It is one thing to say that the authors of the individual books of the Bible were "carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21)" in their writing down direct revelation from God. It is another thing to state the Bible we have today contains the same words these authors wrote. In some cases, hundreds of years passed between the original writing of the revelation and the earliest surviving copy of the author's work. So why should we believe that the Bible faithfully represents what the authors originally wrote?
The Old Testament. With a few minor exceptions, the authors of the Old Testament wrote their original works in Hebrew. Until recently, the earliest known surviving manuscripts in the Hebrew language were dated from medieval times. For these we largely have the prodigious efforts of the Tiberian Masoretes to thank (scholars working in Tiberias in Palestine). Over a period of approximately 500 years, from 500 A.D. to 1000 A.D., these scholars faithfully copied and standardized existing texts of the Old Testament. The oldest dated Masoretic manuscript dates to 895 A.D. While earlier manuscripts are available, these are translations from the Hebrew (such as the Greek Septuagint). Of particular concern was the observation by scholars that these translations displayed significant differences from the surviving Hebrew texts.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls provide a rare opportunity to check how much the text had varied over the centuries. Most scholars agree that the date of the Dead Sea Scrolls range from 150 B.C. to 68 A.D. (Comfort, 1992, p. 173). Despite the fact that these manuscripts predated the Masoretic texts by almost 1,000 years, the divergences in text are remarkably minor. This suggests that careful preservation of the Hebrew manuscripts was an early priority in the transmission of the Old Testament writing.
Of course, even with the Dead Sea Scrolls, this still leaves a thousand years or more between the date when the oldest of the Old Testament texts were written, and the date of the earliest surviving Hebrew manuscript. Some scholars argue that this long period of time makes it impossible to have any confidence that the Old Testament we have today is a faithful preservation of the authors' original writings. Other scholars see the remarkable similarity between the Masoretic texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls as evidence that the original writings have been faithfully preserved over the centuries. This latter view is further supported by the words of Jesus Christ, who treated the first century Old Testament manuscripts as if they were reliable records of the original, divine inspiration. However, this raises the question of how do we know that the gospel records of the words of Christ, specifically, and the New Testament revelation in general, is accurately preserved in the Bible we have today?
The New Testament. The case for the accuracy of the New Testament texts is much stronger than that for the Old Testament texts--both because there are more manuscripts available, and because the time that elapsed between the date of the earliest surviving manuscript and the date of the writing of the original document is substantially shorter. For example, it is widely acknowledged that the papyrus manuscript designated P52, which contains a few verses from the book of John, dates from between 110-125 A.D. This would place it around twenty to thirty years after the writing of the original document. Another manuscript, designated P46 (also known as the Chester Beatty Papyrus 11), is argued by some scholars to date from the late first century. This manuscript is much more complete than P52. It contains all of the letters written by Paul except for the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus). Assuming the late first century date is correct, this means that we have a large portion of the apostle's Paul's writings only twenty to thirty years removed from when he first wrote his letters.
There is some evidence to suggest that the process of copying the New Testament manuscripts was characterized by a lesser concern for preserving the exact wording of the original text than was true for the Hebrew Old Testament. Even so, the differences are not major. For example, a "looser" copy of the New Testament texts was propagated by the Eastern church, centered in Byzantine. This version, which came to be called "Textus Receptus," served as the basis for the New Testament text of the King James Version of the Bible. Later on, earlier manuscripts were discovered which were produced by Christian scribes in Alexandria, Egypt in the first and second centuries. These scribes followed the high quality of scribal copying practiced by the scribes in the great library in Alexandria. As a result, we can be confident that these manuscripts come very close to the original documents. The textual insights provided by these manuscripts is reflected in more recent translations of the Bible, such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the New International Version (NIV) Bible. A comparison of the King James Version with these more recent translations demonstrates that the differences are not major. (For further reading, see Philip Comfort, "Texts and Manuscripts of the New Testament," in P. W. Comfort, ed., The Origin of the Bible.)
A Comparison with Other Texts of Antiquity. While a concern with the accuracy of the texts contained in contemporary Bibles is certainly appropriate, some sense of perspective can be provided by comparing the number of manuscripts of biblical texts available to scholars, with the number of texts of secular literature from antiquity. There are currently more than 6,000 manuscript copies of either the entire Greek New Testament, or portions thereof. In contrast, there are only about 650 manuscript copies of Homer's Iliad, and about 330 manuscript copies of Euripides' tragedies. Furthermore, the surviving manuscripts of the biblical texts are much closer in date to the publication of the originals. The date of the earliest manuscripts for most of the classical works of antiquity are 800 to a 1000 years later than the date of original publication. For many of the books in the New Testament, the corresponding time period is closer to 100 years. To quote the renowned Bible scholar, F. F. Bruce:
Bruce, F. F. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. ISBN: 0-85110-307-3.
Comfort, Philip Wesley, editor. The Origin of the Bible. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 1992. ISBN: 0-8423-4735-6.
McDowell, Josh. Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Revised Edition. San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, Inc., 1979. ISBN: 0-918956-46-3.
Bob Reed
Associate Professor
Economics
If you have any questions or comments you can E-Mail me at BREED@OU.EDU