How Do We Know We Have The Bible? (Part 2)

Author : Keith Sharp
The Accuracy of the Text

The Bible was written a very long time ago. How do we know its text has not been corrupted through the centuries, so that what we have is really accurate?

Old TestamentFirst, consider the Old Testament. The very attitude of Jesus toward the Old Testament settles the matter, so far as its transmission to his day.

But what about to our day? Two facts, the almost fanatical devotion of the Jewish scribes and the abundance of manuscript evidence, give us unswerving confidence in the textual integrity of the Old Testament.

Dr. Neil R. Lightfoot, in his book How We Got the Bible, describes the incredible, meticulous care with which the Jewish scribes (copyists) made sure that they accurately passed on from generation to generation the inspired text (69-76). Probably no other copyists in history have been as devoted to accurately preserving a document.

Furthermore, consider the abundance and value of manuscript evidence. Manuscripts are handwritten copies of documents. All ancient writing comes down to us in manuscript form, and the text of these documents is determined by these manuscripts. Various rules determine which manuscripts are most valuable in determining what the text of an ancient document really is, but probably the most important measure of a manuscript’s value is its age. How close to the original document is it in age? Obviously, the older the manuscript the better.

Our Old Testaments are translations of the Massoretic Text, a standard Hebrew text handed down by some very careful scribes known as Massoretes. The oldest manuscripts of this text date to about 1000 AD. But there are manuscripts of translations of this Hebrew text into other languages that date back to about the fourth or fifth century after Christ. Furthermore, since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Hebrew manuscripts found in caves close to the Dead Sea in 1948, we have Hebrew manuscripts of portions of the Old Testament that were written before the time Jesus walked on the earth. For example, there is a manuscript of the book of Isaiah that dates to about 200 BC. Thus, there is overwhelming proof of the accuracy of the Old Testament text.

The New Testament has even stronger confirmation. Codex Sinaiticus, which contains all the New Testament books in Greek, was written less than two hundred fifty years after the last apostle died. The Codex Vaticanus, which contains most of both the Old and New Testaments in Greek, was written only about two hundred to two hundred fifty years after the deaths of the apostles. The Codex Alexandrinus dates to about three hundred years after the first century.

There are now more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Add over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions (MSS) and we have more than 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today.” (McDowell. 39)

There is now even a fragment of the Gospel of John that dates to the beginning of the Second Century, just a few years after the Apostle John died and a century earlier than unfriendly critics of the Bible once claimed the book was written!

How good is our New Testament text?For Caesar’s Gallic War (composed between 58 and 50 B.C.) there are several extant MSS (manuscripts – K.S.), but only nine or ten are good, and the oldest is some 900 years later than Caesar’s day. (Bruce, New Testament Documents. 16).

If scholars accept the text of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and they do, how reasonable is it to reject the text of the New Testament?

But what about variant (differing) readings
between the many manuscripts?The proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as raised above doubt is very great, not less, on a rough computation, than seven-eighths of the whole. The remaining eighth therefore, formed in great part by changes of order and other comparative trivialities, constitutes the whole area of criticism. . . . the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the residuary variation, and can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text” (Westcott and Hort. 2-3).

And Westcott and Hort, scholars of the last part of the nineteenth century, are generally considered to be among the toughest critics of the biblical text.

How accurate is the text of our Bibles?Our century has seen no greater authority in this field of New Testament criticism than Sir Frederic Kenyon, who died in August, 1952, and we may take his words to heart with confidence:

‘It is reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these discoveries and all this study is to strengthen the proof of the authenticity of the Scriptures, and our conviction that we have in our hands, in substantial integrity, the verifiable Word of God.’

And again:

‘The interval then between then between the dates of the 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. ‘”(Bruce, Books and Parchments. 189-190).

ConclusionIs the text of our Bible accurate? Definitely!

Do we really have the inspired Scriptures in our present Bibles? The answer must be a resounding, “Yes!”

The Lord through His divine providence has kept His promise and has preserved His Word for us in the Bible. When you read your Bible from a good, standard, English translation, rest assured you are reading the Scriptures, the inspired Word of God. You can and should have confidence in your Bible.
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List of Works Cited

Bruce, F.F.,

The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
The Books and the Parchments

Lightfoot, Neil, How We Got the Bible.
McDowell, Josh, Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
Westcott, B.F. and F.J.A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek