We have no copies of the original manuscripts. How, then, can we be sure we have the words written by the biblical writers, such as Moses, Peter, Paul, and John?
- God has made good His promise to preserve the Scriptures, and it is unthinkable that He would preserve anything less than His perfect Word:
Isaiah 40:8
Psalms 119:89
Matthew 5:18
1 Peter 1:23-24
The Evidence of the amazing number of biblical manuscripts: *Since the Bible has frequently been translated into multiple languages and distributed throughout the world, how can we be sure that error has not crept in, even if it was unintentional? As Christianity spread, it is certainly true that people desired to have the Bible in their own language which required translations from the original Hebrew and Aramaic languages of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament. Not only did the work of translators provide an opportunity for error, but publication, which was done by hand copying until the printing press arrived C. A.D. 1450, also afforded continual possibilities of error.
Through the centuries, the practitioners of textual criticism, a precise science, have discovered, preserved, catalogued, evaluated, and published an amazing array of biblical manuscripts that dramatically outdistances the existing fragments of any other ancient literature. By comparing text with text, the textual critic can confidently determine what the original prophetic/apostolic, inspired writing contained.
Although existing copies of the main, ancient Hebrew text (Masoretic) date back only to the tenth century A.D., two other important lines of textual evidence bolster the confidence of textual critic that they have reclaimed the originals. First, the tenth century A.D., Hebrew Old Testament can be compared to the Greek translation called the Septuagint or LXX (written c. 200-150 B.C.) proved to be monumentally important. After comparing the earlier Hebrew texts with the later ones, only a few slight variants were discovered, none of which changed the meaning of any passage. Although the Old Testament had been translated and copied for centuries, the latest version was essentially the same as the earlier ones.
The New Testament findings are even more decisive because a much larger amount of material is available for study; there are over 5,000 Greek New Testament manuscripts that range from the whole testament to scraps of papyri which contains as little as part of one verse. A few existing fragments date back to within 25-50 years of the original writing. New Testament textual scholars have generally concluded that 1) 99.99 percent
Of the original writings have been reclaimed, and 2)of the remaining one hundredth of one percent, there are no variants substantially affecting any Christian doctrine.
With this wealth of biblical manuscripts in the original languages and with the disciplined activity of textual critics to establish with almost perfect accuracy the content of the autographs, over the centuries can be identified and corrected by comparing the translation or copy with the reassembled original. By this providential means, God has made good his promise to preserve the Scriptures. We can rest assured that there are translations available today which indeed are worth of the title.
Through the centuries, tens of thousands of copies and thousands of translations have been mad (transmission) which did introduce some error. Because there is an abundance of existing ancient Old Testament and New Testament manuscripts, however, the exacting science of textual criticism has been able to reclaim the content of the original writings (revelation and inspiration) to the extreme degree of 99.99 percent, with the remaining one hundredth of one percent having no effect on its content (preservation).
(*The Word of God Macarthur Study Bible* – pg 25)
- “Inerrancy means that there must be a Correct Understanding of Inerrancy: “inerrancy means that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything they teach, whether that teaching has to de with doctrine, history, science, geography, geology, or other disciplines of knowledge.” At the Chicago summit meeting, of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy in October 1978, several hundred key evangelical leaders signed this testament: ‘Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.”
- Irrestible Logic: GOD CANNOT ERR, THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD, AND THEREFORE, THE BIBLE CANNOT LIE.
- 5. God Cannot Err. The Bible says “it is impossible for God to lie, and He “cannot lie.” (Hebrews 6:18) (Titus 1:2) Let’s put this in irresistible logic:
GOD CANNOT ERR
THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD
THEREFORE, THE BIBLE CANNOT LIE
INERRACY DOES NOT MEAN THERE ARE NOT DIFFICULTIES IN THE BIBLE. Over 800 questions have been raised about the Bible. A clear and concise answer from Genesis to Revelation are answered in THE BIG BOOK OF BIBLE DIFFICULTIES, WRITTEN BY THE EMINENT APOLOGIST, Dr. Norman L. Geisler and Thomas Howe who wrote this book “over forty’ years of intense study of the Holy Scriptures.