Do We Have the Original Bible Words?

The Bible was written 2000-4000 years ago. How do we know if it has been changed again and again over this vast length of time? Do we have the original Bible words? The best answer is no, but we have all God wanted us to get. Let’s take a look.

For the Old Testament, the Masoretic text which is from 900 AD is authoritative. The Dead Sea Scrolls written between 200 BC and 70 AD   show some slight differences even among their own scrolls. They can show some differences from the Masoretic.

The Masoretic tradition is very careful to transmit very accurately to exact commas. The Dead Sea scroll community was not as careful.

Do We Have the Original Bible Words? At Least We Got What God Wanted.  The Needed Meaning

However, looking at all the differences shows that no clear difference in our understanding of God and what He has done occur. Across 1000 years of transmission and in different types of Jewish communities, we have no loss of any importance in the original text.

Clearly, God got us everything he wanted to and made sure we got the

The New Testament has a much richer textual background. There are so many old copies of the text dating back to between 100 to 300 years from the date they were written.

Let me explain the Codex Sinaiticus which I show a small portion of above.  It is almost complete Bible from about 350 AD.  The Codex does not have all of the Old Testament but has all of the New Testament. It is a fabulous text preserved by a monastery in the Sinai Desert. One other New Testament from about 350 AD is Codex Vaticanus. They are both a complete New Testament that are a treasure from 350 AD.

You can hear that Codex Sinaiticus has as many as 23,000 corrections in the text seeming to be horrible transmission.  Actually, the meaning of the two Codexes is in tight agreement. No changes in our understanding of God or ourselves exist. There are typos and changes in spelling and other issues of little importance.

Many Say So Many Editors! Meaningless Talk

The reason you hear of so many corrections and differences is they there are so many old copies of the New Testament. Many partial texts of the New Testament date back to before 300 AD. None date back to the first century time of writing yet.  There is so much proof of the text of the New Testament that fully 7 books are completely accepted by historians. This would mean that we need no faith at all to accept them. Others, there is still room to argue, but not much. God wanted us to have his words.