The Decentralized New Testament Documents

The concept of decentralization is not something new. I would like to share with you something that caught my attention a few years back, even before I first heard about the concept of the blockchain and distributed ledgers.

What is decentralization, and what does it have to do with the New Testament?

With the advent of Bitcoin and the blockchain, the concept of decentralization is inevitably becoming more and more popular. Now, I do understand that there are different forms of decentralization, but there is a common thread between these. Here is a definition that I found appropriate for what I am talking about in this post. I got this definition from Wikipedia...

 

“Decentralization is the process of redistributing or dispersing functions, powers, people or things away from a central location or authority.”

The process of dispersing functions, powers, people, or things (in our case, New Testament documents) away from a central location or authority was exactly the method or process that was used to preserve the New Testament message. To the best of my knowledge, no other ancient book in history has gone through the process of redistribution as the New Testament documents have.

Many respected textual scholars are convinced that the New Testament writings were not tampered with over the years because they know that they were never centralized in the first place. Whenever I see a documentary in the Discovery Channel or History Channel, claiming or suggesting to us that over the years the biblical documents have been tampered with or manipulated by the Catholic Church or some very powerful individuals, I just smile and think, how silly. This couldn’t have happened because these ancient biblical documents were never centralized. All the evidence overwhelmingly points the other way.

If you found this post interesting, and would like to learn more about the amazing method that God used to protect his word from any future tampering and the preservation of its original message, I highly recommend the book, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

Another good book that I highly recommend is, Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell.

 

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