There are well over 5,000 handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament in the original Greek. Some of these are complete New Testaments or even complete Bibles. Others contain collections of New Testament books (the four gospels, the letters of Paul, the writings of...
Bible Translation History: Unlike religions such as Islam, where the Quran is only truly the Quran in the original Arabic, Biblical Christianity has always believed that God's word can and should be translated into the common languages of all men. In any language in...
Yes, we should believe in Scripture above Church Tradition and Church Councils. Only Scripture is inspired (2 Tim. 3:16). Tradition is never said to be inspired, and church councils are filled with people who have made mistakes. Some church councils approve a doctrine...
It is becoming increasingly common today for people to ask if the Bible is necessary for Christianity. Now, if all you mean is, "can someone be saved without reading or even having access to a Bible," then the answer is, of course, that they can. When the gospel...
Nomina Sacra, or "Sacred Names," are abbreviations that were used in early Christian manuscripts to mark out certain common names or titles related to God in general and Jesus Christ specifically. For example, words like "theos" (God), "kurious" (Lord), "Christos"...
Yes, from the earliest years of the church the New Testament was understood to be Scripture. There is evidence of this not only in the earliest Christian writings and artifacts but even in the New Testament itself! Because the different books of the New Testament were...
No, the "Shepherd of Hermas," was never part of the New Testament and should not be considered scripture. In the early church, there was a very popular book known as "The Shepherd" by a man named Hermas (today, the book is generally referred to as "The Shepherd of...
You will often hear from critics that there is no complete list of the 27 New Testament books all in one place prior to the 4th century and the time of the ecumenical church councils. Even if this were true, one does not need to produce a list to demonstrate that the...
Higher criticism, which is also known as the historical-critical method, is a method of examining the Bible that seeks to discover what was originally meant in the various documents as they were penned in their culture and time. This approach assumes a secular...
When we ask which Bible is the word of God, we have to say all of them. You see, Bibles are translations into a particular language from the original Hebrew and Greek. Yes, there are different ways of translating. Some translations tend to be more wooden in that they...