Are the Biblical Documents Reliable?

Introduction

How do we know that the Bible we have today is even close to the original? Haven't copiers down through the centuries inserted and deleted and embellished the documents so that the original message of the Bible has been obscured? These questions are frequently asked to discredit the sources of information from which the Christian faith has come to us.

Three Errors To Avoid

1. Do not assume inspiration or infallibility of the documents, with the intent of attempting to prove the inspiration or infallibility of the documents. Do not say the bible is inspired or infallible simply because it claims to be. This is circular reasoning.

2. When considering the original documents, forget about the present form of your Bible and regard them as the collection of ancient source documents that they are.

3. Do not start with modern "authorities" and then move to the documents to see if the authorities were right. Begin with the documents themselves.

Procedure for Testing a Document's Validity

In his book, Introduction in Research in English Literary History, C. Sanders sets forth three tests of reliability employed in general historiography and literary criticism. These tests are:

1. Bibliographical (i.e., the textual tradition from the original document to the copies and manuscripts of that document we possess today)

2. Internal evidence (what the document claims for itself)

3. External evidence (how the document squares or aligns itself with facts, dates, persons from its own contemporary world).

It might be noteworthy to mention that Sanders is a professor of military history, not a theologian. He uses these three tests of reliability in his own study of historical military events.

The Old Testament

For both Old and New Testaments, the crucial question is: "Not having any original copies or scraps of the Bible, can we reconstruct them well enough from the oldest manuscript evidence we do have so they give us a true, undistorted view of actual people, places and events?"

The Scribe

The scribe was considered a professional person in antiquity. No printing presses existed, so people were trained to copy documents. The task was usually undertaken by a devout Jew. The Scribes believed they were dealing with the very Word of God and were therefore extremely careful in copying. They did not just hastily write things down. The earliest complete copy of the Hebrew Old Testament dates from c. 900 A.D.

The Massoretic Text

During the early part of the tenth century (916 A.D.), there was a group of Jews called the Massoretes. These Jews were meticulous in their copying. The texts they had were all in capital letters, and there was no punctuation or paragraphs. The Massoretes would copy Isaiah, for example, and when they were through, they would total up the number of letters. Then they would find the middle letter of the book. If it was not the same, they made a new copy. All of the present copies of the Hebrew text which come from this period are in remarkable agreement. Comparisons of the Massoretic text with earlier Latin and Greek versions have also revealed careful copying and little deviation during the thousand years from 100 B.C. to 900 A.D. But until this century, there was scant material written in Hebrew from antiquity which could be compared to the Masoretic texts of the tenth century A.D.

The Dead Sea Scrolls

In 1947, a young Bedouin goat herdsman found some strange clay jars in caves near the valley of the Dead Sea. Inside the jars were some leather scrolls. The discovery of these "Dead Sea Scrolls" at Qumran has been hailed as the outstanding archeological discovery of the twentieth century. The scrolls have revealed that a commune of monastic farmers flourished in the valley from 150 B.C. to 70 A.D. It is believed that when they saw the Romans invade the land they put their cherished leather scrolls in the jars and hid them in the caves on the cliffs northwest of the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea Scrolls include a complete copy of the Book of Isaiah, a fragmented copy of Isaiah, containing much of Isaiah 38-6, and fragments of almost every book in the Old Testament. The majority of the fragments are from Isaiah and the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). The books of Samuel, in a tattered copy, were also found and also two complete chapters of the book of Habakkuk. In addition, there were a number of nonbiblical scrolls related to the commune found.

These materials are dated around 100 B.C. The significance of the find, and particularly the copy of Isaiah, was recognized by Merrill F. Unger when he said, "This complete document of Isaiah quite understandably created a sensation since it was the first major Biblical manuscript of great antiquity ever to be recovered. Interest in it was especially keen since it antedates by more than a thousand years the oldest Hebrew texts preserved in the Massoretic tradition."

The supreme value of these Qumran documents lies in the ability of biblical scholars to compare them with the Massoretic Hebrew texts of the tenth century A.D. If, upon examination, there were little or no textual changes in those Massoretic texts where comparisons were possible, an assumption could then be made that the Massoretic Scribes had probably been just as faithful in their copying of the other biblical texts which could not be compared with the Qumran material.

What was learned? A comparison of the Qumran manuscript of Isaiah with the Massoretic text revealed them to be extremely close in accuracy to each other: "A comparison of Isaiah 53 shows that only 17 letters differ from the Massoretic text. Ten of these are mere differences in spelling (like our "honor" and the English "honour") and produce no change in the meaning at all. Four more are very minor differences, such as the presence of a conjunction (and) which are stylistic rather than substantive. The other three letters are the Hebrew word for "light." This word was added to the text by someone after "they shall see" in verse 11. Out of 166 words in this chapter, only this one word is really in question, and it does not at all change the meaning of the passage. We are told by biblical scholars that this is typical of the whole manuscript of Isaiah."

The Septuagint

The Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, also confirms the accuracy of the copyists who ultimately gave us the Massoretic text. The Septuagint is often referred to as the LXX because it was reputedly done by seventy Jewish scholars in Alexandria around 200 B.C. The LXX appears to be a rather literal translation from the Hebrew, and the manuscripts we have are pretty good copies of the original translation.

OT Conclusion

In his book, Can I Trust My Bible, R. Laird Harris concluded, "We can now be sure that copyists worked with great care and accuracy on the Old Testament, even back to 225 B.C. . . . indeed, it would be rash skepticism that would now deny that we have our Old Testament in a form very close to that used by Ezra when he taught the word of the Lord to those who had returned from the Babylonian captivity."

The New Testament

The Greek Manuscript Evidence

There are more than 4,000 different ancient Greek manuscripts containing all or portions of the New Testament that have survived to our time. These are written on different materials.

Papyrus and Parchment

During the early Christian era, the writing material most commonly used was papyrus. This highly durable reed from the Nile Valley was glued together much like plywood and then allowed to dry in the sun. In the twentieth century many remains of documents (both biblical and non-biblical) on papyrus have been discovered, especially in the dry, arid lands of North Africa and the Middle East.

Another material used was parchment. This was made from the skin of sheep or goats, and was in wide use until the late Middle Ages when paper began to replace it. It was scarce and more expensive; hence, it was used almost exclusively for important documents.

Examples

1. Codex Vaticanus and Codex Siniaticus - These are two excellent parchment copies of the entire New Testament which date from the 4th century (325-450 A.D.).
2. Older Papyrii - Earlier still, fragments and papyrus copies of portions of the New Testament date from 100 to 200 years (180-225 A.D.) before Vaticanus and Sinaticus. The outstanding ones are the Chester Beatty Papyrus (P45, P46, P47) and the Bodmer Papyrus II, XIV, XV (P46, P75).
   From these five manuscripts alone, we can construct all of Luke, John, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, and portions of Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Revelation. Only the Pastoral Epistles (Titus, 1 and 2 Timothy) and the General Epistles (James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2, and 3 John) and Philemon are excluded.
3. Oldest Fragment - Perhaps the earliest piece of Scripture surviving is a fragment of a papyrus codex containing John 18:31-33 and 37. It is called the Rylands Papyrus (P52) and dates from 130 A.D., having been found in Egypt. The Rylands Papyrus has forced the critics to place the fourth gospel back into the first century, abandoning their earlier assertion that it could not have been written then by the Apostle John.

4. This manuscript evidence creates a bridge of extant papyrus and parchment fragments and copies of the New Testament stretching back to almost the end of the first century.

Versions (Translations)

In addition to the actual Greek manuscripts, there are more than 1,000 copies and fragments of the New Testament in Syria, Coptic, Armenian, Gothic, and Ethiopic, as well as 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate, some of which date back almost to Jerome's original translation in 384 400 A.D.

Church Fathers

A further witness to the New Testament text is sourced in the thousands of quotations found throughout the writings of the Church Fathers (the early Christian clergy [100-450 A.D.] who followed the Apostles and gave leadership to the fledgling church, beginning with Clement of Rome (96 A.D.).

It has been observed that if all of the New Testament manuscripts and Versions mentioned above were to disappear overnight, it would still be possible to reconstruct the entire New Testament with quotes from the Church Fathers, with the exception of fifteen to twenty verses!

A Comparison

The evidence for the early existence of the New Testament writings is clear. The wealth of materials for the New Testament becomes even more significant when we compare it with other ancient documents which have been accepted without question.

NT Conclusion

In his book, The Bible and Archaeology, Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, stated about the New Testament, "The interval, then, between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established."

To be skeptical of the 27 documents in the New Testament, and to say they are unreliable is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as these in the New Testament.

B. F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort, the creators of The New Testament in Original Greek, also commented: "If comparative trivialities such as changes of order, the insertion or omission of the article with proper names, and the like are set aside, the works in our opinion still subject to doubt can hardly mount to more than a thousandth part of the whole New Testament." In other words, the small changes and variations in manuscripts change no major doctrine: they do not affect Christianity in the least. The message is the same with or without the variations. We have the Word of God.

The Anvil? God's Word

Last eve I passed beside a blacksmith's door
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime:
Then looking in, I saw upon the floor
Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.

"How many anvils have you had," said I,
"To wear and batter all these hammers so?"
"Just one," said he, and then, with twinkling eye,
"The anvil wears the hammers out, you know."

And so, thought I, the anvil of God's word,
For ages skeptic blows have beat upon;
Yet though the noise of falling blows was heard,
The anvil is unharmed . . . the hammer's gone.
Author unknown

Inspiration

It is very important that you understand how to defend the reliability of the Bible. There are many critics who will challenge the Bible. Atheists will try and find inconsistencies. Cults often claim it has been corrupted thereby justifying their "new" revelations. Muslims deny its validity in order to justify the Quran. So, knowing the issues surrounding its reliability and how to discuss it with people is very important. After all, if the Bible can't be trusted then we haven't a leg to stand on.


 

The fact is that the Bible copies do have textual variations. You need to know why they exist and what they are. This way, you can better handle objections such as, "The Bible was copied so many times that it can't be trusted," or "The Bible was translated from one language to another and then another so that through the centuries it became unreliable."

Inspiration

When we say that the Bible is inspired, we are saying it is inspired in the original documents. "Inspiredness is not a quality attaching to corruptions which intrude in the course of the transmission of the text, but only to the text as originally produced by the inspired writers. The acknowledgment of biblical inspiration thus makes more urgent the task of meticulous textual criticism, in order to eliminate such corruptions and ascertain what that original text was."

Therefore, when critics of the Bible point out apparent contradictions, what they are doing is either failing to understand the context of the passages they are examining, or they have encountered a scribal copying error. The fact is that there are indeed copyist errors on the biblical documents and they account for many alleged contradictions. Remember, it is the autographs (original writings) that are inspired and inerrant, not the copies. The copies we have now are copies of inspired documents. The copies are not themselves "inspired"; that is, they have no guarantee of being 100% textually pure. Does this then mean that we can't trust the Bible? Not at all. The copies are so accurate that all of the biblical documents are 98.5% textually pure. The 1.5% that is in question is mainly nothing more than spelling errors and occasional word omissions like the words "the", "but", etc. This reduces any serious textual issues to a fraction of the 1.5% and none of these copying errors affects doctrinal truths. Following are some types of copyist errors:

• Dittography - Writing twice what should have been written once.

  • A good example would be writing "latter" instead of "later." "Latter" means nearest the end. "Later" means after something else.

• Fission - Improperly dividing one word into to words.

  • Example: "nowhere" into "now here."

• Fusion - Combining the last letter of one word with the first letter of the next word.

  • "Look it is there in the cabinet... or Look it is therein the cabinet."

• Haplography - Writing once what should have been written twice.

  • A good example would be "later" instead of "latter." "Later" means after something else. "Latter" means nearest the end.

• Homophony - Writing a word with a different meaning for another word when both words have the exact same pronunciation.

In the above diagram, there are 26 total "documents" - designated by solid lines. The red documents contain variants. In this illustration there would be a total of nine variants in 26 copies. But, we can see that they are really one variant that has been copied. This illustrates why the Bible is actually extremely well preserved since we are able reconstruct the document tree and see where variants are introduced and then document them.

Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940's, the oldest extant copy of any Old Testament writings were the Masoretic Text dated around 916 AD. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, a complete copy of Isaiah was found. Its date was 125 BC. The difference in dates between the oldest copy and the newly discovered Isaiah document was 1000 years. This provided a pristine opportunity to judge the copying accuracy of the Old Testament documents since it would be easily discernable which errors crept in over 1000 years. The documents proved to be 95% textually identical. The 5 percent that was different were mainly misspellings of words and did not constitute any threat to the content or reliability of the text. This shows how accurately it was transmitted.

Copying Checks

In other words, in English we have letters, "a, b, c, d, etc." and numbers "1, 2, 3, etc.) We have alpha and numeric characters. In Greek and Hebrew there are only one set of writing characters for both numbers and letters. In Greek, for example, the first letter is "alpha." It is also used as the number one. The second letter "beta" is used as the number 2, and so on. When the Greeks wanted to write a number they just used the corresponding character. It is similar in English. What is this, "o"? Is it a letter or a number? We can only know when it is used in context. Similarly, the Greek writers of the New Testament would copy the biblical manuscripts. By default, every letter also has a numeric value. When the copies were done, the copyists would add up the numeric values of the words copied and compare them to the original copy. If there was an error, the copy was destroyed and a new one was begun. This was done with both the Hebrew and Greek writings of the Bible. Therefore, the Bible was copied with extreme care.

Other ancient writings

If the critics of the Bible want to through it out because some of the copies of the documents are not perfectly identical, then they must also throw out other ancient writings which are no where near as well preserved as the biblical documents. Please consider the chart below that compares the New Testament to other ancient writings.

Additional manuscript information

• The John Ryland manuscript, p⁵², dates from 130 AD. Contains a fragment of John 18:31-33, 37.

• Chester Beatty papyri, p⁴⁵, a codex. Dated around 200 - 250 AD and contains all four gospels and Acts.

• Chester Beatty papyri, p⁴⁶, a codex, Dated around the year 200. Contains Romans, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossains, 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

• The Bodmer manuscript dates from 150-200 AD, p⁶⁶, a codex. Dated around 200 AD. Contains John 1:1-6 and 6:35b-29:15.

• There are 19,368 citations of the four gospels by the church fathers.

It is obvious that the New Testament is far better preserved than any other ancient text, yet, people have no problem believing in Caesar, Plato, and Aristotle.
The New Testament documents fall into three categories: 1) Greek manuscript copies, 2) other language copies, and 3) citations in early church writings. The NT was written in Greek and we have more than 5000 different Greek Manuscripts from which to compare. Additionally, there are another 19,000 manuscripts of ancient origin that are translations. That is, we have 19,000 manuscripts of the New Testament in Latin, ..... And finally, all of the NT (except for 11 verses) can be reconstructed from quotes of early church writings. It is very well preserved.
Therefore, we can see that the Bible is an ancient document that has withstood thousands of years of transmission with remarkable accuracy and clarity. We can trust it to be what it says it is: the word of God. It is reliable.

Focus Points

1. The biblical copies are so accurate that all of the biblical documents are 98.5% textually pure.

2. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940's, the oldest extant copy of any Old Testament writings were the Masoretic Text dated around 916 AD. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, a complete copy of Isaiah was found. Its date was 125 BC. The difference in dates between the oldest copy and the newly discovered Isaiah document was 1000 years. This provided a pristine opportunity to judge the copying accuracy of the Old Testament documents since it would be easily discernable which errors crept in over 1000 years. The documents proved to be 95% textually identical. The 5 percent that was different were mainly misspellings of words and did not constitute any threat to the content or reliability of the text. This shows how accurately it was transmitted.

3. If the critics of the Bible want to through it out because some of the copies of the documents are not perfectly identical, then they must also throw out other ancient writings which are no where near as well preserved as the biblical documents.

The New Testament documents fall into three categories: 1) Greek manuscript copies, 2) other language copies, and 3) citations in early church writings. The NT was written in Greek and we have more than 5000 different Greek Manuscripts from which to compare. Additionally, there are another 19,000 manuscripts of ancient origin that are translations. That is, we have 19,000 manuscripts of the New Testament in Latin, ..... And finally, all of the NT (except for 11 verses) can be reconstructed from quotes of early church writings. It is very well preserved.

This material is edited from - http://www.carm.org/demo2/bible/reliable.htm