High Calling Magazine

The official publication of The Francis Asbury Society

How Correct Is The Bible We Have?
BY DR. DENNIS KINLAW

Scripture references: Isaiah 55:6-11; II Timothy 3:16,17; II Kings 22

How accurate is our Bible? This is one of the constantly recurring questions for those who are students of the Scriptures. The Bible, as we have it, was written many years ago. It was compiled over a long period of time by a large number of different people. When it was put together and copied by hand for many years before printing began, how accurate was such copying? How many changes have been made during the process of the transmission of the text from the original manuscripts to our modern printed versions? When you realize that some of the portions of the book of Genesis may go back to ancient cuneiform Babylonian tablets, you can see the possibility of changes being made during transmission from that ancient age to ours.

The facts are that if we could discover the original manuscripts of the Bible there is no evidence to indicate that we would find any great changes made. As far as the New Testament is concerned, we would probably have no changes to make of any real significance if we could locate tomorrow the actual letters of the apostle Paul or the books of the four evangelists. All the evidence indicates that we have the text largely as it came from the original writers. This is one of the miraculous stories of the ages, the providential safeguarding of the Bible text through the ages. But to get the story we need to turn back and see something of the original form of the manuscripts of the Bible.

ORIGINAL LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE

As you perhaps know, the Bible is made up of two sections that came from different periods of history. The Old Testament comes to us from the pre-Christian era of the history of Israel and was written originally in classical Hebrew. (The only exceptions are a verse of Jeremiah, a portion of Daniel and a portion of Ezra. These were written in Aramaic, the common language of Israel after the exile in the sixth century B.C.) Classical Hebrew was the language of Israel from its beginnings until the exile when Aramaic replaced it as the language of commerce. Hebrew became a written language and was not commonly spoken again until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. The Jews learned Aramaic in exile and brought it back with them to Israel and used it until it was gradually superseded by Greek. Aramaic was the mother tongue of Jesus. Since printing was unknown in the ancient world, all the Old Testament had to be copied by hand when extra copies were needed. Some of these copies have survived. Until recently we did not have any that were very old. The oldest were actually from the ninth century A.D. But in 1947 some old manuscripts were turned up that included a copy of Isaiah that dated from about the second century B.C. Other fragments, from most of the books of the Old Testament, were also found that were equally old. This phenomenal find gave us copies of portions of the Old Testament that were in the original Hebrew and a thousand years older than anything that we had had before. One of the significant results of this find has been to show us the meticulous care with which the text was copied. In a thousand years no real changes had occurred in the text. How could any book be copied so many times through so many years without serious changes taking place? The answer to that lies in the work of some Hebrew scholars who were called the "Massoretes." These were Jewish scholars who in the seventh century A.D. edited the Hebrew text and established rigid rules for copying. When a book was copied, the number of letters in the original was counted and compared with the number of letters in the copy. The copy was destroyed if a discrepancy occurred. This shows us something of the loving care that Jewish scholars gave to their Bible and helps account for the transmission through centuries of time without damage to the actual text of the Old Testament.

The New Testament, of course, was not written in Hebrew but in Greek. By Jesus' day Hebrew was pretty much a dead language like Latin is today. So the New Testament writers wrote in the common language of the first century world, Greek. They wrote on a material called papyrus, made from a reed found in abundance in Egypt. Later (from the fourth century onward) a material made from skins of animals was used. In all, over four thousand manuscripts of the New Testament or of parts of it are still in existence. Many of these have been found in recent years by archaeologists. They date from as early as 100-125 A.D. onwards. The oldest known fragment is a portion of the Gospel of John that comes from the early years of the second century A.D. When you realize that John did not write his gospel until almost the end of the first century, you can see how close we are able to come now to the actual original text. When we see how close the text of these fragments and manuscripts is to the text as we now know it, we can see that the New Testament as we have it is for all practical purposes identical with the text given by the original authors. God in His infinite wisdom and love has protected His Word in transmission so that we have it as He intended we should. There is no other book in existence so carefully and accurately preserved.

TRANSLATIONS

Another source of evidence as to the purity of our text is found in the ancient versions of the Bible. Not everyone who wanted to read our scriptures spoke Greek and Hebrew. Thus translations became necessary. The most significant of all the translations is one of the Old Testament that was begun probably in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt (285-246 B.C.). Legend tells us that it was translated by seventy scholars at the request of the Ptolemy who had heard of the great Hebrew scriptures and wanted to add them to his library in Alexandria. From the number seventy it has derived its name of Septuagint and is marked in abbreviated form by LXX. The Pentateuch was first translated but all of the Old Testament was probably in Greek by 150 B.C. This is an important witness to the text of the Old Testament from that period. It is of special significance to us when we remember that this was the Bible of the early Christians. Undoubtedly this was the Old Testament with which Jesus, His disciples, and Paul were familiar. That is why many of the quotations of the Old Testament found in the New Testament are a little different from the corresponding passages of our Old Testament. They quoted from the LXX.

Early in the Christian era it became evident that a translation of the Bible was needed in Latin for the many who spoke that language. Various Latin versions led to the work of Jerome that we call the Vulgate. It was the Bible of Western Europe and North Africa until the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. Its influence is still strongly felt in the Roman Catholic versions. It was translated between 383 and 405 A.D. Thus it is a strong witness to the state of the text of the Bible in that early period of the Christian Church.
What was the importance of this manuscript? The New Testament had been in process of being copied and translated for seventeen centuries. Each copy was dependent upon a previous one but perhaps in some way different. Here was a copy that had not changed for almost sixteen centuries. When compared with the available text in the current versions, it was easy to see how carefully the text of the New Testament had been preserved.

AN ANSWER TO THE CRITICS

From time to time throughout the history of the church there has been a revolt against the authority and the authenticity of the Scriptures. Attempts have been made to discredit them in the eyes of the faithful. One of these accompanied the rise of theological liberalism in Germany in the school of Biblical critics at Tubingen Germany. The theory of evolution had been transposed from the field of the natural sciences into other areas and was being used as the key to explain the development of Christianity as well as other movements. The doctrines of the New Testament were viewed from a developmental viewpoint. Simple things came early while the more complex ones came later. When this was applied to the New Testament documents, it was decided that the Gospel of John must have been written quite late because of its reconciliation of divergent viewpoints found in the second century. Of course, if the Gospel of John was not written until after the development of these second century heresies, it could not have been written by the Apostle John and was certainly devoid of any value as a reliable account of the life and teachings of the Messiah. Thus John was late-dated and accounted of little value historically. The influence of this viewpoint is still seen in the reluctance by many contemporary scholars to accept the Johannine authorship of the fourth gospel. But in 1901 the John Rylands Library, Manchester, England, obtained a collection of Egyptian papyri. These were made available for scholars to study. In 1934 it was determined that one of these fragments was a part of the Gospel of John. It contained John 18:31-33 on one side and John 18:37-38 on the other. When scholars had determined its date, it was established as coming from the early part of the second century of the Christian era. It is most certainly from the first half of that century and perhaps from the first quarter. Thus the critical school that placed John too late to have come from an apostle was fairly well answered. By the early part of the second century it was in circulation through the ancient Mediterranean world. This is simply an illustration of the way God has confirmed the reliability and authority of His Word.

CONCLUSION

God's Loving Care. The preceding stories give us some picture of the way God has cared for the Biblical text and protected it for us. Actually such should not surprise us. This is all according to God's promise. Read carefully Isaiah 55:6-11. God has promised that His word will accomplish the thing for which it was given. II Timothy 3:16-17 shows us something of what it was given to accomplish. The Bible could not accomplish this if it were seriously corrupted in its message or if it were lost. Thus God has simply kept His promise to us and has continued to accomplish His sovereign purposes. This leads us to two truths about God that every Christian is grateful for. 1) God is a revealing God. He wants to communicate with His people. He loves and wants to speak with us. Love always dictates communication. Thus it is not difficult for us who believe in a God of love to really believe that He has given us prophets to proclaim His word and His Son to incarnate that Word. Nor is it difficult for us to believe that He has perpetuated that witness in a volume for all mankind, the Bible. 2) God loves us enough to protect and vindicate that Word. As He protected Jesus until He had accomplished His mission, He has protected and will protect the Bible until it has accomplished its mission. As He in many ways vindicated the claims of Jesus about Himself, He has also vindicated His Word in many ways. This lesson shows us some of the added reasons why we should believe in it and be brought by it to repentance and faith. Such watchful care over His Word and concern for its transmission to those who need it is not new. Read II Kings 22 for the story of the finding of the books of Moses in the temple and of its being read to a young king who did not know about it. In every age God works to release His Word to men. The Reformation is another story of how Luther discovered the Scriptures in his monastery and how he gave it to the world. God's concern now is that this word may be kept by those who know it and be given to those who do not.


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