Is the Bible of today reliable, accurate, and trustworthy,
or has it been changed and corrupted through the centuries and therefore
unreliable and different from what it was when originally written?
Benjamin Warfield was instructor in New Testament Language
and Literature at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh;
Doctor of Laws both from the College
of New Jersey and Davidson
College in 1892; Doctor of letters
from Lafayette College
in 1911; and Sacrae Theologiae Doctor from the University
of Utrecht in 1913. In 1886 he was
called to succeed A. Hodge as Professor of Systematic Theology in Princeton
Theological Seminary – a position which he occupied with great distinction
until his death in 1921.
Warfield states in his book, Introduction to Textual
Criticism of the New Testament, “If we compare the present state of the New
Testament text with that of any other ancient writing, we must ... declare it
to be marvelously correct. Such has been the care with which the New Testament
has been copied – a care which has doubtless grown out of true reverence for
its holy words – such has been the providence of God in preserving for His
Church in each and every age a competently exact text of the Scriptures, that
not only is the New Testament unrivaled among ancient writings in the purity of
its text as actually transmitted and kept in use, but also in the abundance of
testimony which has come down to us for castigating its comparatively
infrequent blemishes.”
Warfield boldly declares that the facts show that the great
majority of the New Testament “has been transmitted to us with no, or next to
no, variations and even in the most corrupt form in which it has ever appeared,
to use the oft-quoted words of Richard Bently, ‘the real text of the sacred
writers is competently exact; ...nor is one article of faith or moral precept
either perverted or lost…’ choose as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by
design, out of the whole lump of readings.”
The historian Philip Schaff in his book, Comparison to
the Greek Testament and the English Version, concluded that only 400 of the
150,000 textual variations caused doubt about the textual meaning and only 50
of these were of great significance. Not one of the variations altered “an
article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by
other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of Scripture teaching.”
Schaff quotes both Tregelles and Scriveners: “We possess so
many manuscripts, and we are aided by so many versions, that we are never left
to the need of conjecture as the means of removing printing errors.”
(Tregelles, Greek New Testament, “Prolegomena”, P.X.)
Sir Frederic Kenyon was the director and principal librarian
of the British Museum
and one of the great authorities in the field of New Testament textual
criticism and manuscripts.
In his book, The Story of the Bible, Kenyon writes,
“It is reassuring at the end to find that the general result of all these
discoveries (of manuscripts) and all this study is to strengthen the proof of
the authenticity of the Scriptures, and our conviction that we have in our
hands, in substantial integrity, the veritable Word of God.”
That textual errors do not endanger doctrine is emphatically
stated by Kenyon when he states in his book, Our Bible and the Ancient
Manuscripts, “One word of warning, already referred to, must be emphasized
in conclusion. No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a
disputed reading. Constant references to mistakes and divergences of reading,
such as the plan of this book necessitates, might give rise to the doubt
whether the substance, as well as the language, of the Bible is not open to
question. It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the
Bible is certain: Especially is this the case with the New Testament. The
number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and
of quotations from it in the eldest writers of the Church, is so large that it
is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is
preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said
of no other ancient book in the world.”
In his book, The Bible and Archaeology, Kenyon
states, “The interval then between the dates of original composition and the
earliest existing manuscripts becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and
the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us
substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity
and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as
finally established.”
The Chester Beatty Papyri (written 200 AD) is located
in the C. Beatty Museum in Dublin
and part is owned by the University
of Michigan. This collection
contains papyrus codices, three of them containing major portions of the New
Testament.
In The Bible and Modern Scholarship, Kenyon says
that: “The net result of this discovery – by far the most important since the
discovery of the Sinaiticus – is, in fact, to reduce the gap between the
earlier manuscripts and the traditional dates of the New Testament books so far
that it becomes negligible in any discussion of their authenticity. No other
ancient book has anything like such early and plentiful testimony to its text,
and no unbiased scholar would deny that the text that has come down to us is
substantially sound.”
Millar Burrows of Yale is the American expert on the Dead
Sea Scrolls, and archaeologist. In his book, What Mean These Stones?, Burrows says, “(the New Testament texts) have been
transmitted with remarkable fidelity, so that there need be no doubt whatever
regarding the teaching conveyed by them.”
Burrows goes on to say, “…archaeological work has
unquestionably strengthened confidence in the reliability of the Scriptural
record. More than one archaeologist has found his respect for the Bible
increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine.”
“On the whole such evidence as archaeology has afforded thus
far, especially by providing additional and older manuscripts of the books of
the Bible, strengthens our confidence in the accuracy with which the text has
been transmitted through the centuries.”
Norman Geisler is a graduate of Wheaton
College and Wheaton
Graduate School,
majoring in philosophy and theology respectively. He also attended Detroit
Bible College
(ThB), and was Asst. Professor of Bible and Philosophy at Trinity
College in Illinois.
In his book, A General Introduction to the Bible,
Geisler states, “Because of its (the John Ryland manuscript – written in 130 AD
– and located in the J. Ryland Library of Manchester, England) early date and
location (Egypt), some distance from the traditional place of composition (Asia
Minor), this portion of the gospel of John tends to confirm the traditional
date of the composition of the gospel about the end of the first century.”
Geisler also states that, “the quotations (from the New
Testament) are so numerous and widespread that if no manuscripts of the New
Testament were extant, the New Testament could be reproduced from the writings
of the early (Church) Fathers alone.”
In 1947, in a cave in Jordan,
the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Among these scrolls was a complete
manuscript copy of the Hebrew text of Isaiah, which paleographers have dated to
be written around 125 BC. Geisler states
that, “the impact of this discovery is in the exactness of the Isaiah scroll
(125 BC) with the Massoretic text of Isaiah (916 AD) 1000 years later. This
demonstrates the unusual accuracy of the copyists of the Scripture over a
thousand year period.”
Bruce Metzger is Professor of New Testament Language and
Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. He states that the Codex
Vaticanus (written between 325 - 350 AD) is one of the
most valuable manuscripts of the Greek Bible. This manuscript is located in the
Vatican Library and contains nearly all the Bible – Metzger’s, The Text of
the New Testament.
The Codex Sinaiticus (written about 350 AD) is located in
the British museum. It contains the New Testament and over half the Old
Testament.
From all of the above manuscripts the present day Bible is
derived, it is the same today as it was when it was originally written.
F. F. Bruce is Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and
Exegesis at the University of Manchester.
Dr. Bruce states in his book, The Books and the Parchments, that, “There
is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of
good textual attestation as the New Testament.”
Nelson Glueck, the renowned Jewish archaeologist, wrote in
his book, Rivers in the Desert, that: “It may be stated categorically
that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.”
Dr. F. F. Bruce states that the Septuagint (the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) written about 200 BC helps to
establish the reliability of the Old Testament’s transmission through 1,300
years when compared with the Massoretic Text (916 AD) we have today.
Has the Bible that we have today been changed or corrupted
from what was originally written? This brief analysis should make it obvious to
an unbiased reader that it hasn’t.
