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How Do We Know The Bible Is Accurate?

We know this several ways. First, we must consider the time gap between
Christ's death, burial, and resurrection and the writing of the New
Testament. Most scholars date the Gospel books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John) around 50-70 AD. Jesus died between 30 and 33 AD. This leaves a time
gap of only 20- 40 years from the death of Christ to the first written
books about His life.

This is important because it means that it was within the generation of
those who had seen Him on earth, and that means that they could have
verified or contradicted the stories about Christ since they would have
known whether it had happened or not. In addition, since there were living
witnesses at the time that the Gospels were put together, there was not
enough time for legendary passages to appear in the text.

Next, we must examine the letters of Paul, which are almost universally
accepted as having been written before the Gospels were. Paul was
converted a mere two years after Christ's death, according to most
scholars--this puts him writing letters as early as 32-35 AD Most scholars
say the latest he started writing was in the 40s or 50s.

In addition, 1 Corinthians 15 quotes one of the earliest church creeds
ever. Paul writes:

"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that
he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to
more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are
still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James,
then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to
one abnormally born." (1 Cor. 15:3-8).

It is universally accepted that the passages about Christ's death,
burial, and resurrection are one of the first church creeds ever (see
Strobel, p 34-35). These creeds were written between 2-5 years after
Christ's death. In historical documents, that's a blink of an eye. For
example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written
more than four hundred years after Alexander's death in 323 BC--yet they
are considered to be generally trustworthy. The shorter the time gap
between an event and when it is recorded, the less likely that it will
fall prey to human error and legend. Therefore, the fact that the church
creeds were written within the first 5 years or so of the Church's
existence is very important.

Secondly, we have vast numbers of copies of the New Testament. This is
also important because no original copy of the New Testament exists today.
That means that all we have is copies of it. So how do we know that the
copies are accurate?

First, you can cross-check the various documents to see how they
differ. If you do this, between the various Greek, Latin, Syriac, and
Coptic translations (of which there are 5,664 Greek manuscripts,
8,000-10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts, and 8,000 Ethiopic, Slavic, and
Armenian manuscripts, for a total of around 24,000--there are only 650
manuscripts of Homer's "Iliad" the book with the second most number of
manuscripts behind the New Testament) then there are amazing
consistencies. It's so amazing that Norman Geisler and William Nix said,
"The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than
any other book from antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than
any other great book--a form that is 99.5 percent pure." (See Geisler
& Nix, 367). It also must be noted that the variants (or
discrepancies) between the texts are usually matters of word order (which
doesn't matter in Greek, since it is an inflected language) and spelling,
and that no key doctrine is in jeopardy of having been corrupted.

Secondly, you can find the Bible quoted in many sources outside of just
the New Testament. In fact, if every single New Testament manuscript was
destroyed, the entire Bible could be reproduced from commentaries written
by various theologians throughout the first millenium AD. This gives us
even more manuscripts to test differences in.

For further information:

Norman Geisler and William Nix, A General Introduction
to the Bible

Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict

Lee Strobel, The Case For Christ

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