Why You Can Trust the Biblical Gospels

Evidence From John's Gospel

A valuable fragment of John's Gospel was found in Egypt at the turn of the 20th century and is now known as the Papyrus Rylands 457 (P52).   It contains what is John 18:31-33, 37, 38 in the modern Bible and is preserved at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, England.  This is the oldest manuscript fragment of  the Christian Greek  Scriptures in existence.  Many scholars believe that it


The Papyrus Rylands 457 (p52), a fragment of the Gospel John dated to the second century C.E., was written only a few decades after the original


was written about 125 C.E., a mere quarter of a century or so after John's death.  The amazing thing is that the text of the fragment agrees nearly exactly with that in later manuscripts.  The fact that a copy of John's Gospel of such antiquity had already circulated to Egypt, where the fragment was discovered, supports the conclusion that the  good news according to John was really recorded in the first century C.E. and by John himself, as the Bible indicates.  The book of John is therefore the work of an eyewitness.

On the other hand, the Apocryphal  writings all date from the second century on, a hundred years or more after the  events they describe had taken place.  Some experts try to argue that the Apocryphal writings are based on earlier writings or traditions, but  there is no proof of this.  Thus, the question is appropriate, which would you put more faith in -the testimony of eyewitnesses or that of people who lived a hundred  years after the fact?  The answer is obvious.

What about the assertion that the Biblical Gospels were altered in order to suppress certain accounts of Jesus' life?  Is there any evidence that the Gospel of John, for example, was altered in the fourth century to distort the facts?   To answer this question, we need to bare in mind that  one of the key sources of the modern Bible is the fourth century manuscript known as Vatican 1209.  If our Bible contains changes made in the fourth century, then these changes  would be reflected in this manuscript.  Happily another manuscript that contains most of  Luke and John, known as Bodmer 14, 15 (p75), dates from 175 C.E. to 225 C.E.   According to experts, it is textually very close to Vatican 1209.  In other words, no significant changes wree made to the Biblical Gospels, and we have the Vatican 1209 to prove it.

There is no evidence, documental or otherwise, that proves that the text of John-or of the other Gospels-was altered during the fourth century.  After examining a collection of manuscript fragments discovered at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, Dr. Peter M. Head, of Cambridge University, writes:  "In general terms these manuscripts confirm the text of the great uncials [manuscripts written in large capitals that date from the fourth century on] which forms the basis of the modern critical editions.  There is nothing here which requires a radically new understanding of the early transmission of the NT [New Testament] text."

Next time: What Can We Conclude?

Watchtower, 2010