A historical apologetics discussion considers New Testament manuscript copies, textual variants, and confidence in the biblical message.
Primary passage: Revelation 22:7
Are there a lot of differences between New Testament manuscripts? Can we trust the Bible?
This is a very old challenge to the accuracy of the Bible. There are many statements that are true about the manuscripts of the New Testament, but there are many statements that are false.
There are also many statements that are stated, in a certain way to make the reader believe the New Testament cannot be trusted.
For instance, it is true that we do not have the original manuscripts that were printed by the actual authors. However, we don’t have those for any of the ancient texts. We do have 5800 handwritten, manuscript copies of the New Testament. That is a huge amount compared to any other ancient text.
It is also true that there are between 200,000 and 400,000 variants, or differences, between all the copies of the New Testament, that we have. When that is stated, alone, it is clear that its reliability is “supposed” to be doubted.
However, it also needs to be pointed out that:
80% of those variants are spelling errors.
19% are insignificant variants that have no effect on the message of the Bible.
Only 1% of all of these variants have any chance of affecting the meaning of that particular discussion point in any way. And most of those are insignificant anyway.
But the most important thing, is that not a single Christian doctrine, is in jeopardy of having variants that could affect its reliability.
Having so many manuscripts, to compare to each other, doesn’t invalidate its accuracy, but it validates its accuracy. With that many copies, if there actually was a difference in the message, it would be shown, but it’s not.
And like I stated many times, when it comes to anything historical written in the Bible, there has never been anything that’s been proved to be false ever.
Revelation 22:7 (Jesus quote)
“Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy written in this scroll.”
Translation notice: The historical source does not explicitly identify the Scripture translation. Quotations are preserved as supplied; NIV is used only as the default passage-link destination.
Image credit: AI-generated for BibleMens.