Can We Trust that the Bible Has Been Accurately Translated?

How can we trust that the original text of the Bible was accurately transmitted to us through the centuries? Many critics of the Bible do not believe we can. In a Newsweek article on the Bible, Kurt Eichenwald makes this startling claim:

No television preacher has ever read the Bible. Neither has any evangelical politician. Neither has the pope. Neither have I. And neither have you. At best, we’ve all read a bad translation—a translation of translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies, and on and on, hundreds of times.

Is this really the case? Eichenwald holds what could be called the Telephone Game view of Bible transmission. You’ve probably played the telephone game. Someone whispers something in someone’s ear, who in turn whispers it in another person’s ear, until the last person says it out loud. Participants inevitably mishear one another, leading to sometimes hilariously absurd changes by the end. “Snowflakes will slide softly soon,” ends up seven people later to, “Snowballs will turn sour.” Eichenwald alleges something similar to this happened with the transmission of the Bible through the centuries.

Was the Bible inaccurately transmitted?

There are three main reasons why some claim we cannot trust that the Bible was transmitted accurately through the centuries. For sake of space we will focus on the New Testament:

The Time Gap: The books of the Old Testament (OT) were written from approximately 1400 to 400 BC. The books of the New Testament (NT) were written from approximately AD 40 to 90. So, anywhere between 3,400 and 1,900 years have passed since the books of the Bible were written. In this time, the original writings have been lost. The earliest copies of the NT were written from about AD 125 to 200. This means there’s a gap of some 45 to 75 years between the originals and our earliest copies. The charge is made that the documents we have are so far removed in time from the originals that we have no chance to figure out what the originals said.

Translations of Translations: Since we do not have the originals, we have “translations of translations of hand-copied copies of copies of copies of copies.” Like the Telephone Game of transmission, understanding the originals becomes an impossible task, as some skeptics claim.

Copy Variants: Of the copies we do have, the challenge of their reliability is made more problematic with the assertion by some that they are riddled with up to 400,000 variations. The impression given is that there are a mountain of inconsistencies making deciphering the texts impossible. (We will look at the nature of these variants later.)

With all of these objections, can we be confident that the original text of Scripture has been transmitted accurately through the centuries? In short, the answer is YES. An overwhelming and informed degree of evidence would say that we can. To demonstrate this, let’s tackle each criticism one by one.

What about the time gap?

What about translations of translations?

What about all of the copy variants?

What about the time gap?

Forty-five to seventy-five years is a remarkably short time by classical or ancient standards between the original writings and the first copy of the NT. Here are three reasons:

Books in general were far more valuable to ancient people than they are today. Because of this they took extraordinary care of them. For example, the “Codex Vaticanus,” a copy of the New Testament originally made in the 300’s, was re-inked in the 900’s, so it could continue to be used. That means that the original Codex Vaticanus was still in use 600 years later. So, though we do not have the originals of the NT today, it is not unlikely that they were still being read and copied at the time the earliest copies were made.
When you consider the time gap between the originals and copies of other ancient works (see chart below), 45-75 years is a small “time gap” for the NT in comparison.

Work	Date Written	Earliest Copies	Time Gap
Homer’s Illiad	800 BC	BC 400	400 Years
Herodotus History	480-425 BC	AD 1000	1350 Years
Plato Tetralogies	400 BC	AD 895	1300 Years
Caesar Gallic Wars	100-44 BC	AD 800	950 Years
Tacitus Annals	AD 100	AD 850	750 Years
Greek NT	AD 40-90	AD 130	40 Years

Comparison of Time-Gap of New Testament
with Other Ancient Writings

There was a rapid copying of texts which gives us many to compare. As disciples and churches rapidly grew, there was an increasing need to make copies of the letters to be read to meet the demand. Because of this, there are an abundance of NT manuscripts from this time. This amount of documents gives us assurance that we can discern the content of the original writings. Here is a break down of the numbers for the Bible:

Greek Manuscript total: 5,856

Non-Greek Manuscripts (Armenian, Latin, etc.): 18,130

Total Manuscripts: 23,986

Work	total number of copies
Homer’s Illiad	1757
Herodotus History	109
Plato Tetralogies	210
Caesar Gallic Wars	251
Tacitus Annals	33

Number of Copies of Classical Writings

How, then, does the number of NT documents compare with other ancient books? If you stack existing manuscripts from the average classical writer, it would measure about four feet high. The NT manuscripts would stack to more than one-mile high.

What About Translations of Translations?

This claim that our English Bible is a “translation of translations” is careless at best and intentionally misleading at worst, reducing Newsweek to more of a tabloid than a news magazine. Of all the modern English Bibles we have which are translated, all are translated directly from the Hebrew (OT) or the Greek (NT).

Greg Gilbert responds:

…it’s not true we’re dealing with “a translation of translations of translations,” as if the original Greek first went into Chinese, which went into German, which went into Polish, and finally we got around to putting it into English. No, we’re able to translate directly from the original Greek and Hebrew, so at worst we’re dealing with a translation, full stop.
Greg Gilbert, Why Trust the Bible?

Enough said on that point.

What about the variants?

What about the claim the NT copies are riddled with as many as 400,000 variants?

First, the assertion that the NT manuscripts are riddled with variants is just not true. The 400,000 number is extremely misleading, and those who put this allegation forward should understand that much. Those who toss this number out to an uninformed public are not just looking at the 5,800 original-Greek manuscripts but also at 18,000 other manuscripts in other languages. On top of that they are adding another 10,000 or so instances where people quoted the NT during the first 600 years of church history. Put it all together, you’re looking at 400,000-ish variants across some 34,000 manuscripts and quotations covering 600 years. This comes out to about 12 variants per manuscript. It is really much less because 400,000 “variants” does not mean 400,000 unique readings. For example, if one document says, “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” and ten others say, “I am innocent of this righteous blood,” then they count all eleven as “variants,” even though only one is off from the other ten. This makes the 400,000 number nearly meaningless.

Second, of the 5,800 Greek manuscripts, where there are variations in the text, most of these are no more significant than spelling differences, small changes of word order or misplaced letters. The chart below shows what the nature of most of these variants are like:

Spelling Conventions	In English this is similar to using “a” versus “an” or “who” versus “whom.”
Similar Appearances of Words	In 1 Timothy 3:16, some manuscripts read “He was revealed in the flesh” while others read “God was revealed in the flesh.” The difference is accounted for how “God” and “he” in abbreviated form in the Greek look very similar. Yet, this has no effect on the meaning.
Similar Sounding Words	Sometimes scribes would work in teams, with one scribe reading aloud while the other wrote what was spoken. In some cases, a word would be misheard because it had a similar sound. This would be in English like writing “rode” instead of “road” or “there” instead of “their.”
Transposed Words	Christ Jesus versus Jesus Christ (Word order in the Greek is not nearly as important as it is in English.)

Examples of the Kinds of Variants in NT Copies

Many of these variants are clustered in just a few places over and over again. As they are spotted, it is easy to identify them and make the corrections or clarify the original words. Imagine you come across an ancient copy of a document which read, “Roses are read, violets are blue. . . .” It’s not hard to see what happened as the original was copied? The correction is fairly simple: “Roses are red, violets are blue…” Wherever there are other differences on a more significant level, these do not amount to a real change of meaning. The more challenging cases account for about 1% of the variants; none of these affect any essential Christian doctrine.

Your word, LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.
Psalm 119:89

So, can we trust that the Bible has been accurately translated? YES! The evidence shows a nearly miraculous process which allowed for such a stable transmission. As a result, we can be confident that the translations we have are based on an overwhelmingly strong amount and quality of document sources.

How Did We Get the Bible?

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Selling over 80 million copies, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code ignited a worldwide controversy. It advanced the claim made by some skeptics that the Bible is a purely artificial collection of books, perhaps tainted by conspiracy and power plays of powerful religious figures, backed financially by the Roman Emperor Constantine. (AD 272-337) Here’s how one passage of The Da Vinci Code reveals the plot:

“Who chose which gospels to include?” Sophie asked.
“Aha!” Teabing burst in with enthusiasm. “The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great.”

The DaVinci Code is a work of fiction. It is as nearly fictitious to believe that in early Christianity there was a massive array of documents which vied for attention and authority of the church. A powerful group of bishops, as the story is told, gathered under Constantine and put a swift stop to it all by publishing a list of the letters they liked and systematically wiping out any dissent. Consequently, the church was left with a set of writings chosen with an arbitrary and politically controlled process.

How can we be confident that the sixty-six books of the Bible are the ones God wanted? How did the Bible come to be formed? The process used for discerning which books would be included in the Bible is known as canonization. Canon comes from a Greek word meaning “rule” or “measuring stick,” referring to the writings which became the “rule” or “measuring stick” of Scripture.

Old Testament Canon

The process of establishing an authoritative canon of the Old Testament began with Moses (approx. BC 1440):

So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel…After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord…
Deuteronomy 31:9, 24‭-‬25

Starting from Moses, the books of the Old Testament (OT) were written and collected for the next thousand years, ending with the prophet Malachi. (BC 420) The thirty-nine books of the OT were well established by the time of Jesus. The Savior, himself, declared:

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Matthew 5:18

In addition, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus (AD 37-100) offers a list of OT books accepted by the Jews which matches our current collection. He writes, “For although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured neither to add, or to remove, or to alter a syllable.”

There are other layers of evidence, as well. What is key to recognize is that the writers of the New Testament (NT) frequently quote the OT without any dispute over the boundaries of the OT canon. In fact, there is no instance anywhere that a NT author cites a book as Scripture that is not in our current thirty-nine book canon of the OT.

New Testament Canon

As in the OT, when the books of the NT were accepted, Christians did not select them with a choosing finger but received them with an open hand.

Over and over again when the early church fathers wrote about which books were included, they used language such as “we received” and “these books were handed down.”
Greg Gilbert, Why Trust the Bible?

This point is vital. They did not “choose” which books to canonize from a large group of undifferentiated books. Rather, each generation began with a group of authoritative books that they had inherited from the previous generation and which that generation in turn had inherited from the generation before them all the way back to the apostles themselves.

The writers of the NT claimed to write with a God-given authority. John declares in his gospel:

The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.
John 19:35

Paul insists that his words were “the word of God:”

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.
1 Thessalonians 2:13

By AD 68, the year Peter was martyred by Nero, there were a group of letters which were already acknowledged as Scripture on par with the OT, itself:

…just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
2 Peter 3:15-16

Similarly, Paul writes around AD 63, citing the gospel of Luke as Scripture to Timothy:

For Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”
1 Timothy 5:18

Papias, a leader in the early church, writing as early as AD 110 gives evidence that the apostle John accepted Matthew, Mark and Luke as Gospels, as well as writing one of his own.

After the apostles died, there was a core collection of books functioning as Scripture. This is given historical confirmation when in 1740 a writing called the Muratorian Fragment was discovered. It revealed that most of the NT books were already recognized and accepted as Scripture perhaps by the middle of the second century by the church. This document can be traced back to an apostolic connection.

The apostle John died around AD 95.
The Muratorian Fragment was written about A.D. 150-170.
Polycarp (AD 69-155), a disciple of the Apostle John, refers to the Fragment himself.

This writing shows a line of connection two generations from the apostles. The early Christians coalesced around the NT books remarkably early. Generally speaking, this core would have included the four gospels, Acts, thirteen epistles of Paul, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation. Books that were “disputed” tended to be the smaller books such as 2 Peter, Jude, James, and 2-3 John. Despite these questions, each of these seven books was eventually accepted.

Disputed Books

Why were some books disputed? Around the middle of the second century there were two categories of letters being circulated among churches:

letters which were good but not written or authorized by the apostles
letters which were reported to have been from the apostles but were not

The church needed to clarify which of the books would be part of the canon. To do this they asked two main questions:

Question # 1: Was the book written or authorized by an apostle? The idea was profoundly simple and powerful: Not just anyone could write about Jesus or give Scripture and expect the church to recognize it as such. No, that level of authority was reserved for those whom Jesus himself had specifically appointed apostles and for a select few close companions of the apostles. For example, though Mark was not an apostle, he wrote his gospel from the knowledge he gained out of his companionship and interaction with Peter.

One interesting thing to notice here is how so many would-be Scripture authors, in the second century and beyond, tried to fool the church by slapping the names of apostles and other first-century followers of Jesus onto their documents! (e.g., Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, etc.) Why did they do that? It is simple. They knew they didn’t have a chance of being recognized as authoritative unless they could pass off their books as originating with an apostle or an apostolic companion. So, the church needed to verify that the disputed books had apostolic authority.

Question # 2: Was it from the first century? This was closely related to the first test. To put it simply, in order for a book to have an apostle’s authority, it would have to be old, dating to the first century. No newbies need apply. Books written more recently than that simply didn’t qualify because the apostles were all dead by the turn of the second century. Antiquity, therefore, didn’t assure canonicity, but a lack of antiquity immediately prevented it.

In addition to the questions above, the church also asked how widely had the books been circulated among the churches and did the content square with the received theology coming from the apostles. Because they did this, they were able to weed out bogus contenders.

Bogus Letters

So, with the books that did not make the cut, what are we missing? Here are some examples which will put your fears to rest that you are not missing out on some great inspiration:

The Gospel of James, dated around AD 150, tells of a skeptical woman who doubts Mary’s character-defining purity. Without warning Mary turns red-hot, sends out a flame like the Human Torch and burns the woman’s hand off. Here is the woman’s description:

Woe for my lawlessness and the unbelief that made me test the living God. Look, my hand is falling away from me and being consumed in fire.

Fortunately for her, the touch of baby Jesus is all it takes to restore her lost body part.

The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, not written by the apostle Matthew, claims that the child Jesus visits with his mother in a cave where the holy duo encounter dragons. Here is how it reportedly went down:

And, lo, suddenly there came forth from the cave many dragons; and when the children saw them, they cried out in great terror. Then Jesus went down from the bosom of His mother, and stood on His feet before the dragons; and they adored Jesus, and thereafter retired.

From the Gospel of Thomas we are treated to stories of a mischievous and youthful Jesus who makes clay birds and turns them into real ones. He also lets it be known that he is not to be messed with as he curses and even kills children who try to give him a hard way to go.

I think the early church fathers were on solid grounds to axe these and others like them from the NT canon.

In conclusion, New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce wrote:

The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and general apostolic authority, direct or indirect.

How Do I Know the Bible Is True?

Often we have heard it said, “Do not believe everything you read.” This adage, which helps us to avoid naïve and gullible thinking, is a good rule of thumb. Yet, when it comes to the Bible, can a strong and well reasoned exception be made? The Bible is hands down the most influential work of writing ever produced. A survey by the Bible Society concluded that around 2.5 billion copies were printed between 1815 and 1975. More recent estimates since 1975 put the number at 5 billion. The Bible is the most translated book having been translated into over 3,400 languages.

So, why has the Bible been so widely read? The Apostle Paul, makes this claim regarding it:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…
2 Timothy 3:16

He describes “all” (each and every) Scripture as coming from the very breath…out of the mouth…of God. God-breathed is most likely a term Paul coins to describe the direct connection of the Bible with God’s very breathed-out words. Peter writes in a similar way:

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
2 Peter 1:20-21

The claim of the Bible is that its authors were inspired (God-breathed) to write the very words of God. Jesus, himself, affirmed the inspiration and authority of the Bible at the smallest details:

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Matthew 5:18

Jesus asserted the accuracy and authority of the Bible right down to the…”the smallest letter…the least stroke of the pen.” Paul, Peter and most importantly Jesus affirm the supreme authority of the Bible. The Bible claims for itself a divine and ultimate authority in all matters of what we believe and what we practice as Christians.

Should we believe this claim? Let me give you four reasons why I say, YES.

The Bible’s Claim to Divine Authority.

More than 1,900 times in Scripture the authors claimed their message was from God. These are found in expressions such as. “Thus says the Lord” or “God said.” The unity of the Bible is an assurance of its inspired authorship.

It was written over a period of fifteen centuries, by more than forty different human authors, in three different languages on three different continents.
The unity of the Bible is quite surprising given the very diverse backgrounds of the writers. These authors run the gamut: kings, royal officials, fishermen, tax collectors, shepherds, prophets, priests, and even a physician.
Though they wrote from different periods of world history and from different personal backgrounds, there is a unified message displaying divine authorship which was able to weave their messages together.

With this claim to divine authorship, either the Bible is miraculously true or the product of men deeply deluded. If someone wrote a biography on Ronald Reagan and repeatedly said, “Ronald Reagan said to me…,” and we discover the writer never met Reagan, much less had a conversation with him, what value would we place in the book? None. Rather, it would simply reveal the twisted mind of the author. Similarly, with the Bible’s claim to divine authorship, it is either God-breathed or born of human deception.

Historical Reliability

Biblical archaeology is a study of the past based on the excavation and evaluation of sites, artifacts and documents surrounding the events and history of the Bible. From this field of study, there has been mounting evidence confirming the historical reliability of the Bible. Here are some examples of where people who were critical of the Bible had to change their minds about the Bible’s accuracy.

It used to be said that the Old Testament writers invented the Hittite tribe (Judges 1:26), since their existence could not be independently confirmed outside of the Bible. However, some ten thousand clay tablets were discovered at the site of what was later to be known as the Hittite capital. The existence of the Hittites is now extensively proven..
The existence of Solomon’s reign and his thousands of horses (1 Kings 10:26-29) was at one time questioned. But in Meggido, which was one of five chariot cities, excavations have revealed the ruins of thousands of stalls for horses and chariots.
William Ramsey, a highly respected archaeologist, set out to prove that Luke’s history was filled with errors but emerged from his study surprised, saying, “Luke’s history is unsurpassed in trustworthiness.” Among many other facts, he discovered that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria, first when Christ was born and again at a later period. (Luke 2:1-2)

This is a very small sample among literally hundreds of times that archaeology has supported or proven the biblical accounts.

Prophecy

Here are a few astonishing examples.

Example # 1: The prophet Isaiah, who prophesied from 700-680 BC, actually names the king who will rule the Persian Empire and let the Jews return to rebuild Jerusalem from Babylon 150 years before the decision was made…

…who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please; he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid.”’
Isaiah 44:28

Cyrus is mentioned as the man who will let the Jews return to their land and rebuild Jerusalem more than one hundred years before he was born. Cyrus ruled over the Persians from 559–530 BC and during his reign he conquered Babylon in 539 BC. Historians tell us that his decree that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem was issued in March 538 BC. Isaiah prophesied from 700–680 BC. That means Isaiah named Cyrus and foretold the decision he would make some 150 years before he arose to be king.

Example # 2: Ezekiel (590–570 BC) prophesied that God would raise up Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, to come against Tyre with his army of horsemen and that the people would be destroyed. Here is a description of what Tyre would eventually look like when God’s judgment was over:

...this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Tyre, and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves. They will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers; I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign Lord. She will become plunder for the nations, and her settlements on the mainland will be ravaged by the sword. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 26:3-6

These predictions began to be fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar. To understand how this happened, we must keep in mind that Tyre was both a coastal city and an island city. The coastal area was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar for thirteen years and destroyed. (586-573 BC) But many people were able to escape to the island using ships. A half-mile from the shore, they built strong fortifications to keep Nebuchadnezzar, already exhausted from conquering the coastal city, from taking the island. For 240 years the island area of Tyre survived while its mainland was in ruins. It appeared that Ezekiel’s prophecy would not be completely fulfilled. In 333 BC, Alexander the Great built a causeway by pushing the ruins of the coastal city into the sea; yes, even the dust was cast into the sea, just as Ezekiel predicted. Alexander, then, organized a flotilla of ships from several conquered nations, including 80 from Sidon, Aradus, and Byblos; 10 from Rhodes; 10 from Lycia; and 120 from Cyprus. As predicted, many nations came against Tyre, affirming the Bible’s prophetic accuracy.

There are hundreds of these kinds of prophecies which could be cited not to mention the dozens which were fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Cultural Influence

For the sake of space, let’s consider just one aspect of the Bible’s influence: the promotion of freedom for people personally and culturally. Several years ago, my family and I went to Philadelphia to visit several historic sites. Among the places visited was the famed Liberty Bell. As we gazed at the cracked monument, we read these words: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.” This inscription comes from the Bible in Leviticus 25:10. It reflects the fact that where belief in the Bible is widely held the message of freedom rings loudly.

From Moses to the Messiah, the Bible is a story of the recovery of freedom. Jesus declared that he had come to “proclaim liberty to the captives.” (Luke 4:18) Horace Greeley (1811–72), founder and editor of the New York Tribune, observed: “It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible-reading people.” The case can be made that only cultures founded with a strong influence from the Bible have viewed freedom as a virtue worth dying for. Theodore Roosevelt observed of the Bible that “no other book of any kind ever written in English has ever so affected the whole life of a people.”

That is in part why presidents of the United States raise their right hand to take the oath of office and place their left hand on a copy of the Bible at their inauguration. When Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. to deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he thundered, “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” He cited words which come directly from the Bible in Amos 5:24.

It is for good reason that over the last 50 years that the Bible has been the most read book world-wide with 3.9 billions copies sold. No other book comes in a close second. Psalm 18:30 declares, “As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD’s word is flawless…”