Question: Is the Bible a trustworthy document?

Answer: This question has been posed to me often. It presents itself in many forms. Doesn't the Bible contradict itself? How do we know the Bible hasn't been changed over the years?

I remember listening to a talk radio program one day. The guest of the show was a leader of an atheist group. He claimed that the Bible was full of contradictions. The host asked him to name a few. The first (and only) one he mentioned was this: In the gospel of Matthew, we are given the family tree of Jesus. In the gospel of Luke we are given an entirely different genealogy for Jesus. Based on this "gross discrepancy" the man claimed that the Bible couldn't be trusted.

Well, I couldn't hold it in. I called in to the talk show. I reminded the man that everybody has two genealogies, one for their mother and one for their father. The man had never considered this simple answer. Just like me in my college days, he was ready to reject the testimony of the Bible based on an opinion that was wrong.

I have had several face to face discussions about the Bible where people throw out this phrase, "The Bible is filled with contradictions." I always respond, "Name one!" In hundreds of discussions over twenty years NO ONE has been able to name one! It is a declaration we hear other people make, and then we repeat it without investigating the truth.

I admit there are things that seem to be contradictory (like the two genealogies of Christ mentioned above), but almost all of these have an extremely simple explanation. But that does not really answer the question, "Is the Bible a trustworthy document?"

Discovering the accuracy of any document is actually a simple project if old manuscripts exist. These old manuscripts are merely compared to the modern translations to see if the content has been altered. The simple historical reality is that the Bible is the most accurate ancient writing that we have. But I must give some evidence to this claim.

Let's compare some other old documents. Most people have heard of Plato even if they have not read his writings. He lived and wrote around 400 B.C. The oldest copy of his work dates from 900 A.D. which is a 1300 year gap after the original. Secondly only about 7 copies exist from this early period. The Annals of Tacitus were written between 55-120 A.D. and the earliest copy in existence was copied around 1100 A.D. which yeilds a gap of 1000 years. There are, more or less, 20 ancient copies of his work.

Most ancient writings have similar figures—anywhere from a 750-1500 year gap between the life of the author and the nearest copy and usually only 5-20 copies of the oldest manuscripts.

Now let's compare these to the Bible. The New Testament which records the life of Christ, was written between 50 and 90 A.D. Fragments of the New Testament writings exist from as early as 114 A.D., entire books from 200 A.D., near complete New Testaments from 250 A.D., and copies of the entire New Testament from 350 A.D. This gap of time is only from 30 to 225 years. But the remarkable thing is that we have over 5,300 copies of these ancient manuscripts. Comparing these ancient manuscripts with our translations today we discover that the Bible is 99.9% accurate. The .1% discrepancies are variations in spelling, grammar, or word order. The amount of ancient data supporting the reliability of the Bible is vastly greater than any other ancient book.

Another interesting point is this. Even if we had no early manuscripts of the Bible we could reassemble its contents from the writings of Christian teachers from the first four centuries. In the writings of the early "church fathers" such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and others we have direct quotes of every verse in the New Testament (over 36,000) except 11. For example, Eusbius, a Christian historian from the third century quotes 3,258 verses from the gospels in his writings. He quotes 1,592 verses from Paul's letters.

I do not want to get too dry and technical here. But it is glaringly obvious that those who claim that the the Bible has some how been altered simply have not researched the facts. These facts should convince you that what the Bible says is true. My hope is that you can be assured that what we are reading in the Bible today is identical in content to that which was written and completed over 2000 years ago.

Copyright © Bill Busshaus 2001.
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Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ®,
Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1976, 1975, 1977, by the Lockman Foundation
Used by permission. (www.lockman.org)