 Good morning everyone. Welcome. I have just started the recording of our session. I hope all of you are doing good. Thank you for connecting to the class today. Are we going to take a moment to pray and then we will get started. All right. Salome, would you like to pray Salome, if it's okay? Yes, Pastor. Thank you Jesus. Thank you Lord for all that I've done of Father God. Thank you for this day of Father. Thank you for this new day that I didn't realize of Father God. Thank you God for everyone that is your Father. God we give you glory, honor, and praise of Father. But I pray, Father, that you have sent fast to analyze the Father that he could teach us this morning of Father. Thank you God for your blessing, Lord God. You lead him while he speaks of Father. Thank you for all that I've done. We give you glory, honor, and praise. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Welcome everyone. So we are in our course on Christian apologetics. We've spent quite a few lectures on talking about creation, the existence of God, creation, and you know different aspects, facets around creation. Today we are going to change the focus, the theme. Look at another area where people ask questions and which for us we need to be able to you know provide answers as far as in response to the questions that people ask. So we're going to talk about the accuracy and the authenticity of the Bible, the accuracy and authenticity of the Bible. How do you know that the Bible that we are reading, the text, so the content, the text is accurate. It's correct. How do we know that on what basis can we respond and what would we say in response when somebody says hey you know you're reading, all of you are reading a Bible but how do you know it is accurate? It's correct. How do you know that the text has not been changed by somebody along the way? So that's one part of the question we're going to answer and then we also want to understand what would we say in response to that question. So then in relation or in on the same subject there would be other questions like so how did, how was the Bible compiled? So you know we say okay this is the Bible, it has 66 books how was it compiled? How did you get it first of all? How do you know that the text is accurate, that text is dependable? That's the first question. The second question is how was this book compiled? Why do you say that on what basis do you say that these 66 books as you have in this part in the Bible is the Word of God? There are a lot of other things that were written around those times. Why weren't they added to the Bible? So that's the second question we want to answer which probably, that's the second question. The third question is also a common question that people ask is why do you Christians have so many different versions of the Bible? I mean you know it doesn't that adulterate the original text if you have so many different versions which one is correct and you know and then honestly if you put several versions side by side and people can do that they can put you know three versions side by side and the same scripture in the three versions may come out with a different meaning. So that's really confusing. So that's the third question. What's going on here? You're saying you're reading the same text but you've got three versions of the English Bible the same verse in three versions. It's coming up with some different meaning. So that's a tough question. How do we respond to that? Right? So that's our objective in this topic on the accuracy and the authenticity of the scriptures. So we will cover the first question today. Hopefully we'll cover that. Next week we will cover the other two and I'll try to keep this as quick as possible as concise as possible. So within two weeks we will cover this. So that's our objective in talking about the accuracy and authenticity of the scriptures. Now all of us you know we know how precious the Word of God is to us. We know the power of the Word of God in our personal lives. We have been greatly enriched as we personally have read the Word. But it's not like that for everybody meaning there are people who have questions. There are people who question whether this book that you and I you know we treasure. Where did it come from? How do you know it's reliable? And all those related questions. So even though we personally are convinced about the Word of God and we personally are you know we treasure the Word. We can't express that emotion to somebody else as an answer. You know I can't go tell somebody hey I love my Bible that's why it's true. That's not a valid answer. I mean for that for that person. Right? I love the Word of God. I treasure it. True. It's wonderful. Now I can use my personal transformation to authenticate the working of the Bible meaning I can say hey this Bible has changed my life. I can use that but it has to come after I convincingly answer these first three questions. Right? Because nobody's gonna you know people will appreciate that the Bible has transformed your life. That is wonderful but they will still ask these first three questions. How do you know the text is reliable and accurate? Why 66 books? Why these 66 books? On what basis were they put together? Why not a 67th book or a 68th book from that same time period? And the third question is about these versions. Why are these so many versions and some of these versions are the meaning of the text also changes. So those are very legitimate questions which we need to provide answers and in addition to providing those answers if we say look this Bible has changed my life. Okay now people are going to really accept the Bible because not only have we answered in a very in a very practical way those first three questions in a very convincing way but then we've also given the testimony of our personal transformation. Okay so the testimony of God's word transforming you or impacting you is valid. It's important but in many cases people may not accept that alone as a sufficient answer because they want they're asking these three legitimate questions about the Bible and we need to answer that. Okay so that's the journey we're going to make. I'm going to go ahead and share the PDF that I've put out for today's lectures and I'll put out another one for next week for us to talk about this. So lesson number nine will be authenticity and the accuracy of the Bible. All right everyone's with me so far what we're let me just pause and get back here. Everyone's with me you know what we're going to look at in this section any any questions before we get started. Okay you're all good. All right fine so let's go ahead and get started with this with this lesson. I'll just go and share the PDF. All right so you know over the centuries people have made great attempts to destroy the Bible and it's very interesting. Look back in the history as early as 380 the 4th century the Roman emperor made a great attempt to eliminate just get rid of the scriptures so can you imagine he ordered churches to be burned, Christians to be killed and all scriptures to be burnt like let's get rid of this book but today the Bible still stands as the most circulated the most widely read book in the whole world in the history of the world right it's been translated into more languages and it's more accessible than any but there was an attempt attempts were made. Walter supposedly said that you know within a hundred years he said Christianity would disappear the Bible would disappear and people would not remember anything and very interestingly and now after his death it is said that the Geneva Bible Society bought his house and used his house for printing Bibles so he disappeared his influence diminished practically but the Bible continued right and so here's a very interesting quote from our editorial says for 18 centuries every engine of destruction that human science philosophy that reasoning and brutality could bear against this book has been brought to bear against it to stamp it out of the world but it has a mightier hold on the world today than ever before if that were a man's book it would have been annihilated and forgotten hundreds of years ago so the very fact that the Bible not only has survived every effort to eliminate it but instead it has just just you know proliferated all over the world in so many languages is is a big testimony to the hand of God God in it I think it's a big testimony now very just quickly now I'm not going to spend too much time on this because we are already familiar with this part of it that you know the Bible was it makes this claim right second Timothy chapter 3 was 16 and 70 can somebody read that for us please it's on the in the pdf itself somebody can read it all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete thoroughly equipped for every good work thank you so what is the Bible of course paul is writing this and what's he saying about the scriptures he's saying all scripture so remember paul is writing this somewhere around 60 80 more likely 68 80 this is his last episode that he wrote second Timothy so it was probably 68 80 and he's saying all scripture so for any for for in paul's mind at that time it's all of the Old Testament scriptures that means all the Old Testament that we have here he said that's what he's referring to plus of course his own writings by the time paul is writing second Timothy it's his last episode so he's already written you know all the preceding episodes and in his mind he is referring to all of the Old Testament scripture too right so he says all scripture all of this written scripture he says is given by inspiration of God so man wrote it man wrote it in the language of his time i mean people wrote it in the language of their time and day and time they used the grammar the syntax the figures of speech and they used the culture all of that so it was it was very human in that nature because people wrote it but the inspiration was from God so what we are saying is yeah yeah the text here is very human because people wrote it they used the language they used the grammar they used you know figures of speech they used the language of their day and time but the inspiration is God and Peter himself so this is the another apostle Peter another apostle Peter second Peter 1 2021 he says no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation that means so first of all he's referring to scripture as a as a prophetic book meaning an inspired inspirational inspired book so no inspired inspiration of scripture prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation that means you know it wasn't some individual who sat down and wrote these things so you know people who question the bible question hey what if the scripture was you know some two or three people sitting together and putting it to you know private interpretive did they are making it up but he says hey no prophecies scriptures of a private interpretation but for prophecy never came by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the holy spirit so this is what we believe this is what the bible claims for itself it's inspired by God through human agency they were holy but they were men of God they were people of God right so it was inspired but man was involved in its writing in its compiling in its preserving in its transmission so man was involved so there is the divine aspect as a human aspect so how did it all come together right how did this come so some general information we know the Old Testament the New Testament the Old Testament was original come original over a thousand year period written both in Hebrew and Aramaic and so portions of the bible Daniel is there was an Aramaic over written over a thousand year period the New Testament was written over a 45 year period from about 50 80 to 95 80 so together you go from about a 1500 year period approximately there are 66 books 39 Old Testament 27 New Testament totally 40 different authors and many of them never met each other right so we have all of them writing 40 different people who have written these 66 books how has it been transmitted to us right so in the early days it was written on papyrus so papyrus is just basically the stem of a plant found around that region around in Egypt around the River Nile and so they had this stem of this plant they made this in the papyrus and they wrote on it and later on they moved to leather leather scrolls on which this was written and subsequently so papyrus would be this you know long continuous piece of paper or the scroll would be a long continuous rollable scroll later on they put it into what you know we would call as pages so and that that book that's put together is called the codex right so so that's how it that's the material things that were they used to write upon in the early days so the text of the scriptures the Old Testament and the New Testament was written on these kinds of materials but it was written by a set of people called as crimes and these were not ordinary people but they were people who were specialized or specifically trained to do this type of writing so that means they were very meticulous in their job very meticulous in their writing okay what did that person say I'm writing and I'm making copies of what is written so they're very meticulous in in how they wrote things to the point that you know these crimes when they made copies of scrolls if there were errors they destroyed the whole scroll so it wasn't uh let me put it in a positive way it's so meticulous there because the attempt was to be accurate right so they made copies of course everything was done by hand they had to sit and write everything by hand on these scrolls and make copies of it and then you know as as they had these copies of course as people dispersed as people scattered through the Middle East and around the Mediterranean more and more copies were made and you know it covered that area the text the copies of these books were wherever the people dispersed they carried copies with them and we refer to them as manuscripts so and that process continued so people continued to make handwritten copies of these manuscripts over in that geographical area around the Middle East in the Mediterranean the scriptures were distributed so now I want us to understand something that is simple to understand but it is the basis of establishing credibility of ancient manuscripts and this is what is done with all forms of literary work so it's not specific to the bible all forms of literary work all manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of these two things right so the number of manuscripts in the time can okay let me just go back to one more point here that you know by usually usually by examining the style of writing they would date the the manuscript right so there are experts papyrologists who can determine to a good estimate I mean of course these are estimates they're not accurate they can estimate the age of a manuscript by looking at the style so there are experts who do that so we will leave it to them and and of course there could be even the dating process but typically the handwriting is is a key all right so going back to this how do we determine the authenticity of a manuscript the credibility of a manuscript right two things and this applies as I was saying across the board to all ancient manuscripts one is the number of manuscripts right so the more manuscripts you have the more it adds to the credibility of the text and of course you know you're going to also look at the consistency in the text right there is human error you know there could be a comma missing or you know the small variations would be there of course in copying but the fact that you have more number of manuscripts with the same text is one factor that establishes the authenticity and the credibility of the text the other thing that is looked at is the time gap that means what is the oldest manuscript available and what is the time between the oldest manuscript available to the time when things actually happened so that's a time gap or when the person who spoke those words existed lived right so time gap so the smaller the time gap the more closer to the original we are likely to be that means a less transmission error in copying and so on so the closer we are the smaller the time gap the more closer we are to the original so it's on this basis that the validity of manuscripts the authenticity and the accuracy manuscripts are established right so you look at some of the ancient manuscripts from different you know philosophers and historical works and here's here the numbers that we see right so Plato who lived a few hundred years before Christ or how many manuscripts do we have about 200 manuscripts of his works and by the time gap of 1,300 approximately again of from the time he lived to the oldest that we have sorry sorry another Greek historian we have only eight manuscripts time gaps were 1,300 years it doesn't now when we say time gap it does not mean there were no earlier manuscripts obviously they were they must have been many earliest manuscripts prior to that but the oldest that we have available is 1,300 years from when he or Plato he existed which means that the earlier manuscripts were destroyed or lost along the way and over time okay so you look at several other philosophers we have 8,300 we have the Roman history 35 of the 140 volumes out of 20 manuscripts around 480 10 manuscripts 900 years and so on you know and then you can look at this and I'm just showing this here to show us that you know the numbers you look at the numbers you know how many manuscripts do we have what is the time gap compared it right even of Shakespeare's plays we have a large portion of what he had written there are disputes on changes to that book could have been made to his place now when you come to the bible let's understand this so up until 1948 or so the last book of the bible Malachi was around 400 BC similar to what we saw with Plato so on some of the great philosophers so around 400 BC the last book and around 200 BC we also had the oldest translated from Hebrew to Greek the Septuagint around 200 BC and up till about 1948 that means you know when the King James was translated which was King James was translated around 16 something there was this huge time gap that we actually had about a 1300 year time gap because the oldest manuscripts was from 980 of the Old Testament scriptures so the oldest manuscript was from 980 the the last book was around 400 BC so we're having a time gap of about 1300 years this was still about 1940 but then what happened and of course all of this was kept for us in Ezra and we read about Ezra the Old Testament he was you know we think of Ezra as as a priest and who helped with the rebuilding of the temple and so on but more importantly his role and the role of the scholars in those times the scribes in those times was in preserving the scriptures right so they really played a great role in preserving the Old Testament scriptures now what happened very so remember we had about a 1300 year time gap till about 1940 so all the translations of the Bible till the 1940s were based on text that was from 980 or thereabouts which means there was this huge time gap but then what happened in 1947 is there was this amazing discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls so what actually happened was there was a shepherd and some of the sheep wanted off and so this he went looking for not sheep as goats I guess his goats in the kumran caves near the Dead Sea so as he followed or went looking for his lost goat or goats he ended up in these caves the kumran caves near the Dead Sea and in these caves he found a huge collection or repository of clay jars about two feet high 10 inches wide and inside these jars were leather scrolls preserved and so you're talking about somewhere here in the kumran caves on the Dead Sea and this was in 1947 so it's pretty recent and so they got these scrolls right here from these caves and what did they find they found every book of the Old Testament except for the book of Esther sorry Esther but all the books of the Old Testament and these were from 70 AD or actually even before 70 AD so somehow these scribes who lived at that time had put all of these scrolls here hidden all these scrolls here in the caves to preserve them and so they got these scrolls that went back to the first and the sanctuary first and second century BC so that means around 100 to 200 BC okay so so now what's happening your time cap has gone from 1,300 years to about 200 years approximately roughly now that's amazing that means you've you've got manuscripts or scrolls manuscripts that are so close to the earliest you know times and when things were written or things were spoken yes close I mean this is really close and what was interesting was so remember we had manuscripts from 980 and now you're finding manuscripts from approximately 200 BC what was interesting was the text in these manuscripts were essentially unchanged and Isaiah the book of Isaiah unchanged for more than 2000 years so these are the Dead Sea Scrolls okay these are the the the clay jars in the Cumbrian caves that were discovered so you know they are found about 800 scrolls and so the scrolls had a lot of things but 230 of them were of the scriptures every book of the Old Testament except for Esther in these caves like we mentioned right so we just okay I kind of jumped ahead my head of myself but here's what we see here okay be at Isaiah which was written around 750 okay let me pause and ask if people are with me or gone to sleep um okay um all right okay sorry I'm just looking at the comments here everyone's okay Thayesh is in all right I don't know okay okay um I hope all of you are with me yeah I was just talking I wasn't I was looking at the pdfs I wasn't seeing the chat you're good so far okay all right now I'm sorry if people were out of the classroom because once I start and I move to the pdf and students are not let in I'm really sorry for that hope they got in okay anyway all right somebody can inform Thayesh how to come into the class okay all right Charles why the works William Shakespeare connected to the bible writing they're not connected Charles I was just giving a list of so there's no connection we're just giving a list of different works of people starting from you know philosophers from the Greek philosophers from about 308 BC what we were we were just giving an example of you know here are all the their works and this is the number of manuscripts we have this is the time gap that exists for their works okay so we were just kind of giving an example and then we just picked up Shakespeare we just mentioned that even in Shakespeare's works which you know is widely read in taught in schools and all of that uh there is a lot of questionable text you know in his works but nobody you know deals with that when they read Shakespeare but the fact is that even in Shakespeare's works there are multiple copies of some of his plays with variations in it so that's all I wanted to mention okay so it has nothing to do with the bible just just uh okay Charles okay fine so thank you all right so you all did me so far okay let's go back so I'm going to go back to the pdf so here's the amazing thing that we found right from the Dead Sea Scrolls so this was found in 1947 we've got all the old testament except for the book of Esther and now we are comparing so remember the oldest manuscript that we had up until that time was from 980 now now we are fine we have obtained manuscripts from about uh you know 150 BC this period right we've got uh that's the Dead Sea Scrolls these were the manuscripts that were found in 1947 from world 150 BC and we know that the book of Malachi now so this reduces the time gap between the oldest the last book of the bible to about 250 years now very interesting the book of Isaiah was written 750 BC approximately as I lived and spoke around that time so it was written around 750 BC initially the oldest copy we had was from 980 the we then found a copy of Isaiah that came from 150 BC that's almost 1000 years approximately 1000 year difference and what did we find we found that the copy of Isaiah that we had in 980 from 980 was I'm using the what exact or can you be you could say incomplete agreement was exactly the same as a copy of the book of Isaiah from 150 BC that is from the Dead Sea Scrolls so that means a over a thousand year period of manual transmission so think about it and we are talking about people scribes sitting and copying people copying copying copying over a thousand year period there was no era so just giving example of one book there's no era and therefore and now this brings us a little closer to you know about a 600 year gap between when Isaiah was written to the earliest scroll that we have so therefore we can have great confidence that this manual transmission process over a thousand year period like we said you know they had to sit down and copy it on papyrus and then they used leather scrolls and then they formed these books called Codex that though it was manually done it was done to the highest possible accuracy right so when we compare and so that table that was shown earlier was just for comparison so let me compare ancient scriptures or ancient texts or ancient manuscripts that aren't existence what can we say about the Bible we can say and I'll give you the numbers just if it's coming up on the next page the Bible has more manuscript evidence supporting its reliability and accuracy of translation now and this is one example the Dead Sea Scrolls it's a powerful example it has more it has more supporting evidence of reliability and accuracy than all other ancient texts and we will look at the New Testament we've just mentioned we're old we will talk about the New Testament coming up shortly but the New Testament manuscripts you know the New Testament manuscripts comes from the time of most of these Greek philosophers that people today quote so proudly or no Plato said this and so on so said the Socrates said this and you know they quote so proudly and they don't realize that hey Plato's manuscripts have a thousand year 300 time thousand 300 year time gap and he's got just about eight manuscripts of what he's supposed to have said and they don't realize the New Testament which you know just came 300 years after has more number of manuscripts and they are closer to the original time that means from that time we have those manuscripts so even if you compare if you know the New Testament manuscripts with manuscripts of philosophers who existed or who lived around or in the proximity of that time the New Testament manuscripts far supersede both the number and time gap and number and proximity than any of those philosophers that people today you know talk about so if you're going to question the New Testament then you definitely have to question all the philosophers and historians of their days because there's a huge discrepancy a huge gap a difference in manuscripts and time gap of ancient texts right and we've already shown about the Old Testament how amazing the accuracy is I mean this is astounding that the Dead Sea Scrolls which was from 150 BC to the Scrolls that we had prior 900 AD that there is no variation in the text over a thousand year period and that's why you know all the translations that were done you know before that time are accurate and reliable so you know we had the most common which was the King James version in 1611 based out of these manuscripts from 980 we can be absolutely confident that hey this is this is this English translation is close or is accurate to the original text because we see hardly any change over a thousand year period so we can rest assured rest confident in the reliability and the accuracy of the text that was translated for us even though the manuscripts were from 980 so this is an amazing discovery and you know it's almost like God saying okay hello I want to tell you I'm behind all of this and why did you know why was it that this discovery was made in 1947 by a shepherd boy looking for his lost goat I think God is smiling and saying I just want to show you all something you know I don't think these this discovery happened by accident you know the Bible had by this time by 1947 the word of God had been translated and you know people were preaching teaching and then when you made this discovery it's like it really just you know it's like God's stamp saying look the scriptures that you have is accurate and it out shines all other ancient manuscripts you know so I think I mean I don't know I just just amazing I'm amazed at the the the whole you know what happened there in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls how it was discovered and how it really added credibility to the Old Testament scriptures the accuracy of the Old Testament scriptures and how you know it it really strengthened our faith or our conviction in the reliability of the text God just timed it and God made it available for all of us and it's just amazing okay so I'm just going to pause here we are going to pick up from here after the break let me look at some numbers just to say that look Old Testament has so many manuscripts the New Testament has so many manuscripts all of those kinds of things okay we'll come back after the break and go through that any questions so far okay let me see now there are some questions here how did they establish oldest known Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament okay yeah so Christopher the predominantly two ways one is the like we said the papyrologists do it through the handwriting process and then of course we have the dating process through radioactive dating tools you know to whatever extent that that helps us but these are the two ways we see in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls because we know who did it who preserved it the SNES the the scribes who did it were called the SNES we know when they lived and when they did the copying so that establishes really establishes the time of those scrolls right the because we know the scribes or other the scribes who did the copying of those scrolls so it establishes so you know we would do this by these three aspects we can establish the date of those Dead Sea Scrolls okay okay Max and is any philosophy if I only look only the Bethesda not found on the Dead Sea Scrolls interesting I don't have an answer to that question Max and why the book of Esther was not found among the Dead Sea Scrolls I I don't have an answer to that question no sorry I maybe we should research on that I didn't think of it but it's a valid question and yeah we need to do a little research on on that but I don't know whether we can find answers to why Esther the book of Esther was not there yeah I don't have an answer to that okay maybe we should research on it okay Samuel the book of Isaiah it's the oldest manuscript we have shouldn't the book of Moses be the oldest yeah so we do have so all the remember from the Dead Sea Scrolls right all the books of the Old Testament except for Esther who were found so we found the first five books of Moses and found the book of Job all the Old Testament books from as copied by those scribes from that time about 150 BC the SMEs were found but we're just doing a comparison of Isaiah and to see the accuracy of it so I'm not sure your question Samuel okay okay okay all right okay all right so we're going to take a little break we'll come back in 10 minutes I just want to apologize for those of you who were locked out I'm sorry I didn't know you were outside the class and anyone else who was outside the class I started and I kind of moved to looking at the PDF so I wasn't aware I apologize for that but hopefully you can watch the video and catch up with the parts that you missed all right so let's come back in a few maybe 10 minutes quickly and we will continue from where we passed okay I hope you all with me it's not getting too technical you've understood the two issues on the number of manuscripts and the time gap is that very clear any questions on that do you understand the time time gap aspect yeah okay I'm assuming all of you have understood it any questions you can ask I'll leave you back right after the break okay thanks