How many times have you heard that a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, and now I suppose a smartphone has more computing power than they had to get to the moon? I don’t know about that one way or the other. I do know that we shouldn’t forget that a similar thing can be said about Bible manuscripts.
There are people, scholars mostly, some well-meaning and some meaning ill, who will cause you to doubt the Bible you have in your hands. This started after the 1952 RSV was published. The sainted Dr. Buls said, “That translation made everyone a textual critic.” It has notes in the margins: “not all manuscripts have” or “most manuscripts do not have.” To a layman that information is as useful as telling me that my electronic device does or doesn’t have a quad dual core processor.
The fathers of the Church from Ignatius and Irenaeus, to Augustine and Ambrose, to Luther and Chemnitz had access to far fewer manuscripts than we have now, and they went to the moon with them. They went beyond the moon. They went where no man had gone before to the Trinity, to the Two Natures of Christ, to justification by grace through faith, and to more, so much more.
They had all the riches they needed in the “poverty” of their manuscripts to save souls and thoroughly furnish any man for every good work. I advise lay people to ignore the scholars who want to speak of an explosion of manuscripts subtly indicating that their Bible is being blown to bits. I advise scholars to realize that if this really is an academic pursuit then the result is academic, i.e. not that important.
It’s not important that we have so much more computing power than they did who got to the moon. What is important is that they got to the moon with the computers they had.
