Inspired Stuff , Peter Downey and Ben Shaw
10. How do we know the Bible got to us accurately?
Some people have a Chinese Whispers opinion of the Bible. They know that biblical writings are a few thousand years old, and they assume that they were passed on from person to person, group to group, generation to generation, language to language and that over the centures, mistakes and changes (both deliberate and accidental) crept in and the words, sentences and meanings changed, so that what we now read as...
Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth and the life'
actually began as...
Jesus said. 'Would you like fries with that?'
In short, they suggest that the Bible is unreliable and that it has changed over the years both through accidental errors and deliberate intervention.
Okay, so let's work through these concerns.
In the game Chinese Whispers , what you basically have is a chain of people. Each person gets the message and passes it along to the next person in the chain. As the errors (both deliberate and accidental) start to creep in, they too are passed along, and so the errors multiply as they move along the chain, until at the end, the message bears little or no resemblance to the original.
The Bible did not get to the twenty-first century like this. Let's remember that these holy writings were sacred to the ancient Jews and early Christians. They were treated with great respect and care. Way before laser printers, photocopiers and publishing houses, all copies were handwritten by scribes.
Scribes didn't do this as a hobby in their spare time when they weren't farming vegetables. This was their profession. It was a highly valued and important profession. They went to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of their work.
Every time they copied a page, they would go back and compare the copy to the original word for word. No word and no letter were written from memory. They counted and checked all the letters on each page. A head scribe checked their work. They followed meticulous rules to ensure accuracy. Any mistakes and the page would be destroyed. They wrote in columns of no fewer than 48 and no more than 60 lines. Each column had 30 letters. The ink they used had a special recipe. And to top it off, the scribe had to wash himself and be in full Jewish dress before beginning to copy a scroll.
So the copies that came down through the generations were meticulously produced, kind of like a game of Chinese Whispers where each person checks and confirms their hearing of the message ten times with everyone else around them and compares it to a written version from up the line before they pass it on.
The point is that today's Bible has not evolved, but remained true to its origins.
In addition, we can cross-reference our 21st century Bible with early translations of biblical writings, like the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament made about 250 BC), Targums (Aramaic translations of the original Hebrew made over one hundred years before Christ was born, also referred to as the Syriac translations), the Vulgate (the Latin translation of both Old and New Testaments written in the fourth century AD) and the previously mentioned Dead Sea Scrolls.
To go back to our game of Chinese Whispers , this is like the person at the end of the chain being able to check and compare his or her own message with the first five people in the chain.
By comparing our modern Old Testament with these early writings, we can see that the Bible has not changed in two thousand years. Any historian will tell you that the Bible is historically valid and reliable. In fact, of all the manuscripts and documents that you would read about in any Ancient History course, the Bible is without doubt the most supported, most accurate and most researched on the planet.
So rest assured that when u grab the Bible off your shelf and read it, you are reading from a high quality, totally valid, original historical book, just as accurate now as it was 'way back then'.
