Defending the Christian Faith in Conversation with Islam — Unit 9: The Reliability of the New Testament

Key Verse

"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." (Isaiah 40:8, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain why the reliability of the New Testament matters in conversation with Muslims.

2. Describe the number and age of the New Testament manuscripts, including P52 and the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

3. Explain in simple words what textual criticism is and why the many variants do not destroy our confidence in the text.

4. Show that the New Testament books were written early, within the lifetime of people who knew Jesus.

5. Present the New Testament's claim to rest on eyewitness testimony, and use this evidence with gentleness in conversation.

Why This Question Matters

In the last unit we studied the Islamic teaching called tahrif, the claim that the Jews and Christians changed or corrupted their Scriptures. Many Muslims have been taught from childhood that the Bible we read today is not the same as the Gospel (in Arabic, the Injil) that God gave to Jesus. When a Christian opens the New Testament to show a Muslim friend who Jesus is, the friend may answer, "That book has been changed. I cannot trust it."

This unit answers that objection with evidence. We do not ask our Muslim friends simply to take our word for it. We ask them to look at the history: how many copies of the New Testament exist, how old they are, how scholars compare them, when the books were first written, and who wrote them. The facts are public. Muslim, Christian and sceptical scholars can all examine the same manuscripts in libraries and museums around the world.

This matters for the pastor in two ways. First, it protects our own people. A church member who hears on the radio or on social media that "the Bible was rewritten" needs to know that this claim is not true, and why. Second, it opens a door. A Muslim who discovers that the New Testament has been carefully preserved may become willing to read it for himself. Then the Word of God can do its own work in his heart (Hebrews 4:12).

What Does "Reliable" Mean?

When we say the New Testament is reliable, we mean several connected things. It helps to separate them, because a Muslim friend may raise one question while thinking of another.

• Transmission: Has the text been copied faithfully from the first writings to the Bibles we read today?

• Date: Were the books written close to the events they describe, or many generations later?

• Source: Do the books come from eyewitnesses, or from people who knew eyewitnesses?

This unit deals mainly with these three questions. The deeper Christian conviction is that the Scriptures are inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). But in conversation with a Muslim we usually begin with history, because history is ground we can stand on together. A Muslim believes that God sent down the Injil; the historical question is whether the New Testament we hold is a faithful witness to Jesus and His apostles.

The Manuscript Evidence

A manuscript is a copy written by hand. Before the printing press came to Europe in the fifteenth century, every copy of every book was written by hand. The original writings of the apostles, which scholars call the autographs, have not survived; they were written on materials such as papyrus, which wears out with use. The same is true for every ancient book. What we have are copies, and copies of copies. The question is how many copies we have, how early they are, and how well they agree.

How Many Manuscripts?

The New Testament was written in Greek. Today the official list kept by scholars has about 5,700 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, whole or in part. Some items on the list have since been lost or were counted twice, so the number of surviving manuscripts is a little lower. Some are small fragments with a few verses; others contain the entire New Testament. New manuscripts are still being found, so the exact number keeps changing.

Besides the Greek manuscripts, the New Testament was translated very early into other languages, such as Latin, Syriac and Coptic (the language of Christians in Egypt). There are around ten thousand Latin manuscripts alone. On top of this, the early Christian writers, often called the church fathers, quoted the New Testament so often in their letters, sermons and commentaries that a very large part of it could be rebuilt from their quotations alone.

Compare this with other books from the ancient world. Many important Greek and Latin works survive in only a handful of copies, and often the earliest copy was made many centuries after the author lived. For example, the major surviving manuscripts of the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus come from the Middle Ages, more than seven hundred years after he wrote. Yet historians use these works with confidence. By that same standard, the New Testament is the best-attested book of the ancient world.

• About 5,700 Greek manuscripts listed, whole or partial

• Thousands of early translations in Latin, Syriac, Coptic and other languages

• A vast number of quotations in the writings of the early church fathers

The Earliest Papyri

Papyrus is a writing material made from a reed that grows along the Nile River. The earliest New Testament manuscripts are written on papyrus, and scholars name them with the letter P and a number.

The most famous small fragment is P52, kept at the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England. It is a piece of a page about the size of a palm, with a few verses from John 18 on both sides, from Jesus' trial before Pilate. Scholars usually date it to the second century, often to roughly AD 125 to 175. Even at the later date, this small piece shows that the Gospel of John was being copied and carried to Egypt within a few generations of the apostles.

Other important papyri contain much more text. P46, from around AD 200, contains most of Paul's letters. P66, from around the same time, contains much of the Gospel of John. P75, from around AD 175 to 225, contains large parts of Luke and John. When scholars compare P75 with later manuscripts, they find that the text of Luke and John was copied with remarkable care over the following centuries.

The Great Codices: Sinaiticus and Vaticanus

A codex (plural codices) is a book with pages, like our books today, rather than a scroll. Early Christians were among the first to use the codex widely. Two great codices are especially important.

Codex Sinaiticus was found in the nineteenth century at Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt. It was written in the fourth century, around AD 350, and contains the complete New Testament in Greek, along with much of the Old Testament. Today most of it is in the British Library in London, and photographs of every page can be viewed by anyone. Codex Vaticanus, kept in the Vatican Library in Rome, is from the same century, perhaps a little earlier, and contains most of the Bible.

Here is the key point for our conversation. Muhammad was born around AD 570, and Muslims date the first revelation of the Qur'an to around AD 610. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus were written more than two hundred years before Muhammad was born. The papyri are older still. We can open these manuscripts and read the Gospels exactly as Christians read them long before Islam began. They tell the same story we read today: Jesus is the Son of God, He was crucified, and He rose from the dead.

This connects with what we learned in Unit 8. The Qur'an tells the Christians of Muhammad's day to judge by what God revealed in the Gospel (Qur'an 5:47). If the Gospel they had then was the true Gospel, and if our Gospel matches the manuscripts from centuries before Muhammad, then our Gospel is the one the Qur'an itself pointed to.

Textual Criticism Explained Simply

Textual criticism sounds like an attack on the Bible, but it is not. The word "criticism" here means careful judgment. Textual criticism is the study of manuscripts in order to find the original wording of a text. Scholars use it for every ancient book, including the Qur'an and the works of Greek philosophers.

Here is a simple illustration. Imagine a pastor writes a letter and sends it to ten churches. Each church makes copies and sends them to other churches. Over the years one copier spells a word differently, another skips a line by accident, a third adds a word to make the meaning clearer. The original letter is lost. But if you collect hundreds of copies from many places and compare them, you can usually see where a mistake entered and what the original said. The more copies you have, and the earlier they are, the easier this becomes. This is exactly the situation of the New Testament.

Because there are so many manuscripts, there are also many differences between them, which scholars call variants. A Muslim speaker may say, "There are hundreds of thousands of errors in the New Testament!" It is true that the number of variants is large. But this is because the number of manuscripts is large. A book with only three copies would have few variants, but we would know much less about its original text.

Most variants fall into a few simple types:

• Differences in spelling, like the difference between "colour" and "color"

• Changes in word order, which in Greek usually do not change the meaning

• Words accidentally skipped or repeated by a tired copier

• Small additions, such as writing "the Lord Jesus Christ" instead of "Jesus"

The great majority of variants are of these kinds and make no difference to the meaning. A very small number are larger and meaningful. The best-known examples are the longer ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20) and the account of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). These are not hidden. Most modern Bibles mark them with a note, and every pastor can see them. And importantly, no doctrine of the Christian faith depends on a disputed passage. The deity of Christ, His death and His resurrection are taught again and again throughout the New Testament, in passages that are firmly established.

Even Bart Ehrman, a well-known sceptical scholar who has written popular books about these variants, agrees that most of them are minor, such as spelling and word order. When Christians speak honestly about variants, it strengthens their witness. We have nothing to hide. The evidence is open for anyone to examine.

There is one more important difference. In the history of the New Testament, no single ruler or council gathered all the copies, chose one form and destroyed the others. Copies spread in many directions, to Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Rome and beyond, and no one could control them all. This is why scholars can compare independent lines of manuscripts from different regions. When manuscripts from distant places agree, we can be confident that they preserve what was there from the beginning. A Muslim friend may respect his own tradition's emphasis on one standard text; we can explain, respectfully, that the New Testament was preserved in a different way, through many witnesses rather than one.

How Early Were the New Testament Books Written?

A second question is how close the books are to the events. Jesus was crucified around AD 30 or 33. Most scholars, including many who are not believers, agree that Paul's letters were written in the AD 40s, 50s and 60s, within twenty to thirty-five years of the cross. First Thessalonians, one of the earliest, is usually dated around AD 50. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, written in the mid-50s, Paul passes on a summary of the gospel that he himself had "received" earlier, as we saw in Unit 7. This takes us back to within a few years of the resurrection.

The Gospels and Acts were also written in the first century. Many scholars date Mark to the 60s and Matthew, Luke and John to the following decades. Some conservative scholars point out that the book of Acts ends with Paul still alive, under house arrest in Rome, around AD 62. It does not mention his death, the death of Peter, or the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This may suggest that Acts, and therefore the Gospel of Luke written before it, was finished before those events.

Whichever dates one prefers, the important point is the same. The New Testament was written while many people who had seen and heard Jesus were still alive. They could correct false stories. By contrast, the earliest full biography of Muhammad that we have, by Ibn Ishaq, was written about a century after his death and survives mainly in the later edition of Ibn Hisham, as we saw in Unit 2. We do not mention this to mock, but to help a Muslim friend apply the same historical standard to both traditions.

Eyewitness Testimony

The New Testament does not present itself as a collection of religious sayings that appeared from nowhere. Its writers say again and again that they are reporting what they saw, or what eyewitnesses told them.

• Luke says he carefully investigated everything from the beginning, using accounts handed down by "eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:1-4).

• John writes of "that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes" (1 John 1:1).

• Peter says the apostles "were eyewitnesses of His majesty" (2 Peter 1:16).

• John's Gospel says its witness was present and that "his testimony is true" (John 19:35; 21:24).

• Paul says that most of the more than five hundred who saw the risen Christ were still living when he wrote (1 Corinthians 15:6).

Early Christian tradition supports this picture. Papias, a church leader writing in the early second century, said that Mark wrote down the preaching of Peter. In recent years the scholar Richard Bauckham has argued in detail that the Gospels were based on the testimony of named eyewitnesses who were known in the churches.

The Gospels also show signs of honest reporting. They include details that the writers would not have invented if they were simply making up a story to impress people. The disciples are often slow to understand and they run away when Jesus is arrested. Peter denies Jesus three times. Women are the first witnesses of the empty tomb, even though in that culture their testimony was often given less weight. These "embarrassing" details are signs that the writers were telling what happened, not what they wished had happened.

The places, rulers and customs mentioned in the Gospels and Acts also fit what historians and archaeologists know of first-century Palestine and the Roman world. Luke names governors, cities and officials accurately. This is what we would expect from writers close to the events.

Build on Strong Evidence, Not Slogans

It is easy to tell a Muslim friend, "The Bible has never been changed," but that slogan is not precise enough. Manuscripts differ in spelling and wording, and sometimes in longer passages. Textual criticism compares these copies, finds the variants and explains why one reading is preferred to another. The fact that variants exist does not prove that the Gospel message was lost, but we should not hide the variants either. Pastors should keep two questions apart: how a book was first written, and how it was later copied.

When you speak about who Jesus is, build on passages that have wide support in the manuscripts, not on a single disputed verse or on an argument that needs one modern translation. Peter's confession in Matthew 16, Jesus forgiving sins in Mark 2, His answer about the Son of Man in Mark 14, the opening of John's Gospel and the early creed Paul passes on in 1 Corinthians 15 together make a strong case. Say clearly what each source shows and what we conclude from it. The goal is evidence that stands up to careful questions, not an impressive list of numbers.

Bringing It to the Conversation with Muslims

How should a pastor use this evidence? Remember the posture of 1 Peter 3:15: we give a reason for our hope "with meekness and fear." The goal is not to win an argument but to remove an obstacle, so that a Muslim friend will read the Gospel for himself.

A helpful question to ask is this: "When do you believe the Bible was corrupted?" As we saw in Unit 8, if the answer is "before Muhammad," then the Qur'an's call to the Christians of that time to judge by their Gospel becomes hard to explain. If the answer is "after Muhammad," then the manuscripts from long before Muhammad, such as Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, show that the text has not been changed in a way that alters its message. Many Muslims have never thought about this question. Ask it gently and give your friend time to think.

Many Muslims also believe that God's words cannot be changed. The Qur'an says that no one can change the words of God (see Qur'an 6:115 and 10:64). A Christian can respectfully ask: "If no one can change God's words, and God gave the Gospel to Jesus, how could people corrupt it?" This is not a trick. It is an honest question that invites a Muslim to think about what his own book teaches.

Here are some practical steps:

• Learn a few simple facts well: about 5,700 Greek manuscripts, P52 from the second century, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus from the fourth century, long before Muhammad.

• Admit honestly that variants exist, and explain what kinds they are.

• Ask questions rather than making speeches. Let your friend discover the evidence.

• Offer a Gospel to read, perhaps beginning with Luke or John, and offer to read it together.

• Pray. Evidence can remove a barrier, but only the Holy Spirit can open the heart (John 16:8).

Finally, teach these things to your congregation. Many Christians in Africa and Latin America have heard that their Bible has been changed and have no answer. A short series of teachings on how we got the New Testament can strengthen their faith and give them confidence to share it. The aim is not to make every member a scholar, but to help every member know that the Book in their hands is trustworthy.

Summary

The New Testament is the best-preserved book of the ancient world. About 5,700 Greek manuscripts are listed, along with thousands of early translations and countless quotations by the church fathers. Early papyri such as P52, P46, P66 and P75 take us back to the second and early third centuries, and the great codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus give us the complete or nearly complete New Testament from the fourth century, more than two hundred years before Muhammad was born. Textual criticism compares these manuscripts to recover the original wording; most variants are minor, the few significant ones are openly marked, and no doctrine depends on them. Build the case on passages with wide manuscript support, such as Matthew 16, Mark 2 and 14, John 1 and 1 Corinthians 15, rather than on a single number. The books were written in the first century, while eyewitnesses were alive, and they claim to rest on eyewitness testimony. With this evidence, and with gentleness and respect, a pastor can answer the charge of corruption and invite Muslim friends to read the Gospel for themselves.

Questions for Reflection

1. Have you or members of your church heard that "the Bible has been changed"? How did you respond, and how would you respond now?

2. Why is the large number of variants actually a sign of strength rather than weakness for the New Testament?

3. How would you explain the importance of Codex Sinaiticus to a Muslim neighbour in two or three simple sentences?

4. Which eyewitness passage in this unit speaks most strongly to you, and why?

5. How could you teach your congregation about the reliability of the New Testament in a way that strengthens their faith and their witness?

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