Bible Quote by Douglas M. Beaumont
““When it comes to the New Testament, we can be confident we are reading from accurate sources, because we have so many ancient copies to compare. For many ancient texts there are only a handful of manuscripts in existence. We have only nine or ten good copies of Julius Caesar’s The Gallic Wars. The best-preserved, non-biblical ancient writing we have is Homer’s Iliad, of which there are only 643 copies. Compare these numbers to the New Testament, which is based on nearly six thousand Greek manuscripts plus over nine thousand ancient copies in other languages. If that were not enough, even if all of these copies were lost, we could reconstruct all but eleven verses of the New Testament from ancient quotations of the Bible.””
About This Quote
Source Article: Historical Textual Criticism, 2020
The New Testament’s reliability is supported by an extensive manuscript tradition, far surpassing other ancient works.
In simple terms: Many copies make the New Testament trustworthy.
Key Takeaway
Trust the New Testament’s textual stability.
Themes
history
reliability
manuscripts
Mood
analytical
informative
Type
scholarly
educational
When to use this quote
- academic research
- faith discussions
- education
- publishing
Key Concepts
textual criticism
source verification
historical methodology
Questions to Reflect On
- How does textual variance affect meaning?
- What role do translations play in understanding?
A Different Perspective
Manuscript quantity doesn’t guarantee interpretive accuracy.
![“I have argued elsewhere (Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence [2005]) that we need to treat ethics in biblical texts just as we treat ethics in any other works of ancient literature. It is a vacuous exercise to pick and choose which atrocities were really ordained by any gods and…” quote by Hector Avalos](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ebe/hector-avalos-91785_ancient-literature_i-have-argued-elsewhere-fighting-words-t_2573037.jpg)
