The Preservation of the Bible

*Light* · May 2, 2007

The Preservation of the Bible

Some people say,"The Bible was God's Word when it was originally given, but since then there have been so many different copies and translations and changes that now we cannot believe anything that it says." Is this true? The evidence given above that the Bible was originally from God is irrefutable; but has it been changed? Is the infallible Word of God available today, or has mankind so twisted it that we now have nothing sure to depend upon? We will consider, first of all, what the Bible promises about its own preservation, and then we will look at its historical verification.

What the Bible claims for itself

The Preservation of the Bible:

The Bible not only claims that its very words are inspired, that is, are God's words, as we saw above, but that every one of those inspired words would be preserved forever. Psalm 12:6-7 says, "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever." Jesus Christ said in Matthew 24:35, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." These are very clear promises that God would preserve every Word of the Bible. In Matthew 5:18, the Lord Jesus said, "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." The "jot" was the smallest Hebrew letter, and the "tittle" referred to the minutest parts of their language, like the dot on our letter "i." The Bible claims that not one word of its inspired text ever be lost. In fact, not even one letter, one consonant or vowel, or even the smallest part of a letter, would ever be corrupted! This is because, as Matthew 4:4 states, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." If we are to live by every one of God's words, they must all be preserved for us. Furthermore, they must be accessible, not just preserved somewhere where nobody knows about them or uses them. God promises us in Isaiah 59:21, "As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever." God promised that His people would have His words in their mouths, and so would their seed (descendants), forever. The Bible promises that all of God's inspired words would be preserved forever, and that they would be available to those who wanted to live by them. God did not give us a perfect Bible and then let it disappear, but He preserved it for us today. In the standard English Bible, the King James Version that you hold in your hand, which was accurately translated from the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Greek Received Text, you hold a copy of this preserved Word of God. This is what God promises?His Word has not been lost. Surely God, who is powerful enough to ensure the fulfillment of His prophetic predictions, as we have seen earlier in this study, is able to keep His promises about the preservation of His Word. Let us, however, examine the historical evidence that confirms these promises of perfect preservation.

The Confirmation of History

The Preservation of the Bible:

The Bible is by far the best attested document of antiquity. There are over 5,600 known Greek manuscripts (abbreviated MSS) of the New Testament in existence, along with over 10,000 Latin manuscripts and at least 9,300 of other early versions,4 for a total of more than 24,000 manuscript copies or portions. The book with the second largest number of copies is the Illiad of Homer, with 643 manuscripts, less than 2.7% of the evidence for the New Testament, although it was the most widely read book of antiquity! Furthermore, New Testament MSS date back to the era of the composition of the books themselves; a number of papyri from the Qumran caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered have been dated as early as A. D. 50, and New Testament papyri from other locations date to close to A. D. 100, shortly after the final books of the New Testament were written. After this time the amount of evidence begins to grow with tremendous speed. In contrast to this early evidence, of the 643 MSS of Homer's Illiad, the earliest complete preserved text dates from the 13th century A. D.! Furthermore, all but 11 of the 7,957 verses of the New Testament could be reproduced without a single manuscript from the 36,289 quotes made by early writers in Christiandom from the second to the fourth century. With this kind of evidence, to assert that the New Testament has been corrupted requires one to not only reject God's promises of perfect preservation but to throw out all of ancient history.

AUTHOR/When Written/Earliest Copy/Time Span/No. of Copies
Casear 100-44 B. C. A. D. 900 1,000 yrs. 10
Plato (Tetralogies) 427-347 B. C. A. D. 900 1,200 yrs. 7
Tacitus (Annals) A. D. 100 A. D. 100 1,000 yrs. 20
Pliny the Younger A. D. 61-113 A. D. 850 750 yrs. 7
Thucydides (History) 460-400 B. C. A. D. 900 1,300 yrs. 8
Suetonius A. D. 75-160 A. D. 950 800 yrs. 8
Herodotus (History) 480-425 B. C. A. D. 900 1,300 yrs. 8
Sophocles 496-406 B. C. A. D. 100 1,400 yrs. 193
Catullus 54 B. C. A. D. 1550 1,600 yrs. 3
Euripides 480-406 B. C. A. D. 1100 1,500 yrs. 9
Aristotle 384-322 B. C. A. D. 1100 1,400 yrs. 49
Aristophanes 450-385 B. C. A. D. 900 1,200 yrs. 10
NEW TESTAMENT c. A. D. 35-95 for different books Papyri 7Q5-7 c. A.D. 50 negligible 24,000+ c. A. D. 50

If the New Testament is not preserved, accurate, and historical, nothing is.

What about the Old Testament? Can God's promises to perfectly preserve it be trusted? It also has a wide variety of attestatation and a great number of manuscripts; for example, one source, the Cairo synagogue geniza (a storehouse for manuscripts), discovered in the 1890s, held over 10,000 manuscript portions. Thousands of other Hebrew manuscripts from a wide variety of sources also exist elsewhere.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 provided an opportunity to test the validity of the promises of Biblical preservation. They were over a thousand years older than previously known Old Testament manuscripts?if men had changed the Bible and allowed it to be corrupted, their actions would now be exposed by the discovery of the much older text. Furthermore, all the books of the Old Testament, except the short book of Esther, were discovered among the scrolls, so the test would either validate or invalidate the whole Hebrew Bible. They turned out to provide an astounding confirmation of the accuracy of the Old Testament?the Hebrew Masoretic text, which underlies the King James Bible and most other Bible versions, was found in the scrolls. The Bible had not been changed! Other early manuscripts found in other locations, such as those in the ancient fortress of Masada, also evidence the accuracy of the Hebrew text; for example, fragments from the Psalms, Leviticus, Ezekiel, and Deuteronomy were found that were letter-by-letter identical to our printed Hebrew texts.6

The Jewish scribes were also phenomenally careful in their copying of the Hebrew text. They followed elaborate sets of rules to ensure an accurate textual transmission. The Jewish Talmud, for example, mandated, among other rules, that scribes needed to: 1.) Write no word or letter from memory, but have an authentic copy before him and read and pronounce each word before writing it. 2.) Wipe his pen each time before writing the word for "God" (Eloheim) and wash his whole body before writing the name Jehovah. 3.) Finish a roll within thirty days; otherwise the work was worthless. One mistake on a sheet condemned the sheet?three copying mistakes on any page and the entire manuscript was condemned. 4.) Every word and every letter was counted, and if a letter were omitted, an extra letter inserted, or if one letter touched another, the manuscript was condemned or destroyed at once. Evidence for the use of these rules is seen in the Masoretic notes found in the Hebrew Bible. For example, at the end of the book of Genesis, we find a note that reads in part:

"The number of the verses of the book of Genesis is a thousand and five hundred and thirty and four. . . . And its middle point is, And by thy sword shalt thou live (27:40). And the words are twenty thousand and six hundred and twelve. And the letters are eight and seventy thousand and sixty and four."

Think of it! Every verse, word, and letter was counted and accurately tabulated! Another note, this one at the end of the first five books of the Bible, referred to as the Pentateuch or the Law, reads in part:

"The number of the verses of the whole Law is five thousand and eight hundred and forty and five. . . . And its middle point is, And he placed on the breastplate the Urim and the Thummim (Lev. 8:8). The number of all the words is eighty-one thousand four hundred and forty. The number of all the letters is three hundred and four thousand and eight hundred and seven."

This kind of stunningly meticulous care for the accurate transmission of the Hebrew text provides amazing confirmation that God's promises of preservation have been fulfilled. The Bible we have today in our hands is indeed the same as that which was originally given by inspiration. To say otherwise not only requires one to reject God's promises, but to deliberately close his mind to overwhelming evidence.

God Bless!