“Ah, the Bible has been copied so many times and translated from one language to another. There’s no way we can be sure what we have today is the same as what was written back then. Each time you translate, some of the meaning gets changed corrupted. On top of that, if things are manually handcopied by people, well, it’s higly likley that they made errors and so, we don’t have a pure, uncorrputed text today…”
I have heard several statements similar to this from my work colleages, people I spoke to while I was at university and scores of random people on the internet. It appears to be the view of many non-christians (and some, who claim to be Christians, too) today. Unfortunately, that is a misinformed and an erroneous position.
- Yes, hand copying is not as reliable as taking photocopies. Human errors are inevitable. In fact, there were human errors in the copying of the Biblical manuscripts. However, when we survey the extant manuscripts, we can see that the Bible has been copied with incredible accuracy and the vast majority of the copyist errors are insginifcant.
One of the leading non-Christian New Testament Critics of our day is Bart Ehrman. He popularised the idea that the there are thousands of variations between manuscripts that there is no way we can be certain about any words of Jesus. Responding to his statements, Porter and Pitts say this:
“While we must allow that certain scribes may have had doctrinal agendas that impact their transmission of the text from time to time, this was the exception rather than the rule… Ancient scribes generally considered it their duty to copy rather than interpret or alter the text to suit their or other’s doctrinal beliefs. This is not to say doctrinal alterations did not happen from time to time, but it certainly was not part of regular scribal practice… This is where Ehrman himself is inconsistent. He admits that doctrinally motivated alteration was the exception, not the rule, but builds his entire case upon variants that are often easily explained by using… standard transcriptional probabilities.”1
- Where there are significant differences in the manuscripts, due to the abundance of manuscript copies we have, we can easily identify which variants are the originals and which ones have altered or added/removed text. There’s no manscript variant that is unexplainable, which has any meaningful impact on any key orthodox christian doctrine.
“For most of the Biblical text a single reading has been transmitted. Elimination of scribal errors and intentional changes leaves only a small percentage of the text about which any questions occur.”
“It must be said that the amount of time between the original composition and the next surviving manuscript is far less for the New Testament than for any other work in Greek literature… Although there are certainly differences in many of the New Testament manuscripts, not one fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading.”2
Furthermore, talking about the wealth of manuscript evidence we have, see what the critic Bart Ehrman himself admits:
“The works of several ancient authors are preserved to us by the thinnest possible thread of transmission. For example, the compendious history of Rome by Velleius Paterculus survived to modern times in only one incomplete manuscript, from which the editio princeps was made – and this lone manuscript was lost in the seventeenth century after being copied by Beatus Rhenanus at Amerbach. Even the Annals of the famous historian Tacitus is extant, so far as the first six books are concerned, in but a single manuscript, dating from the ninth century. In 1870 the only known manuscript of the Epistle to Diognetus, an early Christian composition which editors usually include in the corpus of Apostolic Fathers, perished in a fire at the municipal library in Strasbourg. In contrast with these figures, the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material.”3
We will see more about this abundant wealth of manuscript evidence for the New Testament, a little later in this article.
- While there were instances where the Bible has been trnaslated from language A to B and then from B to C, those are the exceptions and not the norm. Nearly all of the translations we have today rely on the original language manuscripts. We don’t translate from Hebrew/Greek to English and then use the English translation to translate into Arabic or Chinese. ALL transaltions are made from Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic manuscripts. While the translators may refer to and rely on other earlier translations such as latin manuscripts, they always go back to the original language copies. Therefore, it is a misleading idea that Bible has been translated from one language to another many times and so the meanings are lost in translation. No, nearly all translations we use today, are directly translated from the originals.
A litttle later, I will present a piece of evidence that shows that what we are reading in our Bibles today is the same as what the first century Christians were reading! First let’s talk a little bit more about the manuscript evidence and what that means for us.
Fig 1: Reliability of the New Testament Manuscripts.
The chart above is taken from “A Popular Survey of the New Testament” by Norman L. Geisler.
NOTE: This Book was originally published in 2014. Therefore, the data used in the chart is not up-to-date. More manuscripts copies of both the NT and other books of antiquity have been unearthed after the publication of this book. It is worth noting that the new evidence only made the difference between NT manuscripts and the rest of antique books’ manuscripts, even more stark.
Let’s consider what this chart is saying:
We have 7 manuscript copies (some fragmentary) of Plato’s teachings/sayings/writings, and, the gap between the time of the original autograph and the earliest of those 7 manuscript copies is 1200 years! Whatever writings we are attributing to Plato today, must have been copied multiple times since the original was written, for 1200 years, and we do not have any copies of those manuscripts. The earliest one is from 1200 years after the original was written. How many copyist errors were made in those 1200 years? How reliable and accurate is the earliest manuscript copy we have available to us? There is no way to ascertain. It might be 100% accurate or only 1% accurate. There’s no sure way of determining. However, by and large, at least the populous, do not question the reliability of Plato. Not many doubt whether Plato really said what the manuscripts say he said.
Similar story with most other books of antiquity. The best one, apart from the New Testament, is the Homer’s work “Illiad”. At the time of the publishing of this chart (original), we found 643 manuscript copies, with the earliest one having a time gap of 500 years from the time of the original autograph.
Compare that with the New Testament – We have 5750 manuscripts copies and the time gap between the earliest manuscript copy and the time of the original autograph is just 25 years! This is staggering for a book that was written 2000 years ago!
Ask yourself – Is it reasonable to doubt the reliabile copying of the New Testament when we have around 6000 manuscript copies of it to compare with, and the earlier copy being only 25 years from the time of the original writing, when we do not doubt books that surived with less than 10 manuscript copies, the earliest of which, is at least a 1000 years away from the time of the original writing?
We need to be clear about a few details whenever we talk about the “wealth of manuscript evidence” we have. Much of the earliest manuscript copies are fragmentary. Which means, we do not have the entire bible or even entire books intact in those earlier copies available to us. In fact, the earliest one found so far is called the John Ryland’s fragment. This fragment is dated to AD115. This fragement is of the size of a credit card and has just five verses! (John 18:31-33; 37-38).
There are several reasons why the earliest manuscripts are so fragmentary;
- They were written on papyri which was made from reeds/leaves. This material is easily damaged, especially when preserved for long periods. It is almost a miracle that we have ANY fragments of those earliest manuscripts even preserved to this day. Many of the manuscripts from around 4th century BC were written on Parchment or vellum, which are a lot easier to preserve and are less prone to damage due to ageing and weathering.
- There were several attempts by various emperors/authorities to destory Christians and Christian scriptures in the first 3 centuries. Remember, Christianity was not legal in the Roman empire in its early days. It was not until the time of Constatine that Christians experienced freedom and support from the state. Therefore, many earlier manuscript copies were destoryed and only a few were left.
- Lack of freedom and support for Christianity in those early centuries combined with extreme hostility time and time again meant that the early Christians did not have the provisions, facilites, and finances to carefully preserve their copies of the Biblical text.
Critics often argue that since the earliest manuscript copies we have are so fragmentary, they don’t really count. However, it is not a reasonable argument. Consider for example, the John Ryland’s fragment mentioned earlier:
Yes, we only have a few words from a few verses in the Gospel of John preserved in this fragment but, this fragment shows someting extremely important:
This fragment has the exact same words that our Bibles 2000+ years later have!
This is a testimony to how well the Biblical text has been preserved!
Even if one were to exclude the small fragmentary mansucripts from the earliest days of Christianity, we will still be left with an abundance of manuscripts that are quite close to the original writings. Consider the following list:
| Manuscript | Date | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| John Ryland’s Fragment | AD 115 | John 18:31-33; 37-38 |
| Bodomer Papyri | AD 200 | Most of John, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude. |
| Chester Beaty Papyri | AD 250 | Nearly all of the New Testament books. |
| Vaticanus Manuscript | AD 325 – AD 350 | Most of the Old Testament & New Testament. |
| Codex Sinaiticus | AD 350 | Nearly all of the New Testament and over half of the Old Testament. |
| Codex Alexandrinus | AD 400 | Almost the entire Bible. |
| Codex Ephraemi | AD 400 | Every Biblical book except 2 Thessalonians and 2 John. |
| Codex Bezae | AD 450 | Gospels and Acts in Greek and Latin. |
At an initial glance seeing manuscripts from AD 300 or 400 may seem like they are far removed from the originals. But, do not forget to keep them in perspective. Go back and take a look at Fig 1 again and you will see that this gap between the originals and the extant manuscripts is quite small compared to other works of antiquity about which there is little doubt.
So, in conclusion, how well is the Bible preserved? Answer: Exceptionally Well! The abundance of manuscripts and their closeness to the time of the writing of the originals means, we can have complete confidence that what we are reading today is identical if not exactly the same as what was originally written.
- Porter, Stanley E. and Andrew W. Pitts. Fundementals of New Testament Textual Criticism. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015. ↩︎
- Dockery, David S., Kenneth A. Mathews, and Robert B. Sloan, Foundations for Biblical Interpretation. Nashville, TN: B&H, 1994. ↩︎
- Metzger, Bruce M. and Bart D. Ehrman. The Test of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. Oxford University Press, 2005, orig.pub. 1992. ↩︎
- McDowell, Josh and Sean McDowell. Evidence That Demands A Verdict. Bletchley, MK: Authentic Media Ltd, 2017. ↩︎