Memorize the Bible

For centuries after the Bible books were written, all copies were necessarily hand-written until the invention of the printing press, and this introduced both accidental copying errors and the possibility of deliberate changes. With the invention of the printing press, the possibility of these accidental and deliberate changes is greatly reduced though not entirely erased.

Given this history, how can we know whether what we are reading today — assuming that we are looking at texts in the original Bible languages — is accurate? I can give my own answer in my own words, but to help in wordsmithing it for this post I decided to ask the AI engine in the Logos Bible Study Software that I use, and it gave me this answer to the question of whether textual errors meant that we couldn’t read the original text of the Bible:

“While textual errors do exist in biblical manuscripts, they do not fundamentally undermine our ability to read and understand the original text of the Bible. Scribal errors occurred during the copying process, including unintentional mistakes like omissions or repetitions, as well as deliberate alterations intended as corrections. However, the discipline of textual criticism allows scholars to identify and evaluate these variations to determine the most likely original wording with a high degree of certainty in most cases. It’s estimated that about 90% of the Old Testament text is without variation, and for the remaining 10%, most differences are minor and do not significantly affect the meaning. For the New Testament, while the oldest manuscripts date from centuries after the original writings, comparison of existing copies allows scholars to reconstruct the original text with confidence. Importantly, no major Christian doctrine is affected by significant textual variants. While absolute certainty about every word is not possible, the overall reliability and message of the biblical text remain intact, allowing it to serve as a credible basis for faith and practice.”

These are not my words, because they come from the Logos AI, but they capture my own thoughts quite well.

But as with other introductory topics covered in these posts so far (inspiration, canonization), it turns out that for purposes of this website, your position about textual questions can differ from mine and it won’t really make a difference.

However, what I do highly recommend is that you recognize that there are a small number of Bible passages where, in the words of the AI answer above, “absolute certainty about every word is not possible.” Even in these cases, it is almost always true that the original wording is not lost, it is just one among a couple of choices.

For example, in Matthew 5:22, there is some question about whether Jesus was telling his listeners to “not be angry with their brother” or to “not be angry with their brother without a cause.” A case can be made for the qualifying clause “without a cause” to be either original and deleted for some reason, or for it to have been added later, and I don’t know for certain which reading is original. But it’s one of those two — the original reading isn’t somehow completely unknown to us.

One of the exceptionally rare cases where the original readings seems to be actually and truly “lost” is in 1 Samuel 13:1 about some chronology matters concerning King Saul. I will leave it up to the reader to read through commentaries about the textual issues in this verse, but a sense of the matter can be illustrated by looking at how the RSV version translates this verse: “Saul was … years old when he began to reign; and he reigned … and two years over Israel.”

With all of this in mind, in my own summaries I occasionally note important textual questions, and while I generally have thoughts about what the “most likely” original reading is, you can disagree with me.

This isn’t the place to argue for particular readings or even discuss sound principles of textual criticism, but what I do recommend is that Bible teachers as well as students just be aware of where textual questions exist and respect the reasonable opinions of others.