Not a Good Book

The New Testament sits at the center of what is arguably the most popular conspiracy to come out of postmodernism: the idea that Constantine—Roman emperor and head of the church’s industrial military complex—created the New Testament after his own likeness, retaining only what agreed with his straight-white-male sensibilities and colonialist aspirations.

This is, of course, nonsense. The core of the New Testament was firmly in place 200 years before Constantine took office (ca. 110 AD). However, this narrative of its origins lives on in Critical Theories and public thought. But in biblical scholarship there is a broad consensus that confirms the historical integrity of these earliest Christian writings. What follows are reasons for that consensus.

THE WEIGHT OF MANUSCRIPTS

No literary masterpiece from the old world survives. We have copies, manuscripts that are centuries even milennia old, and through these manuscripts, the contents of the original writing can be confirmed. The more manuscripts and the older they are, the more certainty there is to the original. Below is the manuscript support for several classical works.