Hi I was wondering if we only have a portion of the orginal manuscript for the gospels then how did we get the rest of it and how is it accurate - I know the bible is true btw I’m just wondering
Thanks
Copies were created through the centuries. Don’t over focus on the Bible, though.
It’s helpful to keep a 10,000 ft. view of the whole of Divine Revelation. (A good, relatively short read would be to read the Church’s Constitution on Divine Revelation - Dei Verbum. It’s only about six chapters, I think, and explains the Church’s viewpoint of Divine Revelation. It’s not just the Bible.
When Jesus walked the earth, He never wrote a book. Nor did He tell anyone else to write a book. He taught orally. They called Him “Rabbi,” which means teacher. He selected 12 Apostles and taught them for the better part of three years…orally. He promised to send the Holy Spirit to lead this Church into all truth and to remain with this Church till the end of time.
So, it wasn’t a book that Jesus left us to learn His truths. It was the Church. The Catholic Church (since there was no other for the first 1000 years of Christianity). The Apostles taught Jesus’ truth orally at first. This oral teaching is called Sacred Tradition (the word “Tradition” here is not to be confused with our word for “tradition,” meaning mere customs.). Eventually, the Apostles started dying off and SOME of what was being taught orally was written down. (Not ALL, but SOME. See John 21:25.) Those writings eventually found their way into the New Testament in the fourth century. Before then, most teaching was oral because the vast majority of people, worldwide, could neither read nor write. (It’s only been since the late 1800’s/early 1900’s, that mankind as been interested in universal literacy .) When the Pope and the Magesterium (the bishops in union with the Pope) met at the Councils of Hippo (393 A.D.) and Carthage (397 A.D.) to decide which books were divinely inspired and which were not, they had over 300 books and letters that were considered worthy of consideration. Of these, only 27 made the cut into the New Testament.
The Old Testament was another story. The Catholic Old Testament differs from the Protestant Old Testament. Why? Because before Christ, the Jews mostly wrote Scripture in Hebrew. But Egypt, the bread basket of the Mediterranean area, had a very large contingent of Jews who were engaged in commerce, etc. They spoke the common language of the Mediterranean, Greek, and requested a Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures. So, one was translated. The Greek version was called the septuagent. Approximately 80% of the direct and indirect references to the Old Testament in the New Testament came from the Septuagent version, not the Hebrew version. So, that’s what was used from the beginning for Christians. The Jews, in the late 1st, early 2nd century, decided that they needed a canon for their Scriptures, so they had a council and made one. One of the criteria was that only Sciptures written in Hebrew, written on Hebrew soil, would be used. This would get rid of some of the books of the Septuagent, which the early Christians were using to convert Jews to Christianity (which didn’t sit to well with them). When Martin Luther came along in the early 1500’s, he replaced the Septuagent version with the Hebrew version. One of the reasons is that 2 Macc. 12:46 supported the doctrine of Purgatory, with which he disagreed.
