Has the Bible Been Preserved Accurately?
Some Bible critics argue that we should disregard the Bible because
it's impossible that our modern versions could match the original
texts. But how does this argument stand up to scrutiny?
by Ken Graham
Has the Bible been preserved accurately? Are the Scriptures that we read
today the same as the ones originally written so long ago? Has the Bible
been changed, or does it constitute the same inspired words written by
the prophets and the apostles?
Of course, there are language differences because the Bible was not originally
written in English. The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew,
with a few parts in Aramaic, and the New Testament was penned in Greek.
The Bible wasn't translated into English until the 14th century.
But did it change over the many centuries until then?
These are important questions because if it can be shown that the Bible
we have today is different from the one God originally inspired, why should
we pay attention to it? If we can't trust that it has been accurately
translated and preserved, there is little reason to trust that it is indeed
God's Word. So it's very important that we see what the historical
record shows. How can we know?
Has the Old Testament been accurately preserved?
The Hebrew Bible, what today is called the Old Testament, is far older
than the New Testament—having been written between approximately
1446 and 400 B.C., some 25 to 35 centuries ago. Is the version we have
today a faithful and accurate rendition of the original?
Let's take a look at how it was preserved for us.
The apostle Paul wrote that the oracles of God were committed to the
Jewish people (Romans 3:2). For centuries they carefully and meticulously
preserved their sacred writings. The manuscripts of the Bible that we
have today were written by hand long ago, well before the invention of
the printing press. The Jewish scribes who made the copies of the Old
Testament Scriptures from generation to generation were scrupulously cautious
about their copying procedures.
This meticulous care was perpetuated by the Masoretes, a special group
of Jewish scribes who were entrusted with making copies of the Hebrew
Bible from about A.D. 500 to 900. Their version of the Old Testament,
widely considered the most authoritative, came to be known as the Masoretic
Text.
Before and during this time, trained copyists followed various meticulous
and stringent requirements for making scrolls of their holy books. The
Masoretes required that all manuscripts have various word numbering systems.
As an example of one test they used, when a new copy was made, they counted
the number of words in it. If the copy didn't have the proper count,
the manuscript was unusable and buried.
Such steps ensured that not a single word could be added to or left out
of the Holy Scriptures. Through such steps the scrolls that formed the
Hebrew Bible were copied meticulously, carefully and accurately, century
after century.
What about the books of the Old Testament?
About A.D. 90 Jewish elders meeting in the Council at Jamnia, in Judea
near the Mediterranean coast, affirmed that the canon —the set of
writings acknowledged as being divinely inspired—of the Jewish Bible
was complete and authoritative.
While there are some differences in organization—the Jewish Bible
combines the text into 22 books while our modern Bibles divide the Old
Testament into 39—the content is nonetheless the same. The differences
are due to the fact that books like Joshua and Judges were written on
one scroll, thus making them one book by Jewish count while they appear
as separate books in our modern Bibles. Similarly, 1 and 2 Samuel and
1 and 2 Kings all made up one book in Jewish reckoning, as did 1 and 2
Chronicles, though all these were divided into multiple books in our English
translations.
The Jewish Council at Jamnia rejected other questionable books, known
as the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, as inspired or authoritative. So
they are not part of this count or the accepted Hebrew canon. Thus these
books are left out of most modern Bibles.
Through the centuries the Jewish people were very careful to preserve
the Old Testament as we have it today. The majority of the manuscripts
that we have today of the Old Testament are virtually identical to the
copies made by the Masoretes, with very little difference between them.
What do we know from the field of textual criticism?
"Textual criticism" is the field of study in which experts
compare the various manuscripts in existence to one another, seeking to
come as close as possible to what the original author wrote. The original
manuscripts are called "autographs," literally "self
writings." Today, with the passage of so much time, no autographs—original
copies—exist of any of the Old or New Testament books.
Over the centuries minor differences (called variants) often make their
way into successive copies of handwritten documents, even with the greatest
of care of the scribes involved. Thus, the field of study called textual
criticism exists to try to identify these variations and determine what
the original texts said.
After 1455 and Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the first movable
metal type printing press, the Bible could be printed over and over again
with predictable accuracy, so variants no longer were a concern. However,
before that time manuscripts still had variants. Thus the period before
1455 is where textual criticism comes into play.
Because of the strict requirements and few locations where the Old Testament
was copied, few variants or versions of the Old Testament ever came into
existence. When the Dead Sea Scrolls (primarily portions of the Old Testament
dating mostly from the first century B.C.) were discovered in 1947, many
people were initially concerned that they would show marked differences
with the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament.
Because the Dead Sea Scrolls were a thousand years older than the oldest
and most reliable Masoretic Text we have today (the Leningrad Codex, dating
to A.D. 1008), scholars thought they might find drastic differences over
that long passage of time. But did they?
After years of study, they found that the Dead Sea Scrolls they examined
have only a relatively few minor, insignificant differences from today's
Masoretic Text of the Old Testament.
"These oldest-known Biblical texts have one absolutely crucial
feature," explains historian Ian Wilson. "Although ... a thousand
years older than the texts previously available in Hebrew, they show just
how faithful the texts of our present Bibles are to those from two thousand
years ago and how little they have changed over the centuries. Two Isaiah
scrolls, for instance, contain the Isaiah text almost exactly as it is
in our present-day Bibles ...
"Although there are, as we might expect, some minor differences,
these are mostly the interchange of a word or the addition or absence
of a particular phrase. For example, whereas in present-day Bibles Isaiah
1:15 ends, 'Your hands are covered in blood', one of the Dead
Sea pair adds, 'and your fingers with crime'. Where Isaiah
2:3 of our present-day Bibles reads, 'Come, let us go up to the
mountain of [the LORD]', to the house of the God of Jacob',
the Dead Sea Scroll version omits, 'to the mountain of [the LORD]'.
"Such discrepancies are trifling, and there can be no doubt that
the Biblical books someone stored away so carefully at Qumran two thousand
years ago were as close to those we know in our present Hebrew and Old
Testament Bibles as makes no difference" (The Bible Is History,
1999, p. 205).
Where there are differences, however, this does not mean the Dead Sea
Scrolls were correct and the Masoretic Text incorrect. We should keep
in mind that the Dead Sea Scrolls were not necessarily transcribed with
the same meticulous preservation practices as those used by the main scribes
of the time. Nonetheless, the remarkable discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls
is astounding confirmation that the Old Testament has indeed been accurately
preserved for us today.
What about the New Testament?
Compared to the scarcity of ancient Old Testament manuscripts, the New
Testament is a different story. Today literally thousands of Greek manuscripts
of the New Testament exist, each of varying antiquity and from various
locations. But, like the Old Testament, no autographs of the New Testament
books exist today either.
How reliable are these manuscripts, and how do they compare to other
works from this general time period?
"... The New Testament documents have more manuscripts, earlier
manuscripts, and more abundantly supported manuscripts than the best ten
pieces of classical literature combined ... At last count, there are nearly
5,700 hand-written Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. In addition,
there are more than 9,000 manuscripts in other languages (e.g., Syriac,
Coptic, Latin, Arabic). Some of these nearly 15,000 manuscripts are complete
Bibles, others are books or pages, and a few are just fragments ...
"The next closest work is the Iliad by Homer, with 643
manuscripts. Most other ancient works survive on fewer than a dozen manuscripts,
yet few historians question the historicity of the events those works
describe ...
"Not only does the New Testament enjoy abundant manuscript support,
but it also has manuscripts that were written soon after the originals
... The time gap between the original and the first surviving copy is
still vastly shorter than anything else from the ancient world. The Iliad
has the next shortest gap at about 500 years; most other ancient works
are 1,000 years or more from the original. The New Testament gap is about
25 years and maybe less.
"... The early church fathers—men of the second and third
centuries such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen,
Tertullian, and others—quoted the New Testament so much (36,289
times, to be exact) that all but eleven verses of the New Testament can
be reconstructed just from their quotations ... So we not only have thousands
of manuscripts but thousands of quotations from those manuscripts"
(Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don't Have Enough Faith to
Be an Atheist, 2004, pp. 225-228).
Sir Frederic Kenyon, authority on ancient manuscripts, sums up the status
of the New Testament this way: "It cannot be too strongly asserted
that in substance the text of the Bible is certain: Especially is this
the case with the New Testament. The number of manuscripts of the New
Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in
the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain
that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one
or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient
book in the world" (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts,
revised by A.W. Adams, 1958, p. 23).
Dealing with different translations
Critics may use textual differences and claims of errors to discredit
the Bible. But the fact remains that God is ultimately responsible for
His Word, and its accurate preservation and transmission over so many
centuries is nothing short of miraculous.
However, God did choose to record and preserve His Word in the Hebrew
and Greek languages. When the Hebrew and Greek are translated into English,
no one English translation preserves the complete essence of God's
inspired thoughts. Regrettably, in moving from any language to another,
something is always lost because not all words and concepts translate
precisely.
Most people have found that they benefit from using several translations
rather than relying on only one. And God has seen to it that we have several
excellent English translations with which to obtain understanding, each
with their own different strengths. We have found that the New King James
Version usually best serves our publishing efforts in putting across the
gospel message as clearly as possible.
God promises to guide, through His Holy Spirit, the true believer into
understanding the essence of His Word (John 16:13). He also provides an
educated, trained ministry to explain His Word clearly and accurately
for the edification and instruction of those He has called (Ephesians
4:11-16; 2 Timothy 4:1-4). To this end The Good News magazine serves as
a tool to help you better understand the Bible. We can be sure that the
Word of God has been preserved accurately for us today. We must make sure
to read it, study it, treasure it and put it into practice in our lives.
GN
Recommended Reading
You can discover many proofs that the Bible is the accurate, inspired
Word of God. To learn more, request or download your free copy of Is
the Bible True? This booklet explores some of the proofs from science,
history and archaeology that the bible truly is God's Word to humanity.
To better understand the differences in Bible translations, request or
download our free reprint article "Which
Bible Translation Should I Use?"
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