How can I trust the Bible? #1

The Bible was written millennia ago and is translated from the original languages. There must be some element of human error within its pages.

Have you ever thought this? Or maybe been told this by someone else?

The trustworthiness of the Bible is really crucial -not only for my blog, which is based on what the Bible says, but it has huge implications for our lives.

My blog is called 'Treasuring Christ', and there is absolutely no reason why anyone should base their whole life around doing this, unless the Bible is true.

The reason that I treasure Jesus, is because the Bible teaches me that:
1. I'm separated from God by my sin
2. I've been rescued out of this separation by Jesus' death on the cross
3. I now have a place in heaven because of what Jesus has done for me

If you can identify with these three things, I'm sure you'll agree that it's essential to be able to show other people why you believe in Jesus. If you can't identify with these three things, I'm sure you're wondering why or how I can believe them. The reliability of the Bible is a key element in this discussion.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible far outweighs any other historical document in terms of reliability, as the table below shows:

Ancient Manuscript Date Earliest Copy No of Copies
Julius Caesar- Gallic Wars 100-44 BC 900 AD 10
Tacitus- Annals of Roman History100 AD 1100 AD 20
Plato- Tetralogies 427-347 BC 900 AD 7
Sophocles 496-406 BC 1000 AD 100
Aristotle 384-322 BC 1100 AD 5
New Testament c. 50 AD 130 AD 24, 633


We do not question the reliability of the works of Caesar, Plato and Aristotle, and yet we question the Bible when the statistics are far ahead in favour of it.

In 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, after being preserved for 1900 years. The text of Isaiah in the scrolls and in a text written 1000 years previously, only 17 letters were different- and these were mere spelling errors. No substantial changes had occurred, and the meaning was not affected. This testifies to the incredible accuracy of the Bible manuscripts. As a matter of fact, when copying Scriptures the Jews had very strict rules to abide to, such as:
The breadth of the column had to be 30 letters, length 48-60 lines
No word, letter or even a yod was to be written from memory
Only authentic copies were to be used as an exemplar
No one should take any notice of even a king when writing God's Name.

There are many more rules, and what they amounted to was not only incredible accuracy in copying, but exact spacing, so that they could instantly tell if the copy was incorrect, and if it was it would be rejected.

I thoroughly recommend this book by Amy Orr-Ewing if you have further questions about this: