Those who hate God like to insist that advancements in technology will prove that His Word is on par with tribal cultures who have passed down history through ever-changing oral traditions and rivaling accounts, thus proving its unreliability.
A recent advancement in technology, however, has become yet another stumbling block for those who wish to discredit the Bible.
According to Phys.org, writing parchment was hard to come by, which led to a common practice of erasing and writing over existing works in ancient times.
According to recent discoveries, a Palestinian scribe was found to have taken a book of the Gospels inscribed with Syriac text, which he erased and wrote over.
Advanced screening technology has revealed the original outlines of the words erased, which are in the third layer of the reused parchment.
“A medievalist from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) has now been able to make legible the lost words on this layered manuscript, a so-called palimpsest: Grigory Kessel discovered one of the earliest translations of the Gospels, made in the 3rd century and copied in the 6th century, on individual surviving pages of this manuscript. The findings are published in the journal New Testament Studies,” Phys.org reported.
The manuscript fragment “… was identified by Grigory Kessel using ultraviolet photography as the third layer of text, i.e., double palimpsest, in the Vatican Library manuscript.”
This is so far only the fourth known remnant of the Old Syriac translation of the gospels.
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This newly discovered manuscript is being considered an additional witness to the authenticity of the Bible and how it has been accurately translated throughout the centuries of human history.
Fragment of a 1,750-Year-old Assyrian New Testament Translation Discovered https://t.co/fP6wCpgMC4#greece #greek #greekcitytimes pic.twitter.com/J1AnaDulKI
— Greek City Times (@greekcitytimes) April 12, 2023
The Dead Sea Scrolls are one of the largest thorns in the side of those who dedicate themselves to denying God’s Word.
According to Logos, “Remarkably, many of these ancient scrolls closely match the medieval Masoretic Text tradition, which modern Hebrew and English Bibles are based upon, confirming the biblical text has been faithfully preserved for all these centuries.”
Claudia Rapp, who is the Director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the OeAW stated, (regarding to the hidden text), “This discovery proves how productive and important the interplay between modern digital technologies and basic research can be when dealing with medieval manuscripts,” according to Phys.org.
Cambridge University corroborated this finding in a study they released, which said, “… a discovery of a new witness to the Old Syriac version, and specifically its remarkable agreement with the Curetonianus, deserves to be studied in the context of the transmission history of the Gospel text in Syriac.”
In layman’s terms, the world, through technology, has received yet another translation of a Biblical excerpt that attests to the extremely high historical accuracy of the Bibles that are being distributed in this day and age, due to the linking of ancient and medieval transcription consistency.
The late theologian Norman Geisler posed a convincing but simple hypothetical, however, to those who quibble over the fact that modern-day Bibles may not be 100 percent accurate.
Geisler referenced Bruce Metzer’s claim that the New Testament only has a 99.5 accuracy translation percentage, as well as others who argue about the modern legitimacy of the Bibles being printed for mass consumption being discredited.
Geisler’s post poses a sentence, “Y#U HAVE WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS.”
Geisler poses the logical argument that even if there is a small error in the sentence, the idea is still easily understood, leaving little excuse to deny the entirety of the message.
I propose an even more relatable example.
Those who wish to throw out the entirety of the Bible based on a minor mistake or mistranslation are akin to those who throw out an entire email sent to them by their employer because one or two words are misspelled.
The consequences of such arrogance will be substantial in both this life and the next.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.