Manuscript Evidence for the Bible



According to Josh McDowell in More Than a Carpenter (1977), the Bible, and particularly the New Testament, are the best-evidenced documents by manuscript evidence in antiquity. According to McDowell,

"When it comes to the manuscript authority of the New Testament, the abundance of material is almost embarrassing in contrast. After the early papyri manuscript discoveries that bridged the gap between the times of Christ and the second century, an abundance of other MSS came to light. Over 20,000 copies of New Testament manuscripts are in existence today. The Iliad has 643 MSS and is second in manuscript authority after the New Testament."

Whereas other ancient religious documents like the Rig Veda were preserved through oral tradition similar to a game of 'Telephone', the Bible repeatedly claims from the book of Genesis onward to have been preserved through writing, and numerous ancient documents preserve its text.

Masoretic Text
The Masoretes, a group of Jewish scribes, finished what is called the Masoretic Text, a standardized form of Old Testament translation by the 6th Century A.D. They took extreme care in the preservation of manuscripts, which included: "Because of the great reverence the Jewish scribes held toward the Scriptures, they exercised extreme care in making new copies of the Hebrew Bible. The entire scribal process was specified in meticulous detail to minimize the possibility of even the slightest error. The number of letters, words, and lines were counted, and the middle letters of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament were determined. If a single mistake was discovered, the entire manuscript would be destroyed. As a result of this extreme care, the quality of the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible surpasses all other ancient manuscripts. The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provided a significant check on this, because these Hebrew scrolls antedate the earliest Masoretic Old Testament manuscripts by about 1,000 years. But in spite of this time span, the number of variant readings between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text is quite small, and most of these are variations in spelling and style." -Kenneth Boa, Bible.org.
 * Strictly specifying all details of the copying process including writing materials, columns per page, column width, and ink color.
 * Nothing was to be written from memory, manuscripts could be copied only from existing manuscripts in good condition.
 * 'Checksumming' was used, i.e. every word, verse, and letter was given a number, and the middle words and letters checked for accuracy, as was the number of letters in each book.
 * A single mistake in a book meant the entire manuscript was to be destroyed.

Dead Sea Scrolls

 * See also List of Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1947, in the midst of the War for the Independence of the Republic of Israel, came the discovery, at Qumran, of the first 7 Dead Sea scrolls by a Bedouin shepherd boy looking for his straying goat. Bedouin of the Ta'amra tribe discovered 7 scrolls in a cave now named "Cave 1" Khirbet Qumran on the Northwest shore of the Dead Sea. Three of these scrolls were then purchased by archaeologist Eliezer Lipa Sukenik for the Hebrew University and others were bought by Mar Athanasius Samuel for the Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem. From 1949-1954, additional fragments of more than 950 different scrolls were found in 10 nearby caves by Bedouins and a joint archaeological expedition led by Professor Father Roland de Vaux for the École Biblique et Archéologique Française and the Rockefeller Museum.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, most of which dated from 200 B.C. to 68 A.D., drastically increased our assurance that the Old Testament we have today has been faithfully transmitted through the centuries. Some even date to 300 B.C. or older, like the Great Isaiah Scroll which was carbon-dated as old as 335 B.C. These scrolls have largely backed up the Masoretic Text, with rare exception. The most manuscript fragments were found in Cave 4, over 15,000. The final cave, Cave 11, was discovered in 1956. The first 7 scrolls remain in the property of the Israel Museum, while most of the fragments are owned by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

There were actually five sites in all discovered contributing Dead Sea Scrolls. The first, at Qumran, consisted of 11 caves with over 15,000 fragments (according to the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation there are over 100,000 fragments from 800 or 900 original manuscripts, typically dating from the 3rd to 1st centuries B.C. The second site, Wadi Al-Murabba'at - 11 miles south of Qumran, contained documents from army fugitives in the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (A.D. 132-135) and included a well-preserved scroll of the Minor Prophets. The third site south of 'En Gedi included a Greek translation of the Minor Prophets from the 1st Century A.D. and some Biblical fragments. The fourth site, 8.5 miles north of Jericho, contained legal documents from Samarians massacred by soldiers of Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. The fifth site at Masada contained a copy of Ecclesiastes (75 B.C.) and fragments of Genesis, Leviticus, and Psalms.

List of Old Testament manuscripts
The following is a list of major Old Testament manuscripts older than 200 A.D.:

KEY:
 * DSS: Dead Sea Scroll

New Testament
There are 127 papyri, 318 and 2882 Majuscule and Miniscule MSS, and 2436 Lectionary MSS that make up the at least 5,762 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament (current as of 2008). There are at least 24,000 manuscripts for the New Testament in all, including at least 8,000 in the Latin Vulgate and 1,000 in Syrian, Coptic, Armenian, Gothic, and Ethiopic, with 99.5% internal consistency. More manuscripts are being discovered and translated all the time.

List of New Testament codexes
The following are largely complete New Testament documents, as opposed to papyri which tend to be fragmentary, prior to 500 A.D.

List of New Testament manuscripts
The following is a list of early New Testament manuscripts, by date, prior to 300 A.D.

KEY:
 * A. Date means "Accepted Date", the typical consensus for the document.
 * C. Date means "Controversial Date", newer dates viewed as controversial.

Writing or Oral Tradition?
Amazingly, it has become in vogue to criticize the Bible as being preserved similar to a game of "telephone." However, such an accusation directly contradicts what the Bible says about how it was preserved, namely, through writing, not oral tradition:


 * Exodus 17:14 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.
 * Numbers 5:23 And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water:
 * Deuteronomy 31:24 And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished,
 * Joshua 24:26 And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.
 * 1 Kings 11:41 And the rest of the acts of Solomon, and all that he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon?
 * Isaiah 30:8 Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever:
 * Jeremiah 30:2 Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.
 * Ezekiel 43:11 And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, shew them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them.
 * Habakkuk 2:2 And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.
 * Luke 1:3 It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
 * John 20:30 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book:
 * Acts 15:20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.

Numerous other examples exist of the Bible being preserved via writing, namely Exodus 24:7; Numbers 17:2-3; 21:14; Deuteronomy 6:9; 17:18; 27:3,8; 28:58,61; 29:20-21,27; 30:10; 31:19,26; 34:27; Joshua 8:31,34; 10:13; 18:9; 23:6; 1 Kings 14:19,29; 15:7,23,31; 16:5,14,20,27; 22:39,45; 2 Kings 1:18; 8:23; 10:34; 12:19; 13:8,12; 14:6,15,18,28; 15:6,11,15,21,26,31,36; 16:19; 20:20; 21:17,25; 22:8-16; 23:2-3,21,24,28; 24:5; 1 Chronicles 9:1; 29:29; 2 Chronicles 9:29; 12:15; 16:11; 17:9; 20:34; 24:27; 25:4,26; 26:2; 27:7; 28:26; 32:32; 33:18; 34:14-31; 35:12,27; 36:8; Ezra 4:15; 5:10; 6:18; Nehemiah 8:1-8,18; 9:3,38; 12:23; 13:1; Esther 2:23; 8:8; 9:32; 10:2; Psalms 40:7; 56:8; Isaiah 8:1; 34:16; Jeremiah 25:13; 36:2-13,17-18,28,32; 45:1; 51:60-63; Ezekiel 24:2; Daniel 12:4; Nahum 1:1; Malachi 3:16; 1 Corinthians 4:14; 14:37; 2 Corinthians 1:13; 2:9; 13:2,10; Galatians 1:20; Philippians 3:1; 2 Thessalonians 3:17; 1 Timothy 3:14; 2 Peter 3:1; 1 John 1:4; 2:1,7-8,12-13; Jude 1:3; Revelation 1:11,19; 2:1,8,12,18; 3:1,7,12,14; 14:13; 19:9; 21:5.

The Bible overwhelmingly claims, in short, to be a historical record constantly preserved through writing, not oral tradition as its critics accuse. Whereas the Rigveda was preserved orally, the Bible always claimed to be recorded through writing. As such its preserved texts are far older than those of eastern religions like Buddhism or Hinduism, and certainly older than those of Islam which of course came considerably later.