3. Beginner Bible Course: How accurately was the Bible preserved as it was hand copied?

EPISODE 3  The simple Bible overview of…HOW WAS IT COPIED AND PRESERVED?

My wife and I took 13 middle school students to the boundary waters canoe area. When we got to the Outfitters, I insisted that the outfitter show me how to set up the tents. He shook his head and said, dude, these things can set themselves up. And besides I put some instructions at the top of one of the packs I listened, I shouldn't have, when we got to the campsite, let's just say it was dark and also raining in the tents. Didn't set themselves up at all, but we did find the instruction sheets. At least I think they were instruction sheets. I couldn't read them. It wasn't the rain or the dark. I mean, I couldn't read them.

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The instructions were completely faded. Looking back on that. I now know what happened with those instructions. When the Outfitters got the new tents, they said, you know what? We better make some instruction sheet copies for those city slickers who don't know how to set these things up. So they made a pile of copies. When that pile went down, they took the last copy and made a pile, more copies they're standing and the Canadian border and a campsite in the dark with the rain falling. I was trying to set up a tent from copied of a copy of a copy of a copy, which brings me to a very important question. Bible students and seekers.

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How do you know that the Bible in front of you translated from ancient copies was not faded instructions. How do you know those copies of copies of copies from the original were anything like the original at all? Well, I have very good news for you, how it was hand copied was incredible. And the copy from which your Bible is translated was remarkably accurate. Let me give you three reasons why the first reason is in How the scribes or copyist did their work. If I were to ask my middle school students to copy the Gettysburg address, here's how they would do it.

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They would read the first line for score. And seven years ago, they might even read the second line in our fathers brought forth, and then they would write four score. And seven years ago our fathers brought forth. That's not how the biblical scribes did it at all. They didn't go phrase by phrase. They went letter by letter. Let me tell you how a biblical scribe would copy the Gettysburg address. They would copy it this way.

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Yeah. Oh, Oh,

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You, you, you get the point letter by letter. Well, that wasn't enough. When they got done copying the entire Gettysburg address, they count the number of letters in the original, and then they count the number of letters in their copy to make sure they matched. But that still wasn't enough. They would find the middle letter of the Gettysburg address, original the middle letter of their copy and make sure they matched people. That's extraordinary. Precision. Why did they go to such labor? They believed they were copying the word of God, but there's a second reason. You can be confident that the copy of the copy of the copy used to translate your Bible was accurate.

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And that is the number of pieces or copies we've found of the scriptures. We've dug up over 66,000 portions of the Bible in ancient manuscript form, whether on pottery or on papyruses Sauron's animal skins. And when we compare those 66,000 fragments portions of these copies, the accuracy's remarkable, 66,000 ancient portions. We found someone has said that that would be the equivalent of 2.5 million pages of documents. And when we look even over a thousand years of what's happened in the copy from the copy, from the copy, the accuracies remarkable.

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Yes, there are spelling changes. Yes. There's usage changes. Yes. Occasionally even something sneaks into the text. But later on, we find an earlier copy that shows it wasn't there and it gets snuck back out. You'll notice that in your Bible when something is in big brackets and will say this was not in the earliest manuscripts we've discovered. The third reason is just logic. If you believe God picked up men like inner tube is picked up by water and carried them along like current under that tube to write something that God would say as my word, do you not think God would also then protect or preserve that in the copying process by giving those scribes special accuracy?

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So another question I have for you, how did we get the 66 books and the Bible who decided, which ones got in and why could there be a 67th book, you know, and modern upgrade to the Bible Bible 2.0, I'm going to try and answer to that in our next wordpicture.