Yesterday we began our series with an old sermon of mine meant to overcome some of the arguments raised against the Bible by the best-selling book and movie, The Da Vinci Code. Today we turn to an opponent of the Scriptures with more staying power than Dan Brown’s work of fiction, Dr. Bart Ehrman. Dr. Ehrman has spent 30 years attempting to discredit the accuracy and proper preservation of the New Testament. Why the New Testament and not the Old, or the Bible as a whole? That is an interesting question.

The answer is most likely the fashion in which the Old Testament has been reproduced. The Old Testament was organized and recognized as the Word of God by the Israeli people for thousands of years. Since it was recognized as Holy Writ it was treated as such, the scrolls duplicated with painstaking efforts. AS it was copied it would be spot checked. The scribes knew what letter or punctuation should be the 1183^rd character, for example, and so they would count and see if indeed the correct character was present in that position. They checked books, they counted the number of letters in every scroll and compared that number to the known answer and any discrepancy would indicate the scroll were compromised.

Dr. Ehrman argues that we do not have the original manuscripts of the New Testament books. That is true, but we likewise do not have the “autograph” copies of any Old Testament book either. He argues that the oldest manuscript of a portion of the New Testament dates to 220 AD, likely 150 years after the original was written. Yet until 1947 the oldest copy of any Old Testament text was from the tenth century AD, as much as 1,500 years later than the original was written. So what is the big deal with 150 years?

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 they contained a complete copy of the book of Isaiah. What was so remarkable about the find is these manuscripts were made about 100 years before Christ was born, meaning they are over 1,000 years older than the previously held oldest document. Most amazing of all, the two manuscripts separated by a millennia were nearly identical. The Jews knew, and were responsible with, the Word of God, of that there is no longer any question.

Unlike the Old Testament, the New did not have the same history of recognition as being God-inspired, or thousands of years of national resources to protect it. Because of this, and the oppression of Christians by the Roman government, meant many of the letters Paul wrote and the Gospels some of the disciples penned would have been copied in haste. Since the documents that make up the New Testament weren’t recognized as “God-inspired” until about 150 AD (about 100 years after their original authorship), who is to say what might have become of the copies that existed at that time? Were they accurate? How do we know without the original, autograph copies with which to compare them? This is the crux of Dr. Ehrman’s argument.

To complicate matters, copies of the New Testament throughout the ages are not as clean and reliable as Old Testament copies. Had the Gospels been properly preserved down through the centuries? Ehrman claims the New Testament manuscripts contain “hundreds of thousands of mistakes”. Is this true? It is an exaggeration, but the manuscripts do contain thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of differences between them. Should every believer in the Messiah be alarmed? Find out next time, here at Think-Biblocally.com

Continue to Part Two