Basics

Have you ever taken the time to locate an Old Testament passage which was quoted by a New Testament author? If so, you probably noticed that, frequently, the wording is not exactly the same. What is going on? Why did the New Testament authors not quite get the quote right? It’s not because they were being sloppy, nor was it because they quoted from memory and got it a little wrong. It was because they were quoting from the Septuagint. 

If you’ve spent much time comparing passages from newer translations of the Bible (NIV, NASB, NKJV, etc) to the King James Version, you’ve noticed that some verses, or portions of verses, have been moved from the main text into a footnote. The footnotes usually say that the verse does not appear in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts.

Why are these verses questioned by scholars and Bible translators? Are they trying to discard portions of the Bible? Are they attempting to achieve some dark objective which results in casting doubt upon the inspiration of the Bible? The quick answer is that nothing sinister is going on. Rather than “removing” verses, the translators have valid reasons to believe that some verses should have never been in the Bible to begin with.

The Bible isn’t a single book. Rather, it is a collection of 66 individual books and letters that have been compiled into one volume. These books and letters were written by approximately 40 different people spanning a time period of over 1500 years.

The books which are regarded as having divine authority and which comprise the Bible are referred to by scholars as “canonical” writings. The English word “canon” is derived from a Greek word which referred to a standard or rule. Thus, a writing is considered canon if it meets a certain standard.

How do we know that the Bible is reliable and that the words contained in today’s Bibles convey the same message as the original documents?

Original Documents

The books of the Bible were written on animal skins and on an ancient kind of paper called papyrus. These writings are referred to as manuscripts. A manuscript is a document written by hand. When referring to Bible manuscripts, the term is restricted to documents written in their original languages (i.e. not a translation). The Old Testament books of the Bible were written in Hebrew and Aramaic while the New Testament was written in Greek.

Since these manuscripts were written thousands of years ago, none of the originals have survived to the present day. Due to the effects of age and use, the originals are all lost. However, thanks to ancient scribes, we have literally thousands of copies of the originals. If the originals are no longer in existence, how can we be sure existing manuscripts were accurately copied?