![]() They did not consider it necessary for salvation that the very handwriting of Paul or Matthew should be preserved, inspired by God though these men were. The first Christians had no superstitious or idolatrous veneration for the sacred Scriptures, such as seems to prevail among some people today. We know of no manuscript of the New Testament existing now that is written on papyrus.įurthermore, when in various churches throughout the first centuries copies were made of the inspired writings, there was not the same necessity for preserving the originals. It was called papyrus, very frail and brittle, and not made to last to any great age and its delicate quality no doubt accounts for the loss of some of the choicest treasures of ancient literature, as well as of the original handwriting of the New Testament writers. Among these, doubtless, some of the writings that came from the hand of the apostle and evangelist perished.Īgain, we must remember, the physical material the inspired authors used for writing their Gospels and Epistles was very easily destroyed. And not only so, but they compelled Christians to deliver up their sacred books under pain of death and then consigned the books to flames. ![]() Over and over again, barbarous pagans burst in upon Christian cities, villages, and churches and burned all the sacred things they could find. The persecutors of the Church for the first three hundred years of Christianity destroyed everything Christian they could lay their hands on. Why is it that we have not the originals written by John and Paul and the rest? There are several reasons to account for the disappearance of the originals. That is how we know we are right in receiving these books as Scripture, as genuinely the work of the apostles and evangelists. These copies, which you can see with your own eyes today, contain the books that the Catholic Bible contains today. What we have now is the printed Bible but before the invention of printing in 1450, the Bible existed only in handwriting-what we call manuscript-and we have in our possession now copies of the Bible in manuscript that were made as early as the fourth century. ![]() ![]() But we know from history and tradition that these were the books they wrote, and they have been handed down to us in a most wonderful way. You may naturally enough ask: “Where has the Bible come from? Have you got the original writings that came from the hand of Moses, or Paul, or John?” No, none of it, not a scrap or a letter. ![]()
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