Is Our Copy of the Bible Reliable?

Three tests of the reliability of ancient documents

• Quantity of manuscripts – how many older manuscripts have we discovered?

• Quality of those manuscripts – Are the manuscripts we have consistent or are there variations?

• The time interval between when the original manuscript was written by the author and the oldest manuscripts we have in our possession (generally, the shorter the interval, the higher the reliability)

The Old Testament

• We do not have as many copies of the Old Testament as we do the New Testament, mainly because of age and because of the nature of animal skins, but the ones we do have are of remarkable quality. The Masoretes were very methodical in their work and had specifications not only for the kind of skins to be used and the size of the columns, but there was even a religious ritual necessary for the scribe to perform before he wrote the name of God. Rules governed the kind of ink they were to use, the spacing of words, and forbade writing anything from memory. The lines, and even the letters, were counted methodically. If a manuscript was found to contain even one mistake, it was discarded and destroyed.
• Even though the Masoretic text was a product of the Fifth to Ninth Century C.E./A.D., the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls confirms that they are reliable. Manuscripts from 200 B.C.E./B.C. are almost identical to the Masoretic text. A complete scroll of Isaiah was found that dated to 100 B.C.E./B.C. (nearly 1,000 years earlier than the Masoretic Text of Isaiah) and in Isaiah 53, out of 166 words, only 17 letters were different, and out of those 17, 10 were minor spelling differences, 4 were stylistic changes such as contractions, and the remaining 3 were contained in the word “light” which was added to verse 11 but had no effect on the meaning.

The New Testament

• We have over 5,700 Greek New Testament manuscripts ranging from the early Second Century C.E./A.D. to the Sixteenth Century C.E./A.D. When you include early Arabic, Latin, and Coptic translations, we have up to 25,000 early manuscripts. Moreover, looking at the Greek manuscripts, 10 to 15 are dated within the first 100 years after the original was written, and about 50 within the first 200 years. Therefore, is a large number when you compare the New Testament books/letters to other ancient texts.
• For example, consider the famous Annals written by the Roman historian Tacitus. We have only one copy, dating to the Ninth century C.E./A.D., 800 years after he wrote it. The best attested to of the Greek writers may be Euripides. We have about 300 fragments from his writings, the earliest about 700 years after he lived.
• Critics often point out the numerous variances that exist. However, less than 1% are meaningful, and even these do not affect any real doctrine. We have complete manuscripts as early as the Third and Fourth centuries C.E./A.D., and we have fragments as early as 25 years from the date of writing. The bottom line is that even though the Bible contains 66 books written by 39 different authors over a period of approximately 1,500 years, there is remarkable consistency, both in terms of the message of Scripture, and in terms of variances within the copies that we have.