What archeological evidence?
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Many people these days suggest that the biblical records were changed over time. The assumption is understandable. Any ordinary letter or book copied again and again for thousands of years is likely to change quite dramatically during that time.
However, the biblical records, and in particular the Jewish Torah, were not copied in a haphazard fashion. The process was so accurate it still amazes historians today. For thousands of years, Jewish scribes carefully copied the original manuscripts of sacred Scriptures without any significant error.
The Masoretic Jewish scribes were so careful that they counted the number of occurrences of every single letter, comparing that count to the "official" count. When a scribe completed his copy, a master examiner would painstakingly count every individual letter to confirm that there were no errors in the newly copied manuscript. This process was so accurate they could pinpoint the exact middle of a book simply by letter count and would check the verse at that point as one of the methods of confirmation. If a single error was found, the entire manuscript was destroyed to ensure that it could never be used as a master copy in the future.
As proof of this accuracy, consider the Masoretic and Yemenite translations of the Torah. Some time ago, the Yemenite Jews were separated from their brother Jews in the Middle East and Europe. Despite a thousand years of copying their manuscripts in isolation, only nine Hebrew letters in the entire Torah were found to differ from the accepted Hebrew Masoretic text. Not one of these nine changes the meaning of a word.
Another example is the remarkable accuracy of the Dead Sea Scrolls compared with what were then the oldest-known manuscripts. At the time these records were found in a cave at Qumran near the Dead Sea, the oldest original manuscript on record dated around 1200AD. Suddenly a number of documents were found dating between 250BC and 70AD. Although there was a thousand-year time difference between the previously used manuscripts and the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls versions, the only changes were different spellings of words, none of them altering any meanings!
One of these scrolls, which remained unpublished until 1991, specifically refers to the Jewish Messiah who was crucified for the sins of the people. It makes reference to prophecies about the Messiah being pierced and wounded (from Isaiah), but refers in the past tense to the crucified Jesus (the name Jesus isn't mentioned). Though not a piece of Scripture, this document dates back to within a few years of the actual crucifixion, thus providing confirmation of the accuracy of the New Testament records about the death of Jesus.
Archeological records provide additional evidence of the accurate translation process used by the Masoretic Jews (the name refers to the word for "fence"). Inscriptions dating as far back as 600BC use the exact wording as today's Hebrew Torah when Scripture passages are quoted. In addition, Old Testament books were frequently quoted by other historical documents such as the Maccabbean account of 167BC and the Dead Sea Scrolls dating between 250BC and 70AD. The entire Old Testament was translated into Greek, the world's language of trade, around 250BC.
No delay
It is now acknowledged that the New Testament Gospels and Epistles were written and widely circulated within 40 or 50 years of the events they describe. Circumstantial evidence alone dated them only a few years after Christ because such explosive events as Nero's massive persecution of Christians (AD64), the martyrdom of James (AD61) and Peter (AD65), the outcome of Paul's trial (AD64) and the destruction of Jerusalem by General Titus in AD70 are not included in the accounts.
Early Christian writers such as Clement writing in AD96 quote heavily from the New Testament books. This means that the books were already in wide circulation by that time. Indeed, the books written by the apostles Paul and Peter quote creeds and hymns that were in common usage which demonstrate a common understanding of Christian doctrine during the mid part of the first century--just 20 years since the death and resurrection of Christ. The events recorded were verifiable and recent. Hundreds of thousands of people who witnessed those events or knew of them were alive to agree with or discredit the biblical accounts.
In 1994, Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede, Director of the Institute of Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, Germany, used a scanning laser microscope to examine a group of papyrus fragments containing 24 lines in Greek of chapter 26 of Matthew's gospel. Dr. Thiede compared details as small as twenty micrometers (millionth of a meter) to four other known references from the first century. He concluded that the Magdalen Papyrus were either an original from Matthew's gospel, or an immediate copy, written while Matthew and the other disciples and eye witnesses were still alive. The text of these fragments is identical to modern copies of Matthew.
No errors recognized
In fact, if the New Testament recorded any factual errors, the early church would have split as the witnesses to the "real" historical events would have contested any inaccurate records. There would be hundreds, perhaps thousands of contradictory accounts. Although Christians were subject to the most terrifying tortures and martyrdom conceivable, they did not declared that the Gospel account of Jesus Christ was in error. Romans charged with torturing and executing Christians, such as Pliny, claimed that weak Christians (to avoid torture or death) never renounced the accuracy of the stories about Christ, just their commitment to the faith. Pliny noted in a letter to Emperor Trajan that true Christians could not be made to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ as God, even under "extreme torture."