Welcome to The Bare Essentials!
Hasn't the Bible been rewritten so many times that we can't trust it anymore?
This is a common misconception. Some people think that the Bible was
written in one language, translated to another language, then translated
into yet another and so on until it was finally translated into the
English. The complaint is that since it was rewritten so many times
in different languages throughout history, it must have become corrupted
. The "telephone" analogy is often used as an illustration.
It goes like this. One person tells another person a sentence who then
tells another person, who tells yet another, and so on and so on until
the last person hears a sentence that has little or nothing to do with
the original one. The only problem with this analogy is that it doesn't
fit the Bible at all.
The fact is that the Bible has not been rewritten. Take the New Testament,
for example. The disciples of Jesus wrote the New Testament in Greek
and though we do not have the original documents, we do have around
6,000 copies of the Greek manuscripts that were made very close to the
time of the originals. These various manuscripts, or copies, agree with
each other to almost 100 percent accuracy. Statistically, the New Testament
is 99.5% textually pure. That means that there is only 1/2 of 1% of
of all the copies that do not agree with each other perfectly. But,
if you take that 1/2 of 1% and examine it, you find that the majority
of the "problems" are nothing more than spelling errors and
very minor word alterations. For example, instead of saying Jesus, a
variation might be "Jesus Christ." So the actual amount of
textual variation of any concern is extremely low. Therefore, we can
say that we have a remarkably accurate compilation of the original documents.
So when that we translate the Bible, we do not translate from a translation
of a translation of a translation. We translate from the original language
into our language. It is a one step process and not a series of steps
that can lead to corruption. It is one translation step from the original
to the English or to whatever language a person needs to read it in.
So we translate into Spanish from the same Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.
Likewise we translate into the German from those same Greek and Hebrew
manuscripts as well. This is how it is done for each and every language
we translate the Bible into. We do not translate from the original languages
to the English, to the Spanish, and then to the German. It is from the
original languages to the English, or into the Spanish, or into the
German. Therefore, the translations are very accurate and trustworthy
in regards to what the Bible originally said.
Comparison Chart
The following chart represents a compilation of various ancient manuscripts,
their original date of writing, the earliest copy, the number of copies
in existent, and the time span between the originals and the copies.
If the Bible is singled out to be criticized as unreliable then all
the other writings listed below must also be discarded.
| Author1 | Date Written |
Earliest Copy | Approximate Time Span between original & copy | Number of Copies |
Accuracy of Copies |
| Lucretius | died 55 or 53 B.C. | 1100 yrs | 2 | ---- | |
| Pliny | 61-113 A.D. | 850 A.D. | 750 yrs | 7 | ---- |
| Plato | 427-347 B.C. | 900 A.D. | 1200 yrs | 7 | ---- |
| Demosthenes | 4th Cent. B.C. | 1100 A.D. | 800 yrs | 8 | ---- |
| Herodotus | 480-425 B.C. | 900 A.D. | 1300 yrs | 8 | ---- |
| Suetonius | 75-160 A.D. | 950 A.D. | 800 yrs | 8 | ---- |
| Thucydides | 460-400 B.C. | 900 A.D. | 1300 yrs | 8 | ---- |
| Euripides | 480-406 B.C. | 1100 A.D. | 1300 yrs | 9 | ---- |
| Aristophanes | 450-385 B.C. | 900 A.D. | 1200 | 10 | ---- |
| Caesar | 100-44 B.C. | 900 A.D. | 1000 | 10 | ---- |
| Livy | 59 BC-AD 17 | ---- | ??? | 20 | ---- |
| Tacitus | circa 100 A.D. | 1100 A.D. | 1000 yrs | 20 | ---- |
| Aristotle | 384-322 B.C. | 1100 A.D. | 1400 | 49 | ---- |
| Sophocles | 496-406 B.C. | 1000 A.D. | 1400 yrs | 193 | ---- |
| Homer (Iliad) | 900 B.C. | 400 B.C. | 500 yrs | 643 | 95% |
| New Testament |
1st Cent. A.D. (50-100 A.D. | 2nd Cent. A.D. (c. 130 A.D.) |
less than 100 years | 5600 | 99.5% |
As you can see, the New Testament documents are very accurate. Therefore, when the scholars translate from the Greek into the English (or into any other language), we can trust that what is translated is accurate and reliable.
______________________
1. This chart was adapted from three sources:
1) Christian Apologetics, by Norman Geisler, 1976, p. 307; 2)
the article "Archaeology and History attest to the Reliability
of the Bible," by Richard M. Fales, Ph.D., in The Evidence
Bible, Compiled by Ray Comfort, Bridge-Logos Publishers, Gainesville,
FL, 2001, p. 163; and 3) A Ready Defense, by Josh Mcdowell, 1993,
p. 45.