Thursday, September 17, 2009

Quotations from "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist"

A couple of good quotations that I may use for a powerpoint on Biblical historicity:

"While the major works of the New Testament were immediately seen as
authentic by these early church fathers, most of the New Testament was accepted
before A.D. 200, and all of it was officially and finally recognized as
authentic by the Council of Hippo in 393. (p. 368) (From Geisler and Nix,
General Introduction to the Bible, 294)

"...of about 40 authors over nearly 1,500 years to get his message across."
(p. 372)

In fact, our conclusion on inerrancy would be falsified if someone could
trace a real error back to an original scroll. (17) But to this day, after
nearly 2,000 years of looking, no one has found such an irreconcilable problem.
(This is truly amazing when you consider that the Bible is really a
collection of documents written by about 40 authors over a 1,500-year
period.
Where could you find such agreement on a variety of issues from
40 authors who all live today, much less over a 1,500-year period?)(17): Copyist
errors have been found in manuscripts, but they are easily identified and known
not to be in the original by comparing the many manuscripts in existence (see
chapter 9). While no Bible originals have yet been found, earlier manuscripts of
other works have survived. So it is possible that a Bible original may someday
be discovered.

I really like the statistic in bold (found in 3 places above). Gives a great perspective of the vastness of the work, effort, and study that went into JUST the writing of the books (inspired, of course), not to mention the immense work that took place to fastidiously copy them and translate and transmit them down to us. Incredible how God has created and protected this precious love-letter to us!

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