Ask a Bible college Student

[Pat Mustard]

Also, looking objectively at the New Testament as a historical document, It was written close to the time of the events it talks about, and the earliest copy we have found is within 30 years of the original writing. There are 5800 historical copies found, and the accuracy compared to the originals is incredible. The New Testament as a historical document is historically reliable, which is a good reason to me to believe in it. Internally, it is consistent, even though there are many writers who contributed to the overall Bible who wrote over a long period of time.

First the bolded bit: The oldest copy we have of a substantial part of any new testament book was written at c200 CE not 63 CE as you imply (any fragment before the 200 mark is a tiny fragment of a single leaf, not even something that we could use to reconstruct the original document). The generally accepted earliest date for Mark the oldest of the gospels is c80CE a whole two generations after the supposed death of Yeshua bar Yosef. It is third hand hearsay based on the corrupted memories of what people were told by their dead relatives who may or may not have witnessed the events depicted in the bible.

Second to the italicised bit: No it is not, first to the "Legion" story. The town depicted in the story, Gerasa lies about 50km (30 miles) away (and is downhill from) from the Dead Sea yet the story has Yeshua casting the demons into pigs and chasing them into the sea, non historic. The crucifiction is also ahistoric, as Yeshua was convicted under sanhedric law which proscribed either hanging or stoning as the death penalty, crucifiction at the time was a Roman punishment for traitors or rebels against the empire. As Iudea wasn't a part of Rome proper and as Yeshua wasn't rebelling against Roman suzerainty he wouldn't have been crucified at all. Corinth at the time that Paul supposedly visited was a tiny village living in the smouldering ruins of the city destroyed by Rome in 146BCE. It didn't regain any prominence within the Hellenistic world until at least the 70's CE, twenty years after Paul supposedly visited it.

Finally to the underlined bit: First of all the 5,800 manuscripts bit counts the number of Greek manuscripts, fragments and copies for which we have currently. From wikipedia I lifted the following:
Distribution of Greek manuscripts by century[10]

PHP Code:

New Testament manuscripts Lectionaries
Century Papyri Uncials Minuscules Uncials Minuscules
2nd 2 - - - -
2nd/3rd 5 1 - - -
3rd 28 2 - - -
3rd/4th 8 2 - - -
4th 14 14 - 1 -
4th/5th 8 8 - - -
5th 2 36 - 1 -
5th/6th 4 10 - - -
6th 7 51 - 3 -
6th/7th 5 5 - 1 -
7th 8 28 - 4 -
7th/8th 3 4 - - -
8th 2 29 - 22 -
8th/9th - 4 - 5 -
9th - 53 13 113 5
9th/10th - 1 4 - 1
10th - 17 124 108 38
10th/11th - 3 8 3 4
11th - 1 429 15 227
11th/12th - - 33 - 13
12th - - 555 6 486
12th/13th - - 26 - 17
13th - - 547 4 394
13th/14th - - 28 - 17
14th - - 511 - 308
14th/15th - - 8 - 2
15th - - 241 - 171
15th/16th - - 4 - 2
16th - - 136 - 194 


As you can see the vast majority of those manuscripts came from the 11th century or later with only a tiny from from the 6th century or earlier. As a testament to the historical validity of the bible, the number of Greek manuscripts is clearly not worth shit.

So my third question to you is; do you have any actual evidence for the veracity of the bible, or are you going to just parrot the long discredited assertions parroted by many fundagelicals who did fly by nights on af.org before you?