Book Comment: The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

 

Almost everyone acknowledges that the original text documents of the New Testament have been lost. The originals were written on perishable materials and were hand copied onto other perishable materials to be distributed among the churches. Constant use, environmental factors, and sheer age led to the degradation of the documents which had to be recopied repeatedly. What we now have has been reconstructed from thousands of early textual fragments and the earliest known full copies of the books.

In the 120 pages of his book, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, F.F. Bruce presents a detailed but highly readable statement about the proofs that the modern New Testament as it stands represents as much as a 99.9 percent recovery of the original documents. Through the comparison of numerous copies, scribal errors and intentional editing can be detected and rejected. The oldest copies and those with the hardest to accept meaning (and therefore most likely to be "corrected" by the scribe) are favored.

Comparing the extant New Testament documents to those of secular antiquity, Bruce shows that the texts of the Christian scriptures are actually far better attested than those of universally accepted secular books.

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F.F. Bruce, who died in 1990, was a highly influential British conservative evangelical biblical scholar and university professor. He wrote numerous books and articles.  https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802867230/f-f-bruce/

Information you will need to search for this book: Bruce, F.F., The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Downer’s Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity Press, 5^th ed., 1960).

A similar book with a very apologetic bent is:

Sala, Harold J., Why You Can Have Confidence in the Bible (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2008).  (This is an apologetics book comparing the extant biblical documentation to that of classical documents from antiquity.)

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A general caution: books may give you wonderful new insights and explanations of subjects, but you should never base your Christian beliefs on any one book or the teachings of one person, no matter who they are. All teachings must be consistent with scripture. Read as the Bereans did, with discernment. “… for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” Acts 17:11 NASB

Any doctrines must be consistent with the historical full body of Christian thought. Doctrines or teachings inconsistent with scripture in any way must be rejected. You would not eat cheese which had a fuzzy fungus growing on it.

Don't Be a Sausage

Silvanus (aka: Silas, fl. 1st century) was probably Peter's amanuensis (scribe) and, according to Roman Catholic tradition, went with Peter and John Mark to Rome in 42 AD/CE. He is also known to have been a companion of Paul. His most famous teaching is "Do not be a sausage which is full of useless things."

We are to devote all of our attention and resources to serving God (Deuteronomy 6:5; Romans 12:11-12; 1 Peter 2:12; Psalms 19:7, 10-11.), so what did Silvanus mean by "useless things"?

In the Christian context a useless thing could, of course, be mindless accumulation of things, but what Silvanus was probably talking about were personal distractions or hindrances to one's Christian witness and/or things about the believer which could cause distractions or hindrances to others.

Useless things to a Christian could be: pride, always having to prove that you are "right," gossip and judgementalism, hobbies which obsess you, failure to forgive (especially when they don't "deserve" it), and church "busyness." Useless things are things you would throw away to lighten yourself when the Devil was chasing you.