Apologetics #4 - The Divine Inspiration of the Bible (Part 3)

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   We welcome everyone. Today is uh apologetics class. Let's see here. Apologetics. And go ahead and do I need to do anything besides apologetics. Uh this I guess this is class four, but this is part three of the divine inspiration of the Bible. Uh we're going to move on into even though we've touched on some things, we're going to move on into some of the New Testament stuff. Today we're going to talk about uh New Testament manuscript evidence, some of that. And in particularly, we're going to talk about some New Testament archaeological evidence and proof. But this is again apologetics class 4, the divine inspiration of the Bible part three. And I could have put under there New Testament. This is really going to be our focus this morning. So, let's go ahead and dive into this reasons the New Testament can be trusted. We got four here. Number one reason the New Testament can be trusted. There are more than 24,000 copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today. Some which date back to the 1st century AD. In comparison, the Iliad by Homer only has 643 surviving manuscripts. We've already mentioned that, but very significant. We're going to touch on some of the specific ones today. For instance, this is the John Ryland fragment. We'll talk about that today for those of you watching. That would be the little fragment up in the the left corner there. Number two reason the New Testament can be trusted. The early church fathers confirmed the writings of the apostles aka the New Testament cannon in their writings long before the corrupt Roman Catholic Church even came into existence in 313 AD. So all the books of the Bible were talked about were known and even together before the Roman Catholic Church everybody everybody you know critics and skeptics always talk about well the the corrupt Roman Catholic Church is the one that formed the canon. No, they didn't. The early church fathers and and it was pretty much already done by the time of Polycarp, who was John's disciple. That's how soon we had the 27 books already established, the New Testament. Number three reason the New Testament can be trusted. Archaeological discoveries have confirmed specific New Testament people, places, and events. And as you're going to see today, even I believe forensic evidence of the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection. We're going to get into that today. Number four, first century historians confirm the existence of Jesus Christ, his miracles, his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate, his resurrection from the dead, and Christian disciples continuing his teaching. Now, we already touched on that because we touched on Josephus and Tacitus. We're going to we're going to repeat some information in these classes, but I want everybody to get

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   those four reasons that that's something that uh you need to remember. You need to keep in your mind. Of course, we're going to talk a little bit that that's the shroud of Trin. We're going to talk about that today. The ouary of James, Pilate Stone, we've mentioned that. The Jesus boat. I won't get into the Jesus boat today, but that was one of the more recent discoveries of a first century fishing boat in the Sea of Galilee preserved somehow in the mud. Anyway, but you guys got those those four reasons the New Testament made trusted. And of course, I mean, the obvious one is that uh you know, I mean, it it really, if you think about it, wasn't that long ago. You know, we talked about the eyewitnesses and we talked about the supernatural things. So, this is just some additional reasons the New Testament be trusted above all the others. Uh just some more manuscript evidence just to give you an idea just to compare some of the ancient ancient writings like Caesar written 100 to 44 BC. Earliest copy of that that is in existence is from 900 AD. So, you know, you got a time span of a thousand years and there's only 10 manuscripts of that. Yet, people accept that as historical enough, enough evidence to to say it's legitimate. Um, you have Plato's writings 427 to 347 BC, earliest copy 900 AD. There's a 1200 year gap. There's only seven manuscript copies. Yet, people don't question Plato existed or his writings are legitimate, right? And you can come on down the line. Tacitus the Roman senator you know first class historian wrote in 100 AD earliest copy we have is from 1100 AD thousand-year gap there's 20 manuscripts but so you get the gist of it here we go to the New Testament so written between 40 and 100 AD earliest copy uh that's debatable 125 AD I think there's some earlier stuff but bottom line time span between the earliest copies and when it was actually written was 25 to 50 years and 24,000 ancient manuscripts. Not even nothing even comes close to what the Bible has. So anybody that says, "Oh, we can't trust the New Testament." Well, then that means you can't trust anything else written in history. You understand? If you throw out the Bible, you throw out everything else. All right, just a few. We're going to talk about a few of the most significant manuscript discoveries. Uh the one I mentioned a minute ago, the John Ryland manuscript. Again, they say dated. It could be. Now, you you have to remember their dating process is still I mean all of the scholars and all of them admit that it's not perfect.

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   So, these are estimates. But I really believe when you look at that fragment to me it looks older than AD 125 or 130. But uh you know of course no one wants to admit that it might have actually been written by Matthew or Mark or John. They don't admit that because that's just too that that would be too much for them. Right? So anyway, this papers fragment known as P52 is encased within a climate control cabinet located inside the John Ryland's Library of Manchester, England. The manuscript fragment was among a group acquired on the Egyptian market in 1920, but not translated until 1934. The fragment contains words from the account of Jesus trial before Pilate. As the paparus contains writing on both sides, it must be from a codeex, a type of book rather than a scroll. This portion of the gospel of John is so old that it helps confirm the traditional date of the composition of the gospel to be about the end of the first century. So when this was discovered, it confirmed the time of the writing of the gospel of John, which John was the last of the gospels written. As writer Tim Chalies says in his blog post, the history of Christianity in 25 objects of the manuscripts that remain to us today, no two are exactly the same. How then can we have confidence that the Bible we possess today is the Bible as God inspired and intended it? This is where we are grateful for the discipline of textual criticism. Textual critics are scholars who examine and evaluate all the surviving manuscripts in order to accurately reproduce the original text. And here we begin to see the importance of this little fragment of paparus encased in glass in John Ryland's library. From this fragment, we know that already in the first half of the second century, there were Christians along the Nile. And these Christians were reading the very same words of God that we read today. I mean, you just you think about that. Just take that in for a moment. That's that's powerful, right? Here's another one. This one is the Bodmmer Papris AD150 to 200. Martin Bodmmer, who began amassing his collection of the world's best books and early writings at the age of 16, died in 1971. He turned down an offer to sell his expansive collection. In 2003, the President Bodmer Library of World Literature opened in near Geneva, Switzerland. Among the approximate 160,000 items is a copy of the Gutenberg Bible and a group of manuscripts. P66, P72, P75, some of the world's earliest Christian writings. P66 dating from AD200 or earlier contains most of John's gospel. This codeex is just one century removed from the time of the autograph, the original text. P72 is the

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   earliest copy of the epistle of Jude and the two epistles of Peter. That is very important because some of the early church fathers that are a little sketchy tried to argue like like origin tried to deny the book of Jude and the two epistles of Peter. Uh but everybody else accepted them. Okay. So anyway, that's that's real important because here you have copies probably earlier than AD 150 would be my guess. But anyway, so you have P75 which scholars date between 175 and 225 is the earliest known copy of the gospel according to Luke and one of the earliest of the gospel according to John. So again, here's entire gospels and you know the epistle of Jude, the epistles of Peter. Again, what even if we say a hundred years before the Roman Catholic Church ever came into existence, right? Pretty powerful stuff when you really start to think about it. Uh here's another one. A Chester Batty Papri 8200. These third century papris cotices were purchased by a British mining engineer a Chester Batty in n in the 1930s from a dealer in Egypt also known as P45 P46 and P47 they are housed in Batty's gift to the world the Chester Batty library in Dublin Ireland P45 contains part of a codeex of Matthew Mark Luke John Acts contains letters written by Paul Romans Hebrews 1 and 2 Corinthians Ephesians Galatians Philippians Colossians Ians 1 Thessalonians P47 contains the oldest known text of the book of Revelation right there. So pretty powerful stuff. Again, 113 years before the Roman Catholic Church began to try to corrupt the entire church. Here's another important fragment and this is taken out of your early church father's book, but you can find information on this everywhere. But this is the the Murritorian cannon fragment. It's widely thought that Caes a disciple of Irenaeus wrote the Murritorian cannon fragment abbreviated MCF. This is dated to about 175 AD. The fragment is named after Muratoni, the man who discovered it. Both the beginning and the ending are missing. So just remember the beginning of this manuscript is missing and the end of it missing. Uh but the important points to note are this. Number one, they have always been only four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There was one book of church history called the Acts of the Apostles. The MCF mentions 13 of the 14 books written by Paul. There's one real epistle Paul to the Leodysians, but there are four epistles to Leodysian Alexandria. And we don't

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