68, which put them about 1,000 years older than any previously known biblical manuscript, yet the scrolls’ content was essentially unchanged (ibid). Some manuscripts dated from the third century B.C.
They contained manuscript fragments from every book of the Old Testament except the book of Esther 2. These scrolls were discovered in 1947 inside clay pots located in the caves near the Dead Sea in Israel. The scribes' accuracy in copying the Old Testament is proven by examination of the Dead Sea Scrolls-the most important Old Testament manuscripts we have. If there were more than three mistakes in the new manuscript, they would bury it and not use it because they were dedicated to a reliable transmission of God’s Word 1.Īfter the scribe was finished with a new manuscript, he would count the letters of each word to determine the total number of letters and the total number of words to see if the letter count and word count matched between the old manuscript and the new one to make sure that the new one was reliable (ibid).
They intentionally looked at each letter at a time to copy into the new manuscript. When they copied a new manuscript from an old one, they didn’t just look at the words or a phrase to copy. If you were copying text by hand, you might look at a few words or a sentence, then copy it from memory, right? But the scribes that copied the Old Testament manuscripts didn't do that they were much more meticulous. So in order to make a copy of something, they would have to make a handwritten copy called a manuscript. During biblical times, people couldn’t store documents on the cloud, take pictures, or make exact replicas on a copy machine. Our certainty of its accuracy is thanks to the manuscripts that ARE available. If there are no original documents though, how can we be sure the Bible we read today contains the same message? The Bible is not at any greater disadvantage for not having any surviving original documents. There is no museum that has the original writings touched by Caesar, Plato, or Homer. These materials naturally deteriorate and ink fades over time.įor nearly all other ancient authors, we also do not have access to the first writings penned by the original writers. One reasons why they may not have survived is due to the type of material the Bible was written on-such as animal skins or thin papyrus paper. Unfortunately, the very first original books of the Bible haven’t been found preserved in an archeological discovery. The easiest way to see if today's Bible is a reliable record of the original writing would be to compare the two versions.
But we did not get the Bible through a game of Telephone! Original Documents vs. They wonder how confident we can be that the Bible we have today is a reliable record of the original writing. Some people believe that this method of passing a message from one person to the next is how we got the Bible. Have you ever played the game “Telephone,” where one person creates a phrase then whispers it to the next person who passes it on to the next until it reaches the last person? At the end, the phrase is usually nonsensical because it's so different from what the first person originally said. How can we know that the Bible we have today is a reliable record of the original writings?
0 kommentar(er)
