Biblical Inerrancy

A lot of people are saying that we cannot know what the Bible really says because of how many times it has been translated, and because those who copied the texts added words, changed words, and deleted words.

Is this true?  Is it possible that we cannot trust the Bible as we know it today?

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Too Many Copies

The first argument is that the Bible has simply been copied too many times to know what the original manuscripts even said. 

As an example something called “secret whispers” or “the telephone game” is trotted out to show what happens when you pass messages from one person to the next.  The game starts with people being separated into groups, and one person in each group is given a message, usually a sentence, that is then passed along by whispering it to the person next in line, who then proceeds to whisper to the next, and so on.  Finally when the message reaches the last person in line, it barely resembles the original message.

Fortunately this is either ignorance or intellectual dishonesty on the part of the whoever puts it forth as the reasoning for thinking that the Scripture we have today in no way resembles the original.

The problem is, copying Scripture is not a parlor game.  People dedicated not just their careers but their very lives to copying Scripture.  Neither oral tradition nor written Scriptures are in any way like the telephone game.  There were not just one person passing on one text to only one more person, and then repeating the process.  We have multitudes of people all passing along the texts to everyone they knew.

The fact is that we have manuscripts, copies of Scripture, that range in ages across a span of over a thousand years, and across locations hundreds and thousands of miles apart.  The benefit of this is that we can compare later documents with earlier documents to see if there are any changes.  We can compare documents found thousands of miles apart to see how they differ.

We can rest assured that the only significant changes that have occurred are those which are in line with how language has changed overtime.  Such as the fact that we no longer say “thee”, instead we say “you”.

We have over 25,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament alone.

Too Many Translations

Another argument is that the Bible has simply been translated too many times from one language to another.  This argument shows a severe lack of understanding of how the translation process works.

When ancient documents are translated they are not, for example, translated from Greek into Latin, and then from Latin into German, and then from German into English.  That’s not how it works.  Official translations always start at the beginning with the original languages of Hebrew, and Greek.

If anything, as time goes by and our knowledge of ancient cultures increases, our translations get better and more accurate.  Not less.

Too Many Changes

Disaffected former Christian and biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman says that we cannot know what the Bible originally said because scribes and the church have altered the texts, and that the manuscripts we have today show anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 different variants.  Meaning that there are 200,000 to 400,000 differences in the texts we have.  They call these differences – variances.  This is quite a lot since there are only 138,162 words in the Greek New Testament.

Is this true?

Yes.

Well at least the part about there being 200,000 to 400,000 variances in the texts.  But it is most decidedly not true that these variances make any fundamental changes to what Scripture says or for the most part even affect the individual words and verses.

The first thing that one must understand is what exactly constitutes a variance.

The most common variant is a misspelled word.  Indeed the most common variant found is the habit in the Greek to put an “n” at the end of a word if the next word starts with a vowel.  Because of this habit many words, especially names, would sometimes appear misspelled because they would have an “n” on the end.

As a matter of fact, as many as 80% of all variants are differences in the spelling of words.  Variants which have absolutely no affect on what a word is translated as.

Other variants include the use of the wrong word, an obvious mistake made by a tired scribe. The usage of connective words such as “the”, “and”, etc.

More variants come from manuscripts such as prayer books and lexicons.  Where someone may have prepared a daily lesson book for example.  A stretch of Scripture may all refer to a particular person, for example Jesus, without mentioning the name in the following verses.  When someone prepared these lexicons and lesson books they substituted the actual names the verses are referring to for the words “he”, “his”, etc.  This just made things clear for the person reading from the lesson or prayer book, it in no way changes the meaning, but it is still considered a variant.

Daniel B. Wallace PhD., one of the foremost scholars of textual criticism says that since 1707 A.D. “No cardinal or essential doctrine is altered by any textual variant that has plausibility of going back to the original.  The evidence for this has not changed to this day.”

Inerrancy and Infallibility

Wallace also gives us an excellent explanation of what it means when believers say the Bible is both inerrant and infallible.

The Bible is infallible, in that it is true in what it teaches, its foundational doctrines, and what that means in reference to faith and practice.

The Bible is inerrant, in that it is true on what it touches, in what it records about what God has done in history, faith, and believers.

As Wallace says in his own words: “So if we were to build a pyramid of bibliology, the broad foundation would be – I believe that God has done great acts in history and the Bible has recorded some of those. On top of that would be – The Bible is telling me the truth when it comes to matters of faith and practice.  And at the very top would be – The Bible is true in what it touches.”

Conclusion

The person who says that if I can find one error in the Bible then the whole thing is a wash, is ignorant.  They are ignorant of scholarship, ignorant of methodology, and ignorant of the Bible itself.

Anyone who would argue against faith based on the “possible” inaccuracy of the Bible when it comes to the texts is not presenting an honest argument.  Their goal is to destroy the faith of those less educated than themselves.  Quite despicable really.

The only conclusion one can reach in all scholarly honesty is that we can trust that we have the word God has given to us as having been passed down correctly.