The original New Testament documents have passed away; God has chosen not to have them preserved. What we have today are copies. He has also not preserved the copies from errors, the normal errors which creep into any long document which has been copied by hand, and been copied so extensively over such a long period of time. It is a natural question, then, as to whether we have an accurate version of what was originally written.
Our Lord says in Luke 21:33, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” This means, unquestionably, that the words which Jesus delivered to us from The Father (which includes all the books of the N.T., John 16:12-15) are in existence on the earth at this very moment. Peter also testifies to this fact, “[H]aving been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because
‘All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away,
But the word of the Lord endures forever.’
Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you,” 1 Peter 1:23-25. Peter is quoting from Isaiah 40:6-8, which shows that it applies to the Old Testament as well. God has preserved His word upon the earth.
What we have are true and faithful copies of the originals. The enemies of God have attacked what is within the Word, and have attacked the date and authorship of the books, but, as far as I’m aware, no credible assault has ever made upon the integrity of the text itself. The particulars regarding the transmission of the text of the Bible are known to all, both friend and foe, and no one attacks the reliability of the Word.
When movable type was invented in 1438, and printing became widespread, copying errors ceased to be an issue in the integrity of the text of our bibles. It became possible to set the plates once, and print away until they wore out, with no additional errors produced. The field of biblical textual criticism, which deals with the integrity of the text of the bible, is therefore limited to the handwritten copies made prior to the introduction of printing.
Before printing was invented, if you wanted to have a copy of a document, you had to write it out yourself, or hire someone to do it. If you were making a copy of a document written by God, would you not be exceedingly careful in your task, to ensure you had made a faithful copy? And if someone were hired to do it, would not their business depend upon their accuracy? But everyone was aware of the danger of errors, and that it was nearly impossible to prevent them from occurring.
When the Jews made a copy of the Old Testament, they had rules for it: “they numbered the verses, words and letters of the Scriptures, by books and by sections, marking the middle verse and letter of each, so that by counting these in any copy they could determine whether a word or a letter had been added or omitted.”[1] In repect to the New Testament copies, Irenaeus, who died in 202, writing of the situation that some copies of the Word had 616 as the number of the beast in Revelation instead of 666, said, “I am inclined to think that this occurred through the fault of the copyists, as is wont to happen, since numbers also are expressed by letters; so that the Greek letter which expresses the number sixty was easily expanded into the letter Iota of the Greeks.”[2] He then goes on to write of anyone who would purposely alter the Word, “then again, as there shall be no light punishment [inflicted] upon him who either adds or subtracts anything from the Scripture, under that such a person must necessarily fall.”[3] By this, we know that those who produced copies of the New Testament early on took their job just as seriously.
At the time (1886) that J. W. McGarvey wrote his “Evidences of Christianity,” there were just under 2100 Greek manuscripts known to exist, which contained all or part of the New Testament (few are complete, most are single books or groups of books). At the time of Bruce Metzger’s “A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament,” written in 1975, that number had risen to around 5000.
At the time when we only knew of around 2100 manuscripts, the number of variations among them was put at from 120,000 to 150,000. These numbers seem alarming at first, but when we look at the character of the variations, we quickly see that they amount to practically nothing. The plain facts regarding the integrity of the text of the New Testament are this (from McGarvey):
“Dr. Hort, one of the most competent of the living authorities on the subject, declares, that in regard to the great bulk of the words of the New Testament, there is no variation, and no other ground of doubt. He estimates the number of words admitted on all hands to be above doubt, at not less than seven-eighths of the whole. When, of the remaining one-eighth, we leave out mere differences of spelling, the number still left in doubt is about one-sixtieth of the whole; and when we select from this one-sixtieth of those which in any sense can be called substantial variations, their number, he says, can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text. That is, only about one thousandth part of the New Testament is so variously expressed in the various copies, as to make any substantial difference of meaning.”[4]
In other words, about 87.5% of the text is above doubt. Of the remaining 12.5%, when we leave out differences in spelling, we are left with 1.7%. Of this, only about .1% produces any substantial difference in meaning. Put another way, 99.9% of the original New Testament is known to us.
Examples of passages of which there is question: the last twelve verses of Mark, John 5:4, John 7:53 – 8:11, 1 John 5:7-8.
Examples of New Testament quotations from the early writers
Another good source for showing the reliability of the New Testament can be found in quotations from the early writers, which either match or are clear allusions to the New Testament.
From Clement:
Ready for every good work
- Col 1:10; 2Th 2:17; 1Ti 5:10; 2Ti 2:21; 2Ti 3:17
“Be ye merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; forgive, that it may be forgiven to
you; as ye do, so shall it be done unto you; as ye judge, so shall ye be
judged; as ye are kind, so shall kindness be shown to you; with what
measure ye mete, with the same it shall be measured to you.”
- Matthew 6:12-15, 7:2, Luke 6:36-38
From Polycarp (knew the apostle John):
“In whom, though now ye see Him not, ye believe, and believing, rejoice with
joy unspeakable and full of glory;”
- 1 Peter 1:8
“by grace ye are saved, not of works”
- Ephesians 2:8-9
“Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted
for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”
- Matthew 5:10
“Judge not, that ye be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again;”
- Luke 6:37-38
“we shall also reign together with Him,”
- 2 Timothy 2:12
“neither fornicators, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, shall inherit the kingdom of God,”
- 1 Cor 6:9-10
“we must all appear at the judgment-seat of Christ, and must every one give an account of himself.”
- 2 Corinthians 5:10
“For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist;”
- 2 John 7
“The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
- Matthew 26:41, Mark 14:38
“who bore our sins in His own body on the tree,”
- 1 Peter 2:24
“who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,”
- 1 Peter 2:22
“Abstain from every form of evil,”
- 1 Thessalonians 5:22
“Do we not know that the saints shall judge the world?”
- 1 Corinthians 6:2
“Be ye angry, and sin not,” and, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”
- Ephesians 4:26
From Ignatius (contemporary of Polycarp):
“who gave Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God,”
- Ephesians 5:2
From Irenaeus (died 202):
“For there is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed, nor secret that shall not be made known.”
- Matthew 10:26, Luke 12:2
“One Iota, or one tittle, shall by no means pass away until all be fulfilled.”
- Matthew 5:18
[1] J. W. McGarvey, Evidences of Christianity (Cincinnati: Guide Printing and Publishing Company, 1886), pg. 9
[2] Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” book 5, ch. 30, sect. 1, Master Christian Library (Albany: AGES Software, 1996, 1997), p. 1120.
[3] Ibid.
[4] McGarvey, pg. 13.