So just how reliable is this Bible these Christians carry round?
Has the original text been scrambled by all the mistakes
and 'improvements' made each time it was copied by hand over the
centuries?
I am sometimes asked questions along these lines about how
reliable our Bible text is.
The answer, in brief, is 'very reliable'! However, to pad out
this summary with a little reputable content, I have taken some quotes from
the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Please note that the term 'received text'
(commonly referred to as 'TR' from the Latin 'Textus Receptus') more
often refers to the Greek version of the New Testament originally
produced by Erasmus, but in connection with the Old Testament it refers
to the Masoretic text.
The following quote was taken from an online search facility
provided by the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- The Greek Text
"Textual criticism of the Greek New Testament attempts to come
as near as possible to the original manuscripts (which did not
survive), based on reconstructions from extant manuscripts of
various ages and locales. Assessment of the individual manuscripts
and their relationships to each other can produce a fairly reliable
text from various readings that may have been the result of
copying and recopying of manuscripts. It is not always age that
matters. Older manuscripts may be corrupt, and a reading in
a later manuscript may in reality be ancient. No single witness
or group of witnesses is reliable in all its readings.
"Even with all these witnesses, there remain problems in the
Greek text. These include variants about which there is no settled
opinion and some few words for which no accurate meaning can
be found because they occur only once in the New Testament and
not in prior Greek works. Very early translations of the New
Testament made as it spread into the non-Greek-speaking regions
of the missionary world, the so-called early versions, may provide
evidence for otherwise unknown meanings and reflections of early
text types.
"In referring to manuscript text types by their place of origin,
one posits the idea that the major centers of Christendom established
more or less standard texts: Alexandria; Caesarea and Antioch
(Eastern); Italy and Gallia plus Africa (Western); Constantinople,
the home for the Byzantine text type or the Textus Receptus.
While such a geographical scheme has become less accurate
or helpful, it still serves as a rough classification of text
types."
- What it Means
At first sight, this does not look too good.
But what it means is that we have a vast number of ancient
manuscripts to compare, and the differences between them come
down, for the most part, to individual words.
We know what all the variants are in all the ancient
manuscripts, and not a single one of these variants makes the
slightest difference to the Christian faith. Not a single
doctrine is inserted, modified or denied by any of these variants.
I have read discussions of a good number of these variants, and
while there is great academic interest in establishing the best
possible version of the original text, from the point of view of
someone wanting to know what to believe and how to live, there is
nothing of interest in these discussions.
The most interesting questions concern two disputed passages:
the 'long' ending of Mark, and the story of the woman caught in
adultery in John. You can cut both these passages from your
Bible, and it would make no practical difference whatsoever.
The two passages so accurately reflect what we are taught
in other parts of the Gospels that there is no point in arguing
over them.
For what it is worth, in my view the arguments come down on the
side of the long ending of Mark being a slightly later addition,
while the story of the woman caught in adultery in John was more
likely to have been in the original text, and left out of some
copies at a fairly early date - probably because some early
Christians were uncomfortable with aspects of the story.
You have only to compare these passages with any of the New
Testament Apocrypha to see the vast difference between the early
New Testament writings - including the two disputed passages - and
the later stories which were written to meet the needs of the
early church.
In short - we can rely on the New Testament
because it is, as far as we need, an accurate record created by
the earliest followers of Jesus.