Can We Trust That The New Testament Hasn't Been Corrupted?
The Bible was written over thousands of years by dozens of authors. Along the way, errors crept into the text. A little bit at a time, slowly and slightly, the word of God was diluted by the words of men. The Christian Scriptures were corrupted, cannot be trusted, and have become nothing more than superstitious insights into archaic myths and fables. Historically helpful perhaps, but hardly “inspired” or “inerrant.”
That is the story that the world is telling; a gripping conspiracy full of intrigue, subterfuge, secret councils and villains, and told in official-sounding documentaries by official-sounding professors. That is the tale being sold on Amazon and NYT bestseller lists, in neighborhood mosques and synagogues, and even some ostensibly “Christian” churches.
It’s a fascinating story. Fiction often is.
As our culture grows ever more biblically-illiterate--and skepticism more vocal--it will be increasingly more important for faithful Christians to be equipped to understand (at least on a fundamental level) why such claims are false and misleading, and to be able to answer the question at hand:
Can we trust that the Bible has not been changed or corrupted?
A Changing and Changed Canon?
According to many scholars, the Bible is a jumbled mess of indecipherable errors. It is so full of holes that there is no hope of harbor and we might as well abandon ship. Though it may contain a few kernels of truth and glimpses of historical record, the winds of time have worn thin the trustworthiness of these ancient writings.
Such skeptics love to talk data. They will say things like:
We don’t have any of the original manuscripts (called “autographs”) of the Bible or any individual book of the Bible. In fact, we almost certainly don’t have any copies of copies--or even the copies of copies of copies.
No two manuscripts match exactly, and the closest two manuscripts to each other have at least 6 differences per chapter.
We don’t have any early copies of entire books (since the earliest manuscripts are all fragmentary).
There are around 400,000 discrepancies (“variants”) in our existing copies; meaning, there are almost three variants for every word in the New Testament.
This all sounds pretty upsetting; especially when we learn that each and every claim above is accurate. Let that sink in for a moment. It is absolutely true that we don’t have the original manuscripts; the copies that we do have are filled with variants.
If we merely stopped there, despair and disbelief would surely be appropriate. With these facts in mind, it might seem like reconstructing the New Testament would be impossible. However, the numbers and claims are smoke and mirrors, and honestly “much ado about nothing.” A small dose of pretty basic critical thinking pulls back the curtain on the popular illusions of chaos and conspiracy.
From Parchment, to Printer, to Pew
Where did the Bible come from? How did it get from Moses and Matthew to Barnes & Noble and Amazon?
The Bible is a collection of sixty-six individual books, each written by a particular author, at a particular time, in a particular place. With dozens of authors and thousands of years and miles between books, we might expect the process of collecting the books into a canon to be nearly impossible. Adding to the challenge is the fact that each book was originally written on some form of parchment or papyrus, neither of which are easily preserved. Thus, we no longer have access to the original manuscripts directly from the hands of David, Isaiah, or John. Instead we have copies of copies, and copies of copies of copies of copies.
But hope is not lost.
Though most Christians are relatively uninformed about this, there is actually an academic field devoted to just such a study. Called “textual criticism,” this science seeks to take all of the existing copies of ancient manuscripts and to systematically and scientifically recreate the originals.
Textual criticism is the discipline that attempts to determine the original wording of any documents whose original no longer exists. (Daniel Wallace)
When the original manuscripts of any ancient book are missing, scholars engage in textual criticism; using all of the existing copies, those trained in this field attempt to weigh through various copying discrepancies or variants (like the ones we were talking about a second ago) and reconstruct the original.
Through the science of textual criticism, we can reconstruct the original manuscripts (called “autographs” in theological terminology) to varying degrees of certainty, depending on the quality of such manuscripts. As will be shown, the degree of certainty possible in the area of biblical studies is exceedingly high. In fact, we should have the utmost confidence in the Bibles that we regularly read, study, sing, and proclaim.
An Example of Textual Criticism
Perhaps the best way to understand the field of textual criticism is to see a hypothetical example. Suppose that a man in the first-century writes a letter to his employees saying:
“Make sure the grain is harvested before the end of the week.”
Now, assume that this letter was lost. However, before this letter was lost, the employees made a copy of the letter to give to all the other employees. So there are maybe twenty-five copies floating around in the 1st century. Many of those are lost to the sands of time, but imagine we find four copies of the original letter 2,000 years later:
Copy A: “Make sure the grain is harvested before the end of the weak.” (notice the wrong spelling of the word “week”)
Copy B: “make sure the grain is harvested before the end of the week.” (notice that the copyist forgot to capitalize the letter “m” in the word “make”)
Copy C: “Make sure the grain is harvested before the end of the week.” (no variants)
Copy D: “Make sure the grain is harvested before end of the week.” (notice the word “the” is missing from before the word “end”)
The scholars often interviewed by the History Channel and with the best-selling books on Amazon are those who delight in throwing their hands up at this scenario and say that the original meaning is utterly impossible to ascertain in light of every copy being different. But, it should be fairly obvious to even the casual reader that their panic is pretty overblown.
Instead of rushing to their publisher’s office, good textual critics work carefully to reconstruct the original letter from the existing copies and evidence. This is actually pretty easy to do. For example, a textual critic would see how all the manuscripts except one had the spelling of “week” instead of “weak” (as in Copy A). He would also realize that whoever made Copy D forgot to include the word “the” before the word “end.” The reason it is easy to spot these errors is because you can compare them with other manuscripts.
Though this is a simplified example and doesn’t take into account the size and complexity of most biblical manuscripts, it still demonstrates the fact that the overwhelming majority of textual variants are very easy to spot, and therefore the original reading is quite simple to reconstruct.
Now, scholars who specialize in this field have far more advanced techniques of finding out an original reading. They consider the age of the copy, where it comes from, what textual tradition it stands in, how many copies have a certain reading, etc.
As an actual example of this, consider the case of 1 Thessalonians 2:7. Most modern translations read something like, “but we were gentle among you.” However, some ancient manuscripts read, “but we were infants among you.” Though there is some overlap between the concepts of infancy and gentleness, that is not what caused the variant. Instead, the difference between the words “infants” and “gentle” in Greek is just one letter (nepioi vs. epioi). We could easily see how a scribe could make this copying mistake.
However, there is also one lone manuscript from the Medieval Period which has neither nepioi nor epioi, but hippoi. Translated, that would read, “we were horses among you.” Given that it would hardly make sense for such a phrase to be used, it only appears in one manuscript (a historically late one at that), and is easy to see how this mistake could have been made (since it sounds similar), it’s not difficult for text critics to distinguish it from the original reading (even if they’re not entirely sure if the original was “infants” or “gentle”).
Digging Deeper into the Data
Critics may quote scary-sounding numbers and cry “corruption,” but Christians should absolutely not be concerned by such claims; as mentioned before, these are nothing more than a scholarly sleight of hand. To demonstrate, let’s dive a little deeper into some of the typical claims as it relates to the New Testament in particular (similar observations could be offered regarding the Old Testament as well).
Typical Claim #1: You cannot trust that the Bible hasn’t been corrupted since there are so many variants between the manuscripts!
Response: The types of variants that we find in the manuscripts are insignificant.
All textual variants can be broken down into four categories:
1. Variants which arise from spelling or grammar, but do not affect content or meaning.
These are the largest group of the four and account for about 75% of all variants. They include basic spelling and grammatical errors and nonsense errors that are obvious mistakes. The most common textual variant arises because Greek often adds an “n” (Greek nu) to simply aid in pronunciation. This is similar to how we use indefinite articles in English. We say “an ice cube” or “a baseball” rather than “a ice cube” or “an baseball.”
2. Minor variants, including synonyms and alterations, which do not affect content or meaning.
This second largest variant group contains changes to the text that do not substantially affect the way a passage is interpreted. One of the most common examples of this type of variant is found in word order differences (i.e. “Jesus Christ” to “Christ Jesus”). In Greek, word order is not as important as in English because of the way that the language functions. A second common example includes the use of the definite article with proper names in Greek. Although awkward in English, Greek sometimes adds the word “the” before proper nouns (i.e. “The Jesus” vs. “Jesus”).
3. Variants which are meaningful, but are not likely original.
This category includes variants that would change the meaning, but are almost certainly not original. An actual example of this is from 1 Thessalonians 2:9 in which most manuscripts say “the gospel of God.” One copy from the late medieval period reads “the gospel of Christ.” This would change the meaning of the text slightly, but is unlikely to be the reading of the original.
4. Variants which are both meaningful and possibly original.
This is the smallest type of variant and accounts for less than 1% of all textual variants. These variants change the meaning of the text to some degree if only even slightly. One example is from Romans 5:1. Some manuscripts read “we have peace” while others read “let us have peace.” In this case, the difference between the two phrases is literally one letter in Greek.
Again, only a minute fraction of all variants are both potentially original and theologically significant. However, as we shall soon see, even these should not lead us to despair in the least.
Typical Claim #2: You cannot trust that the Bible hasn’t been corrupted because all we have are copied manuscripts (since the originals have long since deteriorated).
Response: We actually have more New Testament manuscripts to compare to each other than any other document from the Greco-Roman world.
For example, we only have a few copies of the works of Plato or of the historian Tacitus. When it comes to the New Testament, we have over 5,700 Greek manuscripts, around 10,000 in Latin, 20,000-25,000 in other ancient languages, and over a million quotes from the early church fathers.
Consider the following data produced by Dan Wallace, a leading scholar in textual criticism:
| Histories | Oldest Manuscripts | Number of Surviving Manuscripts |
|---|---|---|
| Livy 59 (B.C.-A.D. 17) | 4th Century A.D. | 27 |
| Tacitus (A.D. 56-120) | 9th Century A.D. | 3 |
| Suetonius (A.D. 69-140) | 9th Century A.D. | 200+ |
| Thucydides (460-400 B.C.) | 1st Century A.D. | 20 |
| Herodotus (484-425 B.C.) | 1st Century A.D. | 75 |
| New Testament | c. 100-150 A.D. | 35,700+ |
The reason that this is important is because the more manuscripts you have, the easier it is to reconstruct the original (since you have more to compare it to). Even more remarkable, the number of manuscripts is constantly growing as more and more manuscripts are uncovered by archaeologists and others.
Typical Claim #3: You cannot trust that the Bible hasn’t been corrupted because there is a long length of time between when the originals and when our oldest surviving copies were authored.
Response: Our New Testament manuscripts are closer in age to the time they were written than other works of Greco-Roman literature.
For example, whereas the historian Tacitus wrote in the first and second century, the earliest manuscript we have from him dates to the 9th century. That is 700-800 years after it was written. This leaves ample time for copyist errors to be made.
Compare that with how close to the time of the New Testament the documents we have were written:
The oldest manuscript we have is called the “Ryland’s Fragment” (“p52”). It is dated by some scholars to the first half of the second century--possibly even the very end of the first century.
The best complete copy of the New Testament we have in Greek is called Codex Sinaiticus (“א”) which dates from the fourth century. Also among the most important is Codex Vaticanus (“Codex B”) which also dates from the fourth century.
In the field of textual criticism, such numbers are critically important; they establish a very early manuscript tradition for us to begin our studies. No other classical work comes even close.
Typical Claim #4: (Again) You cannot trust that the Bible hasn’t been corrupted because there is a long length of time between when our originals and when our oldest surviving copies were authored.
Response: We have a vast array of quotations of the New Testament within various extrabiblical sources.
The New Testament is quoted so often by the early church fathers that even if we didn’t have any manuscripts at all, we could still reconstruct the entire New Testament in all but 11 verses. As mentioned above, we have over a million very early quotations which aid us in our pursuit of the original reading. This allows us to check our manuscripts against the non-biblical sources quoting the New Testament.
Typical Claim: Christians cannot be confident in the doctrines of their faith due to the potential that the Bible has been corrupted.
Response: There is absolutely no confusion or uncertainty on any major Christian doctrine as a result of textual variants, lack of original manuscripts, etc.
We can know with near certainty what the New Testament says in about 99% of it. For the remaining 1% where there is still debate, none of the major teachings of the Christian faith are threatened. While the manuscripts we have may include spelling errors, we don’t have manuscript traditions that deny the deity or resurrection of Christ. In fact, if you just completely discarded any and all variant readings, you would still be left with all of the basic contours of Christian theology and ethics. You would still have a virgin birth, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, passages supporting the Trinity, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, etc. In other words, even those rare variants which are literarily and theologically important are not of ultimate importance to Christian faith and practice.
When we take into account the number of manuscripts, quotations and dates, we have every reason to be confident in the text of Scripture. All things considered, it is irresponsible and illogical at best to use the story of textual criticism to discount the story of Scripture.
Why Have I Never Heard This?
Critics thrive on the surprise factor. They love to pounce on the unsuspecting and rattle off impressive numbers of variants and claims of controversy.
Unfortunately, the Church has not always done a good job of preparing our people for such attacks. On the one hand, it is understandable. In some sense it can rightly be said that, “there is nothing to see here.” Scary statistics on textual variants hardly ever frighten those actually familiar with textual criticism. They boast of much, but the bark is much worse than the bite. There simply is no credible reason to distrust the Bible that we have access to today.
On the other hand, the church has a responsibility to prepare our people for the lies they may encounter. When it comes to the issue of textual variants, it is not only irresponsible, but also a bit silly to bury our heads in the sand. After all, what do we have to be afraid of? Very few places present the slightest degree of uncertainty about the original reading. Furthermore, even those few places in which the original remains somewhat unknown offer no discrepancy in fundamental faith and practice. Those who are disturbed by the concept of variants need only look a little deeper to see just how shallow the critical claims actually are. Far from some ancient game of telephone in which the words of Scripture are lost somewhere along the way, we have very strong, solid, and logical reasons to conclude that the original reading has been preserved over the millennia.
Christians can be confident in the reliability and authenticity of the Scriptures. Not only is our confidence rooted in our understanding of the nature of Scripture itself, but our understanding of the nature and character of God. If we worship a God who grants life through His Word and condescended to redeem a people for Himself through His Word, then it is highly unlikely, if not utterly inconceivable, that He would allow His word to be corrupted beyond recovery.
For Further Study:
New Testament Textual Criticism - David Allen Black (best, short intro)
The Text of the New Testament (4th Ed.) - Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman (best academic intro)
The article in the ESV Study Bible on textual criticism by Dan Wallace (most accessible intro)