Can I Trust the Bible?Sample

What About Translations and Transmission?

At this point you might still be thinking, even if the books of the Bible are the right books, how do we know that our Bibles match with the ancient texts? Couldn’t some of the stories have been changed in translation? Many people are rightly concerned with this question, so today we want to explore how we can be confident that the texts Jesus knew as Holy Scripture match with what we have today in our Bibles.

Thankfully, Christian scholars have access to thousands of ancient manuscripts which help prove the reliability of the text’s translation. In fact, biblical scholars have often referred to the wealth of ancient biblical manuscripts as an “embarrassment of riches,” meaning we actually have so much evidence to work with, the problem becomes just how to sort through it all!

Today’s reading from Paul in 1 Corinthians helps demonstrate the seriousness with which Christians wanted to preserve and proclaim their message. Paul says that the message he passed on to the people is of “first importance,” and that it came to be known “in accordance with the Scriptures.” Paul was adamant that the message of the Gospel and the Scriptures that supported it, not be changed. And the evidence shows that the early Christians took this demand very seriously.

Between 1947 and 1956, discoveries were made in the caves at Qumran (a place just north-west of the Dead Sea) that profoundly increased our knowledge of the history of the Hebrew Scriptures. Here, we discovered hundreds of texts and dozens of copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible, with a few of them still being substantially complete. The earliest manuscripts date to around 250 BC, while the latest texts are from 68 AD. Amazingly, every book of the Old Testament was accounted for, with the only exception being the book of Esther.

Among these copies of the Bible were also commentaries explaining them. The fact that they were both well-preserved and commented on, is just one more piece of evidence that affirms their wide-spread acknowledgment as Holy Scripture.

Similar discoveries have been made concerning the New Testament. To date, we have over 5800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, some of which date to the early second century!

But what’s really incredible about these findings is just how well the documents match with what we have today!
Compared with the previous earliest biblical manuscripts used by Christians (which date to about 1,000 years after the texts found at Qumran), the manuscripts are astoundingly accurate, almost matching identically.

This evidence confirms and gives good reason to trust that our Bibles have been faithfully and accurately copied. What we hold now in our hands today is just like what the original authors wrote.

As you reflect on this today, think about how precious the Word of God was to the early Christians. Think about how important those words were to them and what they mean to you today.