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- Are the copies
of the biblical documents without error?
No. They are not without error.
The copies of the original documents (the autographs) are not
perfect.
- If the copies
of the original writings are not perfect, can we trust the Bible to
be accurate?
Yes we can since the great majority of
the copyist errors (the variants) are minor spelling problems,
occasional word omissions and duplications, etc., and none of them
affect any doctrinal truth.
- Why are the
Dead Sea Scrolls so important to understanding the reliability of
the Bible?
They
demonstrate, via the Isaiah scroll, how very accurate the copies
were. The oldest extant copy
of any Old Testament writings were the Masoretic Text dated around 916
AD. The Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Isaiah was dated at 125 BC. The difference in dates
between the oldest copy and the newly discovered Isaiah document was 1000 years.
The documents proved to be
95% textually identical. The 5 percent that was different were
mainly misspellings of words and did not constitute any threat to the
content or reliability of the text. This shows how accurately it was
transmitted.
- If the Bible is
to be rejected due to minor copyist errors, then what should we do
with other ancient writings?
That would be a logical conclusion. Yet,
countless people have no problem accepting the accuracy of the
writings of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, etc., even though the
manuscript copies supporting them if far less reliable and extensive
as that of the biblical documents.
- How man Greek
manuscript copies and fragments of the ancient New Testament
documents do we have?
More than 5000. This is an extremely large number
compared to any other ancient document.
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