The Reliability of the Bible
Introduction (top)
Each book of the Bible was written at least 1,900 years ago, and we do not have the original manuscripts today. The texts that today's Bibles are based on are literally "copies of copies". When this fact is understood, it is an obvious and understandable question to ask, "Well, how do we know that the Bible is reliable? How do we know that what we read is an accurate representation of what was written all those millenia ago?"
Multiplicity of copies (top)
First, there are a multiplicity of copies of the texts of the New Testament that date from within a couple of generations of their writing. Further to this, the copies come from different geographical locations and have been translated into other languages at a very early time. This helps us, as we can compare texts found in two different geographical locations and surmise that where they match up they're accurate to their original copy. So when we compare a number of manuscripts from a very early time period and different geographical locations, it is very easy to see what is accurate and what is not. We can also look at the translations into other languages and compare meanings as another source of independent information.
When compared to other ancient texts the New Testament is quite in a world of its own with regard to reliability. We have more than 5,000 Greek New Testament Manuscripts today, dating from c.100 AD to c.800 AD (that's only a generation or two between original authorship and earliest existing copy) whereas the next most reliable text that comes to us from a similar time-period is Homer's Iliad, composed in 800 BC, of which we have 650 Greek manuscripts dating from c.100-200 AD (that's about 900 years between original authorship and the earliest existing copy).
If you include translations of the New Testament, we have over 24,000 copies of the New Testament coming down to us from Antiquity, and that does not include quotes. The New Testament was widely quoted in the early centuries AD providing even more sources to compare (it is said that if we lost all Greek versions of the New Testament, we could still piece a complete copy together solely from quotations made from it by the early Church Fathers). That's a great deal of evidence to the authority of the New Testament, and makes it not only reliable, but by far the most reliable document to come down to us from Antiquity.
Comparing the manuscripts... (top)
It is quite common to hear someone accuse the New Testament of containing 200,000 errors. In a way, that statement is quite true - although it is misleading (and it is more correct to say that there are approximately 200,000 variants).
The problem arises as copies were made of copies: obviously, when the scribes of ancient times labouriously copied from one faded text onto a clean sheet, mistakes were bound to occur. Some manuscripts have lines repeated as the scribes' mind wandered, others have the sequence of words incorrect at some point, others have words misspelled.
The figure of 200,000 comes from the addition of these errors in all the manuscripts. So if a scribe made three mistakes whilst making one copy of the New Testament, and then his copy was copied by 100 others, even assuming they did not make any further errors, that is now counted as three hundred variants when compared to other texts that do not carry the original mistake.
Then if each of those copies are themselves copied twenty times, again, without further mistake, that becomes 6,000 variants. Remembering that there are over 5,000 manuscripts, most of which are 'copies of copies', you realise that 200,000 variants is quite understandable - even, to be expected.
Further to that, the types of mistakes encountered from scribal error tend not to influence the message of a text, unless whole lines are skipped inadvertently. Whether words are misspelled, repeated or written out of sequence; generally speaking, they will still represent the original intended message and therefore are reliable.
The process of translation (top)
Many people have the misconception that the modern translations of the Bible are simply rewrites of older translations and thus after so many little alterations are probably totally inaccurate now. This is simply not the case. All mainstream Bibles were translated from the most authoritative copies of the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek available. The existing texts of the Bible in its original languages are studied fervently and compared to each other, as well as to other ancient translations, to find the most authoritative text possible (probably, but not necessarily, the oldest; and perhaps different sections from different manuscripts).
Many Bible translations today (such as the RSV, ESV etc) were translated from the original languages whilst also comparing with other modern translations to attempt to get the most accurate rendering in conjunction with proven ease of understanding; while other versions (such as the NEB) purposefully do not compare any passages at all, but translate solely from the authoritative original texts.
It is also sometimes thought that the translations have become less and less reliable with regard to our understanding of the original languages. Again, this is fortunately not the case. As time goes on, we are able to find more and more authoritative texts (e.g. the find in Qumran in the mid-20th Century) that teach us more about the original languages, and shed even more light on which texts should be treated as authoritative and which should not.
For example, from this kind of process we can see that the Greek text used in the translation of the original King James Version (1611) is not as authoritative as other texts due to probable insertions, and so is not used in translations anymore. This is a perfect example of translations having the ability to become more reliable over time.
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