Question: How many Old Testament documents do we have today and how reliable are they?
Answer:
Josh McDowell in New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, categorises in detail the thousands of manuscripts we have available today around the world, that attest to the validity of the N.T.
In comparison to what we might expect, there are a limited number of such manuscripts for the O.T.
The reason suggested for this limitation is that of age – 2 or 3 thousand years is a long time to expect a document to last – and destructibility of materials.
However, beyond those two reasons, a primary reason was to do with the destruction of documents when they became damaged.
To understand this more fully it is useful to understand how documents came down us:
1. An original author wrote on clay, rock (early materials), papyrus (most common material, made from reeds), or parchments (later usage, made from animal skins) or vellum (calf skin, often dyed purple).
2. Copies would be made – and here the detail should be noted:
- So concerned were the ancient scribes over the copying accuracy of sacred documents that they wouldn’t write even one letter from memory, only from what they had immediately in front of them.
- To achieve accuracy they even counted every letter on a line and checked it with the original.
- They numbered lines and words and letters to ensure accuracy.
- If they made a single mistake they destroyed the copy and started again!
- When a new copy was guaranteed perfect, they would destroy the old one because physical damage gradually occurring might mean mistakes in reading it.
Our earliest complete O.T. manuscript comes from the 10th century AD. although we have plenty of older fragments.
Unlike the New Testament documents, it is really impossible to trace back to the originals. The finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 changed things considerably however.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of scrolls dating from between 3rd Century BC through to the 1st century AD.
To quote McDowell, “They include one complete Old Testament book (Isaiah) and thousands of fragments, which together represent every Old Testament book except Esther,” and these have been used to confirm the evidence of thousands of other documentary fragments that reveal the O.T.
