Apologetics and the New Testament

Since this blog is about Apologetics than perhaps I should spend a little more time on the matter. Perhaps one of the best forms of apologetics is New Testament apologetics because of all the manuscripts that exist for it. Many of the facts with relevance to manuscript reliability can be found in much text on paper and all over the web. A really good website for such information is CARM (Christian Apologetics Research Ministry). The following is some of the data you will find when visiting this site:

“There are thousands more New Testament Greek manuscripts than any other ancient writing. The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure. That is an amazing accuracy. In addition there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages. The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over 24,000.

Almost all biblical scholars agree that the New Testament documents were all written before the close of the First Century. If Jesus was crucified in 30 A.D., then that means that the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years. This is important because it means there were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts (http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence).”

The website provides much more accurate data and thorough details than I am providing on the New Testament at this time; therefore, I have to say that I highly recommend that you visit CARM and take advantage of their resources. The link for CARM is a follows: carm.org.

References:

http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence.