Dr. Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary is a leading Bible document scholar and author of standard Greek language textbooks. For quite some time he has been a leader in an effort to find, list, and make public all Bible manuscripts. His website posts as many photographs of Bible manuscripts as the owners’ will allow, and lists all the known documents in library form. Thefore Wallace keeps track of all new discoveries of Bible manuscripts, which is an ongoing task given the fact that archaeologists uncover new manuscripts regularly.
Wallace has just announced an amazing new discovery. A fragment of one of the gospels has been unearthed that is perhaps the oldest existing New Testament manuscript. This fragment is said to date to the first century, which would put it within the lifetime of many of the eyewitnesses of the resurrection. You can read Wallace’s blog post on this discovery here.
Prior to this discovery, the oldest existing discovery has been the John Rylands Fragment, which is significant evidence for the truth of Christianity. You can read about it here.
As Wallace states, we now have 18 New Testament documents from the second century and one from the first, which added together make up 43% of the New Testament verses. The Bible is supported better than anything in ancient history, by a wide margin.
As always, the evidence for the authenticity of the Bible continues to pile up, even while critics and skeptics do also.
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