The Bible is reliable: Pass it on.

When I was just out of high school and a brand new Christian I took a job at restaurant…to be clear…I took a job at Red Rooster. One night, in between microwaving burgers, the conversation somehow turned philosophical. We got onto the topic of the Bible and the manager had clearly had enough. One of the staff asked her why she didn’t believe the Bible and she replied “Ever heard of Chinese whispers? That’s why”…and then left the room.

I was about to inform her that Chinese whispers wasn’t in the Bible but I needed the job and thought better of it…besides, I understood the point she was making. Many people have the same objection. How could the Bible, written so long ago, be accurately passed down to us today? Surely it has undergone so many mutations that what we have now can hardly be likely to bear any resemblance to what was originally written?

It’s not a new question for historians or for Christians. Whenever historians are trying to determine the accuracy of a historical document they are looking for two things: #1 When were the documents written and #2 how many copies do we have? If the documents were written close to the events that are described and we have a lot copies to compare we can have reasonable certainty that the documents are historically accurate. So how does the Bible compare to other historical documents of a similar period? Pretty well really.

Below is a chart comparing the Bible to other ancient historical documents. When compared to other manuscripts, the Bible is in a league of it’s when it comes to both the number of copies we have and the dates of our earliest manuscripts. This gives us a high degree of confidence that what we have today is what was originally written and recorded. If we want to disregard the Bible as a historical document, we would have to throw the rest out too!