Below is an interactive flash presentation from the Apologetics Study Bible on the reliability of the New Testament. To go onto the next slide, click the arrow on the bottom right hand side of the screen.
After listening to this presentation, you should have strong confidence in the New Testament text that it has not changed since it was written.
This presentation suggests that New Testament scripture was written down and transmitted by written copies rather than oral tradition, but that's only applicable to the Epistles. It's a completely different story for the Gospels.
ReplyDeleteThey also use the false comparison between ancient Greek works and Christian scriptures. The works of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer were never held in the high regard as religious texts. It's like today comparing how many copies I could find of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons compared to how many copies of the Bible. People are many times more likely to preserve and make copies of religious texts rather than secular or philosophical ones. It's a false comparison, and therefore pointless.
It's great the presentation can admit to the errors, but their logic has a major flaw. They discuss how errors have been discovered, but then suggest that we can be certain that "there is no reason to think that the New Testament has been changed or corrupted." What?!? How can you admit there are errors but then suggest that everything is ok? If anything, it should at a touch of humility to the "Biblical Inerrancy" crowd. If there are errors you can try to correct them, but it is impossible to find all errors since we don't have original texts!
Even so, I return to my original point on Epistles versus Gospels: The Epistles were initially written, but the Gospels were carried in oral tradition. The authors of Luke and Matthew were clearly aware of a written Mark, but had other most likely oral sources. Of course, errors are far more likely in oral situations than written ones. The rationalization this Apologetics Study Bible group makes are ridiculous.