METHOD OF TESTING THE HISTORICAL RELIABILITY OF THE NT DOCUMENTS

3 basic principles of historiography. These are the bibliographical test, the internal evidence test, and the external evidence test. The result of these tests may be considered as expert evidences. These are the specialized area of history and archaeology in determining the authenticity of the historical documents.

RELIABILITY OF THE NT DOCUMENTS

The historical reliability of the NT should be tested by the same criteria to which all historical documents are subjected. The eye witness accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ come from primary source documents and are hence reliable. The 3 tests for the reliability of a document are biographical test, internal test and external test.

Bibliographical Evidence

Bibliographical test is an examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us. It is to evaluate how reliable are the copies in regard to the number of manuscripts and the time interval between the original and extant copies. Simply, the more copies we have, the more one can cross check them to figure out what the original document was like. The uniqueness of the NT copies is when compared with other ancient writings, there is an unprecedented multiplicity of surviving copies and yet there is no major discrepancies when compare each of its contents. The latest count of Greek manuscript as follows: 109 papyri, 306 uncials, 2,860 minuscules, and 2,410 lectionaries, for a total of 5,686. In addition to the Greek documents, there are thousands of other ancient NT manuscripts in other languages: 8,000 to 10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts, plus a total of 8,000 in Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian. In all, there are more than 24,500 manuscripts in existence.

As for the time gap between the originals and the first NT copies is about 50 years. The closer the time gap, the more reliable the documents are. No other ancient writings even come close to the qualification of the NT copies in terms of time gap and copies. The closest is the Illiad written by Homer around 800 B.C. Its earliest copy was made in the 400 B.C., approximately a gap of 400 years and only with 643 existing copies. Yet most historians view it as reliable copies. If other ancient manuscripts (such as written by Herodutus, Thucydides, Plato, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, or Pliny Secundus, of which their time gap are between 750 and 1,400 years with none of them having more than 20 copies to compare) are accepted by historians as reliable, how much more the reliability of the NT text is assured. It enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation in terms of the sheer numbers, the span and the variety of documents available to sustain or contradict it. There is nothing in ancient manuscript evidence to match such textual availability and integrity.

I. THE BIBLIOGRAPHIC TEST

A. THE QUANTITY OF MANUSCRIPTS

In the case of the Old Testament, there are a small number of Hebrew manuscripts, because the Jewish scribes ceremonially buried imperfect and worn manuscripts. Many ancient manuscripts were also lost or destroyed during Israel's turbulent history. Also, the Old Testament text was standardized by the Masoretic Jews by the sixth century A.D., and all manuscripts that deviated from the Masoretic Text were evidently eliminated. But the existing Hebrew manuscripts are supplemented by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint (a third-century B.C. Greek translation of the Old Testament), the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Targums (ancient paraphrases of the Old Testament), as well as the Talmud (teachings and commentaries related to the Hebrew Scriptures).

The quantity of New Testament manuscripts is unparalleled in ancient literature. There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts, about 8,000 Latin manuscripts, and another 1,000 manuscripts in other languages (Syriac, Coptic, etc.). In addition to this extraordinary number, there are tens of thousands of citations of New Testament passages by the early church fathers. In contrast, the typical number of existing manuscript copies for any of the works of the Greek and Latin authors, such as Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, or Tacitus, ranges from one to 20.

B. THE QUALITY OF MANUSCRIPTS

Because of the great reverence the Jewish scribes held toward the Scriptures, they exercised extreme care in making new copies of the Hebrew Bible. The entire scribal process was specified in meticulous detail to minimize the possibility of even the slightest error. The number of letters, words, and lines were counted, and the middle letters of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament were determined. If a single mistake was discovered, the entire manuscript would be destroyed.

As a result of this extreme care, the quality of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible surpasses all other ancient manuscripts. The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided a significant check on this, because these Hebrew scrolls antedate the earliest Masoretic Old Testament manuscripts by about 1,000 years. But in spite of this time span, the number of variant readings between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text is quite small, and most of these are variations in spelling and style.

While the quality of the Old Testament manuscripts is excellent, that of the New Testament is very good--considerably better than the manuscript quality of other ancient documents. Because of the thousands of New Testament manuscripts, there are many variant readings, but these variants are actually used by scholars to reconstruct the original readings by determining which variant best explains the others in any given passage. Some of these variant readings crept into the manuscripts because of visual errors in copying or because of auditory errors when a group of scribes copied manuscripts that were read aloud. Other errors resulted from faulty writing, memory, and judgment, and still others from well-meaning scribes who thought they were correcting the text. Nevertheless, only a small number of these differences affect the sense of the passages, and only a fraction of these have any real consequences. Furthermore, no variant readings are significant enough to call into question any of the doctrines of the New Testament. The New Testament can be regarded as 99.5 percent pure, and the correct readings for the remaining 0.5 percent can often be ascertained with a fair degree of probability by the practice of textual criticism.

C. THE TIME SPAN OF MANUSCRIPTS

Apart from some fragments, the earliest Masoretic manuscript of the Old Testament is dated at A.D. 895. This is due to the systematic destruction of worn manuscripts by the Masoretic scribes. However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls dating from 200 B.C. to A.D. 68 drastically reduced the time span from the writing of the Old Testament books to our earliest copies of them.

The time span of the New Testament manuscripts is exceptional. The manuscripts written on papyrus came from the second and third centuries A.D. The John Rylands Fragment (P52) of the Gospel of John is dated at A.D. 117-38, only a few decades after the Gospel was written. The Bodmer Papyri are dated from A.D. 175-225, and the Chester Beatty Papyri date from about A.D. 250. The time span for most of the New Testament is less than 200 years (and some books are within 100 years) from the date of authorship to the date of our earliest manuscripts. This can be sharply contrasted with the average gap of over 1,000 years between the composition and the earliest copy of the writings of other ancient authors.

To summarize the bibliographic test, the Old and New Testaments enjoy far greater manuscript attestation in terms of quantity, quality, and time span than any other ancient documents.

BIOGRAPHICAL TEST

The documents are reliable both in terms of the number of manuscripts available for verification, and also the time lapse between the event (first manuscript) and the oldest extant manuscript.

INTERNAL CONSISTENCY EVIDENCE

Internal evidence test refers to the accuracy and consistency when compare with the contents of each NT documents. In other words, the documents would be considered reliable if they are free of known contradiction. On this test, it is important to remember the ‘benefit of the doubt’ presumption. Unless any contradiction is clearly proven, one cannot assume that the unexplained contradiction is a concluded fallacy. It is a mistake for the critics to assume, that what has not yet been explained never will be explained. When a scientist comes upon an anomaly in nature, he does not give up further scientific explanation. Rather, he uses the unexplained as a motivation to find an explanation. ‘the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the defendant itself, not arrogated by the critics to himself’. Therefore, “one must listen to the claims of the document under analysis, and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualified himself by contradictions or known factual inaccuracies.”

The NT documents clearly satisfy the internal evidence test because within it there are much substantiated consistencies outweighing other minor unproven assumptions.

INTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST

It is unreasonable not to listen to the claims of the documents under analysis and assume error, unless and otherwise the author of the document disqualifies himself by contradictions. NT was written by eyewitness (Lk 1:1-3; Acts 3:15; 2Pet 1:16; 1Jn 1:3). Their testimony was subjected to the most stringent scrutiny by their severest critics. But in the NT no contradiction has been proven. Many alleged and apparent contradictions have been cleared up by archaeology. EG. Apparent (not actual) contradictions are because of our inadequate understanding. Writing existed 2000 years before Moses. Hittite civilization really existed in present Turkey. Either the translation is wrong or you do not understand it properly. But we cannot say that God is wrong in the original autographs.

INTEGRITY AND HONESTY OF THE NT AUTHORS

All the available information about the apostles testify to their honesty and integrity. They began proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus within weeks after the event. If they were lying their powerful persecutors could have easily proved them wrong. The conviction of the apostles was to such extent that they were clinging to their belief even to the point of martyrdom. Men will never be willing to die for what they know to be false. But they will die for what they believe to be true. Thus we can reasonably assume the honesty of the writers.

 (A) PROOF THAT THE GOSPELS WERE WRITTEN BY EYEWITNESSES: 1. Internal evidence, from the Gospels themselves: A. The style of writing in the Gospels is simple and alive, what we would expect from their traditionally accepted authors. B. Moreover, since Luke was written before Acts, and since Acts was written prior to the death of Paul, Luke must have an early date, which speaks for its authenticity. C. The Gospels also show an intimate knowledge of Jerusalem prior to its destruction in A.D. 70. The Gospels are full of proper names, dates, cultural details, historical events, and customs and opinions of that time. D. Jesus' prophecies of that event (the destruction of Jerusalem) must have been written prior to Jerusalem's fall, for otherwise the church would have separated out the apocalyptic element in the prophecies, which makes them appear to concern the end of the world. Since the end of the world did not come about when Jerusalem was destroyed, the so-called prophecies of its destruction that were really written after the city was destroyed would not have made that event appear so closely connected with the end of the world. Hence, the Gospels must have been written prior to A.D. 70.  E. The stories of Jesus' human weaknesses and of the disciples' faults also bespeak the Gospels' accuracy. F. Furthermore, it would have been impossible for forgers to put together so consistent a narrative as that which we find in the Gospels. The Gospels do not try to suppress apparent discrepancies, which indicates their originality (written by eyewitnesses). There is no attempt at harmonization between the Gospels, such as we might expect from forgers.G.The Gospels do not contain anachronisms; the authors appear to have been first-century Jews who were witnesses of the events.

We may conclude that there is no more reason to doubt that the Gospels come from the traditional authors than there is to doubt that the works of Philo or Josephus are authentic, except that the Gospels contain supernatural events.

INTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST

The second test of the reliability of the biblical documents asks, What claims does the Bible make about itself? This may appear to be circular reasoning. It sounds like we are using the testimony of the Bible to prove that the Bible is true. But we are really examining the truth claims of the various authors of the Bible and allowing them to speak for themselves. (Remember that the Bible is not one book but many books woven together.) This provides significant evidence that must not be ignored.

A number of biblical authors claim that their accounts are primary, not secondary. That is, the bulk of the Bible was written by people who were eyewitnesses of the events they recorded.

1. John wrote in his Gospel, And he who has seen has borne witness, and his witness is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you also may believe (John 19:35; see 21:24). In his first epistle, John wrote, What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the Word of life . . . what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also (1 John 1:1, 3).
2. Peter makes the same point abundantly clear: For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty (2 Peter 1:16; also see Acts 2:22; 1 Peter 5:1).
3. The independent eyewitness accounts in the New Testament of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ were written by people who were intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ. Their gospels and epistles reveal their integrity and complete commitment to the truth, and they maintained their testimony even through persecution and martyrdom.
4. All the evidence inside and outside the New Testament runs contrary to the claim made by form criticism that the early church distorted the life and teachings of Christ.
5. Most of the New Testament was written between A.D. 47 and 70, and all of it was complete before the end of the first century. There simply was not enough time for myths about Christ to be created and propagated. And the multitudes of eyewitnesses who were alive when the New Testament books began to be circulated would have challenged blatant historical fabrications about the life of Christ. The Bible places great stress on accurate historical details, and this is especially obvious in the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, Luke's two-part masterpiece (see his prologue in Luke 1:1-4).

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST

1. The disciples must have left some writings, engaged as they were in giving lessons to and counseling believers who were geographically distant; and what could these writings be if not the Gospels and epistles themselves? Eventually the apostles would have needed to publish accurate narratives of Jesus' history, so that any spurious attempts would be discredited and the genuine Gospels preserved. B. There were many eyewitnesses who were still alive when the books were written who could testify whether they came from their purported authors or not. C. The extra-biblical testimony unanimously attributes the Gospels to their traditional authors: the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Clement, the Shepherd of Hermes, Theophilus, Hippolytus, Origen, Quadratus, Irenaeus, Melito, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Dionysius, Tertullian, Cyprian, Tatian, Caius, Athanasius, Cyril, up to Eusebius in A.D. 315, even Christianity's opponents conceded this: Celsus, Porphyry, Emperor Julian. D. With a single exception, no apocryphal gospel is ever quoted by any known author during the first three hundred years after Christ. In fact there is no evidence that any inauthentic gospel whatever existed in the first century, in which all four Gospels and Acts were written.
2. Proof that the Gospels we have today are the same Gospels originally written: 1. Because of the need for instruction and personal devotion, these writings must have been copied many times, which increases the chances of preserving the original text. 2. In fact, no other ancient work is available in so many copies and languages, and yet all these various versions agree in content. 3. The text has also remained unmarred by heretical additions. The abundance of manuscripts over a wide geographical distribution demonstrates that the text has been transmitted with only trifling discrepancies. The differences that do exist are quite minor and are the result of unintentional mistakes. 4. The quotations of the New Testament books in the early Church Fathers all coincide. 5. The Gospels could not have been corrupted without a great outcry on the part of all orthodox Christians. 6. No one could have corrupted all the manuscripts. 7. There is no precise time when the falsification could have occurred, since, as we have seen, the New Testament books are cited by the Church Fathers in regular and close succession. The text could not have been falsified before all external testimony, since then the apostles were still alive and could repudiate such tampering. 8. The text of the New Testament is every bit as good as the text of the classical works of antiquity.To repudiate the textual parity of the Gospels would be to reverse all the rules of criticism and to reject all the works of antiquity, since the text of those works is less certain than that of the Gospels. Many events which are regarded as firmly established historically have (1) far less documentary evidence than many biblical events; (2) and the documents on which historians rely for much secular history are written much longer after the event than many records of biblical events; (3) furthermore, we have many more copies of biblical narratives than of secular histories; and (4) the surviving copies are much earlier than those on which our evidence for secular history is based. If the biblical narratives did not contain accounts of miraculous events, biblical history would probably be regarded as much more firmly established than most of the history of, say, classical Greece and Rome.  

CORROBORATION OF EXTRINSIC EVIDENCE

The third test requires other reliable historical materials to confirm the internal testimonies provided by the NT documents. Besides having the value of expert evidence, these extrinsic proofs also have the weight of corroborating evidence. The word ‘corroboration’ means support or confirmation. ‘there is nothing technical in the idea of corroboration. When in the ordinary affairs of life one is doubtful whether or not to believe a particular statement, one naturally looks to see whether it fits in with other statements or circumstances relating to the particular matter; the better it fits in, the more one is inclined to believe it’. Therefore, not to leave the immense wealth of corroborating evidences behind, here is some of it to benefit the sceptics and to bring about a stronger conviction.

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST

History and archaeology have confirmed the authenticity of the NT documents from the outside. Christians have ‘better historical documentation for Jesus than for the founder of any other ancient religion’. 

SOURCES FROM EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITERS outside the New Testament such as Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius who preserves the writings of Papias (A.D. 130); Against Heresies by Irenaeus (A.D. 180) and writings by Clement of Rome (C. A.D. 170); Polycarp (A.D. 70-156); Tatian (C. A.D. 170) corroborated that many people believe Jesus performed healings and was the Messiah, that he was crucified, and that despite that shameful death, his followers, who believed he was still alive worshipped him as God.

TESTIMONY OF HISTORY FROM EARLY NON-CHRISTIANS SOURCES also confirm the New Testament content and history. They include : Flavius Josephus (AD 37-100) - Jewish Antiquities, Cornelius Tacitus (AD 52-54): Annals of Imperial Rome, Pliny the Younger’s letters from Bithynia (AD 112)  addressed to the Emperor Trajan – Roman, Thallus (AD 52) – Samaritan, Jewish Talmud (AD 500) – Jewish, Lucian (2nd Century) Greek, Suetonius (AD 120) - Roman - Life of Claudius. The writings of these non-Christians supplement and confirm the gospel account and thus makes strong corroborating evidences. These writings come largely from Greek, Roman, Jewish and Samaritan sources of the first century.

Collectively, these testimonies of the secular historical documents and the NT documents agree in the following points: (1) Jesus was from Nazareth; (2) he lived a wise and virtuous life; (3) he was crucified in Palestine under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar at Passover time, being considered the Jewish King; (4) It was believed by His disciples that He rose from the dead on the Third day. (5) Jewish leaders believed that Jesus was born illegitimately. His enemies acknowledged that he performed unusual feats and hence they charged Him with sorcery. (6) his small band of disciples multiplied rapidly, spreading even as far as Rome; Christianity could not be contained. Roman rulers persecuted the Christians. (7) his disciples denied polytheism, lived moral lives, lived according to the teachings of Christ and worshipped Christ as Divine.

EVIDNCE FOR JESUS - HISTORIANS

Consider Bible Jesus and Israel.  Subjected to greatest criticism, attack and persecution. But victorious. This is itself is a proof for Bible and Bible God.

THEY IGNORE HISTORIANS REFERENCE TO JESUS = josephus, tacitus, pliny the younger, Suetonius, philegon, other silent historians and also Christian sources. THEY CONSIDER ONLY ANTICHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND VIEWS AS VALID. HENCE OBVIOUSLY PREJUDICED.

Lack of academic standards and deeper study. Critics learn their profession by attacking the Bible and Jesus. That is the only safe ground. But truth seeking critics have in thousands have ended up with believing in God Jesus.

External Test

Because the Scriptures continually refer to historical events, they are verifiable; their accuracy can be checked by external evidence. The chronological details in the prologue to Jeremiah (1:1-3) and in Lk 3:1-2 illustrate this. Eze 1:2 allows us to date Ezekiel's first vision of God to the day (July 31, 592 B.C.).

The historicity of Jesus Christ is well-established by early Roman, Greek, and Jewish sources, and these extrabiblical writings affirm the major details of the New Testament portrait of the Lord. The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus made specific references to John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and James in his Antiquities of the Jews. In this work, Josephus gives us many background details about the Herods, the Sadducees and Pharisees, the high priests like Annas and Caiaphas, and the Roman emperors mentioned in the gospels and Acts.

We find another early secular reference to Jesus in a letter written a little after A.D. 73 by an imprisoned Syrian named Mara Bar-Serapion. This letter to his son compares the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Christ. Other first- and second-century writers who mention Christ include the Roman historians Cornelius Tacitus (Annals) and Suetonius (Life of Claudius, Lives of the Caesars), the Roman governor Pliny the Younger (Epistles), and the Greek satirist Lucian (On the Death of Peregrine). Jesus is also mentioned a number of times in the Jewish Talmud.

The Old and New Testaments make abundant references to nations, kings, battles, cities, mountains, rivers, buildings, treaties, customs, economics, politics, dates, etc. Because the historical narratives of the Bible are so specific, many of its details are open to archaeological investigation. While we cannot say that archaeology proves the authority of the Bible, it is fair to say that archaeological evidence has provided external confirmation of hundreds of biblical statements. Higher criticism in the 19th century made many damaging claims that would completely overthrow the integrity of the Bible, but the explosion of archaeological knowledge in the 20th century reversed almost all of these claims. Noted archaeologists such as William F. Albright, Nelson Glueck, and G. Ernest Wright developed a great respect for the historical accuracy of the Scriptures as a result of their work.

Out of the multitude of archaeological discoveries related to the Bible, consider a few examples to illustrate the remarkable external substantiation of biblical claims. Excavations at Nuzi (1925-41), Mari (discovered in 1933), and Alalakh (1937-39; 1946-49) provide helpful background information that fits well with the Genesis stories of the patriarchal period. The Nuzi tablets and Mari letters illustrate the patriarchal customs in great detail, and the Ras Shamra tablets discovered in ancient Ugarit in Syria shed much light on Hebrew prose and poetry and Canaanite culture. The Ebla tablets discovered recently in northern Syria also affirm the antiquity and accuracy of the Book of Genesis.

Some scholars once claimed that the Mosaic Law could not have been written by Moses, because writing was largely unknown at that time and because the law code of the Pentateuch was too sophisticated for that period. But the codified Laws of Hammurabi (ca. 1700 B.C.), the Lipit-Ishtar code (ca. 1860 B.C.), the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1950 B.C.), and the even earlier Ur-Nammu code have refuted these claims.

The Historical Accuracy of the Bible Revealed

To be divinely inspired, a book must be historically accurate.  For if its credibility cannot be established on the basis of known events, it certainly cannot be relied upon as an adequate guide in matters beyond our ability to check.  On the other hand, if we can demonstrate that such a book is correct in historical matters, to an extent unknown among human writings, then we have strong evidence that the authors were inspired by God.  In this lesson we shall learn that this is true of the Bible.