Can We Trust The Bible?

How did the Old Testament get from when it was written thousands of years ago to our hands today? Recall, Moses was the human author who recorded the first book of the Bible, Genesis, around 1400BC. But also remember that he describes history that dates far before he was even born! From Adam and Eve to Noah and the flood, from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to Joseph in Egypt, all the earliest history from creation til Moses was passed down orally from generation to generation. But before you start worrying that Moses wrote the first books of the Bible depending entirely on mere human memory (which, as we all know, is flawed at best), note that it was actually God who spoke directly to Moses telling him what to write down: “And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.’” (Exodus 34:27) “And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD…” (Exodus 24:4) So, though Moses was the first human author of the Bible, of the Old Testament, we cannot see him as more than a scribe, a pen (if you will) in the hands of the true author…God!

Now, after Moses wrote down the first 5 books which God spoke to him, he began the incredibly important task of preserving and passing on the written Word of God: “Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel.” (Deuteronomy 31:9) And so, for the next 1000 years, God continued to lead the nation of Israel (the Jews) and speak to them through prophets like Moses, from Joshua all the way to Malachi. These words, authored by God and recorded by human prophets, were written on scrolls and kept carefully by the priests until soon the canon (the Tanakh) was complete!

Now you may be wondering: “if this is all true, where are the originals? Show me the stone tablets or papyrus on which Moses wrote God’s words and I’ll believe!” The sad truth is there are no remaining original manuscripts of the Old Testament today…but this shouldn’t surprise us; the originals weren’t stored on Microsoft Word, they were written on scrolls made from papyrus or leather that obviously deteriorate from everyday use! So how can the “2016” Christian hold a copy of their Bible today and claim it’s the same as one written thousands of years ago by God, when we don’t have the original manuscripts? Herein lies the good news…

When original scrolls began to show signs of wear and tear (as would be naturally expected) do you know what happened? They were copied! Yes, the people of that time realized these words from God were too important to lose and needed to be carefully copied word for word to preserve them and pass them on to descendants so that future generations could know the true God of the universe and what He has done! And so, old and worn manuscripts were reverently placed in containers called genizahs and were buried. And from 500BC to 300AD, a group of scholars arose in Israel called the SCRIBES and the TANNAIM (“repeaters”) whose only job was to meticulously copy and preserve the Hebrew Old Testament given to them by the priests. These scribes were so “OCD” (obsessive perfectionists) that they developed the strictest rules to follow when copying synagogue scrolls, example:

1. No word or letter was to be written from memory
2. If more than three mistakes were made on any one page, the whole page had to be destroyed and redone

Because of their tireless efforts, Christians today (despite not having the originals) have over 3000 copies of the Hebrew Old Testament, 1500 manuscripts of the Septuagint, 8000 manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, and 65 manuscripts of the Syriac Peshitta! All this to say, we have more than enough corroborating copies of the original Hebrew Old Testament written by Moses and the prophets! These 39 books were clearly of great importance, something that the authors and scribes felt they could not afford to lose, something that had to stand the test of time…and they did!

Faithful English translations of the Bible (including the KJV, NKJV, NASB, NIV, ESV) have translated the Old Testament from the earliest complete Hebrew manuscript known as the “Masoretic Text”:

1. the oldest incomplete copy of the MT, Allepo Codex, 930AD (1/4 was burned by fire)
2. the oldest complete copy of the MT, Codex Leningradensis, 1008AD

Now I know what you’re thinking: “that’s only 1000 years ago…that’s well over 1000 years since the original Old Testament was completed (recall Malachi wrote the last book around 430BC). How can I trust a copy that is so removed from the original? What if the original words of God were lost in translation, like what happens in the children’s game “broken telephone”?

Admittedly this was a very tough argument for Christians to defend against…until one fine day in 1947 in a town called Qumran in Israel overlooking the dead sea, where 3 small boys were herding goats and one of them followed a stray goat into one of the thousands of caves in the area. The boy playfully threw a stone into the deserted cave only to hear the sound of a clay pot breaking! Curiously, the boy followed his throw and discovered a broken pot containing a scroll…one of 981 scrolls hidden in the caves of Qumran! These 981 dead sea scrolls (as they came to be named) would include portions from every Old Testament book but Esther! The manuscripts were dated and found to have been written between 400BC and 100AD! That’s right, just after the Old Testament was completed and canonized!

With the discovery of the dead sea scrolls, Christians now had the oldest copies of the Hebrew Old Testament written within mere years of the completion of the original Tanakh. Scholars now had the coveted opportunity to compare these earlier transcribed copies (ie. the dead sea scroll portions) with the later ones used for our modern Bible translations (ie. the complete Masoretic Text); in essence, scholars could now evaluate just how accurate the scribes were in copying the Bible over a span of almost 1500 years! Ready for what they found?

Amazingly, the portions of the Old Testament found on the dead sea scrolls were 95% identical to the Masoretic Text! This is how accurate the scribes were! Now most Asian parents would not be pleased with such a mark, and would inevitably ask: “what about the other 5%?” Well, the 5% differences are all consistent with what is referred to as “copyist” errors by scholars, which include:

1. Confusion of similar letters
2. Substitution of similar sounding letters or words
3. Omission of a letter or word
4. Doubling a letter or word
5. Reversal in the order of two letters or words
6. Reversal in the order of two letters or words
7. Two words being joined as one
8. One word being separated into two

This should not dishearten the Christian who desires to have full confidence in the Bible as the complete Word of God. Do not for a moment believe that there are hundreds of significant textual errors “out there” that only scholars know about, for this is just not the truth. Every single textual variant in the Old Testament has been honestly and transparently indicated in the footnotes of your faithful English translation of the Bible. And looking thru these variants will show you that 99% of the words in your Old Testament are unquestionable exact copies of the original God-given words, and even within the 1% of words in question, no variants would change any point of doctrine or what we believe! It is therefore with great assurance and confidence we can KNOW the Old Testament which you and I have in our hands today is absolutely written by God, is absolutely complete, is absolutely accurate to the original words He spoke, and has been faithfully and reliably passed down to us. What more can we want? The Old Testament demands our trust, it has earned mine, now how about you?