Philo of Alexandria, a Jew and a contemporary of the apostles: “The Jews would die ten thousand times rather than to permit one single word to be altered of their Scriptures.”
Athanasius on the Old Testament canon: “The Christian Church of the New Testament receives from the Hebrew Church of the Old Testament the sacred books of that Testament, because it is to the Jews, as Paul says (Rom. 3:2) that are committed ‘the oracles of God.’”
Dean Burgon on the preservation of the Scriptures: “There exists no reason for supposing that [God], who in first instance thus gave to mankind the Scriptures of Truth, straightway abdicated His office; took no further care of His work; abandoned those precious writings to their fate. That a perpetual miracle was wrought for their preservation – that copyists were protected against the risk of error, or evil men prevented from adulterating shamefully copies of the Deposit – no one, it is presumed, is so weak as to suppose. But it is quite a different thing to claim that all down the ages the sacred writings must needs have been God’s peculiar care; that the Church under Him has watched over them with intelligence and skill; has recognized which copies exhibit a fabricated, which an honestly transcribed text; has generally sanctioned the one, and generally disallowed the other.”
Sir Frederic Kenyon (a Greek manuscript scholar who worked at the British Museum): “The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, faithfully handed down from generation to generation throughout the centuries.”
