Has the Bible Changed over Time?

Hasn’t the Bible been rewritten a number of times? If that’s the case, does the Bible we have today look anything like the original?

A friend said she couldn’t trust the Bible because it had been rewritten “like eighteen times.” I asked her if she thought it would be smarter for Christians to just go translate the oldest documents they could find. She said yes—and then I had some good news for her: that’s already what we do.

So, are we truly reading the same book now that the earliest Christians used in the first or the second century? Or is it a book that has been rewritten and changed over the centuries? This is actually quite an easy question to answer because of the discovery of so many ancient manuscripts of the Bible in the past one hundred years.


The Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Copies of the Bible

One of the biggest discoveries of ancient copies of the Bible was the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948. Among these scrolls were copies of every Old Testament book (with the sole exception of Esther) dating between the second century BC and first century AD. When these texts were compared to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament we use as the basis for translations today, they were virtually identical. There are only occasional differences in orthography (spelling and grammar) and in very minor details (such as an omission of a letter or word, the reversal in order of two words, and other such differences).

The reason for this accuracy has to do with the fact that the ancient scribes who made the copies took painstaking care not to allow mistakes. They checked and rechecked their work. 

Ancient papyrus fragments of the New Testament, some dating as early as the second century AD, continue to be found in the sands of Egypt, where the dry climate is conducive to the preservation of papyri. When these texts are compared to the Greek text that we use today, there are seldom differences, but when there are, they are usually differences of spelling and grammar. The view of the Bible as an evolved document simply makes no sense when the oldest documents match the ones we have today.

What If an Ancient Copy of the Bible Was Just Discovered?

What if the news media were to announce that a very ancient portion of the Bible was just discovered? Our natural curiosity would immediately cause us to wonder how different it is from the Bible that we use today. Well, such a situation happened quite recently. An ancient papyrus page from the New Testament came to light as recently as 1983. The document dates to the second century AD, thus making it one of the earliest portions of the New Testament ever discovered. This papyrus comes from John’s Gospel (18:36–19:7) and may be as close as fifty years to the original text of John. So, just how does it compare? Have there been numerous changes? Does it show signs of substantial rewriting?

The passage it contains recounts Jesus’s interrogation by Pontius Pilate, the demand of the crowds to release Barabbas instead of Jesus, the soldiers putting a crown of thorns on Jesus’s head, and the crowd yelling for Jesus to be crucified. When we do a close comparison of this recently discovered document to the Greek text that stands behind our English translations, we discover that the degree of similarity is extraordinary. Most of the verses are word-for-word identical. 

There are two places where the word order of a couple of words is different, there are two places where there is a different grammatical form of the same word, and there are two words that are spelled differently. One of these is the name Pilate. The letter e has been added to the first syllable (“Peilate”), which reflects a regional spelling difference. 

The biggest differences are two places where there are differences in emphasis: in 19:4 the newly discovered text has “I find no guilt in him” (versus, “I find not one bit of guilt in him”), and in 19:6 the newly discovered text has “crucify him” (instead of “crucify, crucify”). Much could be said about how these variations originated in the scribal copying of the text. We can actually achieve a reasonable certainty in determining what form was original and how the variation came into existence. But there are two important takeaways from this: 

(1) Not one of the differences observed here affects the meaning of the text in any way. We would find the same kind of situation if we were to take any of the oldest fragments or more extensive manuscripts of the New Testament and conduct a careful analysis. 

(2) This example illustrates the kinds of variation that we find in manuscripts whenever any two manuscripts are compared.

There is no doubt that more ancient fragments of the Bible will be discovered in the years ahead. It is easy to predict that there will be no surprises. Apart from changes in word order and occasional variations in spelling and grammar, there will not be many differences. This has been the case with every new discovery thus far.


How Does the Bible Compare to Other Ancient Documents?

It should also be noted that the Bible is the most well-preserved ancient document in human history. When we compare it to the state of preservation of other ancient documents, the results are rather surprising. The Annals of Livy and the Histories of Herodotus are preserved in 15 manuscripts, Julius Caesar’s Gallic War in 10 manuscripts, and Plato’s Crito and Phaedo in 6. We find similar numbers in all of ancient classical literature. The most well-preserved ancient document is Homer’s Iliad that is in 190 manuscripts (and fragments). Even though there are so few manuscripts for these other writings, no one is actually casting doubt on whether we can trust what they say.

By contrast, the New Testament is contained in roughly 5,500 Greek manuscripts, more than 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and thousands of manuscripts of still other languages (such as Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and others). After the invention of the movable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-1400s, of course, the numbers begin to skyrocket far beyond these.

Which Documents Do the Modern Translators of the Bible Use in Their Work?

The modern Bibles that we read are English translations of the Hebrew and Greek originals. But our translations do not depend on one or two manuscripts. The translators use editions of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles that take into account all of the important manuscripts of the Bible. 

These volumes contain an elaborate system of symbols and abbreviations that report manuscript variations. The detailed set of footnotes show what is contained in the various manuscripts without having to go to a museum or library to consult them. Through these footnotes, translators and scholars have constant access to what is contained in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts. 

And for that matter, so does your pastor and other teachers in your church. Those who have gone to Bible College and have studied Greek and Hebrew learn how to use these editions of the Bible in the original languages. At a glance, they can tell you the precise wording of the original text, any manuscript variations, and what is most likely the original form of the text.

The truth is that we have an incredibly well-preserved text that is accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.