Has the Bible Been Accurately Copied Down Through the Centuries?
by Norman L. Geisler
The Bible is the most accurately transmitted book
from the ancient world. No other ancient book has as many, as early, or more
accurately copied manuscripts.
Old
Testament
Old Testament manuscript reliability is based on
three factors: their abundance, dating, and accuracy. Most works from antiquity
survive on only a handful of manuscripts: only 7 for Plato, 8 for Thucydides, 8
for Herodotus, 10 for Caesar’s Gallic
Wars, and 20 for Tacitus. Only the works of Demosthenes and Homer number
into the hundreds. Yet even before 1890 a scholar named Giovanni de Rossi
published 731 OT manuscripts. Since that time some 10,000 OT manuscripts were
found in the Cairo Geniza, and in 1947 the Dead Sea caves at Qumran produced
over 600 OT manuscripts.
Further,
the Dead Sea Scrolls, containing at least fragments of all OT books except
Esther, all date from before the end of the first century a.d. and some to the third century b.c. The Nash Papyrus is dated between
the second century b.c. and the
first century a.d.
The
manuscripts’ accuracy is known from internal and external evidence. (1) It is
well known that Jewish scribal reverence for Scripture led to its careful
transmission. (2) Examination of duplicate passages (e.g., Pss 14 and 53) show
parallel transmission. (3) The early Greek translation of the OT, the
Septuagint, substantially agrees with the Hebrew manuscripts. (4) Comparison of
the Samaritan Pentateuch with the same biblical books preserved within the
Jewish tradition shows close similarity. (5) The Dead Sea Scrolls provide
manuscripts dating a thousand years earlier than most used to establish the
Hebrew text.
Comparative
studies reveal word-for-word identity in 95 percent of the text. Minor variants
consist mostly of slips of the pen or spelling. Only 13 small changes were
discovered in the entire Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Isaiah, eight of which were
known from other ancient sources. After 1,000 years of copying, there were no
changes in meaning and almost no changes in wording!
New
Testament
The reliability of the NT is established because
the number, date, and accuracy of its manuscripts enable reconstruction of the
original text with more precision than any other ancient text. The number of NT
manuscripts is overwhelming (almost 5,700 Greek manuscripts) compared with the
typical book from antiquity (about 7 to 10 manuscripts; Homer’s Iliad has the most at 643 manuscripts).
The NT is simply the best textually supported book from the ancient world.
The
earliest undisputed NT manuscript is the John Rylands Papyrus, dated between a.d. 117 and 138. Whole books (e.g.,
those contained in the Bodmer Papyri) are available from around the year 200.
And most of the NT, including all the Gospels, is available in the Chester
Beatty Papyri manuscripts, dating to about 250. Noted British manuscript
scholar Sir Frederick Kenyon wrote, “The interval then between the dates or
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.”
Thus both “the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the [NT]
may be regarded as firmly established.” No other ancient book has as small a
time gap between composition and earliest manuscript copies as the NT.
Not
only are there more and earlier NT manuscripts, but also they were more
accurately copied than other ancient texts. The NT scholar and Princeton
professor Bruce Metzger made a comparison of the NT with the Iliad of Homer and the Mahabharata of Hinduism. He found the
text of the latter to represent only 90 percent of the original (with 10
percent textual corruption), the Iliad
to be 95 percent pure, and only half of 1 percent of the NT text to remain in
doubt. The Greek scholar A. T. Robertson estimated that NT textual concerns
have to do with only a “thousandth part of the entire text,” placing the
accuracy of the NT text at 99.9 percent—the best known for any book from the
ancient world. Sir Frederick Kenyon noted that “the number of [manuscripts] of
the NT, of early translations from it, and of
quotations from it in the older 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 the other of these ancient authorities. This can be
said of no other ancient book in the world.”
In
summary, the vast number, early dates, and unmatched accuracy of the OT and NT
manuscript copies establish the Bible’s
reliability well beyond that of any other ancient book. Its substantial message
has been undiminished through the centuries, and its accuracy on even minor
details has been confirmed. Thus the Bible we
hold in our hands today is a highly trustworthy copy of the original that came
from the pens of the prophets and apostles.[1]
[1] Geisler,
Norman L. 2007. “Has the Bible Been Accurately Copied Down Through the
Centuries?” In The Apologetics
Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith, edited by
Ted Cabal, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen, Paul Copan, and J. P. Moreland,
468–69. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
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