Has The Bible Been Preserved?

from July/August 2004 Good News Magazine, by Ken Graham

Has the Bible been preserved accurately?

There are language differences; the Bible has not been translated into English until the 14th century…but did it change until then?

Does it still constitute the same inspired words written by the prophets and the apostles?

What does the historical records show?

Has the Old Testament been accurately preserved?

Old Testament = Hebrew, written approximately between 1446 to 400BC…some 25-35 centuries ago.

Romans 3:2 - unto the Jews were the oracles of God committed.

The manuscripts of the Bible we have today were written meticulously by hand long ago from generation to generation, which care was perpetuated by the Masoretes, a special group of Jewish scribes, who were entrusted the making of copies of the Hebrew Bible which is now known as the Masoretic Text (AD 500 to 900).

Books of the Old Testament

About AD 90, Jewish elders meeting in the Council at Jamnia affirmed that the canon (the set of writings acknowledged as being divinely inspired) of the Jewish Bible was complete and authoritative.

There were only 22 books (we have 39) but that is so because certain books like Joshua and Judges were written in the same scroll, so as 1 and 2 Samuel, Kings and Chronicles…but the content is the same.

Textual Criticism

It is the field of study in which experts compare the various existing manuscripts with one another, seeking which is nearest to the original writing. The original manuscripts are called “autographs” which no longer exist today.

Over the centuries, minor differences which are called “variants” often make their way into successive copies of handwritten documents, still with the greatest care of the scribes involved…the reason why textual criticism exists especially during the period before 1455. The invention of printing press have done away with the variants due to the predictable accuracy of the printing.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, over a thousand years older than the oldest Masoretic Text we have today (the Leningrad Codex, dating AD 1008), the examination resulted to a few minor, insignificant differences.

New Testament

Though no autographs were found, the New Testament manuscripts (written in Greek) are a lot more in existence today in various antiquity and location.

The New Testament documents have more manuscripts than the 10 best classical literature combined, with 5,700 hand-written Greek and more than 9,000 in other languages. Some nearly 15,000 are complete Bibles, others are books or pages and a few are fragments. Next closest is Iliad by Homer with only 643 manuscripts.

Time gap between the copy from the original has the New Testament the shortest, having only 25 years or even less. Next is the Iliad, with 500 years and most ancient works have 1,000 years or more.

“… The early church fathers—men of the second and third centuries such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and others—quoted the New Testament so much (36,289 times, to be exact) that all but eleven verses of the New Testament can be reconstructed just from their quotations … So we not only have thousands of manuscripts but thousands of quotations from those manuscripts” (Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, 2004, pp. 225-228).

Sir Frederic Kenyon, authority on ancient manuscripts, sums up the status of the New Testament this way: “It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain: Especially is this the case with the New Testament. The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world” (Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, revised by A.W. Adams, 1958, p. 23).

Dealing with different translations

God is ultimately responsible in preserving His Word. Originally written in Hebrew and Greek, the English and other translations sometimes lose the original concept precisely. Some versions have their strength over the others but God promises to guide, through His Holy Spirit (John 16:13).

He also provides an educted, trained ministry to explain His Word clearly and accurately for the edification and instruction of those He has called (Ephesians 4:11-16; 2 Timothy 4:1-4).

The New King James Version usually best serve to show the gospel message as clear as possible.

We must make sure to read it, study it, treasure it and put it into practice in our lives.

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