bible corruption

Digitalized Manuscripts

The New Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts

Since they began their work in 2002, a core part of their mission has been to make it possible to view and study New Testament manuscripts from anywhere in the world. They have worked toward this by traveling around the globe and capturing beautiful digital images of some of the most important extant manuscripts.

Today, they are taking another step forward by making it easier than ever for us to access manuscripts.

They’re launching the new CSNTM.org.

Here are some of the features that we can expect to find now and in the coming weeks:

  • New Manuscripts – They will be adding 10-20 new manuscripts to their website weekly for the next few months. These will be from the National Library of Greece in Athens (their ongoing project for 2015–16), as well as previously unposted images from hundreds of manuscripts and rare books in their collection.
  • New Look – They have revamped their entire website to make it both simpler and richer in content. They have new content, which narrates how they go about digitizing and archiving manuscripts. They also explain what goes into their extensive training program that enables their teams to work quickly while capturing high-quality images.
  • New Viewing Environment – The website is equipped with a new viewer, which makes it easier than ever to navigate manuscripts and view their stunning new images.
  • New Usability – Their new site is also designed to work perfectly with mobile devices and tablets, enabling us to view manuscripts or to access other resources quickly, whenever we need them.
  • New Search Features – The website is now outfitted with an extensive search functionality. Searches can be performed at the manuscript level, allowing us to find manuscripts that meet certain criteria (e.g., date, contents, material, location). They can also be performed at the image level, which allows us to find specific features within a manuscript. For instance, they now have a Jump to Book option that allows us to find the beginning of each book that a manuscript contains. Also, one can search tagged manuscripts for verse references. Every place, for example, in which John 1.1 is tagged will automatically populate when the verse is searched.
  • New Search Database – The search database holds tags for each manuscript and individual image. As their team continues tagging their growing collection, the search function will become more comprehensive each week. But the task is daunting. They want our help for the tagging!

If interested, you can reach them via their contact page:

http://www.csntm.org/

Please share their new site with colleagues and friends, so more and more people can continue to utilize CSNTM’s library, which is free for all and free for all time. They sincerely hope that you enjoy using the site. It represents a giant leap forward in accomplishing their mission: to bring ancient New Testament manuscripts to a modern world.

SO WHAT?

Look, I don’t read Greek.  It gives me confidence, however,  to know that scholars – Christian and non-Christians – who actually do read and do understand the Greek language have dedicated their whole lives to make sure that the thousands of manuscripts we have in our possession say pretty much the same thing.

It gives me confidence to know that the deity of Christ was NOT invented at the Council of Nicea, or that  – other than errors in spelling – the cardinal doctrines of Christianity have always been the same. Paul did not make them up. Nobody corrupted the manuscripts. We can prove it – because we kept them all 🙂

You might like to watch an interview with Daniel Wallace, who is the Executive Director for the NCSNTM. He speaks his mind into the New Testament (NT) tradition. The 5, 839 Greek NT manuscripts, plus the up to 20, 000 NT manuscripts in other ancient languages, plus the over a million NT quotations from the early Church Fathers definitely DO NOT help the Muslim conspiracy theory of Bible Corruption. We can zero in very, very well what the original text said. For the interview click here.

And since David Wood is one of my heroes, we also have his interview with Dr. Michael Licona about the Historical Jesus vs. the Muslim Jesus. To watch that interview, click here.

And last, but not least, an interview with Gary Habermas. During the last ten years, Dr. Habermas has dedicated all his efforts to update his bibliography on the major scholarly research on Resurrection (from 1975 to the present) in French, German and English – if you don’t mind. You can see the interview here.

Hope this helps 🙂

New Testament Contradictions

I have watched many debates and talks that discuss the New Testament  alleged contradictions. This has been a topic that grabbed my special interest ever since I was living in India. The reliability of the text of the New Testament is something that is particularly attacked in the Muslim world.

I hope Dr. Licona’s lecture on Bible Contradictions will help people realize that the contradictions are not really so. Also, you might want to watch some of Dr. Licona’s debates with Barth Erhman regarding the Resurrection of Jesus. You can easily find those on YouTube.

If you ever decide to give Dr. Erhman a chance to mess with your mind, I can assure you he will. I have come to appreciate him – only by watching his debates – and he seems like a nice, funny guy. Bart Erhman has made a living by writing books that create doubt in the minds of Christians. But that is all there is. He is good at casting doubt, but he kinda has a double standard.

In one of his famous books Misquoting Jesus, Erhman concludes that you cannot really trust the manuscripts, and therefore, you cannot really know what the original manuscripts of the New Testament said. However, in the same year when he wrote Misquoting Jesus (2005), he also cowrote an academic book called The Text of the New Testament with Bruce Metzger – the greatest manuscript scholar of the last century.

In The Text of the New Testament, Metzger and Erhman conclude that the manuscripts of the New Testament have been accurately copied, and that we know what the original ones said. So when Erhman writes for a lay audience, he says you cannot trust the manuscripts. But when he writes for an academic audience, Erhman says you can actually trust them.

Why would a respected scholar do this? Same year, same texts, but two different conclusions. I think Erhman knows he cannot get away with these conclusions within an audience that knows what he is talking about. But he can get away with it with the popular audience. And these books that cast doubt into the Bible text – unfortunately – are very popular and sell a lot of copies.

Actually, many Muslims adore Erhman because he is a former Christian who is now a critic of the New Testament. Muslims often exploit Ehrman’s work and parade his anti-Christian rhetoric in videos and articles.  It is important to note, tough, that Erhman, along with the majority of serious scholarship, holds the view that Paul was a true disciple of Jesus Christ who met with the leaders of the early church shortly after Jesus’ crucifixion – not a usurper.

Also, Dr. Ehrman remarks that we can say with confidence that Jesus actually did die, he probably was buried, and that some of his disciples (all of them or some of them?) claimed to have seen Him alive afterward. Erhman also says that NO scribe EVER changed the cardinal doctrines of Christianity i.e. Council of Nicea (on the divinity of Christ).

Now that you have the background on who Dr. Bart Erhman is, you can enjoy the lecture 🙂

If you have doubts about the Christian faith, have you put those doubts *themselves* to the test as much as you have Christianity?

Andy Bannister

Are there contradictions in the Gospels?