Chuck Foreman – Teaching Pastor
When we make a statement like, “the Bible is reliable,” what we mean is that the oldest manuscripts we have available to us have been carefully compared to literally thousands of ancient copies to determine their integrity or accuracy. This is actually a literary science called textual criticism. We put all the manuscripts we have of Bible books under this type of relentless scrutiny. In other words, we’re trying to answer question, Do the copies and versions we have of the Bible accurately represent the oldest and best manuscripts of the Bible? This has actually kept the Bible from being corrupted over the centuries, contrary to what many uninformed skeptics have said. What we’ve discovered by applying the techniques of textual criticism is that our Bible is one of, if not, the best ancient work in the world, in terms of textual integrity. As far as I’m concerned, being a believer in the scientific method and a skeptic at heart, the integrity of any ancient or modern text must be determined before I will even consider its claims. Now for the real question… (more…)