 Welcome back everyone. I've I've just started the recording of this session Okay, so any questions before we keep moving forward everyone's okay any specific questions so far Okay Was the Christopher's question or was whether manuscripts copied many times They could be so because more people in countries, but they found in multiple job. Yes. Yes so The answer is yes, so they were found in multiple geographies. So we will mention some of that coming up and yeah, so the The man as people did were dispersed those who could afford you know, you know doing these manuscripts Was not an easy task All right, so the scribes did it exclusively and You know when the people are dispersed, they'll obviously carried these copies with them into wherever parts they were dispersed and Later on those who could afford to buy put would buy these copies. Yeah Okay, any other questions? So Charles question what a time gap is okay So what we are saying or what we said in our in the in the earlier session Was there are two criteria that are used with respect to verifying the An an ancient man ancient manuscript and it is for all manuscripts not just for bible but for any ancient literary work Right And especially okay, these Greek philosophers who lived Around 300 years Before Christ those Greek philosophers or historians who recorded historical things The two things we that is typically used one is the number of manuscripts. How many manuscripts do we have because you know, then we can We can Compare and verify the text That's one and the second one is what we mentioned as time gap so time gap means the time From when the actual person lived Or when the actual work the original work was written Maybe maybe we can state that right the first piece of work was written So obviously it's going to be when the when the philosopher lived or when the historian lived Who was documenting right that was his The first piece first manuscript the original manuscript To the oldest manuscript that we were able to find so Let's say we found five manuscripts If one manuscript was uh 900 ad Uh another manuscript was 800 ad And then another manuscript was 700 ad etc. So let's say the oldest manuscript was 700 ad And uh this historian or the original work was written 300 bc Then the time gap is the time difference between The original one when the historian lived and wrote his original work to the oldest that we have which is about Which is 780 which is totally about thousand years So we would say the time gap for this person's work This historian's work Is thousand years Uh the goal is the of course to keep this time gap as small as possible Meaning if you want to get manuscripts that are as close to or the earliest the first manuscript Which was the time that the historian lived or the philosopher lived And and had his work written Right, so we want to get the time gap as small as possible. Is that okay? You understood it Charles. Okay All right Any other questions I'll jump into the notes then Okay, all right, so let's go forward and if you have any questions, we'll probably have some time towards the end of this Lecture as well Okay So let's just move on forward just to get a little bit more You know more information here So when you look at the manuscripts as of the bible Now we're coming specific to the bible so The oldest as of now the oldest manuscripts like we said are from the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was in this time frame about 100 to 200 BC Okay, so the oldest manuscripts Hebrew manuscripts Of the Old Testament are the Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts around 200 BC Okay, now Remember the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic parts of it were written in it, but mostly Hebrew Now the entire Old Testament is translated into Greek around 200 BC Okay, so that we refer to as a Septurgent So the whole Old Testament was translated into Greek 200 BC So that is the first translation So we are saying it should be pretty accurate because you're you know, this is the first translation of the Old Testament into Greek and the oldest So the oldest copies of the Old Testament in Greek are around So they were translated on 250 BC around 325 350 80 So We're talking about 500 years to these the Greek versions Right, so they were translated around 200 or 250 BC The Greek version of the Old Testament and the copies of these manuscripts We have 325 we have 350 Right, they were found in different parts of the The Middle East I think Christopher asked this question And so we are talking about of 500 600 year time gap of these Greek copies of the Old Testament And you go into Okay, this is again about this is the Alexandres. This was from Egypt, right? So we have another set of manuscripts Now when you come to the New Testament Okay, and we'll give the numbers of how many of these manuscripts are all available, but I just just just giving you information now. So the New Testament was written in Greek between 45 to 1980 What is the number of these manuscripts we have? We have about 5,500 5,500 manuscripts Okay, now you compared this with eight ten hundred manuscripts of some of the, you know Other ancient scriptures that be short on the table earlier Okay, so you compare that look we have good number substantial now The Greek which New Testament, which let's say was, you know, just to round it off was completed around 180 Was translated into Latin First translation into Latin around 480. So again, we're saying This is the first translation should be pretty accurate And the Latin manuscripts, we have all 10,000 manuscripts Of the New Testament And then early versions in other languages 9,300 So We have about 2,500 manuscripts Greek, Latin, which is the first translation, then some other translations Of the New Testament And the earliest earliest manuscript of the New Testament Is around 12080 so approximately You know 25 years after John died so The time gap so John The author of the Gospel of John And the manuscript that we have the earliest 120 AD so approximately 25 years after this person lived And other manuscripts Are about 208 years from their original writing Okay, so Both in terms of copies of the Greek Manuscripts, which is the in the Greek language And then the Latin which was the first translation made around 400 AD Which then the Latin Bible became you know the the one that was used by the Catholic Church for 1000 plus years so What do we have here? We you know if you try to put all of this together in a little table for us Old Testament We have more than 10,000 manuscripts The oldest I mean the the best and okay, we're going with the best number the best number we have 150 years New Testament 24,000 manuscripts 50 year time gap for the best that's the Gospel of John so If you compare these numbers with you know other the Greek philosophers and so on there You know There the time gap is like 1200 years 1400 years Bible The best time gaps we have is 150 50 years so We are saying if people consider these works works of these philosophers to be You know they quote them they study them all of that Then how much more accurate and authentic Is the text of the Bible based on so many manuscripts that are there and The time gap that is as you know pretty minimal very small that we have So when you look at the manuscripts the number of work manuscripts Old Testament and New Testament and when you look at the not only the original language Hebrew or the Greek but the translations that is Hebrew to Greek of the old and Greek to Latin of the new You know, it's pretty amazing the the number of manuscripts the time gap and therefore How much confidence we can have in the text of the scriptures Especially in comparison to other ancient texts right, so scholars have pointed You know, okay, they say, okay, they're copying errors and so on and so forth what's been the conclusion apart from insignificant variations, so you know, yeah, obviously when they like I said in the very beginning Humans are involved. We are caught people are copying manually. So there will be some variations grammar or spelling not more than one thousandth part of the New Testament is affected by the difference So we have about 24 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament And when you look at it all of them together You're talking about one thousand part of the New Testament could you know, that's a very small part which is human error, which is you know, you're copying and you're transmitting There would be small variations but This is very very minute so what I wanted to you know put together for us in a very brief and concise way Is to show us that you know, if you look at things very logically practically in terms of the text of the scripture from the original manuscripts through the copying process through the translation process, you know, like we said Hebrew was translated into Greek the Greek was translated into latin so through the copying process through the translation process You look at all the manuscripts you look at the text of the manuscripts apart from What you can say is okay. Yes, there is human error because people are sitting and copying or people are sitting and translating And then they're making copies of it. They're you know, passing it out apart from that provision for you know, very human error the text of the scripture Old Testament and New Testament is from Verification point of view it is reliable both in terms of the number of manuscripts and in terms of the time gap and in terms of the text it is absolutely reliable So we're looking at it purely from practical point of view you're not looking at the inspiration side just looking from a practical point of view this is what we can say okay now before we get into anything further Is this clear so far? All right So I'm assuming if you're quiet then I'm assuming we'll go on okay Okay, I have a question Samuel No So I want us to be you know convinced and you put all these numbers together and you can go back to the table that I showed in the very beginning and say hey look at all these other literary works from ancient times so we're talking about you know 2000 years ago 2500 years ago look at all those literary works look at the Bible you've got you've got you've got so much um uh both in terms of manuscripts both in terms of the reduction in time cap both in terms of transmission across manuscripts and in transmission across translations so you've got all of that for us to check I mean you look at all of that look at the big picture you can say hey the text of this book of these you know basically of course I would say but see this book means it's a compilation of these 66 books is completely reliable okay both the Old Testament and New Testament completely reliable so like we said the New Testament we are down to about 50 years time cap for the closest one the Gospel of John 250 years time cap for all the other texts of this uh books for the Old Testament we are cut down to about 250 years uh for the oldest book so 150 years for the oldest book so we are very close in terms of time cap and the number of manuscripts are significant yeah so take some time I see your comment Prabhakar so take some time to go to the notes and if you need to ask questions we can pick it up again next week okay so let me just move forward and we will okay it's saying can't share my screen okay alright so I'm assuming you've been with me so far now I'll just finish up a few more thoughts here before we close here's the next thing I want us to consider which is yeah and I'll be going into more of a theological side alright so we've covered the practical side and then we're going to be stepping into a little bit of the theological side now about the scriptures so Jesus so Jesus is coming here around 3080 uh some uh you know around that time the early part of this century this millennium the GAD the Old Testament books have all been there right all Malachi everything's been there we also have the Greek translation of the Old Testament which was done around 200 BC so you've got the Hebrew text of the Old Testament you've got the Greek text of the Old Testament and now comes Jesus around 3080 right I'm just putting it roughly and he's starting his ministry he's going around preaching now Jesus in his preaching affirms the authority of the Old Testament so when he's talking about the scriptures he's referring to the Old Testament you know as we understand it right the Old Testament what we have is talking about that and he affirms the authority and I've just given you the many times you know put these references down many times Jesus refers to the Old Testament so you know it is written you know and any quotes from the Old Testament it makes reference to the Old Testament showing us that these Jesus himself was affirming the accuracy of the Old Testament so he didn't question the Old Testament he quoted from it he used it in his defense against the you know against the temptation so he used it as a weapon as a sword of the spirit as we understand he used the Old Testament he studied the Old Testament teaching so from a theological side Jesus also affirmed the Old Testament scriptures so what else do we see now so I'm moving into more the theological side so over this thousand five hundred year period with 40 authors writing all the texts the scriptures it is we don't find any self contradiction in the scriptures or any errors that are significant now we understand that there will be these human transmission errors in manuscripts and so on but there is no historical or factual error in the text that means till today nobody can say the Bible is mentioning such and such a person and such and such a person didn't exist or such and such a place and this place historically never existed and some of these things of course will require archaeological discoveries but based on archaeological evidence the Bible is becoming more and more accurate the people are finding out that the Bible is accurate it is always accurate archaeological discoveries are just confirming things that the Bible has in terms of places in terms of people that existed now how do we respond to difficult passages that we see in the Bible okay first of all and this is for us to understand for us to think through and work on our studying of the scriptures the first is this that there is the law of non-contradiction so that means I can make two statements two statements the two statements don't have to be the same but just because they are different doesn't mean they contradict so example suppose at 9 o'clock I meet you know I just put it down here I don't know whose names I used John and Jim okay suppose at 9 o'clock in the morning I meet John and Jim in the office okay and in the afternoon later the same day at 12 o'clock I meet somebody and I say hey I met John today then at 3 o'clock or sometime later in the day I meet somebody else and I say hey I met Jim today now are these statements contradictory does it mean I am lying they don't because I did meet John and I did meet Jim when I spoke to the person at 12 o'clock I spoke in the context of John maybe he knows only John so I just said I met John today or maybe John came up in a conversation so I said I met John today I spoke to the other person later on in the day say at 3 o'clock I mentioned it in the context of Jim so maybe he knows Jim or maybe Jim came up in the conversation so I said I met Jim the two statements are different I said I met John I said I met Jim they are different statements but they are not contradicting each other both are true because at 9 o'clock I did meet both John and Jim together so we have to think through certain passages in scripture like this so both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament we will have stories recorded for us so an example would be stories in Samuel or the Kings and the Chronicles especially and maybe the way it's recorded a certain incident recorded in Kings maybe differed a little bit from the way it's recorded in Chronicles it's not a contradiction we just have to understand it the way I said it like how it's been recorded the focus of the context will determine what is expressed and just because how it's expressed in one place differs from how it's expressed in another place doesn't mean it's a contradiction it just means it was expressed according to the context to what was important in that context so this is the law of non-contradiction similar in the New Testament you come in especially in the Gospels you will find different records Matthew, Mark, Luke Matthew, Mark, Luke they would record different instances and there may be differences in the way it's recorded so people will point out the difference they say correct well understand it from the point of view of the law of non-contradiction which is very logical and we do it all the time so why can't we apply the same rule to the Scriptures that when Matthew, Mark, Luke are recording the same instance they will present information that they feel is relevant about that incident it doesn't mean they are contradicting each other it's just they are differing from each other because they are emphasizing something different about the same instance the second thing is about researching that is we there are we have to accept that there are difficult passages in the Old Testament but there are difficult passages for us the meaning or the interpretation is not very obvious to us and how do we resolve it well we need to make an effort to do some background information research some background information understand go back into the culture go back into the history especially for those passages try to understand why was it said and what was going on because it's very easy for us to take even from Paul's writings we can take texts that are seemingly contradicting each other but then you say okay wait a minute let's go back into the background let's go back into the culture the history what was actually happening so that when we read what was written we know it is inspired by God but it was inspired for a context it was inspired in a cultural setting it was inspired in a actual things that were happening so when we understand the inspired word given to those people in that context then we get the correct meaning so then when we put that meaning alongside another passage which was inspired by God but given to a people in a certain culture in a certain historical context then we see that the meanings are not contradicting but if you don't do that and you just take the text of these two passages and it's easy to do that look these texts are contradicting each other so how can you say you know it's inspired well if you make an effort to understand the like I mentioned the cultural historical context and get the meaning of what was being said then you see that there is no contradiction in what was inspired by God okay so I I'm going to pause here and see what's any questions Kennedy how can one compare the accuracy of the Bible to the Quran in terms of time gap hmm good question Kennedy and I actually haven't done that part of research I will yeah you know maybe I can do that before next week's class and have an answer for you on that but I haven't done it yeah so it would be interesting to do that that's a good question to look at Quran and there could be many other yeah and if these kind of questions come up there's no harm in going and researching and getting that information you know so is there any volunteer who would like to do that research and you can take five minutes to present it to us next week next week's question I mean I could do it but somebody else can do it too the question is how can you compare the accuracy of the Bible so you're comparing Bible accuracy in terms of time gap okay anybody wants to do that and share it with us next week it's a good question interesting question nobody asked me all these years nobody asked me this question any volunteers I can do it faster okay Maggie thank you so much so you understood the question right you understood what Kennedy was asking yeah so if you do this and then next week when we meet you take the first five minutes and just please share with the class this you know what you find very good good question and thank you Maggie for offering to this research on that okay any other questions alright so I'm going to pause here let me just quickly review what we started with and then we will dismiss there are three major questions we are trying to answer and we just did one the first part today next two we'll do it next week the question we are trying okay so the three main questions as far as the Bible is concerned how do we know that the text of the Bible is accurate is authentic that's what we answered today second question is how was the Bible compiled for us and why is it just the 66 books you know why not other works that were written in that same time periods or whenever why do we say this is the canon of Scripture on what basis were the 66 books compiled to form the Bible that we have that's the second question the third question is why do we have so many different versions of the Bible and why is it that even in the versions there could be a parent difference in the meaning of what is translated the English versions of the Bible why is that these are three big questions people ask in terms of the Scriptures we have done the first one so what we said Maggie I'll take your question I'm just going to quickly recap doing a recap and then I'll take your question so what we said is this when we in general when we study ancient manuscripts there are two things two criteria one is the number of manuscripts and second is time gap so we put out a little table that showed you know some of the ancient texts how many manuscripts do they have and you saw on the table it's very sparse some of them are 8 to 10 some of them may be 100 the number of manuscripts and the time gap many of them the time gap is thousands of years thousand 300,000 100 years some may be 400 years 500 years that's the time gap in these ancient manuscripts of history of philosophy and of course when you have the manuscripts you want to look at the text that the text is not corrupted so that's where Shakespeare came in we said look even in Shakespeare even though Shakespeare is more recent than the others there are many of his plays where the text is corrupted but you know they just go with okay this is the most accepted one and go okay let's look at the bible so we give a brief overview of the bible we have 66 books 40 authors written over a 1000 year period and we said first of all the last book of the Old Testament was the Old Testament written in Hebrew around around 400 BC so we had 400 BC we had all of the Old Testament scriptures written in Hebrew by that time all compiled and we had 200 BC we had all of the Hebrew text translated into Greek alright so 400 BC Old Testament 200 BC Greek of the Old Testament then we said that till 1947 till that time the oldest collection of Hebrew of the Old Testament scriptures was from 980 980 so 980 to 400 BC about 1300 years the best we're just taking the best time we're not taking the longest but the smallest 1300 years time but then what happened was in 1947 we had the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and these were dated over till 200 BC approximately right we had all the Old Testament except the Book of Esther and so now your time gap has come down to about 200 years which is better far better than many of the other historical books and the Latin translations what we have now the Latin translations which was done 200 BC our oldest manuscripts are around you know 350 to 400 AED so we talk about what about 200 and 500 years okay the New Testament is even better because the oldest that we have is John's Gospel 250 year period and the others we have within 250 year period time gap and the number of manuscripts we have it's about the Old Testament we have about 10,000 manuscripts the New Testament we have about 24,000 manuscripts sorry I kind of made a mistake and that's why I was stumbling here the it is the Latin translation of the New Testament that we have which is around 250 years time gap okay the Latin translations so we have about 10,000 manuscripts of the Old Testament about 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament the time gap is very small 50 years for the New Testament about 150 years for the Old Testament so this is like summarizing so this is where the scriptures stand compared to other ancient manuscripts right so we are saying also when you look at the text of the scriptures there is a hard apart from transmission error there is hardly anything significant in terms of error in the text so the text is not corrupted we can say that it has not been changed randomly there is transmission error and there is copying error but other than that very negligible copying error the integrity of the text has been maintained and the big proof of it was between the 900 AD and the scrolls in the Cumberland Caves over more than 1,000 years the text remained the same so with great confidence we can say that the text of the scripture has not been corrupted through the process of the transmission process of copying and copying has remained the same so that was today's focus establishing the authenticity and accuracy of the text of scripture so without getting too technical you should be able to explain this in a very simple way to people how do you know the text of scripture as accurate and you can go to the PDF if you want to look at the numbers and so on but the canonization of scripture and also the numerous versions of scripture why do we have it and I think we can if it goes well we can finish it in one lecture and then move on to the next topic but that will be the next week and Mangi will give us a quick response to that comparison between Bible and Quran Mangi you had a question Yes Pastor Sometimes we meet Christians people in the church in the left church so they bring up questions like why they say that the apostle Paul's letter where letters written to different churches and to people and some of his letters were responses to question that churches or people asked him about their own personal or congregational problems and they also say that he told Timothy that Old Testament was scripture the question they ask is why do the church take the doctrine from his letters since he himself said that the Old Testament is the anointed scripture and yes why do our modern church take doctrine from Paul's letter and how can we respond to that Say the last part again I understood a question that Paul said the Old Testament was scripture but the last part what did you say Mangi how can we take the New Testament as scripture so yeah the arguments of Paul's letter are just letters explaining to people various problems and issues so why should the New Testament church like our church or modern church get its doctrine from those letters how can we respond to them okay good question so it is true that when Paul said all scriptures get my inspiration of God the Old Testament was there and all of Paul's epistles were already written so it's a good Timothy 3 like you mentioned at the beginning that was Paul's last epistle and he was he would be killed very soon now how do we respond to this question it's a very valid question here's how I would respond that all that Paul wrote all that Paul taught and wrote came by inspiration how do we know that if you look at Paul I'll quickly mention Galatians chapter 1 Paul said that what he's preached he didn't receive it from any man but which the Lord revealed to him 1 Corinthians 11 when he says I recede from the Lord what I have spoken Ephesians chapter 3 Paul says this mystery which has been hidden has now been revealed by his spirit to his apostles and prophets so what is Paul saying he's saying look things which the apostles and prophets are proclaiming which includes Paul and Peter and all the others in the New Testament church whose writings we are reading was revealed by the Holy Spirit is a revelation of the mystery given by the Holy Spirit so the writings of the apostles and prophets this is the New Testament writing so the apostles and prophets are as inspired by the Holy Spirit as the Old Testament scriptures so that is why we take the New Testament writings given to us from the apostles and prophets on equal grounds because the same Holy Spirit gave the revelation and what we do find in the New Testament the teaching of the New Testament is that it is a continuation but it is also a new covenant in some way it is replacing the Old Covenant so of course we need the Old Covenant we need to understand a lot of things from the Old but there is a new Covenant there is a revelation given to us here which supersedes what was given previously so we live by the New Testament but we need to study the Old Testament in order to understand the New Testament and a lot of other things that are there so that is how I would respond to that does that satisfy? Thank you sir, yeah that is it all right Christopher can you give us examples a law of non-contradiction needs to be applied very quickly in the records of New Testament in the Gospel accounts sometimes it says there were two demon-possessed men in other places there was one demon-possessed man or there were two blind men there was one blind man so some of these things when you look at it closely you find that it's just the way the writers have presented some of those things yeah and like that there are examples in the Old Testament as well which maybe I just can't recall right now but we can make a list of these situations okay okay last question we'll take then we'll go for a break Kennedy yes there were there were a lot of things that were written during the Inter Testament period but we don't take but they are not considered part of the canon of Scripture and we will explain next week why right so that is a big question why are we only taking these 66 books and of course the Catholic Church has an additional set of collection of books called the Apocrypha which consists of these books that were written part of them some of them were written during this Inter Testament period which we do not consider as canon of Scripture why right so to answer a question Kennedy yes there were books written but why if we don't consider them as canon we will pick it up next week okay alright good thank you for these questions and I appreciate it when you ask questions because then I know that we can cover parts but I may have addressed it in the lecture alright so let's please go for a quick break and I will see you in the next class okay thank you God bless bye now