Has the Bible been corrupted, altered, edited, revised, or tampered with?

Answer

The books of the Old Testament were written from approximately 1400 BC to 400 BC. The books of the New Testament were written from approximately AD 40 to AD 90. Therefore, between 3,400 and 1,900 years have passed since a book of the Bible was written. During this time, the original manuscripts have been lost and most likely no longer exist. Since the time the books of the Bible were originally written, they have been copied repeatedly by scribes. Copies of copies of copies have been produced. Given this, can we still have confidence in the Bible?

The Holy Scriptures are God-breathed and therefore inerrant (2 Timothy 3:16-17;John 17:17). Inerrancy can only be attributed to the original manuscripts, not to the copies of the manuscripts. Despite the meticulousness of the scribes in replicating the Scriptures, no one is infallible. Over the centuries, minor discrepancies emerged in the various copies of the Scriptures. The vast majority of these differences are simple spelling variations (similar to American “neighbor” versus British “neighbour”), word inversions (one manuscript says “Christ Jesus” while another says “Jesus Christ”), or easily identifiable missing words. In essence, over 99 percent of the biblical text is undisputed. Of the less than 1 percent of the text that is disputed, no doctrinal teaching or command is compromised. In other words, the extant copies of the Bible today are authentic. The Bible has not been corrupted, altered, edited, revised, or tampered with.

Any impartial document scholar will acknowledge that the Bible has been remarkably well-preserved over the centuries. Copies of the Bible dating back to thThe 14th century AD manuscripts are nearly identical in content to copies from the 3rd century AD. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, scholars were surprised to see how similar they were to other ancient copies of the Old Testament, even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were hundreds of years older than anything previously found. Even many hardened skeptics and critics of the Bible acknowledge that the Bible has been transmitted over the centuries far more accurately than any other ancient document.

There is absolutely no evidence that the Bible has been revised, edited, or tampered with in any systematic way. The sheer volume of biblical manuscripts makes it easy to detect any attempt to distort God’s Word. There is no major doctrine of the Bible that is cast into doubt due to the minor differences among the manuscripts.

Once again, the question arises: can we trust the Bible? Absolutely! God has preserved His Word despite the unintentional failings and intentional attacks of human beings. We can have the utmost confidence that the Bible we possess today is the same Bible that was originally written. The Bible is God’s Word, and we can trust it (2 Timothy 3:16;Matthew 5:18).