal with later tonight. We're talking about why these
27 books, the early church at first. Keep in mind, there was
no fax machines and emails and all these things. The early church
disputed some disputed the authorship of first Peter. Why? Because first Peter was written
in literary Greek, the highest polished Greek, you can find,
whereas 2 Peter was written in this vulgar with some grammatical
difficulties and, you know, like John and Mark. But, of course,
these difficulties are completely erased when we read Peter. In
1 Peter chapter 5, Peter says, through the work of a secretary,
Immanuensis, Sophanus, I wrote to you this letter. So that erases
any, and the church understood this, and later they, everybody
accepted 1st and 2nd Peter as authored by the Apostle Peter.
So we're talking about style. There was different styles. God
moved them, the authors, to write as he saw fit, but he retained
their styles. That's why John is a different
style than the Apostle Paul. Paul wrote in conversational
Greek. So did Matthew. But their styles are a little
different than Hebrews and James and Jude and Luke and Acts. Luke
wrote in literary Greek, as did Jude and James. It's interesting,
Jesus' brothers seemed to be very educated, because they wrote
in this impeccable style of grammar in the Greek language. So dealing
with manuscripts, that's what a manuscript is. It's a handwritten
copy of the same language. So when we say we have 5,686
cataloged Greek manuscripts, I say cataloged because there's
many Greek manuscripts that are just not cataloged yet. But of
the ones that are actually defined and cataloged, 5,686. And as we'll see, there's no
other work of antiquity that even comes close to that kind
of reliability, just on the quantity of Greek manuscripts. Now, it's
fair to say, and we will see this in our charts, that the
manuscript support for the New Testament documents far exceeds
any other work of antiquity, despite the fact that we don't
have any original autographs. We don't have the original. What
would happen if we did have an original? What do you think would
happen? Yeah, I think they would work. I've been to the shrine.
I've seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's in this beautiful building
with the whole scroll of Isaiah in this glass encasement, circumambulated,
and it's just beautiful. Well, I can imagine if we have
the original text, it would be worship, I think. But we don't
need the original text to get back to the original composition
because of the amount of manuscripts that we have. Now, aside from
the manuscripts, and that's not the only aspect of reliability
that we have. Aside from biblical manuscripts,
we also have. Lectionaries. But the lectionary
lectionary were early church programs or study guides. That
the early church utilize and within these very early, early
lectionaries contain hundreds and hundreds of New Testament
quotations. So we have those and we also
have a ostrich or pottery. We have portions of furniture
and portions of different materials where people would actually engrave
Bible verses, lots of them, and inscriptions as well. Furthermore,
and this is one of my favorite portions of evidence, aside from
the biblical manuscripts, the patristic writings, the writings
of the church fathers, as we see shortly, that you can literally,
in the first Four centuries of just quotations from the church
fathers. You know, they wrote much and we have their writings.
You can literally reconstruct. The New Testament, just on their
whether they're loose or not, their quotations. Amazing in
terms of reliability from these other sources. Now, I'd like
to go through the evidence. We won't take a long time. If
we have time, we will do some question and answer. But then
tonight, after we take our break and eat, We're going to talk
about the canon of the New Testament. If you go on borders or well,
when they used to have borders in Barnes and Noble, there was
a section on, you know, in the religious section, lost books
of the Bible, assuming there was books that were lost. And
of course, that's begging the question. But today, people buy
into lost books of the Bible. As if there was a committee,
the Roman Catholic Church got into a room and they said, this
one's out and this one's in. Yeah, this one's out, too. And
someone collected those out books. And they made a book called The
Lost Books of the Bible. And liberal scholars like the Jesus
Seminar will pick up on this and they use actually they put
the gospel of Thomas, not written by Thomas, in the same plane
of equality with that of the gospels that we have. But yet,
if you were to ask a church father about some of these books, they
would think you're crazy. They would say that that's a
false writing. It's ridiculous. The Gospel of Peter is one of
the, not written by Peter, one of the earliest of these what's
known as pseudepigrapha books, false gospels or false writings. And in the Gospel of Peter, which
was highly Gnostic to begin with, it has Jesus on the cross feeling
no pain. Now that was Gnostic, that was
typical of Gnosticism. And you also have, this is the
funniest thing, it goes from a serious to a silly. You have
this cross, Jesus's cross, that actually followed him after he
died. But it gets worse. The cross
actually talked to him. It said something to him. So
you would, as Aaron says, these books are just pure fantasy.
But today, liberal scholarship will hold these books up on the
same par of equality as that of the gospels that we have.
You'll be shown dealing with the evidences throughout history.
The veracity or reliability of the New Testament, as well as
the old, has been attacked, as we see all over the place, not
only by the secular world, but by non-Christian cults and not
just Muslims, but in Mormonism. They see that in their eighth
article of faith, they see the Book of Mormon as the word of
God. But they see the Bible, and they
use the King James translation, they see that as the Word of
God insofar as translated correctly. So as long as you translate it
correctly, then it's the Word of God. And thank God for Joseph.
Joseph translated it correctly for us in 1844. And now we have
the inspired version of Joseph Smith. And of course, he doesn't,
as I said before, cults have some reason why scripture alone
doesn't work. Well, they have another mantra.
If you don't like something, just change it. And in places
like John 1 18 in Joseph Smith's translation, you read this. Well,
first from the a recognized translation, you read something like this.
No one has ever seen God except the monogamous chaos or chaos,
the only begotten God or only begotten son. It's a variant
there. Only he. has seen God, and he,
Christ, is at the Father's bosom. He exegetes, or makes the Father
known. But no one has ever seen God
at any time. Virtually every recognized translation
will read the same way. Why? Because every Greek manuscript
says the same thing. No one has ever seen God. Well,
what does that do to Mormon theology? It controverts it, because they
believe God is a big man with body parts. He has flesh and
And bone is tangible as man. So what Joseph did, he changed
John 1 18 to read something like this. No one has ever seen God
except he who bore record of him. He has seen God. So all
the faithful people have actually seen the big exalted man, God.
New World Translation does the same thing. The translation of
the Jehovah's Witnesses. Now, they will keep consistent
to most recognized translations, except when it has to do with
their distinctive theology, particularly their rejection of the deity
of Christ, like in John 1.1. In the beginning was the Word,
the Word was with God, the Word was a God. John 1.18, that's
even more blatant. They actually change a tense.
Before Abraham came to be, their translation says, I have been. As if Jesus was claiming to be
very old. And so the Jews got angry and
wanted to stone him. Even though it's a present indicative tense.
Unless he says, before Abraham, Gidomai sprang up. Before Abraham
came to be. Ego eimi. I am. And what was the response of
the Jews? They wanted to kill him. In John 19, 7, they said,
we have a law, if anyone claims to be the Son of God, he deserves
to die. That's blasphemy. They understood
what that phrase means. They understood the Old Testament
significance. I don't see Exodus 3, 14 as a
direct relevant or a direct correlation, but there's other passages that
actually have egoe me. Like Isaiah 43, 10, that you
believe and understand And know that the Septuagint says, I am. Before me no God's form, neither
will there be after me. So there's many direct, exact
correlations in the Old Testament, and the Jews understood this.
Jesus claimed to be the ego, a me, seven different times in
the Absolute. Meaning, in the Absolute, with
no supplied predicate. I am. I am what? Just I am. And
the guards fell back. It will be shown that the textual
evidence for the New Testament is much greater than any work
of antiquity. Now, the earliest copy of the
New Testament dates back from the beginning to the second century,
as we'll see. I think I gave you one of those
copies. Now, when we look at some of the liberal scholarship,
like the Jesus Seminar, if you're not familiar with the Jesus Seminar,
it was a group of so-called scholars, many PhDs like John Dominic Crossan,
and they got together and they decided what books were the actual
Gospels. And what did Jesus actually say?
Now, without getting into all the details of how they arrived
at their conclusions, basically, they put red marks, gray marks,
and black marks. So we know what Jesus said here,
but we know that's out because it sounds too Jewish or it's
too theological. At the front, they completely
deny any miracle. It's called the assumption of
naturalism. Anything that has not happened
naturally cannot be true. So they go in with that starting
premise. So what do you have? You have Jesus not saying probably
80 percent of what's recorded in the Gospels. Now, they just use a different
standard. Muslims use a different standard
when they look at the Koran and they look at all the variances
in the Bible and all these things, but they don't apply the same
standard to their own work. Now, it's interesting if secular
historians assumed that accounts in the writings of ancient historians,
such as Josephus or Suetonius, Tacitus, tell each account could
be individually proven trustworthy. We would have to conclude that
we know next to nothing about Roman times. In fact, as we'll
see, most of our Roman education, what we know of ancient Rome,
comes to us in a handful of manuscripts. But yet nobody would dream of
questioning that you have a chart that I gave you. Look at your
paperwork. It's a sorry for the disalignment. I don't know what
happened on the printer on the very right hand column where
it says quantity of manuscripts. Now, I just want to this is an
example. And I wrote at the top, those who reject the New Testament
as a reliable document would never dream of questioning any
other work of antiquity, which does not even come close
to the manuscript evidence of the Bible, of the New Testament.
Now, if you look at your chart, you see up at the top, author
or book, date written, date of copy, gap time, and quantity
of manuscripts. We see Homer, Thucydides, Livy,
Aristotle, Tacitus, now these are just a few examples. Again,
most of our knowledge of Roman history is contained within the
writings of these authors. Look at Homer. Homer comes closest
in terms of quantity, meaning it has more manuscripts than
the others. But what I want you to notice is the gap time. Now,
we have the date written around 800 BC. We have the date of the
first copy. So we have the date that it was
first written and the date of the first actual copy. But look
at the gap time. 500 years. Quantity of manuscripts,
643 right now. Look at the next one. Herodotus. History. His book called History
gives us Roman history. We see when it was written and
we see the date of the first copy. Look at the gap time. 1,300
years from original composition to date of first copy. 1,300 years, eight manuscripts. Next one. Again, around 1,300
years. Again, about eight manuscripts
we have extant. Livy, History of the Rome. Most of his writings have a thousand
year gap time. and only 19 manuscripts. Aristotle, 1400 years of gap
from when he first wrote it from the first copy. Tacitus, no one
questions the reliability of these people. Tacitus, in his
annals, they'd written around AD 100. Gap time between original composition,
and first copy. A thousand years. Who denies
Aristotle's writings? Who denies the reliability of
Roman history? 20 manuscripts with Tacitus. Now let's look
at the New Testament. It's almost embarrassing. The Gospel of John The earliest fragment that we
have dates back somewhere between 117 AD and 138. Some would even date it earlier.
This is the earliest copy we have, and we're going to see
it in a second, of a portion of the Gospel of John. We're talking 25 to 40 years
within the man's life. Also, what I always point out
in debate with Muslims, when they attack the Gospel of John,
I say, for 1,800 years, nobody attacked the authorship. For
1,800 years. And now you're coming here to
attack it? No one in Muhammad's day attacked the Gospel of John.
In fact, you can read the Quran, Surah 5, verse 47. It says, Judge
everything according to the Gospel. They should. They wouldn't be
Muslims anymore. But of course, the gospel has
been perverted, according to them, because it teaches things
that are contrary to their theology, namely that Jesus Christ has
gone in the flesh, that he died on a cross and was physically
resurrection, which they deny. There's the dilemma. There's
no evidence they can provide. They just keep denying it. Those
are assertions, not arguments. And the only solution for their
dilemma is to embrace the Lord of glory, Jesus Christ. Look at the New Testament books. Many books we have from 8,200, which puts the gap around 100
years. Then most of the books by 8,250,
we have most of the New Testament books, 150 year gap. And then
by 325, we have the complete New Testament 5,686 manuscripts, 5,686 manuscripts
compared to these ancient writers. You have eight here. You have
19 here with a thousand year gap. And you're going to compare
that. To 5,686 manuscripts, every manuscript
of John, of the gospel of John, chapter one says the same thing
in the beginning was the word, the word was with God. And in
English, the word was God. It virtually reads the same way
in Greek. Comparably. The early with the
earliest being around the second century, and we have copies of
most of the New Testament books dating back to the middle of
the second century, we have excellent copies of the entire New Testament
dating back to the middle of the third. Fact is, no other
work of antiquity even comes close to the quantity or quality
of the New Testament manuscripts. The only reason why someone would
deny the New Testament, it's not based on objective grounds. It's not based on evidence. It's
based on a pre committed theology, a denial of Jesus Christ as God. I'd like now to in the final portion of this
talk to look at some of the manuscripts in detail. I believe I gave you some copies. First of all, the New Testament
was written, at least what evidence shows, the earliest manuscripts
we have were written on papyri, or papyrus in the singular. It
was a thick paper-like material produced from the pith or stem
of a plant, a papyrus plant. And that's what they had. Now,
it's amazing that we have these. Keep in mind, one of the reasons
why we have, there was great persecution. They used to burn
up manuscripts. And as we'll see later tonight, there was
a reason why they had to hide manuscripts or why the New Testament
was actually recognized or canonized. There were distinctive reasons,
just like creeds. What were the reasons for Christian
creeds and councils in the first few centuries? Because of heresy. Well, what
is the reason why the early church had to recognize or canonize
what God's Word was? Because people were attacking
it and persecution. Papyri was the earliest material.
that the Bible, the New Testament, was written on. And it was a
common writing material up until around the third century. And
it continued to be used for secular classical literature up until
the sixth or seventh century. And again, 5,686 manuscripts
that we have extant, that we have that you can go look at.
But the most significant papyri that we have, and right now I
think catalog, we have about 119 papyri manuscripts. that represent most, not all,
but most of the New Testament. Some of the most significant
papyri are John Ryland's, or the P52, which you have a copy
of. I'll show you in a second. And also the Chester Beatty collection,
which I'll explain, and the Martin Bodmer collection. Now again,
these are some of the earliest manuscripts that we have. First
of all, the John Ryland's fragment, If you look on your copy, you'll
see it. It's this little tiny one piece fragment of a manuscript.
It's the earliest surviving New Testament manuscript so far. And it was acquired in Egypt
about 1920, and it wasn't actually published until 1934. And right
now, it's in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England.
It's very small. It's about two and a half by
three and a half inches. It's really small. But it's the earliest
one that we have, and it contains a portion of, I think I wrote
it down, of John 18, chapter 18. Again, it's the oldest portion
of the New Testament known right now. And it dates back 117 to
138. Some have even dated it back
to AD 98. The next one, I don't know if you have a picture
of it. It's the Chester Beatty papyri. Now it's housed in the
Beatty Museum located in the suburb of Dublin. P45, 46, 47. You may have a picture
of it. P45, 46, and 47. Now here's why these are significant. P46, P stands for papyrus or
papyri. It contains the earliest portion,
P46, of the Apostle Paul. Earliest portion, P46, somewhere
around 175, perhaps. It also contains Hebrews, which
have led many to believe that because they were in somewhat
of a collection that Paul wrote Hebrews, some would claim that.
Nevertheless, it's the earliest surviving papyri of the Apostle
Paul. It represents His letters, except
the pastorials. Dating back, as mentioned, probably
around 175 to 200. P45, it's interesting because
it's the earliest ones we have of Acts and the Gospels, and
that dates about the middle of the third century. P47 is the
earliest manuscript containing the Book of Revelation. and it
goes back maybe about 250 to 275. Then we have what's known
as the Martin Bodmer papyri, P66, 72, and 75. P66, earliest
copy we have of John, significant copy, dating back super early,
again, maybe 150 to 175 perhaps. P66. P72 contains Jude, and 1st and 2nd Peter, dating
back around the same time. Then P75, the earliest portion
of Luke. And I'll tell you something very
interesting about P75. Maybe about 175 AD, perhaps. But what's interesting about
the earliest copy of Luke is that this manuscript actually
mentions the name, this one manuscript, the name of the rich man with
Lazarus It's the abbreviated form of Nineveh, Nevi. Now, it's the only one that I'm
aware of that actually contains the name, so perhaps it wasn't
in the original. I don't think anyone agrees that
it was actually in the original because it's only one manuscript.
But the Coptic Church, relating to that little boy, claims that
was the name because they claim this was the original and so
on and so forth. That was the name of the new ace in Greek
was the name of the rich man, but probably not. But it's just
interesting and interesting factoid of the earliest copy of Luke.
Now we come after the papyri evidence, which is a powerful
witness to the textual authenticity of the New Testament. Now we
come to what's known as the unsold codexes. And if you look on your
paper, you'll see some portions of an
unsull. Now, an unsull means a twelfth
part of anything. And it's a noted manuscripts
that are printed in large formal letters, similar to our capital
letters. In other words, the earliest
manuscripts of the New Testament were all capital letters. They
had no punctuation and they just ran together. It's very difficult
to read. And currently, there's about
307 cataloged, unsold, capital, manuscripts in existence. Some
of the most significant ones, and I think you have some copies
of the Codex Sinaticus, Codex Vaticanus, Alexandrius, Codex
Besa, some of the more significant. Codex Sinaticus dates back to
around 340, perhaps. Best shape. I mean, it's in really
good shape. And you have a copy of Sinaticus.
John 1 I think at the very top it says according to John in
Greek and That's the earliest complete Bible that we have is
the Codex Sinaiticus And it's the old one of the oldest surviving
Portions of the New Testament written and it was written also
not on papyri was written on parchment or vellum like animal
skin It's much nicer and it lasted longer as well Now Codex Sinaiticus, as mentioned,
if you look at the very top right, I think, you see the, I don't
know if you can see it, it's in Greek, but it says, according
to John, again, for 1800 years, no one denied authorship of the
gospel of John. 1800 years. The earliest, one
of the earliest church fathers to verify the authorship was
Irenaeus, writing about 180 AD. He verified that the author was
John. And he was a student of a disciple of John, Polycarp
of Smyrna. Polycarp says he had been a Christian
for 86 years. He was martyred. Interesting
story about his death. But nevertheless, he claims he
was a disciple of John. And Irenaeus was a student of
Polycarp. And he says John was the author
of the Gospel of John. Now, there's other codex we can
look at. I don't know if you have another
one. But after the large capital codexes, then we get into around
the ninth century, then we find the smaller letters called unsull. Keep in mind, one of the reasons
why we have smaller letters in some of the biblical manuscripts
later on, because you can write it real fast, unlike the big
capital letters. And there is much persecution.
They had to get done with these manuscripts before they were
killed. So that was one of the reasons why we have minuscule
manuscripts or smaller case letters. And thereafter, we started seeing
punctuation much easier to read. And that was essentially the
great advantage of using a minuscule small letter text. You could write more also. It
was more cost effective. You didn't have to use as much
vellum or parchment as well. Now, we saw the manuscripts,
we saw some evidence, and we talked about the lectionaries
from the seventh through the twelfth centuries. But also the
patristic evidence we dealt with, and I think that's besides the
biblical manuscript, is probably some of the strongest, strongest
points of evidence. The early church fathers and
some were leaders of the original churches, valiantly defended
and affirm the rule of faith for the church. And these citations
of New Testament passages were just extensive. And thus, they
have been a considerable important branch of evidence for the reliability
of the New Testament. Not only is every book in the
New Testament represented, but also nearly every verse, nearly
every verse has been quoted by early church fathers. I like
what Jay Moreland says. He says, virtually the entire
New Testament can be reproduced from the citations contained
in the works of the early fathers, some 32,000 citations in the writings of
the fathers before the Council of Nicaea. 32,000 biblical citations. Just an amazing point of evidence. And if we have more time, we
can go through some more detail of the Church Fathers. But in
conclusion, it can be affirmed that the New Testament documents
are reliable. Given the same bibliographical
test we'd give any other ancient piece of literature, the New
Testament towers far above the great works of antiquity in terms
of manuscript quality, quantity, in terms of the gap time between
the original composition and the first copy. And the earliest
portion of the New Testament dates around 130, on an average,
compared to the other gap time, a thousand years, more than a
thousand years. And the New Testament evidence
of the reliability can be verified by multiple sources, not just
manuscripts, as we saw. But by the papyri, the unsull,
church fathers, lectionaries. And even though the original
handwriting of the New Testament authors is missing, God has certainly
preserved his New Testament by the quantity of New Testament
manuscripts. All scripture is breathed out
by God. How can we trust it? Because
God has preserved it in such a way that other works don't
even compare to it. We have 5,686 manuscripts, 5,686 Greek manuscripts. And we put them all together.
We can say with certainty, with reliability, that we know what
the New Testament authors actually wrote. And we have about five
minutes left with that. And when we come back, we're
going to talk about canonicity or how the New Testament was
actually brought together. It's very important that Christians
know this because you're going to be attacked. As soon as you present
the gospel, as soon as you present Jesus Christ as Lord, many will
attack the very source from which you derive your assertion, the
New Testament. And we have to be prepared to
say, no, you were wrong. Do you believe in Roman history?
And they will say, yes. And I ask why? And then it opens
the door for discussion. OK. We have about five minutes.
I'd like to take, if you have any, any questions that I can
answer. If I can't answer, I'm going
to give the mic to Dr. Downing over there and you can
answer. Any guests? Pardon me? My view of the Dead Sea Scrolls...