‘The canon, a text that was considered sacred and recognised as authentic of the Christian Church, is based as you know on the New Testament, which is composed of the four Gospels plus the Epistles.’
‘These were written during the time of Christ?’
‘No, the precise time they were written has been the subject of a great deal scholastic discussion. Some think that the earliest of these writings is St Paul’s epistle that dates to around 50AD, then comes St Mark’s gospel about 65AD and as late the beginning of the 2nd century AD for St John’s gospel.
‘That spans one hundred years.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Do the originals of these texts exist,’ asked Laura.
‘No my dear, unfortunately no,’ he replied laughing. ‘We do have about 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament exist, plus about 8,000 in the Latin Vulgate. However, the oldest existing copy of the Bible is the Codex Vaticanus safely guarded in the Vatican Library, this is believed to have been written in Egypt during the first half of the 4th century, this codex contains a large part of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
‘Septuagint?’
‘Yes the Septuagint was transcribed from Hebrew into Greek for the Great Library of Alexandria in ancient times, before Christianity, Septuagint means seventy, referring to the number of translators. It was more than a simple translation of the Hebrew text, since the translation was influenced by Greek ideas, Greek philosophical concepts, which later was important for the birth and spread of Christianity.
‘So that Vatican has the oldest existing version of the Bible?’
‘Yes, but there are others, the second oldest is in the British Museum, it is called the Codex Sinaiticus and is a 4th century manuscript of the Greek Bible, which is believed to have been written shortly after the Codex Vaticanus, however the only part that remains is the Septuagint, the New Testament part was lost.’
‘What is the history of these bibles?’
‘Well in the case of the Codex Sinaiticus, as its name indicates, it was discovered in the Monastery of Saint Catherine, on Mount Sinai in Egypt, in 1859 by Constantin von Tischendorf.’
‘And after those?’
‘Then comes the Codex Alexandrinus, which was written the 5th century, it’s also in the British Museum today, then finally concerning the oldest bibles in existence is the Cambridge University library’s Codex Bezae, written in the 6th century.’
‘So there’s a huge time gap between the events and the texts. I mean if you take St Mark’s gospel and the Vatican Codex that’s three hundred years.’
‘Quiet so, but when it was written it was copied from existing manuscripts, like for other ancient works that have come down to us from Greece and Rome. Remember the Codex Sinaiticus is one thousand seven hundred years old!’
‘So the same principal could also apply to the Gospels?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well that Jesus really existed!’
He laughed.
‘Right, though it is not so simple. In the case of ancient Greece and for example Thucydides ‘Peloponnese Wars’, archaeological evidence corroborates his account plus the fact that many surviving works of ancient writers refer to his works, some of these going back to Roman times. In the case of Jesus we only have the gospels.’
‘Only!’
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to offend your beliefs, I mean there is no other corroborative evidence.’
‘I was joking.’
‘What we have to remember is that all texts from the ancient world have been passed down to us in the form of copies, there is no original of the first Bible, and what we have was manually copied from manuscripts. All books were hand written and all copies hand written, there were no presses, so everything was made by scribes, priests, monks, of one form or another. These scribes changed texts, either by error, or by deliberately, for religious or political motives.’
‘So the changes made by the scribes were not those spoken by God, but by man?’
‘The original texts were inspired by God, according to believers, but we don’t have them and those we have were written centuries after the originals!’
‘Let me tell you something of the history of the Holy Land.”
‘Please.’
‘One and for all there is absolutely no evidence of the existence of the key Biblical figures such as Abraham, Moses, David or Solomon, or for that matter of almost all the others mentioned prior to about 200BC. In other words there is no evidence of Temple or the existence of Jerusalem at the time when the first Temple was supposed to have existed.’
‘So King David who founded Israel is a myth?’
‘I’m sorry to say that the existence of King David, is cited in the Bible, and in the Bible alone, for this is no other source that speaks of David, established Jerusalem as his capital nearly 3,000 years ago.’
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The Legacy of Solomon Page 60