Question: I was just reading an article that Tov posted online regarding to the specifics of his statistics. If you have the time to look at the article right now or tomorrow I would greatly appreciate it. Here’s the url http://www.emanueltov.info/publications.html and the article I’m reading is under "collected papers 2008-Hebrew Bible, greek bible and qumran" […]

Question: How do you feel about this comment on the Old Testament by an OT Textual Critic named Emmanual Tov?  He claims that about 35% of the DSS biblical manuscripts belong to the Masoretic tradition (MT), 5% to the Septuagint family, and 5% to the Samaritan, with the remainder unaligned. The non-aligned fall into two […]

Question: How do you feel about this article? http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bible/Text/Bibaccuracy.html Do you believe that the New Testament we have in our Bibles are similar to the originals? Answer: This is an easy question. Yes, I believe that the best Greek manuscript we have today is virtually an exact copy of the original documents. I have a […]

Question: I wanted to ask you how do we know that the New Testament epistles, books, and sermon(s) were written prior to 100 A.D.? I looked on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible) and the majority of the oldest fragments of some of the N.T. documents are from the 2nd to the 3rd century. How do we know for […]

Question: Is it true that Ezra was the individual responsible for the final Old Testament canon? I heard from my religious studies T.A. that he changed some of the Old Testament stories to seem a bit more "spiritual". For example the story of David, and the destruction of the fall of the first temple due […]

Question: I have been researching the historical reliability of the New Testament because I started having doubts about the Gospels. Fortunately I have found an abundant amount of evidence on the Gospels, and the historical evidence behind them. Some of the books that I have been reading are, "The Historical Reliability of the Gospels" by Craig […]

Question:  I note what you say about the Ryland’s papyrus but I find it somewhat disingenuous. It merely testifies to the existence of the 18th chapter of John’s Gospel being in existence possibly as early as 120 A.D. and it says absolutely nothing about the reliability of the text which we have of any of […]

Question: Why the Mark 11:26 in brackets? Answer: What an interesting coincidence.  I got two questions on Mark 11:26 in the same week.  I am copying my answer to the other question below. Actually, he was asking about a different aspect, so I will add a couple of thoughts on your question as well.  Like […]

Question:   Is there any [strong] evidence that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written after 70 AD? I’ve been browsing wikipedia and found that some scholars believe that those 3 gospels, specifically Luke, believe that it was dated sometime after 80 AD to maybe around 125 AD. Is there any [strong] evidence […]

Question: If the bible was written so long ago and interpreted in many different ways and has been re-written so many times how can we be sure the version we read today is not complete fiction? Answer: I have answered this question a number of times and in various ways at the web site.  I […]

Question: Who put all of the books of the Bible together in one book, and how do we know that they were right? Answer: The logic of the answer to this question is fairly simple, but the evidence is a bit involved.  In order to give you a sufficient answer, I suggest you read the […]

 Question: I was wondering as a Christian, how sure are we that Matthew the Disciple of Jesus wrote the Gospel that bears his name and if he did, when can we assert he wrote his Gospel? Answer: I wish I could say that we know for sure that Matthew wrote this gospel and that we […]

Question: I have recently heard that many scholars believe 2 Peter is pseudepigraphical and was written around 100-150AD. Is there any evidence that shows that it was written around 64-65 AD which is another possible date that it was written? Answer:  The date of writing of the New Testament books will always generate some controversy.  We […]

Question: How then do you explain the LXX & MT versions of Daniel & the story of Bel & the Dragon? Dennis; God used the Jewish teachers/rabbis as the arbiters of what is to be considered an approved text. They said no to the additions to Daniel. I agree with their assessment by looking at […]

Question: I have heard and seen articles so many times about the Catholic faith hiding evidence of other gospels and possibly a gospel from Jesus himself? This concerns me since I used to be Catholic (now a non-denomintated Christian) and still have many Catholic friends that may be oblivious of this information and frankly get […]