Home > God > God exists > the Bible is true

The Bible is God's inspired word and is true in most respects, except for instances in which man has introduced errors.

People who say this believe that God inspired the original writers of the Bible to produce true documents. However, over time, as the Bible was copied and recopied, errors were introduced. While God may have created a perfect original copy, humans--who are not perfect--introduced errors over time.

It is true that in the Bible God does not promise us that anything other than that the original manuscripts are inspired and true. However, historians are confident that the copies we now have are, word for word, 99% accurate copies of the originals. For the 1% of the words which are uncertain, we know exactly which words those are and NONE of them have any effect on doctrine or teaching. In other words, there is 100% certainty that we correctly have the original message God gave us. In the academic and scholarly world, there is no question that we have accurate copies of the originals.

Yes, there are times when people have intentionally introduced errors. An example of this would be the Jehovah's Witnesses New World Translation of the Bible. But these are easy to spot because we can compare them against copies which we know are accurate and correct.

Although the Hebrews and early Christians were very careful in their copying and proof reading (to a much higher degree than we achieve today), there may have been times when a copying error was unintentionally introduced. But history has shown that these errors are caught and corrected. For example, they would be caught when comparisons with accurate copies reveal the errors.

Remember we are not dealing with a single, serial line of copies, as shown below. In the illustration below, and error made in "copy 2" would remain forever in all future copies.

In reality multiple copies were made from each original and from each copy. The simplified diagram below shows how errors are detected and corrected. Let's assume an error was made in copy #1 on the fourth line and was passed to copy #2. The error would be caught because that copy might be compared with a number of "copy 1" versions, as well as other "copy 2" versions.

The above is a greatly simplified diagram. In reality, like the original, each copy was reproduced to create numerous new copies. And previous copies might be referenced in making a new copy. The following diagram is more realistic, although still simplified.

For example, we currently have over 25,000 ancient copies of the New Testament. Many of these were produced at a time relatively close to when the original was written. These are compared and scientifically analyzed to give us a true, accurate copy of the original manuscripts.

There is no scientific or theological reason to doubt whether what we have now matches what was originally written. We have accurate copies of what was originally written.