the Bibliographical test?

Question

can anyone give me a brief definition of it?
[from a christian viewpoint?]
i'm very confuzed as to what it is and means

[i am a christian and am doing homework on this, but the page that my teacher gave us to read only has one small paragraph talking about the bibliographical test and it makes no sense to me at all]

could you please help me?

thankyou =]

Answer 1

It is basically testing whether the documents that we do have have been reliably transmitted through the centuries. The closer a document is to the originals or copy-copy in terms of time, the better. Another aspect is the number of copies we have. The more that we have the better so we can take a look at how well the text has been preserved over linguistic, geographical, and temporal lines.

Atheist, but you can trust me on this.

Answer 2

The "Bibliographical Test" was articulated by Chauncy Sanders, a military historian, in his book "An Introduction to Research in English Literary History," 1952, pp 143 ff. He is discussing how to detect a forgery when someone tries to present an ancient document as the authentic original. His "test" has nothing to do with manuscript evidence as it is commonly used today by Christian apologists. There is value to comparing the age and number of extant manuscripts to assist in reconstructing a missing original, but textual criticism still needs to be employed.

Answer 3

It means the reliability of the bible edition(s) you are using .
This site will help you understand it :

http://www.answers2prayer.org/bible_studies/new_testament/bibliographical.html

Please note that in the case of the NT the reliability factor does NOT mean that the content was not distorted PRIOR to the formation of the NT. It was !
Nor does it mean that the NT is in fact truthful .

Answer 4

Your kidding, I hope, right. Did your teacher tell you about a dictionary?

Answer 5

Why don't you Google it?