Day 6: The Bible is a Miraculous Book: Preserving the Bible

Once God's word was written, it had to be preserved for future readers. The originals, called "autographs" by scholars, were written on papyrus, which decayed easily. Therefore, they had to be copied accurately.

By God's grace, we have excellent copies of the originals. We possess copies of entire biblical books, as well as parts of different passages. These copies, called "manuscripts," are very numerous, and some are nearly as old as the originals.

For instance, we have a copy of part of the New Testament that was made only forty years after the original. 

Copies of complete books were made only three hundred years later. We possess five thousand copies of the New Testament in ancient Greek and ten thousand copies in other ancient languages. 

By comparison, our oldest manuscript of Caesar's Gallic Wars was made nine hundred years after the original, and only nine or ten good copies of the book exist. 

Our earliest copy of Tacitus' Histories was made nine hundred years after the original. Our oldest copies of Aristotle's works were made 1,300 years after the originals.

Scholars have worked diligently to compare the various ancient copies of the Bible and have given us a text that is so close to the original that no matter of faith or practice is in question. 

God revealed himself in his word and made certain that every generation would have that revelation to read. Because his word was copied accurately, we can trust the Bible we possess to be his word for us today.

In his letter to the Thessalonian church, Paul wrote, “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

Believe the Bible for “what it really is”: the word of God.