Legal Evidence and the Bible

1 Thess. 5:21 (ESV)  Test all things; hold fast what is good.

This past week I was speaking with a man who doubted (to say the least) the reliability of the New Testament.  Usually, this is because folks don’t like the message: it holds them accountable.  So, I started to give evidence of the scholarly support for the New Testament documents.  He wouldn’t believe any of the evidence I gave, but as I looked for something he would accept, I came across the following.  It quotes a rule from the Cornell Law School describing what is needed to consider an ancient document qualified to be used as evidence in a court of law:

“Under the rule, if a document is (1) more than 20 years old; (2) is regular on its face with no signs of obvious alterations; and (3) found in a place of natural custody, or in a place where it would be expected to be found, then the document is found to be prima facie authenticated and therefore admissible.”

I applied this rule to the evidence for the New Testament documents and thought the readers of this blog might be interested.  Let’s see how the New Testament documents fair:

1.  “More than 20 years old.”  Well the New Testament certainly qualifies for this.  The earliest New Testament manuscript we have in our hands dates to 1900 years ago. It’s the John Ryland’s papyri.
2. “Is regular on its face with no signs of obvious alterations.”  Again, the earliest manuscripts can be checked by others of the more than 5,000 Greek copies of the New Testament we have in our possession to make sure the early ones were not altered.
3. “Found in a place of natural custody, or in a place where it would be expected to be found.”  The earliest copy of the complete New Testament was found in a monastery and another near the same age was found in the Vatican Library, exactly where we would expect to find New Testament documents: in church’s possession. The earliest documents were found in Egypt where the climate is conducive to preservation of the materials upon which these documents were written. The church was powerful early on in Egypt, so we should expect to find copies of the documents there.

“Then the document is found to be prima facie authenticated and therefore admissible.”  What more can we say.  According to the ancient document rule of a secular and excellent school of law, the New Testament documents are so what they appear to be to the extent they qualify to be used as evidence in a court of law.

Why is this important?

We should get a couple of things from this. First, we should obey Scripture and test everything. God leaves nothing out of “everything,” even His Word. We can test God’s Word and find it to be true even by secular legal standards.

The second point is the fellow I mentioned earlier, the one I was talking with about the reliability of the New Testament documents, refused to accept even the Cornell Rule for judging the reliability of ancient documents. he was set on the idea the Bible has no support and decided to accept that fallacious assumption as the foundation for any discussion. Some people are like this. Only the Holy Spirit can get through to them.

Prov. 2:8-15 (ESV)  Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path; ¹⁰ for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; ¹¹  discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.

Some people are just this way, they love to dispute truth at any cost mentally or logically.  When we I reach this point in a conversation, when someone starts to deny logic in order to keep their beliefs, I find it frustrating and pointless to continue the discussion.  I will sometimes leave them with a Bible verse and “kick the dust from my feet.”  I’ll ask them to contact me when they accept logical arguments but not until then.  In this case, the man got vulgar.  I have a policy of discontinuing such conversations.  If you want to discuss something with me, you need to be civil.

Some, unfortunately, are just out there to fight the gospel.  Be prepared to meet them if you haven’t already.