Can We Trust the Text of the Bible?

We do not have access to the original compositions of any of the books of the Bible. Instead, we have access to copies of copies of those compositions. Since the printing press did not exist in the ancient world, all those copies had to be painstakingly made by hand. Whenever a text is copied by hand, of course, there is potential for human error to produce changes in the text. Some anti-Christian skeptics argue that, since we only have copies of the books of the Bible from centuries after their original composition, the biblical text must be hopelessly corrupt, undermining the Christian belief that the Bible is God’s word.

For argument’s sake, let us assume that the text of the Bible we have access to has many errors and differs substantially from the original compositions. Logically, this would not mean that the Bible is not God’s word; it would just mean that the Bible is God’s word, but with some significant distortions mixed in. The importance of the Bible, then, would not diminish. Since the Bible would still give us our only access to the very word of God, it would still be reasonable for Christians to regard the Bible as their highest Authority, even if they could not regard it as inerrant or infallible.

But do we only have access to a hopelessly corrupt version of the biblical text, which differs substantially from the original Bible? In fact, no. Using the science of textual criticism, we can reconstruct the original form of the biblical text with a high degree of confidence and accuracy.

The Text of the New Testament

The science of textual criticism involves analyzing the variations found in the different copies of a text, determining which variations preserve the original reading, and then reconstructing a text that represents the original composition. This is a science that can be applied to any ancient text. It should be noted that we have many more copies of the New Testament than we do of any other ancient text. We have over 5,000 copies of the Greek New Testament, compared to, at the most, hundreds of copies of other ancient Greek texts. Furthermore, while the copies of most ancient Greek texts we have are from about 900 years after the original, we have copies of many New Testament books that are from about 100 years after the original. This means that we can have more confidence in reconstructing the original wording of the New Testament than we can with almost any other ancient text. No one doubts that we can be confident in knowing what these other ancient Greek texts originally said, in spite of only having access to copies of them from centuries later. So, it is wildly inconsistent to call into question whether we can know what the New Testament originally said, just because we only have access to copies of the New Testament texts.

There are thousands of textual variants found in the many copies of the New Testament. However, the overwhelming majority of these variants are very minor and completely inconsequential to the meaning of the text. In a small number of cases, there are textual variants that make a real difference in the meaning of a verse. However, in none of these cases is a significant Christian theological doctrine at stake. Just compare the old King James Version of the Bible (from 1611), which was based on late, relatively errant copies, with a modern English version of the Bible which is informed by the science of textual criticism. While there are some verses which are significantly different, no one’s theology is going to be significantly altered by reading one version or another. 

The only significant sections of the New Testament which textual criticism has shown to not have been original are Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11. The earliest manuscripts we have of Mark end at 16:8, with the women leaving the empty tomb after an angel told them Jesus was risen. Scholars disagree on whether Mark intended to end his Gospel with this somewhat ambiguous verse for rhetorical purposes, or if there was originally more to Mark’s Gospel which somehow got lost early on. In any case, at some point, a scribe who felt unsatisfied with this ending added Mark 16:9-20, which is basically a short summary of the resurrection narratives of Matthew, Luke, and John. Nothing significant is gained or lost theologically by the presence or absence of these verses. 

John 7:53-8:11 is the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. From multiple early Christian writings, we know that the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery was circulating among early Christians independent of John’s Gospel.^[1]See Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers in English (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 303-305. Apparently, at some point a scribe thought it would be appropriate to add this well-known story about Jesus to the Gospel of John. Again, nothing significant is gained or lost theologically by the presence or absence of these verses. 

Over many centuries of being copied and copied again, the text of the New Testament was not substantially corrupted. So, we have good reason to be confident that it was not substantially corrupted very early on, even though we do not have access to the very earliest copies of the New Testament. 

The Text of the Old Testament

Old Testament textual criticism does not give quite as much certainty about recovering the original form of the text as New Testament textual criticism does. In terms of the number of copies we have available and the time in between those copies and the original texts, the Old Testament is closer to many other ancient texts than it is to the New Testament. Nevertheless, textual criticism can allow us to be confident that we can know what the original text of the Old Testament said. On top of that, Jesus’s repeated affirmation of the Authority and truthfulness of the Old Testament Scriptures as they existed in the first century gives Christians good theological reasons for trusting in the reliability of the transmission of the Old Testament texts prior to His time. So, for both the Old and New Testaments, the existence of textual variants in copies of the Scriptures does nothing to undermine the Christian belief that the Bible we have today is God’s Authoritative word.