Much of the resistance to a young earth model stems from mistrust for the accuracy of scripture.  Satisfaction on this subject is a valid requirement for anyone who might struggle with the issue of origins in general and Christianity specifically.  So let's explore the subject.

In his book "Surprised By Faith", Dr. Don Bierle devotes the second chapter to the question, "Can I believe the Bible?"  He applies the principles of historiography, used to determine the authenticity of ancient documents, such as the writings of Tacitus, Caesar, Heroditus and others, to the New Testament.  It is important to realize that none of the original manuscripts from any of the writers have survived.

Working then only from copies, the first test of authenticity asks how many copies now exist for us to study.  Between 7 and 643 copies for various authors are known to exist, yet there are 5309 copies of the New Testament in Greek and 24,633 copies total in various languages.  Scholars accept that we have essentially the true text of ancient authors where only a handful of manuscripts exist today.  So the New Testament is by far the best established in terms of surviving copies.

The next thing historiographers want to know is how early the surviving manuscripts are.  The author with the shortest time between his original work and the earliest known manuscript is Virgil, at about 300 years.  Others range from 900 to 1500 years.  Obviously, if the manuscripts we have were penned so long after the original the potential for error becomes much greater.  Yet portions of John's Gospel have been found that were copied down only about 35 years after the original.  Whoever used that copy might have known John.  And there are nearly complete manuscripts that date between 100 and 150 years of the original known as the Bodmer and Chester Beatty papyri.  Scripture exceeds all scholarly demands in this area as well.

The third aspect of historiography concerns the accuracy of the copies.  How well do they support one another?  What evidence of distortion exists?  The Mahabharata (a Hindu religious book) has a rate of distortion due to copying errors of 10.3%.  The Illiad comes in at 4.9%.  The New Testament's distortion rate is .2%, that is two tenths of a percent!  Concerning the 40 lines in question, F.F. Bruce says that "the variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the New Testament affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice."

Beyond this, references to New Testament text found in other writings, over 36,000 of them, is alone, enough to reconstruct nearly the whole New Testament and adds even more credibility to the New Testament which exceeds every requirement used to establish the authenticity of the ancient classics.  If you simply must cast away scripture as inaccurate then all the ancient works must also be scorned by such a standard.

Dr. Bierle goes on to examine more evidence tests, both external and internal, further establishing the literary and historical accuracy of the New Testament.  He leads his reader to the point of delivering a verdict: that the New Testament is beyond question authentic and accurate.

Further struggle over this point is more founded in prejudice than logic once the facts are on the table.