“The whole Bible was given to us by inspiration from God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives; it straightens us out and helps us do what is right. It is God’s way of making us well prepared at every point, fully equipped to do good to everyone” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 TLB).
In addition to the manuscript evidence that exists for the New Testament, we also have quotations from the New Testament Scriptures in the works of early Christian authors. These individuals are known to us today as the Apostolic Fathers and their writings cover a period that spans 90 to 200 A.D. Much like an ancient living organism that has been preserved within a piece of amber, the New Testament documents have also been preserved within the writings of these early church leaders.
These authors used so many New Testament quotations in their works that it is possible to reconstruct the New Testament almost entirely from their writings. We should also note that some of the earliest church leaders personally interacted with Jesus’ Apostles. Because of this, it is inconceivable that an inauthentic copy of the Scriptures would have been accepted, circulated, or endorsed by them.
This leads to another important question: what about the myriad of errors that are supposedly contained within these ancient Biblical manuscripts? To address that question, we should first remember that misspellings or missing words are labeled as “variant readings” when comparing two manuscripts. A change in word order or minor variation in word usage is also classified in this manner.
Many “errors” within these manuscripts are attributable to these minor variations. Others may reflect changes in word order that do not affect the meaning of the Biblical text. Nevertheless, each of these variant readings may be listed as “errors” whenever they appear. They are also counted as such in every subsequent copy. This explains how some are able to claim that there are “thousands of errors” within the Bible.
The good news is that no Biblical teaching is affected by any of these variant readings. One Biblical scholar offers the following explanation…
“There are less than 40 places in the New Testament where we are really not certain which reading is original, but not one of these has any effect on a central doctrine of the faith, Note: the problem is not that we don’t know what the text is, but that we are not certain which text has the right reading. We have 100 percent of the New Testament and we are sure about 99.5 percent of it.” (1)
(1) Norman L. Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks (1990), When Skeptics Ask, Wheaton, IL: Victor Books [pg. 160]