Six Reasons Why I Believe In the Biblical Biographies of Jesus: Part Three

3. The Documentary Evidence
Were Jesus' Biographies Reliably Preserved for Us?

"These are significant questions, and they're equally relevant in examining the New Testament. When I hold a Bible in my hands, essentially I'm holding copies of the biographies of Jesus - Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John - and all the other books of the Old and New Testaments have long ago crumpled into dust. So how can I be sure that these modern-day versions - the end product of countless copying throughout the ages - bear any resemblance to what the authors originally wrote?

"In addition, how can I tell if these four biographies are telling the whole story? What if there were other biographies of Jesus that have been censored because the early church didn't like the image of Jesus they portrayed? How could I have confidence that church politics haven't squelched biographies of Jesus that were every bit as accurate as the four that were finally included in the New Testament, and that would shed important new light on the words and deeds of this controversial carpenter from Nazareth?"

~Lee Strobel

"This isn't an issue that's unique to the Bible; it's a question we can ask of other documents that have come down to us from antiquity. But what the New Testament has in its favor, especially when compared with other ancient writings, is the unprecedented multiplicity of copies that have survived. The more often you have copies that agree with each other, especially if they emerge from different geographic areas, the more you can cross-check them to figure out what the original document was like.

"We [also] have copies commencing within a couple of generations from the writing of the originals, whereas in the case of other ancient texts, maybe five, eight, or ten centuries elapsed between the original and the earliest surviving copy.

"In addition to Greek manuscripts, we also have translations of the gospels into other languages at a relatively early time - into Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. And beyond that, we have what may be called secondary translations made a little later, like Armenian and Gothic. And a lot of others - Georgian, Ethiopic, a great variety.

"Even if we had no Greek manuscripts today, by piecing together the information from these translations from a relatively early date, we could actually reproduce the contents of the New Testament. In addition to that, even if we lost all the Greek manuscripts and the early translations, we could still reproduce the contents of the New Testament from the multiplicity of quotations in commentaries, sermons, letters, and so forth of the early church fathers."

~Bruce M. Metzger, Ph.D.
Master's degree, Princeton Theological Seminary
Master's degree, Princeton University
Doctorate, Princeton University
Honorary doctorate, St. Andrews University
Honorary doctorate, University of Munster
Honorary doctorate, Potchefstroom University
Professor emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary