If someone told you they don’t believe the Bible because it has so many errors, how would you respond? Would you know what errors they’re talking about? Could you explain the nature of those errors and defend the reliability of the Bible?
This is one of the most common challenges skeptics and atheists use to discredit the Bible and Christianity, yet many Christians are not prepared to give a good response. Believers are often unaware of the basis for the skeptics’ claim, and are caught off guard when they hear it for the first time. This is true of many common challenges and objections to Christianity, which is why we need apologetics—being equipped to give reasons and evidence for the truth of what we believe. (See 1 Pet. 3:15 and Jude 3.)
What Errors Are They Talking About?
When skeptics claim the Bible is full of mistakes, what they’re often referring to are variants in the New Testament manuscripts. (They sometimes also refer to alleged contradictions in the Bible as errors. I'll address this in a future blog.)
A variant is something that differs (varies) among the many existing manuscripts (copies), such as differences in spelling or word usage. (Think of ‘honor’ vs ‘honour’ or ‘arose’ vs ‘stood up.’) In an attempt to support their claim, critics will often cite these facts:
No original texts (autographs) of the Bible are known to exist.
All ancient copies (manuscripts) were hand-written by fallible men.
There are approximately 3 'mistakes' for every word in the Greek New Testament manuscripts (138,000 words and roughly 400,000 'mistakes')
Calling the variants 'errors' or ‘mistakes’ and pointing out their large number without also acknowledging the number of manuscripts or the nature of the variants is an appeal to sensationalism meant to cast a grim shadow of doubt on the accuracy of the New Testament. Some critics claim that we can’t know what the Bible really says because all we have are copies. This thinking is misguided for at least two reasons.
First, the fact there are so many manuscripts (20,000+ in various languages) actually increases the ability to accurately reconstruct the original. Variants can be more easily identified and corrected when there are more documents to compare and cross-check.
Second, if someone possessed the original, it’s possible that person would be able to make changes to the text. Since there were thousands of copies made and distributed throughout the ancient world, it would be virtually impossible for a scribe or priest to alter the text of Scripture. (Remember, they had no rapid transit or internet back then!)
The Nature and Number of Variants
The vast majority of variants are simple changes in spelling or word usage, and in no way affect the meaning of the text. Other variants do affect the meaning of the text, but for various reasons, are not viable possibilities for representing the original. For example, if one manuscript from the 8th century had this type of variant, it would be unlikely that this one manuscript retained the original wording while all the earlier manuscripts did not.
The only type of variant that should raise any concern at all (and even then, not much) are the ones that do change the meaning of the text and are viable possibilities for representing the original text. Less than one percent of all textual variants belong to this category.
An example of this last type of variant is the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 7:53-8:11. The majority of New Testament scholars believe this story was added to John’s original writing because it does not appear in the earliest manuscripts. Still, this presents no real theological concern, because no variants of any kind (even those that change the meaning of the text) affect any core doctrine of Christianity. NONE!
Something else to keep in mind is how the variants are counted. If a variant consists of just one letter of one word in one verse, and appears the same way in 1,000 manuscripts, it’s counted as 1,000 ‘errors’ or variants. This helps us to understand how the large number of ‘errors’ claimed by critics is being overplayed to create doubt.
Textual Criticism and the Bibliographical Test
The process of comparing manuscripts (copies) of ancient texts in order to reconstruct the original is a practice known as textual criticism. This process is used for all works of antiquity for which no original documents exist. Non-biblical examples include classical works by Homer, Caesar, Aristotle, Plato, and others. It’s worth noting here that the accuracy of the reconstruction of these classical works is not called into question, even though the same process is used and there are far fewer copies to cross-check. There is actually greater evidence for the accuracy of the New Testament than for all these classical works combined! This evidence can be found in the results of a particular process used by historians for authenticating ancient texts. This process is called the bibliographical test.
The bibliographical test analyzes the reliability of ancient manuscripts by comparing the number of existing manuscripts, and the gap of time between the original writings and the earliest manuscripts. (The smaller the gap between the original writing and the earliest copies, the more reliable the copies are considered to be.) This test best determines how accurately any ancient document has been transmitted over time.
As shown in the chart below, when comparing the 5,856 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament to other ancient texts, it's undeniably clear that the New Testament far surpasses all other ancient documents in sheer number of existing manuscripts, and in how close in time the earliest copies are to the original writing. As more ancient manuscripts have been discovered and the chart has been updated, the New Testament continues to be in a class by itself. It is by far the most well-attested ancient work known. (Learn more about the Bibliographical Test here: https://www.josh.org/wp-content/uploads/Bibliographical-Test-Update-08.13.14.pdf)
Intellectually honest critics who reject the reliability of the New Testament should consider other ancient works far less reliable. (But, they don’t.) Given the attestation in the bibliographical test, the large number of New Testament manuscripts, and understanding the nature of variants, we can be very confident the New Testament we have today accurately represents the authors’ original writings. If you’re ever challenged by someone about the number of 'errors' in the Bible or the fact that all we have are copies, don’t be intimidated. The facts are on your side!
There are many other evidences for the reliability of the New Testament that can be useful in removing obstacles to faith in Christ, or increasing the faith of those who have already trusted Christ for their salvation. Every Christian will experience doubts and challenges. Knowing why Christianity is true will go far in preventing our faith from being shipwrecked when we’re dealing with personal doubts or faced with challenges from those who don’t yet believe.
Recommended reading:
Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace
I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel
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