Bible Translations (2)

More on Bible translations (Sources: Hard Sayings and Why We're Catholic both by Trent Horn.)

We do not possess Plato's original Republic nor do we possess the original Jewish histories of Josephus, The Roman histories of Tacitus, or the Greek histories of Thucydides. However, modern scholars reconstruct original manuscripts of these works by comparing all the surviving copies using a process called textual criticism.  

Simple example of textual criticism:  Your grandmother, who lived in a remote cabin, had a fabulous recipe for chocolate chip cookies.  You liked them so much you copied down her recipe for your personal use.  When you bake them for your friends they in turn copy down the recipe for their use.  50 years go by and your grandmother has passed on and her cabin was destroyed in a fire.  No original recipe.  However, with all of the various copies that were made, if you collect them all and compare them to each other and sift out the various differences that may have crept in, you will be able to reconstruct the original recipe.

One of the most famous examples of Greek literature: Homer's Iliad was written in the eighth century B.C. and the oldest complete copy available was written in the tenth century A.D. Or 1,800 years later.

In contrast, there are over 5,500 copies of Greek New Testament manuscripts.  Fifty of the manuscripts are dated to within 250 years of the original copies.  There are 15,000 copies in other languages like Latin, Coptic, and Syriac.  The first complete copy of the New Testament [Codex Sinaiticus] can be dated to within 300 years of the original documents.