WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?
by Ernest O'Neill
Bible Documents vs. Ancient Manuscripts
Program 43
We've been talking about the one messenger from outer space that our planet has ever received or encountered. Of course, His name is a name that all of us have known since we were children. Yet, it's a name that tells us more about the origin of our world than any other name.
It's the name of the one human being that has been able to leave our planet, go out into space beyond where our space shots go and actually encounter the Supreme Being that created our universe, come back and tell us what He is like, why He made us, and what the point of this whole life here on earth is.
That man is, of course, the man Jesus. We've been talking about the fact that He is a historical figure. He is not a myth. He is a historical figure more reliably recorded, as far as His actions and His words are concerned, than either Julius Caesar or any of the great figures of that era.
The history that we have of Him is found in the last quarter of the book that we call the BIBLE. It's actually the part called the New Testament. That is far from being just religious myth. That is actually good reliable history. We have been talking about how we can trust that the people that wrote that history did actually observe the things that they wrote about.
They can be relied upon and their word can be trusted because, in fact, they died for the things they wrote about. There were many other eye-witnesses alive at the same time who observed the same events and read their accounts. There was no public outcry that their accounts were lies or were inventions. Rather, they were accepted as the truth.
We've come to the point where we see that it is quite reasonable to believe that these men were actually alive when they saw these events they recorded in the last quarter of the book we call the BIBLE. What many of us have had trouble with is the fact that this all occurred so many years ago.
I remember thinking myself, "Well, wait a minute. This occurred in the first century. That was two thousand years ago. Now, maybe these men did write the truth about those days. But, how can we be sure that somebody hasn't tampered with it since?" Of course, that's the problem you run up against in regard to most of our classical authors.
We read Caesar's history of the Gallic War, and we have no doubt what we're reading is actually what occurred in those days. Yet, the amazing fact is this, that Caesar's Gallic Wars actually record events that took place between 100 and 44 B.C. The first manuscript we have of the history of the Gallic Wars is, would you believe it, not 22 B.C. which would be 20 years after the events, not even 100 A.D. which would be one hundred twenty years after the events; not even 500 A.D., which would be 520 years after the events. The first manuscript that we have, the earliest manuscript that we have still in existence of Caesar's Gallic Wars is dated 900 A.D.
Yet, all of us who have studied Latin, who have studied Roman history, have absolute confidence that when we read Caesar's history of the Gallic Wars, we are reading what actually took place in those days. In spite of the fact there are one thousand years, a period of a thousand years, that has elapsed between when Caesar actually wrote his original manuscript, and the manuscript that we have, came into existence.
During that time, of course, you have one thousand years when long ago people had died who had observed the Gallic Wars, and there have been thousands and millions of people who lived in the interval, any one of whom could have got Caesar's original manuscript, and changed it and created all kinds of imaginary myths.
Yet, we do not question for a moment that what we read of the Gallic Wars, is what Caesar actually wrote, in spite of the fact that we don't have his original manuscript, we don't even have the manuscript that was copied from his; we don't even have the manuscript that was copied from that copy of his.
We don't even have a manuscript that was written within a hundred years of his life or death. We don't even have a manuscript that was written within four hundred years of the Gallic Wars. Our earliest manuscript was actually written in 900 A.D...a thousand years after the Gallic Wars were fought.
Yet we have no doubt in our minds that when we read the history of the Gallic Wars we are reading what Caesar actually wrote. Now, it's the same with most of the other classical authors. There is a vast gap between the manuscript that they originally wrote and the earliest manuscript we that we have.
In other words, you know that in those days we did not have paper. We had a thing called papyrus and a thing called vellum (animal skin) and then this papyrus (made out of reeds). None of them were very permanent. They all deteriorated with age.
It was the normal pattern that scribes would copy the old manuscript onto new papyrus or the old manuscript onto new vellum and then would automatically destroy the old manuscript. That's part of the reason why we have so few early manuscripts of the history books of those ancient days.
It's the same you know with Plato's REPUBLIC. Probably none of us who studied philosophy at university have failed to study Plato's REPUBLIC. We all regard his REPUBLIC as a base text in Philosophy I. It is what everyone reads.
We have no doubt that when we read Plato's REPUBLIC we read actually what he wrote. And we're reading Socrates and he thought. And yet Plato's REPUBLIC was written somewhere between 427 and 347 B.C. That's when Plato lived. So, Plato's REPUBLIC was written somewhere about 400 B.C.
Now, do we have his original manuscript? No. Do we have the manuscript that was copied from his? No. Do we have another manuscript? No. Do we have another manuscript that was written within 200 years of his life? No. Do we have one that was written within 400 years? No.
The earliest manuscript that we have of Plato's REPUBLIC is dated 900 A.D., dated by carbon dating which is reliable within a thousand or two thousand years. It becomes unreliable after you get into what you call tens of thousands of years or millions of years, but it's reliable in regard to a thousand or two thousand years. That dates the earliest manuscript of Plato's REPUBLIC at 900 A.D.
He wrote the REPUBLIC in 400 B.C. So, 1200 or 1300 years have elapsed between when he wrote his original manuscript and when this manuscript that we have in our hands, in one of our libraries, came into existence.
In other words, there were twelve or thirteen-hundred years during which anyone could have gotten Plato's original manuscript and changed it in all kinds of ways and re-written it and re-created the whole theory and the philosophy. Yet, not one of us in our philosophy classes questions that when we read Plato's REPUBLIC today, we're reading the actual manuscript that he wrote 1500 to 2500 years ago.
So, that's the kind of evidence that we have for ancient manuscripts and ancient histories. What kind of manuscript evidence have we for the New Testament history? Can we be sure what they wrote in those days about Jesus is actually what we're reading today? Let's talk about that tomorrow