Bible Education

Josh documents 24,633 manuscripts of the New Testament in his book The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict. This abundance of New Testament manuscripts gives credibility to its accuracy.

The Internal Evidence Test gives reliability, accuracy, and credibility to the New Testament. Listen as Josh explains the factors of the test and how it affirms the New Testament accounts.

Luke, the author of Acts, names 32 countries, 54 cities, 9 islands, and hundreds of details that have all been confirmed without one single error. He is one of the greatest historians of antiquity when it comes to detail, and listen why we can trust his recorded accounts.

In Luke 3:1-2, there are 22 historical references in just two verses that have been confirmed apart from the Scriptures. They have been confirmed by archaeological, historical, and literary sources.

Can you trust the details of the New Testament? While archaeology cannot prove that the Bible is the Word of God, it can confirm that the details of the Scriptures are accurate.

The External Evidence Test asks the question of a document under investigation: Are there external references, apart from the document being examined, that confirm the inner document, the details, the personalities, and the events? Are the New Testament facts affirmed by other sources? Yes. Listen to Josh explain the research!

Josh concludes with scholars that Luke is unsurpassed. The Bible is accurate and it’s been confirmed by extra Non-Biblical sources that confirm the inner testimony.

When it comes to the External Evidence Test of any historiography, the principles that determine authenticity, the New Testament stands strong. One of the most accurate Roman historians confirmed the inner testimony of the Scriptures about Christ.

Josh goes through some conclusions from Non-Biblical literature that confirms facts about Christ.

Can you hold the New Testament in your hand and say, “What I have is what was written down and has not been changed, and what was written down is true?”

Some external evidence allows for the dating of Luke’s accounts between AD 14 and AD 29.

How did Sir William Ramsey come to trust the accuracy of the New Testament? The details of Acts 19:31 helped confirm for him the reliability of Luke’s accounts.

Sir William Ramsey totally changed his opinion from thinking the New Testament was a second century document so far removed from what it talked about that it couldn’t be accurate to concluding that Luke is unsurpassed in the history that he recorded about the first century.

Sir William Ramsey was regarded as one of the world’s greatest archaeologists and topographers. He was not a Christian but used the book of Acts to aid in his topographical study of the first century. Listen to his conclusions!

Dr. Gottschalk’s defines the External Evidence Test, “Conformity or agreement with other known historical or archaeological facts is a decisive factor in determining the credibility, reliability of a document.” How does the Bible stand up to this test?

Ephesians

There are 24,633 surviving manuscripts of the New Testament. The second most copied book in history is the Iliad, which has survived with 643 manuscripts.

There has never been another book that has been persecuted more, people wanted to destroy it more and eradicate it more from the face of the Earth, than the Word of God. Yet, it has survived through so many times of persecution.

The first major book ever translated was the Bible in about 225-250 B.C. The Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. The Bible has been translated into all the languages spoken by 95% of the people in the world!

Bible Societies alone have printed over 2,582,000,000 Bibles, New Testaments, or individual Scripture portions. Do you know how unique that is?