"The Bible Can't Be Trusted"

"You can't trust the Bible — it's been changed so many times and lost through translation."

I used to believe this too. But the more I investigated, the more I realized: that claim doesn’t hold up under historical scrutiny.

In reality, the Bible is the most well-preserved and well-attested ancient document in human history. We have over 25,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament alone — in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and other early languages (Aland & Aland, 1987; Wallace, 2006). No other ancient work comes close.

For comparison:

Julius Caesar’s "Gallic Wars" survives in only about 10 manuscripts, all copied centuries later (Metzger & Ehrman, 2005).

Alexander the Great's life is known through just a handful of sources, written 300+ years after his death (Flint, 2013).
Yet the New Testament was written within a few decades of Jesus' life, and we have fragments dating as early as the 2nd century (Wallace, 2006).

Because of the enormous volume and early dating of these biblical manuscripts, scholars can compare thousands of copies across centuries and regions. The result? The New Testament we have today is over 99% textually consistent with the earliest available manuscripts. The remaining differences are minor spelling variations or word order, none of which change any core doctrine or narrative (Aland & Aland, 1987; Metzger & Ehrman, 2005).

So rather than being lost in translation or corrupted over time, the Bible is actually the most reliably transmitted document of the ancient world (Tov, 2012).


References

Aland, K., & Aland, B. (1987). The text of the New Testament: An introduction to the critical editions and to the theory and practice of modern textual criticism (E. F. Rhodes, Trans.). Eerdmans.

Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. (n.d.). Digital manuscript collection. https://manuscripts.csntm.org/

Epp, E. J., & Fee, G. D. (1993). Studies in the theory and method of New Testament textual criticism. Eerdmans.

Flint, P. W. (2013). The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible. Abingdon Press.

Metzger, B. M., & Ehrman, B. D. (2005). The text of the New Testament: Its transmission, corruption, and restoration (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Metzger, B. M. (2001). The Bible in translation: Ancient and English versions. Baker Academic.

Tov, E. (2012). Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3rd ed.). Fortress Press.

Wallace, D. B. (2006). Revisiting the corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, patristic, and apocryphal evidence. Kregel Academic.