NOTHING BUT COPIES & ERRORS

2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,”

Hebrews 6:18, “that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie. . .”

How in the world can the Bible be accurate? It was written over a thousand years ago by a bunch of Jewish men, and since then has been translated many times in many languages. How can we even believe that what we read is reliable? As a Christian, I claim that the Bible is the Word of God and therefore inerrant in its original writing. But, if there are copy errors in today’s editions then how can I trust it? How can I tell anyone to believe it then?

Having a lot of copies actually helps the cause of proving the reliability of Scripture, especially when copies from different geographical areas all line up together. You take the different languages from different cultures and they all say the exact same thing and this makes a great proof test of reliability, especially when they are from different time periods as well. There are 5,664 total Greek manuscripts and 24,000 copies in Latin, Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian manuscripts. Sir Fredrick Kenyon noted, AThe number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translation from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest 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 the other of these ancient authorities.” (Geisler, Systematic Theology I, 463).

We have copies of the New Testament from within a couple of generations of the event, as compared to most ancient manuscript copies, which are within 5, 8, and even 10 centuries afterwards. This is interesting. The only closest ancient document that has even close to the copies of the New Testament is Homer=s Iliad with 650 Greek manuscripts. The only problem is the copies are from the 2nd and 3rd century, and the Iliad was written around 800 B.C. Makes a very lengthy gap compared to a couple generations of the Bible, yet anthropologists, historians and literary critics all attest to the Iliad’s accuracy. Makes a great case for the Bible’s accuracy then! If the Iliad with a couple thousand years difference between the original and the first copy we have is accurate, then surely the Bible is accurate when the difference between the copy and original is a matter of 20 to 30 years.

That might be, but there still seem to be a lot of errors in the Bible. Those can also be accounted for as well. Today, we can rest assured that the Bible we read is reliable and accurate. God is not fooled and is able to make sure that His word is protected from the errors of man. As Dr. Geisler would say, “Just as man can draw a straight line with a crooked stick, God can write an inerrant book with sinful men.”

One reason for variation is that the scribes might have had a memory lapse or their memory played a trick on them and they wrote the words in the wrong order, but still the right words for the sentence. This is no big deal in Kione (Biblical) Greek. In Biblical Greek sentence sequence does not matter, because one word functions as the subject of the sentence regardless of where it stands in the sentence. Meaning, just because the word sequence changed the meaning does not change. This makes many of the variations inconsequential. It would be equivalent to the differences in spelling a word. A simple example would be Shopping Center or Shopping Centre, different spelling, but it is still a place you walk into to shop.

It is these types of errors that account for the majority of the errors within the Bible. There are no errors that have taken away the context of what was written from the beginning. Not to mention that we have the New Testament to within a couple of generations to the original. No early text compares to its legitimacy. If you discount the Bible then you have to discount every early text found thus far in history, leaving us with no account at all of our past.

Let me end with this simple question. Can you or I write an inerrant book? Yes! Page 1: 2+2=4. Page 2: 3+3=6. Page 3: 4+4=8 and so on. You get the picture. If both you and I can write an inerrant book, then by all means the infinite, omniscient God can. If it is the best attested book in History and it is reliable then we better pay attention to what it says about Heaven, Hell and how to avoid one and attain the other.

John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”