2.3 The Reliability of the New Testament Documents
How sure can we be that what we read is what the original authors wrote? It's a common claim that the New Testament documents (a) were based on oral traditions that were intrinsically unreliable, and (b) were hand-copied (not printed), so errors would have crept in. As a result, they have been corrupted in transmission, so they are unreliable.
The key questions are:
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How many different copies do we have?
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How close in time are the copies we do have to the originals?
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How much variation is there between these copies?
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