Since the books of the Old Testament were written over a period of about 1000 years (1400 B.C. to 400 B.C.), they should reflect the types of Hebrew used during the various periods in which they were written. Any later alterations would be marked by a reduction in these distinctions and a blending together of styles. Throughout the Old Testament we find that the distinctions in grammar and dialect have been preserved among the different books.5 Even the ancient forms of spelling have been preserved. If anything had been changed, you would think that at least the spelling would have been updated to agree with the later forms, yet it was not, giving support to the contention that the text is accurate.
Another way in which we can check the accuracy with which the Old Testament has been preserved is to compare the Masoretic text to the Septuagint (an early Greek translation of the Old Testament). The Septuagint gets its name from the Latin word for 70 (Septuaginta) because of an account which claims that the translation was done by 72 scholars, six from each of the twelve tribes. Translated in the third and second centuries before Christ, the Septuagint provides a second witness to the accuracy of the Masoretic text.
By comparing the Septuagint to the Masoretic text, it is possible to judge the accuracy of both. This is especially true since, after the first century A.D., the Septuagint was preserved only by Christians and thus can be considered a separate witness. Studies of the differences between the Septuagint and the Masoretic texts again show that the text of the Old Testament has been remarkably preserved.
There is a third witness to the accuracy of the Masoretic text, discovered by a Bedouin shepherd boy in 1947. While looking for a lost goat near the Dead Sea, he tossed a rock into a hole hoping to flush out the goat. Instead of a goat, he heard the sound of shattering pottery. When he went down into the hole to look around, he found several jars containing ancient leather scrolls. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is truly one of the most important finds in modern history.
Among the scrolls discovered in the caves were fragments and portions of every book in the Old Testament, with the exception of the book of Esther. Also found in the caves was a complete copy of the book of Isaiah that had been made around 150 B.C. This copy of Isaiah was over 1100 years older than any previously known Hebrew manuscript. Even with the vast amount of time between when these two copies were made, when the copy of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls was compared to the Masoretic text we have today, the differences between the two copies were minimal.
The majority of the differences that existed were minor spelling and grammatical differences which do not in any way affect the meaning. One example of a difference that was not simply a spelling or grammar variation can be found in Isaiah 53:11. In the copy of Isaiah found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Isaiah 53:11 has the additional three letter Hebrew word for light while this word does not appear in the Masoretic text. This was the only such difference in the whole chapter. This additional word results in only a small difference in the meaning. The King James Version (KJV), which was based on the Masoretic text, reads as follows:
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.
The New International Version (NIV), which is the version quoted in this book, follows the Dead Sea scrolls at this point and reads:
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many and he will bear their iniquities.
As you can see, while the NIV is a little clearer, there is no major difference in these two verses.a
Thus by comparing the Masoretic text, the Septuagint, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars can be very certain that the Hebrew text that is used in translating Bibles today is so close to the originals as to be, for all practical purposes, the same as that written down by the prophets. To date, no ancient manuscript find has ever caused any of the doctrines of the church to be questioned. In fact, the opposite is true. The more manuscripts we find, the more they have confirmed the accuracy of the present text.
The Text of the New Testament
When we examine the New Testament, we find the evidence for it to be even stronger than that for the Old Testament. The oldest complete New Testament is the Codex Vaticanus. Located in the Vatican, it is believed to have been copied around A.D. 325. This shows that only a few hundred years after the books of the New Testament were written, they were already being collected as a complete unit. If we look at portions of the New Testament, we move even closer to the originals.
Most scholars believe that the oldest fragment of the New Testament we have is the John Rylands Manuscript, which contains a portion of the book of John (18:31-33, 37-38). This fragment dates from about A.D. 125-130,b which is less than 40 years after John wrote it.c Other early manuscripts of the Bible continue to be found.
In 1972, the papyrologist Jose O’Callaghan claimed that a small manuscript fragment found in among the Dead Sea Scrolls (called 7Q5) was actually from the Gospel of Mark (Mark 6:52-53) and was copied somewhere between A.D. 50 and A.D. 68 when the caves were sealed. If correct, this would be truly astounding since the range of dates for Mark run from the mid 40s to the mid 70s, with most scholars dating Mark during the 60s. As such, O’Callaghan’s identification caused a lot of controversy, and in fact was largely rejected by New Testament scholars who claimed this was just too early and that the manuscript fragment was too small to make such identification certain.
The case for the identification of 7Q5 with Mark was strengthened recently when the fragment was examined using special equipment. Much of the dispute turns on the identification of one of the letters which has been damaged. If the disputed letter was the Greek letter nu (N) then the text would be consistent with the text of Mark. The problem is that much of the right hand portion of the letter is missing and to some it looks like an iota (I), which would not match the text of Mark. Recent examinations using advanced technology have shown that the disputed letter is in fact a nu and thus is consistent with the text of Mark. As a result, among papyrologists (those specifically trained in this area) there is growing support for O’Callaghan’s identification.6
In late 1994, Carsten Thiede, Director of the Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, Germany, announced a startling discovery about a different manuscript. Thiede dated the Magdalen papyrus, which contain portions of the Gospel of Matthew (26:7-8, 10, 14-15, 22-23, 31), to A.D. 66 or slightly earlier.7 Again, as with O’Callaghan’s identification of 7Q5 with Mark, this has caused considerable controversy for the range of dates given for Matthew are from the 40s to 90s with most liberal scholars dating Matthew in the 70s and most conservative scholars dating it in the 60s.
One of the significant aspects of the Magdalen fragments is that they are from a codex (similar to a book) and not from a scroll. This indicates that these are at least second generation copies and gives us an indication of how rapidly the Gospels were copied and spread throughout the Roman world, which as we shall see shortly is important for establishing their reliability.
Whether or not the work of O’Callaghan, Thiede and other scholars who support the early date of these and other manuscripts stands up to the examination of other scholars, what is clear is that the textual evidence for the New Testament is far and away stronger than for any other ancient work. By 1989, scholars had catalogued 5488d early Greek manuscript portions of the New Testament.8 These manuscripts, along with about 20,000 translations, which include over 10,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate, provide a truly phenomenal record of the text of the New Testament.9
As a comparison, let us look at a few other ancient works. About 100 years before the New Testament was written, Julius Caesar wrote his account of the Gaulic Wars. Of this work we have about 10 copies, made about 1000 years after Caesar wrote them. We have about 7 copies of the works of Plato that date approximately 1200 years after Plato died. For any single work of Aristotle we have about 50 copies, written about 1400 years after his death.10