The Bible is central to the faith of Christians. We biblically credit this, in part, to 2 Timothy 3:16-17 which states,“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (ESV) Since the Bible is Scripture its therefore breathed out by God (that is to say that God, in effect, authors Scripture). It is core to Christian belief because from the Bible we learn about who God is, his actions and dealing with his people, and how we are to live in light of who he is and who we are; very important things. However, those of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints faith (from here on referred to as LDS) are not of this conviction. In this paper I will evaluate a commonplace argument within LDS tradition as to why the Bible is an unreliable document.
For the representation of the argument I will utilize LDS scriptures, official publications of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and works of revered LDS scholars in good standing with the church. Most prominently, we’ll see this in the Book of Mormon in 1 Nephi 13:27-28 which reads,
And all this have they done that they might pervert the right ways of the Lord, that they might blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men… Wherefore, thou seest that after the book hath gone forth through the hands of the great and abominable church, that there are many plain and precious things taken away from the book, which is the book of the Lamb of God.
We see here that the LDS position is perhaps partially that there was some sort of malicious intent at play in where the Bible was mishandled in the process of getting it from the original autographs to the texts that we have today. There are some LDS that will ascribe to this idea. However, the idea that errors mostly just found their way into the text by way of mere human error is more common. This view is displayed on the LDS website itself in a mini-article entitled Bible, Inerrancy Of, “As the Bible was compiled, organized, translated, and transcribed, many errors entered the text. The existence of such errors becomes apparent when one considers the numerous and often conflicting translations of the Bible in existence today.”and it was even the subject of a letter from the First Presidency (the three highest leaders among the 15 apostles of the church including the president and his two counselors) in 1992 wherein it reads, “The Bible, as it has been transmitted over the centuries, has suffered the loss of many plain and precious parts. ‘We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.’” (The ending of the letter is a quotation of Article of Faith 8)
With all of this information at our disposal it seems apparent that we can interpret the text of 1 Nephi with the ideas displayed by LDS.org and the First Presidency in order to get an accurate representation of the modern LDS thought regarding this issue in that it wasn’t so much a malicious intent of the transmitters and translators of the biblical text but of mere human error. Because of this, the Bible cannot be relied on completely on its own. It should be interpreted with the assistance of the Book of Mormon as also stated in the letter from the First Presidency. With this knowledge we can fashion the argument displayed in an easily understandable way. All in all, the argument goes as follows:
1: Texts that undergo translation over a long period of time are unreliable today
2: The Bible has undergone translation over a long period of time
3: Therefore the Bible is unreliable today
Now, this is an argument that I personally hear a lot from atheists and agnostics or really any people group that doesn’t view the Bible to be of any sort of divine origin. People like Bart Ehrman (alumni of Moody Bible Institute) have popularized this idea in the 21st century. Which, if we’re being honest with ourselves, seems to make a lot of sense at face value. If texts that undergo translation over a long period of time are indeed necessarily unreliable today, then the Bible is certainly unreliable. If ever there has been a set of documents that fit the criteria of undergoing translation over a long period of time, it’s the Bible. There’s definitely no denying that. In essence, this argument is certainly valid.
However, in this paper I will be spending the bulk of the time focusing on the truth (or lack thereof rather) of the first premise, “Texts that undergo translation over a long period of time are unreliable today” since, as I previously stated, the second premise is definitely true.
The area of study that deals with this sort of thing is what is called textual criticism. Textual criticism consists of comparing documents (in this case, biblical manuscripts) in order to discern what the original document would’ve said. In looking at this I would like to first draw our attention to Victor L. Ludlow who is a professor at Brigham Young University. In 1985 he contributed an article entitled Are there things we are learning or can learn from contemporary biblical criticism to the LDS magazine, Ensign. In this he says of textual criticism,
Such studies may create theological problems for those who hold the belief that the Hebrew and Greek portions of the Bible have been transmitted unchanged through the centuries. Latter-day Saints, however, are usually untroubled by evidence of textual change since we do not believe that the Bible has necessarily been transmitted in its original form.
It would seem that the LDS view would be that this unreliability of the Bible is that of theological problems. This is most likely an interpretation of the “plain and precious” descriptor of the things taken out of the Bible that we see in the passage from 1 Nephi. It also assumes that Bible scholars believe that the process of transmission and translation has left the Bible without any markings of change. This, I would argue, assumes a much more significant problem than there actually is. But what is the actual problem at play here?
The New Testament contains about 400,000 variants (Blomberg). For many LDS people, this appears to be a deathblow to the modern Bible translation’s claim to be accurate in its representation of the original autographs. How can our modern Bible translations (even their beloved 1979 KJV) possibly be accurate with this? The answer to this question is somewhat simplistic; quality over quantity. Most biblical scholars working on translation will be rather frank with you in the number of textual variants that exist between the different codices and fragments that we have access to today because they know that’s not what actually matters.
Let’s put this into perspective of our modern day experience in typing. As I am typing this paper I can assure you that I have had to delete incorrect letters, delete repeated letters, and add accidentally omitted letters numerous times. I can also assure you that autocorrect has caught some that I would’ve otherwise glazed over (I accidentally typed two ‘m’s for ‘omitted’). This is a pretty common tale for all of us as it is simple human error. We aren’t perfect people and thus we make minor errors in things such as typing and writing. We even realize this and think nothing of it. If I were to read the sentence, “I went to the zoo to se th otters” I can recognize a couple of errors but my contextual knowledge of the english language can fill in those gaps to know that the original intent of the writer of the sentence was for it to say, “I went to the zoo to see the otters”. The same thing comes into play with textual criticism of the Bible.
Scholars generally regard the variants seen in the New Testament as fitting into one of four categories; neither viable nor meaningful, viable but not meaningful, meaningful but not viable, and both viable and meaningful. We will discuss two of these categories in this paper. Variants of the neither viable nor meaningful variety make up about 70% of all New Testament variants (Barnett).
One common type of variant in this category is something called metathesis. This is when letters or words are accidentally reversed by a scribe. An example of this is seen in John 1:42 where Ἰωάννου (“of John”) and Ἰωνᾶς (“of Jonah”) are confused. Another common error of this category is fusion. This is when a scribe accidentally joins two words. We can observe this in Mark 10:40 with ἀλλ᾽ οἷς (“but for whom”) being miswritten as ἀλλοἷς (“for others”) (Wegner 225). There is certainly much more that could be said in this specific area of textual criticism but for the sake of brevity, we’ll move on. It is important to acknowledge that these are recognized as errors by comparing them to other manuscripts that point us in the right direction.
There are however, a few examples of more signifiant variants. These would fall into the category of both viable and meaningful. One example of this is what some scholars call the pericope adulterae (woman caught in adultery). This is the beloved story where the teachers and Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman who had been caught in adultery and asked him to say whether they should uphold the law in stoning her or let her go free. He is put in a predicament because the Romans didn’t allow Jews to carry out death sentences. If he says for them to stone her, then he is going against this but if he says for them not to stone her then he’s disobeying the Jewish law. Jesus response with a profound response, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” As they leave, Jesus writes something in the dirt and says, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (ESV) It’s a heartfelt story showing Jesus’ righteousness and compassion. However, there is reason to believe it’s not in the original text.
It is found in John 7:53-8:11 and a modern Bible translation will most likely have brackets around it and a label telling that early reliable Greek manuscripts (such as P66) do not include this. It includes words that aren’t found anywhere else in John’s gospel and many would say it interrupts the flow of the narrative that is being presented. It is, however, found in the Textus Receptus (along with the majority of the later Greek manuscripts) which was one of the base texts for the 1611 King James Version and is still used today. Of course, greater emphasis is put on earlier manuscripts since they are likely to represent the original autograph more closely. Because of this many scholars, and myself, do not consider it to be part of the original text.
At this point many LDS people would see this as an obvious proof for the unreliability of the Bible as compared to the Book of Mormon. Was someone tampering with God’s word? How can the Bible have a chunk as great as twelve verses missing from early manuscripts (and most likely the original autograph) and still be a reliable text? The answer is, again, quality over quantity. I would argue that not only do variants such as this make up less than one percent of all New Testament textual variants, they’re not doctrinally impactful when removed.
The story that we get in this text certainly sounds like something that could’ve happened and it in fact might have. The Pharisees try to trip up Jesus with some sort of paradox and he gets out of it anyway. This could be part of the reason why it was later added. However, this doesn’t impact whether or not the Holy Spirit actually inspired John to record this event. John even says at the end of his gospel that Jesus did many other things that he didn’t record (John 21:25). But nothing in this story solely contains a piece of essential doctrine. Without this we still know that Jesus is perfect in the law (2 Corinthians 5:21) and we still know that Jesus is loving (John 13:34). Take this story away and these things still remain; no plain and precious things are removed and the arguments of Ludlow and other LDS people are left without strong evidence. This is the common story throughout textual criticism.
We are left with a document (or rather a collection of documents) that is roughly 99.5 percent accurate (Boa) which is quite a bit to boast. We haven’t received the Bible via an extended game of telephone but by a precise process that, where it is not without blemish, has remained incredibly precise for centuries by God’s grace. This leads us to our conclusion in interacting with the LDS argument against the reliability of the Bible. The first premise, being that texts which undergo translation over a long period of time are unreliable today, is evidently false. God has remained true to his promise that his words will never pass away (Mark 24:35, Luke 21:33) and we praise him for that.
Works Cited
The Book of Mormon. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments. Crossway Bibles, 2008.
Barnett, Tim. “Textual Variants: It’s the Nature, Not the Number, That Matters.” Stand to Reason, May 2016, www.str.org/articles/textual-variants-it%E2%80%99s-the-nature-not-the- number-that-matters#.W_y8MaeZM1J.
Boa, Kenneth. “How Accurate Is the Bible?” Http://www.cslewisinstitute.org, 2009, www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/410.
Blomberg, Craig L. Can We Still Believe the Bible? an Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions. Brazos Press, 2014.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. “Bible, Inerrancy Of.” Doctrine and Covenants 8, www.lds.org/topics/bible-inerrancy-of?lang=eng.
Ludlow, Victor L. “Are There Things We Are Learning or Can Learn from Contemporary Biblical Criticism?” LS.org, Ensign, Apr. 1985, www.lds.org/ensign/1985/04/i-have-a- question/are-there-things-we-are-learning-or-can-learn-from-contemporary-biblical- criticism?lang=eng.
Wegner, Paul D. The Journey from Texts to Translation: the Origin and Development of the Bible. BridgePoint Books, 1999.