Is the Bible Reliable?
To investigate Christianity, the best place to start is the Bible. The Bible is a collection of texts. Protestant Bibles contain 66 books—39 in the Old Testament (OT) and 27 in the New Testament (NT). Catholic and Orthodox traditions include additional books in the OT, and the Jewish Tanakh arranges and counts the books differently. The OT was mainly written in Hebrew, with a a few sections in Aramaic, and the entire NT was written in Koine Greek.
How do we know that we have what the original writers wrote? It can be compared with other ancient texts that are deemed by scholars as trustworthy in two areas:
The amount of time between the oldest existing manuscript and when the original is believed to have been written, and
How many copies still exist.
Unfortunately, no original NT manuscripts have survived; they were made of materials that easily disintegrated. But there are approximately 5,800 surviving copies of those originals, ranging from second‑century papyri to medieval CE lectionaries. As a rule, the narrower the time gap between a copy and the original, the less variation could have crept in. For the NT, the time gap is about 100 years between
original and existing copies; for a work like Homer’s Iliad the gap is about 400 years and there are about 2,200 copies; and for Caesar’s Gallic Wars the gap is about 1,000 years, with only about 10 surviving copies. Because of the closeness of dates between NT copies and originals, Biblical scholar, F.F. Bruce said, "The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning."[1]
More manuscripts allow for better cross-checking of variants to reconstruct the original reading. Keep in mind that manuscripts were copied by hand and show spelling and other variations; only the original autographs are error free. Most of the variations involve the Greek letter movable ν (nu). The famous atheist NT scholar, Dr. Bart Ehrman said, “To be sure, all of the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.”[2]
For these reasons, we can be confident that the NT we have closely reflects the original writers’ texts.
A common misconception is that the contents of the Bible were decided at the Council of Nicaea (325 CE). This misconception was popularized in the novel The Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown writes, “The Bible is a product of man, my dear. Not God. . . More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament . . . The Bible as we know it today was collated by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great. . . [at the] famous ecumenical gathering known as the Council of Nicaea.”[3] The reality is that the Council of Nicaea did no such thing; it was convened to address the Arian controversy, which produced the Nicene Creed. The proceedings and canons from the First Council of Nicaea are preserved and available online.
Church fathers Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria affirmed the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and argued for their apostolic origins. Another church father, Papias, reports that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark based on Peter’s eyewitness recollections. We can also tell that Mark was involved with the apostles and ministry because the apostle Paul mentions him and also says, “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11). Paul’s letters were also widely accepted as canonical by many other church fathers and read in the early church.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). Although the writers of the NT were human, they were inspired by God to write. Much of the NT was written early: many of Paul’s letters date to around 50 CE, and the Book of Revelation is usually dated to about 95 CE. Most texts fall within the lifetimes of people who witnessed the events they describe. They were not later made‑up stories, because contemporary historians would likely have challenged false accounts. Later writings that attempted such stories, such as the Gnostic gospels, were met with resistance by church fathers. As an example against Gnosticism, John wrote, “I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world” (2 John 7).
The NT we possess is reliably close to the originals. The relatively short time gap between the originals and the earliest manuscripts supports this. In addition, the large number of surviving copies allows scholars to cross‑check variants and reconstruct the earliest attainable text with high confidence. While scribal errors and minor variations exist, they are overwhelmingly insignificant for core doctrines and historical claims. Early citations by church fathers, the chronological proximity of many writings to the events they describe, and the broad, independent manuscript evidence together support the view that the current NT text faithfully reflects what the original authors wrote.
If you are new to Christianity start with the Gospel of John and get either a New American Standard Bible (NASB), English Standard Version (ESV), or American Standard Version (ASV) Bible since they are easier to read yet maintain a more literal translation. There are good commentaries online such as the https://enduringword.com/ or purchase a MacArthur Commentary. A great site for questions is https://www.gotquestions.org/.
[1] F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? 1st ed. (1943), expanded later editions; the wording appears in the 3rd revised edition (1974), page 16.
[2] Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, (New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 207.
[3] Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code, (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2003), 231-233.
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