Faith

Christianity is a faith based on history. There are more copies of New Testament manuscripts dating close to the time of their writing that any other historical document (by an order of thousands!). We are certain that the New Testament Greek version is what they had at the end of the first century.

There is a rumour that the Bible was greatly modified in the 200-400 years after Christ. This is not true, although the final choices of books for the New Testament (“the Canon”) were decided during this time. Books to be included had to have very strict requirements: written by an apostle or someone very close to an apostle (e.g. Mark and Luke). The books needed to be validated by the Early Church Fathers in the first and second century. This excludes books like “The Gospel of Thomas”, which was written much later, and not by the the Apostle Thomas.

Christianity (and Judaism) are also validated by centuries of archeological digs. A fun example is the Hittite Empire. In the 19th century, some scholars scoffed at the idea of this empire as the Bible was the only source for the information. Then … archeologists discovered the evidence for the Hittite Empire! Now you can get a degree in Hittite Culture.

Finally, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls showed just how much care was taken with the hand-copying of the Old Testament. The copy of Isaiah (~200 BCE) was identical (except for very minor copying errors) from the “modern” copies from the 1,500s. Between the care of the scribes and the power of the Holy Spirit to preserve the scriptures, we can have confidence in them.

TBD