The Text of the Bible. A comparison of an English Bible in the Revised Version with one in the Authorised Version reveals at once many changes. Some are due to the progress of the English language, but many others are due to what scholars call various readings in the text. The text is the original Hebrew of the Old Testament and the original Greek of the New Testament. Formerly an idea largely prevailed that this text was an unchanging, unchangeable thing, preserved miraculously from ancient times. The preservation of the Bible is certainly one of the greatest miracles. When we reflect that the Bible had existed for a thousand years before printing was invented in Europe, that all copies had to be made laboriously by hand, and that thousands of copyists must have been employed, the wonder is not that there are various readings of the text, but that these are comparatively few and unimportant. The text of the Bible was preserved by human hands, working under human limitations, but the hand of God is in it too.
J. R. Dummelow, ed., A Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936), xiv.
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