On the recordNovember 15, 2016
I thank the gentleman and appreciate his remarks. Let me say something about manuscripts, which are the historical evidence for the text of the Bible. The Bible that we acknowledge during this National Bible Week has come down to us in history through manuscripts that were written centuries or millennia ago. These manuscripts are more numerous by an order of magnitude than any other classical text and go back much closer to the time of origin than any classical text. For instance, the Histories of Herodotus, which, actually, I read recently, are based on eight manuscripts that come about 1,300 years after the original version. By contrast, the New Testament has over 20,000 manuscripts, some of which go back mere decades after the original version. The Dead Sea Scrolls proved that the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, which came down from other sources, is, indeed, accurate and reliable to the letter. I now yield to the gentleman from Ohio, Representative Bill Johnson, my friend and colleague.
