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Biblical Facts Overcomes Fictional
Attacks..….
The
Bible is the most translated, purchased, memorised, and persecuted
book in history. Voltaire, the 17th century French
philosopher and writer, predicted that the Bible would be extinct within
100 years; however, within 50 years of Voltaire’s death, his house was a
warehouse of the Geneva Bible Society.
Introduction
 Down
through the years, the sceptic has quickly dismissed the Bible as a
source of truth, claiming the Bible to be fantasy not history;
inaccurate, unscientific, and self-contradictory.
This is the nature of the sceptic. Yet the sceptic still retains the
fundamental yearning common to all mankind, to know the answers to
certain basic and innate questions. Questions such as: Who am I? Why am
I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is my purpose? Is
there a Creator? Is there more than just this life? Is there life after
death? Try as he may, he cannot avoid thinking on such matters from
time-to-time, or even most of the time.
Perhaps the noted Oxford and Cambridge scholar C. S. Lewis correctly
identified the most heartfelt longing of man when he wrote, “There
have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I
find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever
desired anything else.”
The word
‘Bible’ is derived from the Greek word ‘Biblia’, which actually means
‘Book of books,’ and refers to the sacred writings of Judaism and
Christianity. The Bible consists of 66 love letters from God to mankind
and has two parts. The first part is called by Christians, the ‘Old
Testament’, consisting of 39 books of the sacred writings of the Jewish
people originally written in Hebrew, except for some portions in
Aramaic.
The
second part is called the ‘New Testament’, consisting of 27 books which
was composed in Greek and records the life of Jesus Christ and the
beginnings of Christianity. It is translated in whole or in part into
more than 2,000 languages, its influence on history and culture,
including literature and the other arts, is incalculable.
The
Reliable Authenticity of Biblical Translations
To many
people, the origin of the Bible can be summed-up as follows: "A mere
translation of a translation of an interpretation of an oral tradition"
- and therefore, a book with no credibility or connection to the
original texts. To subscribe to the view contained in the foregoing
statement, held by both Christians and non-Christians alike, is totally
misguided. For example, biblical translations are derived from existing
copies of ancient manuscripts and are not translations of texts
translated from other interpretations.
 Another
challenge levelled against the origin of the Bible is the reliability of
the manuscripts from which today's Bibles are translated. Remarkably,
there is widespread evidence for absolute reliability, because there are
more than 14,000 existing Old Testament manuscripts and fragments copied
from throughout the Middle East, Mediterranean and European regions that
agree dramatically with each other. In addition, these texts agree with
the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which was translated from
Hebrew to Greek some time during the 3rd century BC. The Dead Sea
Scrolls, discovered in Israel in the 1940's and 50's, also provide
phenomenal evidence for the reliability of the ancient transmission of
the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament) before the arrival of Jesus
Christ.
The
manuscript evidence for the New Testament is equally dramatic, with over
5,300 known copies and fragments in the original Greek, nearly 800 of
which were copied before 1000 AD. Some manuscript texts date to the
early second and third centuries, with the time between the original
manuscripts and our earliest existing copies being a remarkably short 60
years. Interestingly, this manuscript evidence far surpasses the
manuscript reliability of other ancient writings that academics trust as
authentic every day. Look at just a few random comparisons: Julius
Caesar's "The Gallic Wars" (10 manuscripts remain, with the earliest one
dating to 1,000 years after the original text); Euripides (9
manuscripts; 1,500 years after the original text); and Aristotle (49
manuscripts; 1,400 years after the original text).
In textual comparison, with over 5,300 copies and fragments of the New
Testament assuring us that nothing has been lost, this strengthens
dramatically the authenticity of the New Testament text. In fact, all of
the New Testament except eleven verses can be reconstructed from the
writings of the early church fathers in the second and third centuries.
From the
time the Bible saw the light of day, many down through the centuries,
including governments, evil dictators, philosophers, followers of other
religions and followers of none have all tried in various ways to
destroy it, but have failed.
The
Bible is the world’s best seller ever, and the most widely distributed
book in the world.
“Forever O Lord Your Word is settled in heaven….."Psalm
119:89
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