Why can you say that the New Testament passes the bibliographic test better than any other document of its time?

Answer 1

There are three lines of evidence that theologians seek to use in claiming that the biblical documents are reliable: the internal test; the external test; and the bibliographic test. The first examines the claims made by the biblical authors, the second looks to outside confirmation of the biblical content; and the third examines the biblical manuscripts. Looking briefly at each of these tests as it applies to the Bible:

The internal test

Robert P. Carroll (The World of Ancient Israel, Prophecy and society) says the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, contains the ideologically controlled documents which represent the propaganda of a small religious elite. Whatever we think of this statement, the fact that Carroll felt obliged to make it means that we have to treat the Old Testament with caution.

The claims that Paul wrote all thirteen epistles attributed to him have been discounted by a clear majority of biblical scholars. The pseudo-Pauline epistles do not support the view of the Bible as being reliable.

Although not properly part of the internal test, the claim that the gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, two of whom were actual eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus, are generally examined as part of this test. The gospels were actually written anonymously and only attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear later in the second century. The gospels themselves do not claim to have been written during the apostolic period or by the apostles, and biblical scholars are satisfied that they could not have been written by eyewitnesses to the events they portray. The gospels are too far removed, both in time and source, from the life of Jesus to be evidence of reliability.

The external test

The external test compares what the Bible says with the historical evidence.

The Old Testament is certainly better supported by the external test than is the New Testament. Although almost everything in the Book of Genesis and up until the period of the Judges is contrary to science and history, a good deal of the biblical history of the judges and the monarchies is consistent with history.

There is little in the New Testament that can be checked against history. The census under Quirinius that we find in Luke's nativity account seems to refer to the census of 6 CE, which is fine except that Luke also talks of King Herod, who died in 4 BCE. Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says the best explanation is that, although Luke likes to set his Christian drama in the context of well-known events from antiquity, sometimes he does so inaccurately. Fr. Brown also says that there is little likelihood that the genealogy in either Matthew or Luke is strictly historical.

The New Testament performs rather poorly in the external test, but much of the Old Testament performs moderately well. Overall, the Bible passes the external test better than any other test.

The bibliographic test

There is no doubt that the evidence shows that the Old Testament has changed little since the beginning of the Common Era. However, there is plentiful evidence of amendment, addition and redaction in the earlier history of the Old Testament books, many of which are no longer in the form originally written. Even more so with the New Testament, various extant manuscripts show evidence of evolution in the books of the New Testament since earliest times. So diverse are the texts that have come down to us in the various early manuscripts that have survived, that since the eighteenth century the New Testament documents have been divided into families according to the type of text which they contain. There are three of these families, namely, the Western family, the Alexandrian family, and the Traditional (Byzantine) family, as well as the Caesarean texts.

Comparison to other documents of the era

A useful comparison can be made with Antiquities of the Jews, published in 93 CE by the first-century Jewish priest, military leader and historian. This has been verified as substantially accurate, but suffers two flaws. First, it relies heavily on the Old Testament for its source, and therefore can be no more reliable than that source; second, Josephus felt the need to please his Roman masters and is now understood to have biased some of his accounts for this reason. In terms of the bibliographic test, Antiquities of the Jews has come down to us more or less as originally written, but with some minor Christian changes. There are two extant versions of the passage known as the Testamonium Flavinium, neither of which could have been original, and it is possible that the passage is entirely a late Christian forgery.

Julius Caesar's book, Commentarii de Bello Gallico(Commentaries on the Gallic War) no doubt reflects the way he wanted posterity to view his achievements in France, but it passes the bibliographic test quite well.

On this evidence it is difficult to say that the Bible as a whole passes the bibliographic test better than any other contemporary document.