Trusting the Bible: The Question of Original Autographs
The inerrancy of Scripture is an essential element to the Christian faith. It is because Scripture is the inerrant word of God that Christians place their trust in it and believe in its authoritativeness. A question that often comes up to combat this doctrine is, “How can Christians trust the Bible when the original documents are not available for examination?”. It is true that we don’t have any of the original written documents of the biblical texts also known as the autographs; it would be foolish to deny that. In this paper, I will discuss why Christians trust the Bible given the fact that we don’t have these autographs.
A lot of time has passed since the autographs were written. Naturally, this would mean they would be difficult to find. A possible factor is that because the Jewish people had such respect for Scripture, when they became worn they would dispose of them so as to not let the now confusing writing misrepresent God’s Word (Lasseigne 33). Nevertheless, for one reason or another, we do not have them with us today. We do, however, have a great deal of manuscript copies of the autographs. There are currently about 5,680 known New Testament manuscripts today (Geisler Bocchino 256). This is astounding when we put it into context of other famous and well-respected writings. Aristotle’s writings were done around 384-322 BC which has only 49 copies and the earliest ones were done 1400 years after the originals. Plato’s writings were done around 427-347 BC and there are 7 copies in existence with the earliest one being 1200 years after the original. These are writings that are almost uniformly accepted and trusted yet the basis for this pales in comparison to the New Testament manuscripts we have access to today. This is especially true when we see that some were written less than 100 years after their autograph counterparts (Slick). This gives us confidence because we’re able to do more of what is called textual criticism.
Textual criticism is when multiple manuscripts are checked together to determine their accuracy between one another. With textual criticism we do see a few common errors, three of which I will discuss here. One error present in the manuscript copies of the Old Testament is haplography (omission of a letter or word) with “sons of Benjamin” (ִבְּנָיִמן ְבֵּני) being written as “Benjamin” (ִבְּנָיִמן) in Judges 20:13. We also see dittography (repetition of a letter or word) with “he shall bend” (ִי ְד ֹר ) being written twice in Jeremiah 51:3. Thirdly, we see homoioarchton (omission caused by similarly beginning pairs of words or phrases) with the Masoretic text saying, “And he carried away all his cattle, and all his goods which he had gotten” and the Septuagint making no mention of the cattle since they can be included with “all his goods” in Genesis 31:18 (Wegner 180). These are all minor mistakes that don’t have significant impacts on the text. They also certainly did not have a significant impact on the regard the Jewish people have had for the Scriptures for hundreds of years. It could be doubtful that the New Testament authors even lived in a time of access to the autographs of the Old Testament yet it is quoted with the assumption that they are quoting the very Word of God.
Even with these common scribal errors that occur in the manuscript copies, we still have incredibly accurate text today. The text that we have for the Old Testament is 95 percent accurate (Waltke 157-158) and what we have for the New Testament is 99.5 percent accurate (Boa). This truly is incredible. Hans Küng once wrote in Judaism: The Religious Situation of Our Time,
“Lay people are usually unaware that the scrupulous scholarly work achieved by modern biblical criticism … represented by scrupulous academic work over about 300 years, belongs among the greatest intellectual achievements of the human race… The Bible is far and away the most studied book in world literature.”
The fact that this much investigation has been done of the Bible and it be as accurate as it is really quite an astonishing thing.
We can now see that not having the autographs doesn’t really have an impact on the reliability of the Bible. Throughout the millennia, the Bible has remained accurate and respected by Christians and secular scholars alike. Yet, ultimately, the search for the biblical autographs cannot not have a determining factor in the trust Christians have in the Scriptures. It is the reality that the Bible is the Word of God that is the chief reason for trust. In his book Why Believe the Bible John MacArthur discusses this very thing, “Actually there is only one argument that can prove that the Bible is true and authoritative for our lives: the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and mind”. This has been the regard of Christians since the beginning. To quote the Chicago Statement on Biblical Innerancy, “We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God's written Word.” At the end of the day, it is God’s divine work in us through the power of the Holy Spirit that opens our hearts to receive the truths Scripture and no amount of apologetical knowledge on the history of manuscript copying can substitute for that.
Works Cited
Boa, Kenneth. “How Accurate Is the Bible?” Http://Www.cslewisinstitute.org, 2009, www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/410.
Brotzman, Ellis R., and Bruce Waltke. “Old Testament Textual Criticism: a Practical Introduction.” Old Testament Textual Criticism: a Practical Introduction, Baker Academic, 2016.
Geisler, Norman L., and Peter Bocchino. Unshakable Foundations. Bethany House Publishers, 2001.
International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy: Exposition. The Council, 1978.
Küng, Hans. Judaism: the Religious Situation of Our Time. SCM, 1995.
Lasseigne, Jeff. Unlocking the Bible: What It Is, How We Got It, and Why We Can Trust It. Baker Books, 2016.
Slick, Matt. “Manuscript Evidence for Superior New Testament Reliability.” Christian Apologetics Research Ministry, 10 Dec. 2008, carm.org/manuscript- evidence#footnoteref1_46l6ckl.
Wegner, Paul D. The Journey from Texts to Translation: the Origin and Development of the Bible. BridgePoint Books, 1999.