They abandoned worship at the Jerusalem temple in the 300s B.C. because of widespread religious corruption, gathered up their scrolls of Scripture (the Hebrew Bible), and retreated to Qumran near the Dead Sea. When the Romans threatened the region, these believers hid their scrolls in the dry caves high above Qumran. The scrolls remained hidden until 1947, over 2,000 years later, when a Bedouin boy found them while searching for his goat.
The Dead Sea Scrolls represent one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history, and they authenticate in remarkable ways the reliability of our contemporary Old Testament texts. Among the many discoveries was a complete scroll of the entire book of Isaiah. Although our oldest manuscript of Isaiah at that time was from the 1000s A.D., the Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah, written 1,000 years earlier, was a near exact match! For example, in comparing the texts, of the 166 words in Isaiah chapter 53, there are only 17 letters in question. Ten of the letters are simply a matter of spelling, which do not affect the meaning at all. Four more letters are minor style changes, such as an added “and.” The remaining three letters spell the word "light," which is added in verse 11 and does not affect the meaning of the passage. In short, what the Dead Sea scrolls demonstrate are highly careful and exact transmissions of Biblical texts down through the ages. This careful preservation is consistent with the prior oral tradition as expressed in the Bible’s book of Deuteronomy 31, which records God telling Moses to read out loud the law (their Bible) every seven years. Such a tradition preserved the accuracy of the text for generations to come.
For the New Testament, our confidence in its reliability is even greater. True, we do not, for instance, possess the original parchment on which Mark first wrote his Gospel. However, this should not be surprising because we essentially have NO originals for any of the writings from the ancient world. Still, is it rational to believe that we possess what the New Testament authors originally wrote? Or, has the text passed through too many hands over too much time to be trusted?
The truth is that the New Testament remains the best-preserved ancient text in history with 27,000 complete books or sections of ancient text in our possession. The oldest section dates to mere decades from the original, and the oldest complete New Testament dates to a little more than 200 years after the original. Compared to Homer’s The Iliad, the second best preserved ancient work, which is routinely taught in schools as historical literature, there remains just 643 complete works or fragments of the text, but the oldest copy dates to 500 years from the time of the original.
Critics claim that the New Testament includes 400,000 variations among the many copies of the ancient texts, which sounds like a lot. However, of those variations, the vast majority are due to simple (easily identifiable) scribal errors of spelling or grammar that do not affect the meaning of the text. Less than 1% of those variations have any bearing on the meaning of the text, and NO Christian beliefs or teachings are altered by those very few variations within the ancient New Testament texts.
Alongside the dedicated preservation of the New Testament text, its internal evidence demonstrates its truth. No credible scholar disputes that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the early first century A.D in the Roman province of Judaea. Several historical sources beyond the New Testament confirm that reality: Jewish historian Josephus, Roman historian Tacitus, Thallus, Clement of Alexandria, The Didache, and more. Some were only brief mentions because at that early time the writers could not have imagined his worldwide impact. Altogether, however, the New Testament provides near-contemporaneous accounts of a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth.
In the first century, women were not eligible to testify in a Jewish court of law. They were considered too emotional and unreliable. Yet in the Gospels, remarkably, women are the first witnesses of the resurrected Jesus Christ. They provide the first testimony to his resurrection. Additionally, Jesus calls Peter, “Satan" (Matthew 16:23), and the disciples later cower in fear following Jesus’ crucifixion thinking they will be arrested and killed next. Soon after, they charge boldly into the streets proclaiming his resurrection. All of these culturally and personally “embarrassing” details would certainly have been edited out of the New Testament accounts unless it was what actually happened.
Finally, most of the books of the New Testament were written prior to 70 A.D., within roughly 35 years of the crucifixion, by eyewitnesses, personal associates of eyewitnesses, and within the lifetime of eyewitnesses. There remained plenty of people, including perhaps Mary herself, who could have corrected any inaccuracies within the New Testament gospels and letters. History also records that most of those who first proclaimed the reality of Christ’s resurrection died excruciating deaths. At any point they could have renounced their faith and lived. They didn’t because they knew the truth.
Police detectives call it chain of custody: evidence collected at the scene and properly handed from one to another to another all the way to the court room. In recording the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we know that John the apostle, an eyewitness, collected evidence in the form of his gospel. He had three students, Papias, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote to their students what they learned from John. Their student, Irenaeus, wrote to his student, Hippolytus. From there to the first council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) to today, we see that what is proclaimed about Jesus in the New Testament has not changed. As retired homicide detective, Warner Wallace, notes, “The Jesus we know today, God in flesh, born of a virgin, rose from the dead, that Jesus is present at every stage in the chain of custody to today.”
The combined evidence leads to the most rational and best conclusion that God exists (see our previous six essays), and that God in Christ through man preserved His Word for us and to us in the Old and New Testaments. We do indeed possess accurate accounts of the historical people, events, and teachings of Christianity. According to classical literature scholar, Giorgio Pasquali, “No other Greek text is handed down so richly and credibly as the New Testament.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls represent one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history, and they authenticate in remarkable ways the reliability of our contemporary Old Testament texts. Among the many discoveries was a complete scroll of the entire book of Isaiah. Although our oldest manuscript of Isaiah at that time was from the 1000s A.D., the Dead Sea scroll of Isaiah, written 1,000 years earlier, was a near exact match! For example, in comparing the texts, of the 166 words in Isaiah chapter 53, there are only 17 letters in question. Ten of the letters are simply a matter of spelling, which do not affect the meaning at all. Four more letters are minor style changes, such as an added “and.” The remaining three letters spell the word "light," which is added in verse 11 and does not affect the meaning of the passage. In short, what the Dead Sea scrolls demonstrate are highly careful and exact transmissions of Biblical texts down through the ages. This careful preservation is consistent with the prior oral tradition as expressed in the Bible’s book of Deuteronomy 31, which records God telling Moses to read out loud the law (their Bible) every seven years. Such a tradition preserved the accuracy of the text for generations to come.
For the New Testament, our confidence in its reliability is even greater. True, we do not, for instance, possess the original parchment on which Mark first wrote his Gospel. However, this should not be surprising because we essentially have NO originals for any of the writings from the ancient world. Still, is it rational to believe that we possess what the New Testament authors originally wrote? Or, has the text passed through too many hands over too much time to be trusted?
The truth is that the New Testament remains the best-preserved ancient text in history with 27,000 complete books or sections of ancient text in our possession. The oldest section dates to mere decades from the original, and the oldest complete New Testament dates to a little more than 200 years after the original. Compared to Homer’s The Iliad, the second best preserved ancient work, which is routinely taught in schools as historical literature, there remains just 643 complete works or fragments of the text, but the oldest copy dates to 500 years from the time of the original.
Critics claim that the New Testament includes 400,000 variations among the many copies of the ancient texts, which sounds like a lot. However, of those variations, the vast majority are due to simple (easily identifiable) scribal errors of spelling or grammar that do not affect the meaning of the text. Less than 1% of those variations have any bearing on the meaning of the text, and NO Christian beliefs or teachings are altered by those very few variations within the ancient New Testament texts.
Alongside the dedicated preservation of the New Testament text, its internal evidence demonstrates its truth. No credible scholar disputes that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in the early first century A.D in the Roman province of Judaea. Several historical sources beyond the New Testament confirm that reality: Jewish historian Josephus, Roman historian Tacitus, Thallus, Clement of Alexandria, The Didache, and more. Some were only brief mentions because at that early time the writers could not have imagined his worldwide impact. Altogether, however, the New Testament provides near-contemporaneous accounts of a historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth.
In the first century, women were not eligible to testify in a Jewish court of law. They were considered too emotional and unreliable. Yet in the Gospels, remarkably, women are the first witnesses of the resurrected Jesus Christ. They provide the first testimony to his resurrection. Additionally, Jesus calls Peter, “Satan" (Matthew 16:23), and the disciples later cower in fear following Jesus’ crucifixion thinking they will be arrested and killed next. Soon after, they charge boldly into the streets proclaiming his resurrection. All of these culturally and personally “embarrassing” details would certainly have been edited out of the New Testament accounts unless it was what actually happened.
Finally, most of the books of the New Testament were written prior to 70 A.D., within roughly 35 years of the crucifixion, by eyewitnesses, personal associates of eyewitnesses, and within the lifetime of eyewitnesses. There remained plenty of people, including perhaps Mary herself, who could have corrected any inaccuracies within the New Testament gospels and letters. History also records that most of those who first proclaimed the reality of Christ’s resurrection died excruciating deaths. At any point they could have renounced their faith and lived. They didn’t because they knew the truth.
Police detectives call it chain of custody: evidence collected at the scene and properly handed from one to another to another all the way to the court room. In recording the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we know that John the apostle, an eyewitness, collected evidence in the form of his gospel. He had three students, Papias, Ignatius, and Polycarp, who wrote to their students what they learned from John. Their student, Irenaeus, wrote to his student, Hippolytus. From there to the first council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) to today, we see that what is proclaimed about Jesus in the New Testament has not changed. As retired homicide detective, Warner Wallace, notes, “The Jesus we know today, God in flesh, born of a virgin, rose from the dead, that Jesus is present at every stage in the chain of custody to today.”
The combined evidence leads to the most rational and best conclusion that God exists (see our previous six essays), and that God in Christ through man preserved His Word for us and to us in the Old and New Testaments. We do indeed possess accurate accounts of the historical people, events, and teachings of Christianity. According to classical literature scholar, Giorgio Pasquali, “No other Greek text is handed down so richly and credibly as the New Testament.”
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