The first ever question in the Universe was uttered by the crafty serpent to Adam’s wife Eve in the Garden of Eden, why would he ever need to change what is obviously a winning tactic? He knows that unless doubt is countered, it will lead to skepticism, and in due course, outright unbelief.

In former days it was just scholars who needed to be aware of this kind of material. Yet now that the blatant attacks on the Bible have gone mainstream in the media through men like Dan Brown and Bart Ehrman, Christians in our day need to be armed with answers. Here’s what we know:

The Jews had an unparalleled reverence for the Scripture. As the book of Deuteronomy expresses it, “man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Jesus quotes this verse in response to the devil’s first temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:4, Luke 4:4).

We can determine Christ’s view of Scripture with even greater certainty from His words in Matthew 22. In the context of quoting from the book of Genesis, He said, “…have you not read what was spoken to you by God…” (Matt. 22:31) According to Jesus, when the text of Genesis is read, you are reading words spoken to you by God. To say that Jesus had a high view of the text of the Bible would be a huge understatement.

But that is not all. In Matthew 5:18, Jesus said, “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” This is hugely significant. A “jot” is the Hebrew letter “yodh”, the 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is also the smallest letter. A “tittle” is the small decorative spur or point on the upper edge of the yodh. If you can imagine a tiny letter with a slightly visible decorative mark (similar to the dot used in the lower case letter “i” in our English language), the meaning of Christ’s statement becomes abundantly clear. Jesus was saying that not even the smallest letter or even a tiny mark above a Hebrew letter will ever disappear from God’s law, until all is fulfilled. He not only believed that inspiration extended to every word, but to every tiny mark on the page.

For an orthodox Jew, nothing was more sacred than the word of God. This meant that when it came to making copies of the Biblical text onto scrolls, each Jewish scribe was meticulous in the extreme, viewing his task as a high and holy calling. Tradition tells us that each scribe would actually take a bath before writing the name of God on a scroll, even if it appeared only a few words apart in a verse. Multiple references meant multiple baths!

As is the case in a number of other languages, each letter in Hebrew has a numerical value. This means that each line in the text could be given a numerical value, as did each page and each scroll. If the number total of the copied scroll was not the same as the original, the entire copy was burned. Similarly, if a letter even touched another letter, the copy would be destroyed and the scribe was asked to start his work all over again. Talk about precision!

The Middle East is a hot and humid climate and therefore scrolls did not last too long. When they faded (over time) it did not matter because of the meticulous preservation of the text as mentioned above – the old copy would be buried in the sand and the new one would then be used.

Now lets fast forward from ancient times to the year 1946. In the Middle East, at a place called Qumran, a local shepherd boy was throwing stones and small rocks into the nearby caves. As he did so, he heard a clanging sound and decided to investigate further. What he found shocked the archaeological world. He discovered a pot with a Hebrew scroll inside. Local authorities were informed and investigators were sent to the area. Similar discoveries were made in eleven other nearby caves. Altogether, around 900 scrolls were found. These scrolls contained almost every book of the Hebrew Scriptures (what we would call the “Old Testament”). What an amazing treasure!

It took some time before the scrolls were sufficiently preserved, but as research has continued over the decades, it has enabled us to make great strides in our knowledge regarding how the Hebrew Scriptures have been handed down to us. The scrolls found were approximately 1,000 years older than anything in our possession before. They are known as the infamous Dead Sea Scrolls. These copies can be compared with what we have and they are remarkably similar, confirming the fact that the Jews were highly meticulous in the transmission of the Scripture text.

THE NEW TESTAMENT GREEK TEXT – Before the coming of Christ, Alexander the Great had conquered much of the known world. One of the things he did was to insist that all under his rule would learn the Greek language. This was not the Greek of the elite, but the type of Greek everyone spoke, known as koine (common) Greek. This was highly providential of course, as it was this koine Greek in which the New Testament was written. As you might imagine, this factor helped enormously in the spreading of the Gospel message.

When we talk about the inspiration of the Biblical text we must remember we are referring to the original words (known as the autographs) rather than any copies that were made. No Christian makes the claim that the copies are free from error. Clearly they are not.

Mistakes in the copies (copying errors) are called Textual Variants. The early Christians were not the elite intellectuals of their day (generally speaking) as passages such as 1 Cor. 1:26ff confirm. Not many were wise, according to the flesh. Christians were therefore not the greatest spellers. Often their writings are very hard to read. However, the Christians were notorious in spreading the message. Even under harsh persecution, copies of the Gospels and the Epistles went everywhere throughout the Empire.

This is very significant because even though Christians were often persecuted and outlawed, the spread of these copies made it totally impossible for the New Testament text to be controlled in any way. The copies were everywhere in the Empire and were never in just one place under lock and key. No one, not even an Emperor with all the force of Rome behind him, could call all the copies back to one place and then tamper with them to insert a previously unknown doctrine.

In our day, Dan Brown made the outrageous suggestion (in his best selling work of fiction “The DaVinci Code” which he said was based on historical fact) that for political expediency (seeking to unite all factions under his rule), Emperor Constantine inserted the idea of Christ’s deity into the New Testament. Those who know anything of the historical context find this idea simply laughable. It would have been impossible for one man to control the text in such a way. Even outside of the New Testament, we have the written testimony of Christians who affirm Christ’s deity long before Constantine ever existed (see here).

Let us now talk about the textual differences we find between copies. By far the largest two passages are:

Mark 16:9-20
John 7:53-8:11

These texts are in all likelihood NOT part of the original New Testament. Scholars have known this for centuries and our modern translations take this into account. If you are using a modern day translation, if you check these Bible passages, you will find a note, either in the margin, or in the text itself, which explains this clearly.

Another such text is 1 John 5:7, 8. The English Standard Version (ESV) reads, “For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.”. Now compare these words with the King James Version rendering, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one”. Did you notice the marked difference? There is a far longer reading in the KJV than the ESV. Why is this?

This text is known as the Comma Johanneum. The evidence is decidedly against the longer version being authentic. The King James Version of the Bible is based on what we call the textus receptus (Latin for “received text”) and this Greek text includes the added words. However, more authoritative Greek manuscripts do not have them, which is why most believe they were not part of the original. The added words found in the textus receptus and therefore in the KJV (and NKJV, which is also based on the TR) affirm the Trinity but obviously come from an over-zealous scribe who made the addition. Thankfully, the doctrine of the Trinity can be easily affirmed from the rest of the Bible without any scribe’s help in the matter. Our modern day translations (such as the NASB, ESV, NIV and others) rightly ignore the words added in by the scribe in 1 John 5:7.

Here is Dr. Daniel B. Wallace (Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts) explaining the historical background regarding 1 John 5:7, 8 in more detail:

For further discussion see the articles and videos posted here on the blog under the theme of Textual Criticism. I would especially recommend the article “Is the Bible full of errors?” as it shows the types (and degree of importance) of errors we are talking about. I would also highly recommend the two teaching videos by Dr. Wallace, entitled, “Is What We Have Now What They Wrote Then?”

For further details on the last twelve verses of Mark’s Gospel, check out the link here for a 5 minute video by Dr. Wallace.