Recap of 11th & 12th Grade DGroup 3/30/14

I still encourage everyone to go see "God's Not Dead" before it leaves theaters. If you can tell me what arguments Josh uses for the existence of God that we have studied in the 11^th and 12^th grade DGroups and bring me your ticket stub, I will give you a $5 gift card to the place of your choice! 

Don’t forget to invite your friends (skeptics, agnostic, atheist, believer) to this Sunday night’s special simulcast The Case for Easter with Lee Strobel. You will learn historical evidence and proof of Jesus’ resurrection—without which our faith is pointless. The presenters will examine medical evidence, the evidence of the missing body and the evidence of appearances. You will also most likely learn about the “minimal facts” argument for the resurrection. This is evidence that is so good that even skeptical scholars are convinced by it. 1) Jesus was killed by crucifixion 2) Jesus’ disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them. 3) The conversion of the church persecutor Paul 4) The conversion of the skeptic James, Jesus’ half-brother 5) Jesus’ tomb was empty.

This week in DGroups we talked about the reliability and accuracy of the New Testament (NT).

Remember that the NT is 27 separate writings written on scrolls by 9 different writers over a 20-50 year period. We have none of the original documents. We have copies of originals called manuscripts. But that is not a problem. All ancient literature is reconstructed into its original by comparing surviving manuscripts. The NT blows other ancient literature away in this regard. We have MORE manuscripts, EARLIER manuscripts and more abundantly SUPPORTED manuscripts than other writings of antiquity.

Here is a "RECIPE" for evidence for confidence in the NT:

R-Reliable reconstruction (when we compare all the copies we have extremely reliable reconstruction)

E-Early manuscripts (copies were written soon after the originals--25 years, next closest ancient text was 500 years.)

C-Copious copies (5,300 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts of entire NT and 9,300 portions of the NT = over 24,000 manuscripts.)

I-Independent non-Christian writers affirm it (10 known non-Christian writers mention Jesus within 150 years of his death. Including the greatest Jewish historian Josephus.)

P-Powerful percentages (of accuracy compared to other ancient texts; 99.5% accurate; .05% in question does not affect doctrine.)

E-Erroneous errors  (the "errors" sited are multiplied by the number of manuscripts so the number of "errors" are inflated and are just grammatical variants.)

S-Supported manuscripts (the early church fathers quoted from the NT so many times in their second and third centuries writings that you could read most of the NT just from their quotations.)

We also know that we have tons of eyewitness accounts in the NT and Luke himself records 84 facts in the last 16 chapters of Acts that have been confirmed by historical and archeological research. Overall 140+ eyewitness details and citing of at least 30 historical figures in the NT attest to its accuracy. The testimony we have is early, eyewitness and at times embarrassing (meaning, the writers include stuff they would not have made up because it’s embarrassing to themselves.)

So when people say “The Bible is full of errors because it’s been copied so many times” you can say with confidence that their statement is false and share with them the truth.

“There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.” F.F. Bruce, Distinguished Scholar on the life of Paul, former President of the Society for Old Testament Study as well as the Society for New Testament Study.