Have you ever wondered about whether we have the message of the New Testament? Do we have the original documents written by Paul, Peter, John, and the other writers? How do we KNOW for certain?
Well, one thing that we must acknowledge is that the autographs, the original writings of these books, are probably gone; either they were destroyed by a person or just deteriorated by time, or they are lost and there is no way to determine if they are the originals or not. How is one to determine whether you have the original? Do we know what James' handwriting looked like, or do we have a sample of Luke's signature? The existence of either is highly unlikely.
Having said that, there are copies of the books of the New Testament (and the Old Testament!) that we have access to. In fact, there are over 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament alone! Imagine, 5,000!!! If you compare this to the copies of the manuscripts of ancient philosophers and historians, the number of copies of the ancient works of Tacitus number a high of 2! Thucydides has only 8! And yet the New Testament books have over 5,000! Pretty amazing.
You would think with that number of copies there would make several errors. While there ARE errors, most are simple spelling errors similar to our mistaking homonyms (words which have the same pronunciation but have a different spelling) for one another. Just like we mistake "their" for "there" or "they're", spelling errors came into the copies of the New Testament books.
In addition to errors in hearing, errors in sight could occur. If a scribe was copying a manuscript late at night by candlelight, due to fatigue or his haste to finish his work he might skip a word, or even a line or two of the manuscript he is copying. Some manuscripts have this error as well.
The previous two errors are unintentional, but what is called intentional changes also occur. Sometimes a scribe or religious teacher who wanted to prove a teaching or belief of his would add something to the manuscript he was copying, or he would change the words. This caused errors as well, but usually this sort of error is easy to spot.
Scholars have counted up the errors and determined that less than 5% of the New Testament has possible changes. That is a small percentage! Most of these changes are minor, such as spelling errors, and do not change the overall meanings of the passages they record. Imagine! Scholars are also able to look at these errors and compare them to find what was most likely the original reading based on the above mentioned possible errors.
What does this mean for us? Well, the documents that we have speak for themselves. When scholars put them together and compare the differences they find what was most likely the original wording of the New Testament message. Ultimately though, there is a certain level of faith that we must put into the equation. Though there are so many manuscripts available, the fact remains that we do not have the originals by the authors who wrote them. However, the copies of this book, which date anywhere from the end of the first century all the way to 17th century and later, all agree in 95% of the message recorded! There is a great amount of evidence which can influence people to believe in the message recorded within the pages of this great book!
