The Divine Pen Strokes: Our First-Century Manuscripts of the New Testament

By Curt Fletemier

“...these manuscripts could date as early as the late first century AD...”

In new testament manuscript research it has been the habit of biblical scholars for some years to use the second century AD as a convenient chronological dumping ground for manuscripts that are difficult to date. Perhaps it is time to investigate this dumping ground, and it would not surprise me if one or several of these manuscripts could date as early as the late first century AD, which would make them first generation copies of the gospel autographs themselves. In these pages, Curt Fletemier demonstrates how this could indeed be the case.

—Paul L. Maier
Russel H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History, emeritus
Western Michigan University

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973634119

Curt Fletemier

Curt Fletemier, M. Div., left his engineering career in 1991 to become an overseas “tent-maker,” sharing his faith with friends and students while sharing his earnings with local Christian workers native to the Asian countries in which he taught. Tired of hearing Muslims and atheists alike saying that the Bible has been changed, he went in search of our earliest New Testament manuscripts. In the process of that search, he stumbled across some pretty strong evidence that we actually HAVE first century manuscripts of the New Testament – and they have been hidden in plain sight for years.

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Copyright © 2018 Curt Fletemier.

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THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3412-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3413-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3411-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018908235

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/25/2018

This book is dedicated to my parents, Marvin and Shirley Fletemier, from whom I learned about the Lord.

Contents

Prologue

1   History of the New Testament Manuscripts

New Testament from the First Century

New Testament Historically and Archaeologically Credible

Jesus and His Apostles Spoke Koine Greek

Five Things to Remember about the Real New Testament

Modern Translations Accurately Reflect Originals

Errors (?) in Bible Manuscripts

Putting a Date on the Manuscripts

First-Century Manuscripts

2   Fragment 7Q5—Qumran Mark

3   P64—Magdalen Papyrus

4   Nomina Sacra

5   P46—Beatty II Papyrus

The Amateur’s Analysis

6   P66—Bodmer Papyrus

7   The Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus

Epilogue: Truth

Bibliography

Prologue

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my Word will never pass away. (Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31, NIV)

As you know, these words were spoken about two thousand years ago in an unimportant little corner of the Roman Empire by a wandering preacher who had a very small number of followers. And they were spoken before anyone had ever written down any of his words. The people of Jesus’s day who did not believe in his divinity must have thought he was pretty arrogant to go around saying his words would last forever.

In our time, those who do not believe in Jesus’s divinity cannot easily explain how his words have actually managed to last almost two thousand years and have become ever more well known as time passed from years to centuries to millennia. So they’ve created a myth. Different groups state the myth in different ways. One group likes to say, The Bible has been changed. Another group says, The New Testament is not an eyewitness account of historical events. It is rather a legend, a narrative that evolved over time. No matter how it is stated, it is basically the same myth.

We Christians are not interested in myths. We deal in facts.

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CHAPTER 1

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History of the New Testament Manuscripts

New Testament from the First Century

Christians around the world believe that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament (NT) appeared at some point in the first century somewhere between AD 45 and 90 and were written by the actual men whose names are traditionally associated with them. In fact, we can make a pretty good case that every book of the New Testament, including Revelation, was completed prior to AD 70.

Jesus and his disciples were looking at the great Jerusalem temple one day when Jesus told them, Truly I tell you, not one of these stones will be left on top of another (Matthew 24:2; Mark 13:2; Luke 21:6, NIV). He had earlier predicted (Luke 19:43–44) that Jerusalem’s enemies would set up ramparts all around it. Jesus’s prediction of the city’s doom and the temple’s destruction came true a generation later according to the historian Josephus.

In AD 66, thirty years or so after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the Jews in Judea rebelled against Roman rule. Nero sent Vespasian, commanding the Tenth Roman Legion, to put down the revolt.

By AD 68, when the Qumran site was overrun, the northern resistance had been crushed. Vespasian’s troops moved south to besiege Jerusalem. Nero killed himself that year, Vespasian returned to Rome to become emperor, and Vespasian’s son Titus took over the siege.

The Romans finally breached the wall and retook Jerusalem in AD 70 as Jesus had predicted decades earlier. They tore down the temple and recycled its stones, a lot of them going into the Roman Colosseum. The temple’s sacred furnishings were carried off to Rome as trophies.

The Jewish resistance managed to persevere for a few more years, but one by one, their strongholds fell. Masada was one of the last to go. It was all over by AD 73.

The temple was obliterated, Jerusalem was sacked, and thousands of Jewish citizens were slaughtered. Thousands more were sold into slavery, sent to work in the mines, or doomed to die in the arena.

The war with Rome and rape of Jerusalem, very personal, earth-shattering calamities for the Jews and Christians of the time, were not recorded in the New Testament; that cataclysm happened after the New Testament had already been written.

However, skeptics feel Jesus could not possibly have predicted it, so Jesus’s prediction must have been written into the narrative afterward.

Ironically, while the temple’s destruction is used by Christians as proof the NT was completed prior to AD 70, it’s also used by unbelievers as proof that the NT books were written afterward. Of course, they begin with the assumption that