Do We Have What The Apostles Wrote?
The question is often -asked: How do we know that the New Testament has the very writings of the apostles and their co-laborers? How do we know that the have substantially what they wrote? Some contend that we do not know, and cannot. Infidels have been very zealous in propagating this assertion. There have been so many corruptions of the New Testament, they say, so many additions, so many subtractions; that even if the apostles did write by inspiration, we still don't know that we have what they wrote.
We need, however, have little worry on that point. The Lord would hardly have taken the trouble to inspire men to write a book, and then not take the trouble to see that' it was handed down. Scholars, some years ago, investigated this wild charge of the infidels very carefully; and revealed that in 300 years there were one hundred times as many corruptions in Shakespeare as there had been in 1800 years in the New Testament manuscripts!
Copyists Uninspired
Actually, when books were copied there were bound to be some errors. The copyists were not inspired. Their manuscripts, however, correct each other, and help the scholars by comparison with one another to determine where an error has been made.
One fundamental fact that some professed Bible student need to learn is that a very imperfect translation of the scriptures can convey the truth to us. We have the highest testimony on earth to the fact. Christ and the apostles quoted from a very imperfect translation of the Old Testament out of Hebrew into Greek. They quoted from the Septuagint version, the Greek translation. This accounts for the fact that sometimes the quotations from the Old Testament appear to be quite different from the words that we read in our Old Testaments; for our Old Testament was translated out of the Hebrew into the English.
Now if Christ could use an uninspired and imperfect translation, we can too, and not suffer too much damage. If you have any doubt on that point we might mention this one little incident: One printed English Bible was called the "Vinegar Bible". This odd name arose from the fact that at one place in the gospels where the word "vineyard' occurred, they made it read "vinegar'. That didn't deceive anybody. Everybody understood what had happened. Typesetters or proof-readers made the mistake. (They often make them).
Date Of Books
Another thing that skeptics have been very much concerned about is to move every Bible book as far from the accepted composition date as possible—as far away as they can from the year or period in which the books are generally supposed to have been written. With reference to the New Testament books, as we shall see, they think if they can get folks to believe they were not written in the first century, but rather in the third or fourth, they can weaken faith and gain a foot-hold on which to stand and attack the Bible.
The main burden of this lesson is to show conclusively and by irrefragable testimony and evidence that the Book we read today is substantially identical with the writings of the apostles.
An Old Slander
It might be of interest to call your attention to the fact that there are more than 1700 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, or some part of it. It is a very interesting fact, too, that the oldest manuscript of the New Testament in existence is complete; it has every book complete. From these ancient- manuscripts, of course, our New Testament is translated; and regardless of whether we read it in the Greek original or the English translation, we are reading the same book.
Not only infidels have charged the Book with being corrupted in its text, but one religious sect (the Mormons) borrowed this old infidel slander, and gave it circulation' in the so-called "inspired' Book of Mormon This old slander, as propagated by the infidels, is that the New Testament was compiled about the year 325 A. D. They declare that this was the business of the Council of Nice, and that it happened on this wise: All the hundreds of books claiming to be the New Testament scriptures were piled together promiscuously on the floor; a table was set in the midst of them, and the learned bishops prayed to God that the inspired book would jump up on the table! According to the infidels ludicrous telling of the story, twenty-seven books jumped. The only answer such a ridiculous charge needs is this: Those bishops were not fools. A man need not be classified a fool to 'be a believer even a bishop believer.
The Mormons put this old slander into circulation in their Book of Mormon. In order to make place for this monstrous perversion of truth, they charged that "that great and abominable church' (the Catholics) had taken out many precious things, including a great many of the "covenants' of the Lord. One of the Mormon's inspired (?) men, Orson Pratt, said, "We do not know that one single verse in the New Testament came down to us without change. (And they have hundreds of them in the Book of Mormon absolutely identical with the same verses in the King James translation!)
Any man who tries 'to write a book and deceive people into thinking that it was written 300, 500, or 1,000 years before, will always slip up. The writer of the Book of Mormon did. He said he translated the Book Mormon out of the Egyptian language, and that actually the book was 2,000 years old—maybe more. Yet this 2,000 years old book quotes at length from the writing of William Shakespeare and from the King James translation of the Bible! The signature of the imposter is on almost every page. He left the print of his cloven hoof for all to see.
However many things we may charge against Catholicism, we must defend them from this slanderous Mormon accusation. They did not make the changes charged against them. The oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are older by far than the Catholic church. Nobody has changed the dotting of an "i or the crossing of a "t. That is one thing the Catholic church is not guilty of! (to be continued)