Tag Archives: New Testament

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How Much Manuscript Evidence Is There For The New Testament?

“The wealth of material that is available for determining the wording of the original New Testament is staggering: more than fifty-seven hundred Greek New Testament manuscripts, as many as twenty thousand versions, and more than one million quotations by patristic writers. In comparison with the aver- age ancient Greek author, the New Testament copies are well over a thousand times more plentiful. If the average-sized manuscript were two and one-half inches thick, all the copies of the works of an average Greek author would stack up four feet high, while the copies of the New Testament would stack up to over a mile high! This is indeed an embarrassment of riches.” – Dan Wallace

Explore the evidence for the reliability of the NT further here.

Think Christianly with Jonathan Morrow

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Has the Earliest Manuscript of the New Testament Discovered?

New Testament scholar Dan Wallace weighs in on this:

“On 1 February 2012, I debated Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today. This was our third such debate, and it was before a crowd of more than 1000 people. I mentioned that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered—six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. These fragments will be published in about a year.

These manuscripts now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts (all fragmentary, more or less) from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 40% of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.

It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934. Not only this, but…” (read the rest)

Think Christianly with Jonathan Morrow
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It’s Okay to Expect a Miracle

The Bible is full of them and they are still happening today. Here is a fascinating Christianity Today interview with New Testament Scholar Craig Keener. Enjoy!

“Craig Keener has the brain of a scholar and the hands of an activist. The New Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary has authored 15 books, 70 journal articles, and more than 100 articles for religious and general interest publications. He and his wife, Médine Moussounga Keener, are deeply involved in ethnic reconciliation ministry.
In his New Testament commentaries, Keener has investigated biblical miracles. But his newest volume—Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Baker Academic)—focuses on contemporary miracle accounts, citing hundreds of recent occurrences.
Keener is ordained in a historic African American church and served as an associate minister before moving to Asbury’s campus in Wilmore, Kentucky. Christianity Today senior writer Tim Stafford interviewed Keener this fall.
Miracles are an unusual subject for a New Testament scholar. What led you to it?
I was going to write a footnote in my commentary on Acts, and was dealing with questions of historical reliability. Many scholars dismiss miracle stories as not historically plausible, arguing that they arose as legendary accretions.
I was familiar with [contemporary] reports of miracles taking place. There must be thousands of such reports. It was inconceivable to me that people would say eyewitnesses can’t claim to have seen such things.
What do you want to accomplish with this book?
Primarily, to challenge scholars who dismiss miracles in the Gospels as legends and not historically plausible. Eyewitnesses say these kinds of things all the time. I also want to challenge the bias that says these things can’t be supernatural. I believe God does miracles, and I don’t see why we scholars are not allowed to talk about it.
You’re trying to break open the naturalistic tradition of writing history that scholars have followed for centuries.
I understand the historical paradigms within which we work, and I’m able to work within those by bracketing out certain questions. But I wonder who made up the rule that we have to bracket out those questions, and why we are obligated to follow such rules. The way the discipline of historiography has been defined, such questions get punted to philosophy or theology.
How is the world today different from philosopher David Hume’s world, or theologian Rudolf Bultmann’s, who said that a modern man who turns on an electric light can’t possibly believe in a miracle?
In Hume’s day, nobody he knew had experienced a miracle. But there were miracle accounts….” Read the rest (click here)

Check out the book:

Think Christianly with Jonathan Morrow