Why is it when Christians provide evidence for accuracy of the biblical text non-believers won't recognize it?

Question

I've seen this several times. The evidence is very clear that the text of the New Testament is very ancient. There are 1000s of ancient copies and portions to collate and compare, many going back to the second century and some even to the end of the first. What is found is that the text of the New Testament is within a generation or two of the events it describes.

When I have noticed thumbs up/down, I have seen a lot of thumbs down when this is explained. Who is thumbs downing it and why? Obviously, it can't be the information because it is correct. Is it the attitude of the responder?

The only thing that a New Testament close to originals evidences is that the text has not been tampered with and that what we know as the New Testament now is close to the originals. I don't get why that bothers the skeptics so?

This still leaves plenty of room for skeptics to discuss content, misleading interpretation, the miracles being fairy tales and even the failure of the church and Christians.

Certainly when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume there was some kind of standardization. You see this when you look at the documentary evidence. That only makes sense. And certainly there were decisions made as to what books were to be included and what left out. I suppose that could be tampering. For example, the early church left out the gnostic gospels and letters believing they were of late date, not attributable to an Apostle and heretical.

Why is it that despite the documentary evidence, otherwise extremely intelligent people continue to argue that the text has been tampered with and disregard the evidence to the contrary? If you believe in science and you understand how documentary evidence is handled its really a non-issue.

Now the Old Testament is a different case. It is remarkable that the Isaiah scroll found among the Dead Sea scrolls is so close to the known Hebrew text today. But unfortunately documentary evidence for the Old Testament is not nearly as old in terms of its proximity to originals as the New Testament. So we do have to separate these, and I recognize that.

Enlighten me, please.

Answer 1

I don't know what to say first: Are you joking? or Who cares?



Let's start with Are you joking? I attended a Bible college, took 4 semesters of Greek, which included instruction on textual analysis. I'm hardly an expert, but I know enough to know that your story about thousands of highly reliable manuscripts from the 2nd century is rubbish.



You say we have "many going back to the second century": try half a dozen fragments going back to the third.



You say "some even to the end of the first." Maybe there are as many as four fragments as old as 200 CE -- that's the end of the second. Nothing as old as the first.



But we don't have "thousands" of manuscripts unless you count documents from the 12th century or later, where your definition of "ancient" -- already pretty strained -- snaps entirely.



And all of the manuscripts disagree. Okay, some of the disagreements are trivial; some are obvious misspellings; but some affect the meaning rather dramatically.



On to: Who cares?



Really, it wouldn't matter a fig to me if we suddenly found a pristine copy of Q under the sands of Egypt. In a cultural sense, I'd be intrigued & impressed but I wouldn't feel that some more authentic text held any more authority over me than the latest English adaptation.

Answer 2

I'll give you a couple of instances.



YOM



Yom has been translated into the English word day, yom has never been day, it is an undefined period of time that is characterized by the surrounding words. Now most fundies would have you believe that the world was created in 6 literal English days, this is sadly for them totally untrue. It is 6 undefined periods of time, that could be anywhere from seconds to bazillion years.



Begotton.



It is distinctly recognized that monogenes does not and never has meant begotten, it means unique.



So, for Christians to say that Jesus was God's only begotten son is again in error, Jesus was his only unique son. So even though it is not mentioned, God may well have had other sons, but they were not unique.



Just for a mention, each individual letter in the Hebrew alphabet has around 20 meanings. Let's take the letter Yod in Hebrew, one of its many meanings is 'the spark of creation'. Now let's translate that into English and we get J.



What the heck does J mean? Nothing does it!



Each individual letter in Hebrew interacts with the next in the word, so how can the English language ever translate any comparison in a single letter than it does in Hebrew.



It doesn't.



Like I said this is a couple of instances, there are a multitude. In fact given the meaning of each individual letter in Hebrew, the whole English translation is in error.





Fail.

Answer 3

I am not trying to be mean, I hope you will look at this with an open mind since you seem to have a problem with people having closed minds.



"many going back to the second century and some even to the end of the first."



Since many people do not accept the Bible in the first place, and as you point out it was written after the "Fact", of course they are not going to accept it as factual.



Your faith makes it irrefutable proof to you, but if someone does not believe in the veracity of the Bible, than who can you reasonably expect them to accept your proff of things when they come from the Bible.



To put it in Perspective:



Do you believe in Muslim teachings, Why not, they are in the Quaran?



It is the exact same situation.

Answer 4

While that proves that there is great accuracy among the various copies in circulation, it says noting about whether the subject of the writings has any basis in fact. For instance, many ancient copies of the Quran could be produced, their antiquity proven, and their text compared. This proves nothing, of course, except that the people making copies of the document were very careful to avoid mistakes.



Secondly, what about the texts that do not match those in the Bible. Their are many ancient writings that contradict those in the Bible, and by discluding them, you slant the logic of your own arguement.

Answer 5

To a degree, parts of the newer versions of the Bible (such as the NKJV, NIV, etc.) are partially incorrect.

Parts of some of the newer Bible's are translated from the Septuagint, which is a false translation of the Bible.

Not all of them are translated from said source, but a lot are.

The only one that I can think of right off the top of my head that's not is the KJV.



And the only other errors are grammatical. Which doesn't really matter much to me.



Just because somethings old doesn't mean it's false.

Just because somethings new doesn't make it true.



I think it's because they think they're fairy tales.

Which they're not. But we are free to chose what we want to believe.

And making fun of someones beliefs is never right.

Just because (man I say that too much...) you think the Bible is bull doesn't mean you're anymore correct than the person who believe's its the true and living word of God.

Just because you believe in the theory of evolution does not mean someone who doesn't is of less intelligence than you.

Just because you think that we're all on this earth for nothing, we just live and die, doesn't mean you're more important than the one who believe's that there is a meaning to all of this madness.

Answer 6

"What is found is that the text of the New Testament is within a generation or two of the events it describes."



So if I write a book about all of the magical things that happened during the Vietnam War, I should expect people 2,000 years from now to accept it all as completely true, even though it happened 10 years before I was born? Your logic is disturbing.

Answer 7

Non-believer is simply a term for a person who appreciates life from a neutral unbiased perspective.



I'd love to see the evidence that you claim of, I'll read about it and if I don't come back and tell you it's BS, you can spank me.

Answer 8

Not only were you enlightened by Monkeyhead, you just got pwned by him *in your face*. I'm certain you will never take the leap to look at this objectively because you people never do, but hey, at least I lived a victory vicariously through him!

Answer 9

When Christians accept Carbon dating as accurate then we'll believe something from the bible.

It takes one to know one.

Answer 10

Very very good issues. I've often asked the very same questions and I just can't understand it either. Do they still need more proof? Are the writings too unbelievable to them? The Bible has given us more history and archaeological evidence than any other book we have. I just don't know what more some people need.

Answer 11

The evidence for accuracy never covers the supernatural elements of the books, so that's what we point out.

Answer 12

Who disputes that the texts exists? It's the stories in them that are impossible to believe. And you sound so smart too.

Answer 13

Most of the "evidence" that I've seen is usually somewhat shaky.

Answer 14

luke 8:12 "then cometh the devil, and taketh the words out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved"

Answer 15

it isn't about the age of the works, it's about the content - completely unsubstantiated anecdotal stories