Defending the Manuscript Traditions of Biblical Literature

Author(s):

The third of the series “Debates of the Reliability of the Christian Bible” produced by author Erik Angus MacRae in September of 2020, this work takes on the question of whether or not the Christian Bible is reliable by endeavoring in a thorough explanation and examination of the Judeo-Christian textual preservation traditions. It describes both the preservation methodology of both the Old and New Testaments and how they differ from one another, and identifies numerous texts of extant manuscripts from which our modern translations of the Christian Bible draw. Bringing up a lecture by Daniel Wallace of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, the process of textual criticism is explained, and the nature of the textual variants existing in the New Testament manuscripts are described with an open and honest view. After this, arguments from the Islamic community are addressed; issues are pointed out in the way of inconsistencies between contemporary Islamic arguments about the preservation of the biblical text and Quranic quotations that weaken that report, and building on the case refutations are made towards both the Gnostic Gospels, and the Islamic Gospel of Barnabas, and the authority of the Judeo-Christian literature of the Holy Bible is soundly defended.