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House MD: best – videoi – basic truth of the human condition: everybody lies
 Politicians - car salesmen (manufacturers!) - cosmetic companies
 Ourselves – big ourselves up – get out of trouble – Xn – less.
 World full of lies – how can we know what is true?
Numbers 23:19 God is not human, that he should lie,
not a human being, that he should change his mind.
 God is not human – perfect – cannot lie – faithful in all his waysii –
utterly trustworthy – reliable.
 So the words God speaks must be same – else denial of his character.
Inherent in who he is – word is true
 Scripture – written – exactly equivalent to hearing God himself speak –
authority, truth.
Jesus explained very clearly where the Word – Bible would come from:
John 14:26 the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my
name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to
you.
Holy Spirit would...
 enable them to understand
 enable them to remember – details, times, places
 supernaturally – human book – also divine book.
o So we talk about Biblical inerrancy – impossible to have errors –
bring God’s character into disrepute.
Don’t miss significance of what I’m saying. Expect the world to not believe that
– also under attack from inside the church.
 Liberals: Gist, /details. Just human interpretation of events.
 Leftfield charismatic. Experience God more than read about him.
o More often, Bible is just sidelined, squeezed, quoted briefly, then
lots of stories.
Question: Written originally – perfectly reliable, trustworthy, true – what then?
Thousands of years ago. Changed? What about now? Without error? Really?
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Old Testamentiii
Lots of copies. Like cassette tape? No.
Scribes – gospels: Rulesiv (a few of many!)v
1. Written by: /heretic, pagan, informer, Samaritan, convert to Judaism,
slave, woman, child. Whatever you think re: woman – careful!
2. Only parchments made from “clean” animals – joined with thread from
clean
3. Each column: >48, <60. 30 letters wide
4. Black ink, specific recipe
5. No word or letter from memory
6. 1 hair-space between letters, 1 letter-space between words
7. Wash & wear full Jewish scribal dress
8. Mistake: cross out – unless it’s the name of God – throw away.
9. Writing YHWH – if the King interrupts you – ignore him!
10.Some scholarsvi calculated everything - #occurrences each letter –
#words - #lines - middle letter. Error: throw away.
Did it work? Eg: Book of Isaiah
 Written: 700BC
 Jesus: 0AD
 Until recently, oldest complete copy: 916 AD. Big gap of 1600 yrs.
Accurate? How well copied? Don’t know.
 1947 small boy herding goats in Judea desert – found cave – full of
sealed earthenware jars. DSS. One complete scroll of Isaiah. Turned out
– undisturbed for ~1900 yrs – 125BC.
 Compared to oldest copy. What changed in 1000 yrs?
o 95% identical. Not great?
 If you had 95% of the Bible, you’d be happy!
o Isaiah 53 – 17 letters different. 10: spellings. 4: “and”. 3: 1 word
that doesn’t affect the overall meaning.
o 1000yrs – 1 word! Considering ball-point pens invented in the
lifetime of some here!vii
 Old parchments could be used for hundreds of years – not
inconceivable: direct copy of Isaiah’s original.
Point: OT preserved almost perfectly. Hands: extremely close to what was
originally written.
 Miraculous? Preserved so well over thousands of years. Yes!
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New Testament
Completely different kettle of fish.
 Church spread fast throughout ME, Europe, N Africa.
 Loads of copies – thousands of MSS – in many different languages.
o Completely nuts – huge quantities : 5600viii Greek MSS, 10,000 in
Latin, 5000 in other languages (Syriac, Copticix) just surviving ones!
 Plus quotations from Church Fathers – Bishops, writers from early
Centuries. >1M quotations of NT. That alone, you could piece together
almost whole NT.
 By contrast, 10x more MSS of NT than Homer’s Iliadx, much better
quality, far older.
o Far more of Iliad than any other ancient docxi.
 Need to know? Not always copied carefully – notes scribbled in margins:
weather, complaining about ink, too long. Rush. Lots of variants – many
thousandsxii - /Jewish. Can we be confident?
o So many – different copyists – shows no conspiracy to change
anything. Impossible to do – far too many copies floating
aroundxiii.
o Kinds of variants?
 Vast majority: spelling of names, places – not as uniform as
English
 Obvious nonsense: 1Thes 2:7 we were like young children
among you. One MSS: “like horses” – 1 letter - Obvious
mistake – doesn’t make sense.
 Word order. Apparently in Greek. “Jesus loves Mary” – at
least 16 different ways of writing it – all translated same in
English.
 Different words: 1Thessalonians 2:9 we preached the
gospel of God to you. One MSS: “of Christ”. But almost
every other MSS, esp earlier ones: “of God”. Must be a
mistake.
 How to decide original? Explain from chart – start
from bottom.
o Finally, there are some genuine head-scratchers. <1% of variants.
 End of Mark’s gospel. John 8, footnoted in NIV: Eg 1John
5:7-8.
 None contain significant doctrine, because Bible doctrine
never depends on a single verse!
 Confidence!
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Bible Translation
Is what you’ve got in your hands a decent translation of the original Hebrew,
Greek languages? Brieflyxiv...
 How to translate from one language to another?
 Translate each word directly into English: Interlinear translation.
o John 3:16 Thus for loved God the world, so that the Son the only
he gave, in order that every the believing one in him not should
perish but should have life eternal. (literal)
 Very hard to read. Why? Word order is different in Greek
 Message: Never mind trying to translate the exact words – try to
translate the meaning of the author. What’s he getting at?
o This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one
and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed;
by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.
 “whole and lasting life” – doesn’t say anything about
“whole” life here. Careful!
 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (NIV)
o Middle-ground – familiar. Spectrum
Eg 1Kings 2:10
 Then David slept with his fathers and was buried (ESV)
o ESV – derived from KJV
o David fell asleep with his Fathers. “Fathers”: more than 1? “sleep”:
incest?
 Then David rested with his ancestors and was buried (NIV)
o Translated the idea – rested. Less literal – but easier to
understand perhaps.
 Then David died and was buried with his ancestors (NLT)
 Sure, he died. “rested, slept” – temporary – Stephen fell asleep.
 Slept with his ancestors – then buried. Emphasis on rest, not burial.
 NLT: died, then buried with his ancestors.
Translate words: work harder
 Translate ideas: Bible translator is interpreting it too. Miss stuff –
sometimes important stuff.
 That’s why we use NIV – good balance.
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Conclusion
Confidence: Jesus believed this so completely.
Andrew Wilsonxv: If the Bible says something, and we disagree about what it
means, that could be for one of two reasons. It could be because the Bible is at
fault, or it could be because we are at fault ... there are numerous
misunderstandings in the Gospels, and Jesus appears to hold the disciples
accountable for every one of them:
 Are you still so dull? (Mark 7:18)
 Do you still not understand? (Matthew 16:9)
 How slow you are to believe! (Luke 24:25)
 Knowing their hypocrisy, He said … (Mark 12:15)
 You don’t know what you’re asking. (Matthew 20:22)
 Get behind me, Satan! (Matthew 16:23)
And so it goes on. For Jesus, misunderstandings of Scripture come about
because humans are muddled, rather than because the Bible is. Fallen humans
blaming the word of God for our confusion is like a bunch of drunks getting lost
in broad daylight, and then complaining that the sun isn’t shining brightly
enough.
Matthew 7:24-27 everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into
practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came
down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it
did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who
hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish
man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and
the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
 Be confident in what you have in your hands.
 Don’t be ignorant of the difficulties, but trust NIV, Simon & me to do the
hard work for you.
 Dig in yourself – bring Bibles – keep open – check – Bereans examined
the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was truexvi.
 Trust Jesus’ confidence.
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i
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZR2k5c_198
Psalm 145:17
iii
Interestingly, the Quran can claim similar levels of reliability, and MSS from even closer to the original author
than the Bible currently can. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Quran_manuscript
iv
I struggled to find an authoritative, definitive list of scribal rules. Almost every source online and in books
sounds so suspiciously similar that they must be based on a single source, which always sounds dodgy to me.
The original source at least, is scholarly: P Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and
Development of the Bible. Baker Academic.
v
The image is the oldest known complete Torah http://www.timesofisrael.com/hebrew-profs-weigh-in-onimportant-12th-century-find/
vi
Masoretes, who were responsible for copying Biblical text from AD 500 to 950
vii
The ball-point pen was patented in the UK in 1938 by Biro!
viii
It has to be said that only 12 MSS exist from C2, 64 from C3 and 48 from C4 – a total of only 124 MSS from
within 300 years after the NT was completed. However, between these MSS, multiple copies of the whole NT
text is found. It is also likely that this number will continue to increase, but probably not by much. 40% of the
NT can be found in MSS written within 150yrs of being written.
ix
+ Georgian, Ethiopic, Armenian, Gothic...
x
About 2200 MSS of Iliad.
xi
Next is probably Homer’s Odyssey with 141. Next most plentiful would be some of the writings of the Church
Fathers. Nothing else (Tacitus, Caesar, Plato etc) comes close.
xii
Hundreds of thousands in fact. I don’t want to highlight this fact because it is likely to scare people, and with
the limited time I have to explain the issues, it is unhelpful. See Dan Wallace’s book for a thorough treatment.
xiii
In stark contrast to the Quran, which was most definitely messed with, officially, by Calif Uthman. All the
modern copies derive from that one copy, and it was definitely different to the original. (Daniel Wallace,
Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, Kregel
Academic, 2011. p35-38)
xiv
Most of this is from Wayne Grudem’s paper on the ESV translation philosophy:
www.waynegrudem.com/wp-content/.../The-advantages-of-the-ESV.pdf
xv
http://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/trevinwax/2015/01/22/why-you-should-trust-jesus-unbreakable-andinfallible-bible/
xvi
Acts 17:11
ii