The Bible is Reliable (part 2)

In the previous post you may have seen the words "Septuagint" and "Masoretic."  The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Old Testament writings.  Jewish scholars finished it more than 100 years before Jesus was born.  There are existing fragments of Septuagint manuscripts dating back to that time.

The Masoretic text is the Old Testament in Hebrew.  Its oldest manuscripts still around today date to the 800s and 900s AD.  There aren't earlier ones because worn-out copies were destroyed.

Then there's the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date to around 100BC, around a thousand years before the extant copies of the Masoretic text. Interestingly, there are few variations between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic and most are differences in spelling or word order.  This fact defeated my fear that Bible books were transmitted like the old party game of telephone.

Okay, just looking at Old Testament manuscripts, let's see what's available and then compare that to other ancient literature:

Version	Examples	Language	Date of Composition	Oldest Copy
Dead Sea Scrolls	Tanakh at Qumran	Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek(Septuagint)	c. 150 BCE – 70 CE	c. 150 BCE – 70 CE
Septuagint	Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and other earlier papyri	Greek	300–100 BCE	2nd century BCE (fragments) 4th century CE (complete)
Peshitta		Syriac		early 5th century CE
Vulgate	Codex Amiatinus	Latin		early 5th century CE early 8th century CE (complete)
Masoretic	Aleppo Codex, Leningrad Codex and other incomplete MSS	Hebrew	ca. 100 CE	10th century CE
Samaritan Pentateuch		Samaritan alphabet	200–100 BCE	Oldest extant MSS, c. 11th century CE; oldest MSS available to scholars, 16th century CE
Targum		Aramaic	500–1000 CE	5th century CE
Coptic	Crosby-Schøyen Codex, British Library MS. Oriental 7594	Coptic		3rd or 4th century CE

and let's compare to other ancient literature: 

AUTHOR	DATE written	EARLIEST manuscript available	TIME SPAN since original events/writing	NUMBER of copies available	ACCURACY between copies
Homer	ca. 850 B.C.			643	95%

Plato	ca. 380 B.C.	ca. A.D. 900	About 1,300 years	7	reconstruct
Aristotle	ca. 350 B.C.	ca. A.D. 1100	About 1,400 years	5	reconstruct
Caesar	ca. 60 B.C.	ca. A.D. 900	About 950 years	10	reconstruct

So far you may be noticing that there is a considerable variety and number of Old Testament manuscripts that date back in time fairly close to Old Testament events compared to some of the ancient literature we take for granted.