The Evidence Most Critics Ignore

how do we know the Bible we have today is the same as the original texts that were written almost 2,000 years ago the simple answer is that God has preserved his word for us my name is Lex and welcome to unlearn Yeshua made an amazing prophecy concerning the preservation of scripture saying Heaven and Earth will pass away but my words will by no means pass away Matthew 24:35 Yeshua also made it clear that nothing from the Old Testament would pass away saying do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets I did not come to destroy but to fulfill for surely I say to you till Heaven and Earth pass away one jot or one tit will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled Matthew 5:1 17-19 likewise the prophet Isaiah said the grass withers the flower Fades but the word of our God stands forever Isaiah 40:8 it could be argued that the preservation of scripture is part of God's Redemptive plan for mankind if the scriptures were not preserved how would we know about Sin and salvation if we didn't have the Torah we wouldn't know what sin is because Paul says for by the law is the knowledge of sin Romans 3:20 and I would not have known sin except through the law for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said You shall not covet Romans 77 how would we know about salvation apart from the revelation of Christ in the New Testament because in him you also trusted after you heard the word of Truth The Gospel of your salvation Ephesians 1:13 the revelation of our Salvation is only known by the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus 2 Timothy 3:15 so we see that the preservation of God's word is vital for us to come to a saving faith in Yeshua the preservation of scripture is important for the gospel of the Kingdom to be preached in all the world as a witness to All Nations Matthew 24:14 the doctrine of scripture preservation means that God has kept his word intact and we can trust that the biblical texts we have today are truthful copies of the original text therefore we can trust the Bible to be accurate and truthful in its message and teaching preservation simply means that we can trust the scriptures because God has sovereignly overseen the process of its transmission over the centuries the Hebrew scribes were meticulous about copying each letter exactly as they were written they would even count the number of letters in a passage to make certain they didn't miss even one in their copy the New Testament writers were not trained scribes so we do find more cop errors such as spelling and grammar mistakes but these errors do not affect the message or meaning of the text in any significant way we sometimes find that the person who copied the text accidentally copied the same line twice or left out a word occasionally other textual variant include using pronouns instead of proper names spelling mistakes and different word order but none of these variants changed the message or meaning of the text however in spite of these types of variants Scholars have been able to reconstruct the original text with great accuracy because of the vast number of manuscripts available to us they're able to compare thousands of copies to find out where the mistakes were made and reproduce a trustworthy copy of the original this method of comparing manuscripts is called textual criticism we can see how the scriptures have been preserved by simply comparing the number of manuscripts we have of the Bible with other ancient writings available to us we can also compare how much time has passed between the original writing of the earliest copy we have to help us determine How likely they are to be accurate here are some of the best examples of what are considered to be reliable copies of ancient text ranked in order from the fewest texts to the most copies available each of these texts is considered to be very reliable and accurate according to most scholar Plato has seven copies the earliest is 12200 years from the original Aristotle has 49 cop copies the earliest is400 years from the original Homer's ilad has 643 copies the earliest is 500 years from the original the New Testament has 5,600 Greek copies and over 19,000 copies in syc Latin Coptic and Aramaic over 24,000 total manuscripts the earliest is less than 100 years from the original these writings are all considered to be reliable based on the number of texts and how close they are to when the original was written The Iliad is considered to be one of the best and most reliable text of antiquity because it has so many copies dating so closely to the original however as you can see by comparison the biblical text is unequaled in both number of copies and close proximity to the original writings there are thousands more Greek manuscripts of the new testate in existence than any other ancient text likewise the copies we have of the New Testament date closer to the original than any other ancient text ever found this means that it's easier to verify the accuracy of the New Testament than any other document of antiquity because of the wealth of manuscripts available to us biblical Scholars have been able to compare all of them and determine with 99% certainty what the original text actually said even biblical critics such as Bart Man have acknowledged that we are able to reconstruct the original text accurately based on the overwhelming number of manuscripts available man likes to point out the number of discrepancies that exist between different manuscripts but even he admits that those variants don't affect our ability to reconstruct the original text if one of the leading critics of the Bible must admit that we have accurately reconstructed the New Testament then we should have no reason to doubt that the text we have today is both reliable and accurate thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video I think you'll really enjoy this next one also think about someone else who 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