Why to Believe the Bible – There are Thousands of Ancient Manuscripts Still in Existence

Moving forward on this series of posts, the next reason to believe that the Bible has a divine source is because there are thousands of ancient manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments. Beginning with the Old Testament, I’ve seen estimates of us having anywhere from 17,000 to 30,000 ancient manuscripts. These manuscripts are either fragments or full copies of books found in the Bible. The oldest manuscripts we currently have are from the 200’s BC from the Dead Sea Scroll collection. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scroll collection in the 1940’s, the oldest manuscripts available dated to the 900’s AD. So you can see that the Dead Sea Scroll discovery pushed back the oldest manuscripts by about 1100 years! What is most remarkable about the discovery of these scrolls was that the content of the scrolls was no different from the next oldest manuscripts! One would expect for there to be significant differences in wording or content, but this was not the case…which is a testament to scribal techniques.

The truth of the matter is that many scribes dedicated their lives to the faithful copying of the Old Testament, mainly because they recognized it as coming from God. Moreover, they were known for their strict rules in copying. One can look up a list of their rules online, but one to highlight was that no more than two copying mistakes were allowed in one manuscript. As soon as the scribe made three mistakes, they had to start the copying process all over again! This alone most likely accounts for the same content seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the next oldest manuscripts from the 900’s AD.

As for the New Testament, we have about 6,000 copies of ancient manuscripts. The oldest ones we have are from the early 100’s AD. Just to give you an idea of how amazing it is that we have 6,000 copies of the New Testament and 17,000-30,000 of the Old Testament, the next oldest book that we have with a large number of copies is The Iliad by Homer. The Iliad was written in the 700’s BC in Greece, and currently there are about 1700 copies of it. So by comparison, in terms of number of copies, the Bible blows the next oldest book out of the water! Now, it is true that the Bible does not claim to be a story book like The Iliad, but why did Jews and early Christians see it necessary to make so many copies? I would argue that it is because they recognized its divinity!