Has the Bible been changed?
FAQs (013)
The last parts of the Bible to be completed (the New Testament) were written nearly two thousand years ago. We don't possess original copies of any of the books of the Bible. This is not at all surprising as books of this era were written on papyrus which disintegrated over time. In fact, there are no original manuscripts of any ancient writings from this period. So even the oldest manuscripts of the Bible that we possess are copies of copies of copies. Yet we can still say with a high degree of certainty that the text of the Bible that we possess today is virtually the same as when it was originally written.
The reason for this is that there are so many manuscripts that bear witness to it. Individual manuscripts may contain variations and mistakes, due to the long and laborious process of copying out manuscripts by hand before the invention of the printing press. However, when the manuscripts are dated and compared, a process known as textual criticism, the correct reading can be determined in virtually every case.
Modern Bible translations are made in the light of a huge amount of scholarship. Bruce Metzger, one of the world's foremost authorities on the text of the New Testament, states that 'not one doctrine of the church is in jeopardy because of a variant reading in the New Testament'.
In fact, there is no other ancient book that has so many surviving manuscripts from so close to the time of writing. If we are to disbelieve the authenticity of the Bible, then we must also throw away the writings of Caesar, Plato, Aristotle and Homer, to name just a few!
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