I've spent several months researching and writing about Textual Variants (and I spent six months before that researching New Testament manuscripts) to bring me to this point: What is New Testament Textual Criticism? New Testament Textual Criticism (NTTC) is not about criticizing the New Testament, but uses the word criticism in the sense of careful study.
Criticism: the work or activity of making fair, careful judgements...
Last week I wrote about What are Unintentional Textual Variants?, and this week I want to focus on intentional changes scribes made to the New Testament text.
Intentional changes are often harder to detect than unintentional changes. A spelling mistake should be easy to detect, unless the new word it produces is a legitimate word, and one that make sense in context. The author of an intentional change will try to make the change fit into...
In my last article, How Many New Testament Manuscripts Exist?, I showed there are over 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts that have been cataloged. Scholars also know of over 20,000 manuscripts in other languages, about half of them in Latin. There are also undoubtedly thousands of manuscripts in private collections, churches and libraries which are effectively lost to the academic world and haven't been studied.
Unfortunately, there...
I've been wanting to write about the number of New Testament Manuscripts for a while, but I haven't been able to find the types of resource I thought would be available. In my article What is the Gregory-Aland Numbering System?, I showed the most common system scholars use to track Greek New Testament manuscripts and fragments, but there are probably many fragments which haven't been submitted to the...
Christianity is based on historical events. Throughout the Bible, there were eyewitnesses to events, and those people reported what happened. The Gospels, in particular, have extra-Biblical sources which help confirm their accuracy. First century non-Christian historians who refer to events in the Gospels include Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Tacitus, Thallus, and Emperor Trajan.
The testimonies...
I recently finished reading the book Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth
for a Skeptical World by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell. I've known of
the book for years, and had someone recommend it to me years ago, but kept
putting off reading it. Now that I'm writing a blog, I need to research the
questions I have. This seemed like a good time to read a classic book on
Christian Apologetics.
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