Do we still have the same Bible text today as was originally written down? Have the countless copyists not distorted and falsified the original wording over time? The question of whether the Bible is God’s word would be superfluous if we no longer had the original written messages.
The issue of the accuracy of the textual transmission of the Bible must be addressed separately for the Old and New Testaments, as they are two distinct narratives.
The New Testament (NT)
The 27 writings of the NT were written in Greek between 30 and about 98 AD. Today, more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the NT are known to exist. This is an overwhelming number! In contrast, when it comes to Greek and Latin classics (Plato, Cicero, Caesar, etc.), one must be happy to have about a dozen manuscripts for a particular work.
In addition to approximately 5,800 New Testament manuscripts, there are around 20,000 manuscripts of ancient translations (e.g., into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian).6 Finally, there are also tens of thousands of Bible quotations in the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers and Church Fathers.
The oldest manuscripts for large parts of the New Testament date back to within a few years of the original writings. Particularly notable in this context is the papyrus manuscript “P52,” which was first published in 1935. This small fragment contains parts of John 18:31–33, 37, 38. It is now dated to around 100–125 AD.8 This brings this textual witness very close to the time of the Gospel of John’s origin around 98 AD. This manuscript provides crucial confirmation of the excellent quality of our current Bible text.
Various researchers even date individual New Testament manuscripts to the 1st century AD, such as P46, P64, and P67. Further research in this area will likely provide even more clarity.
Anyone who takes a closer look at this Bible manuscript and compares it with later manuscripts will see that the New Testament has not been corrupted over time. We can say with certainty that we, the people of the 21st century, have the same New Testament as the Christians of the 1st century!
The time gap between the original text and the earliest manuscripts is typically 750–1600 years for Greek and Latin classics. If such texts are still considered reliable, how much more so is this true for the New Testament! Of course, copyists made mistakes. But by comparing the manuscripts, such errors can be uncovered. Let us take an example to illustrate this: select 100 manuscripts of the Gospel of John from the wealth of available manuscripts, spanning different centuries and geographical regions. If, for example, two manuscripts contain a word in a certain verse that is missing in the other 98 manuscripts, we can identify the copying error in the two manuscripts.
The enormous number of manuscripts of the New Testament, as well as the fact that they date from all centuries before the invention of printing (from the 1st/2nd century to the 15th century), guarantees that every word of the original text is contained in these manuscripts!
Based on Greek manuscripts, scholarly editions of the New Testament have been produced to provide experts and interested readers with access to the Greek text.
We now draw the following conclusion: The transmission of the New Testament is a phenomenon without parallel in classical literature. Today, we still have the same New Testament Bible text as when it was written.
Modern textual research impressively confirms the words of Jesus in Luke 21:33: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
About the Old Testament (OT)
The OT was written in Hebrew and Aramaic between approximately 1600 (the time of Moses) and approximately 400 BC (the time of Malachi, the last prophet).
Both of these languages are consonantal languages. The letters of their script are consonants. The reader must add the vowels. If one has a good command of these languages, this is entirely natural and typically does not pose major problems.
The transmission of the Hebrew-Aramaic OT is remarkable: today, thousands of Bible manuscripts contain the so-called Masoretic Text (MT) or the “Protomasoretic Text.”
The Masoretic Text
The Masoretes, whose work underpins these manuscripts, were Jewish scholars (rabbis) who meticulously copied the Old Testament in the Middle Ages. Their work, characterized by perfection, can be explained by the copying methods they employed.12 For example, they counted letters and certain words and expressions in the original and checked their results in the copies. According to the Masoretic data in the Tanakh, Jehoash, for example, it could be assumed that the five books of Moses contained 304,805 letters and 79,847 words. As a result, the text was transmitted with a perfection reminiscent of the computer age, because computers also check today’s texts by counting the characters and words used. One of the more recent findings of modern archaeology is the realization that such methods were not only used in the Middle Ages for the transmission of important texts, but were probably already employed in ancient Israel. This care in copying is characteristic of the peoples of the Middle East and can be traced back thousands of years.13 In this respect, these peoples differed significantly from the ancient Greeks and Romans in Europe.
The manuscripts from the Judean Desert
The manuscripts discovered in the Judean Desert from 1947 onwards, the oldest of which date back to the 3rd century BC, show an overwhelming correspondence with the medieval text. These countless fragments and manuscripts from Qumran, Masada, Nachal Arugoth, and Wadi Murabba’at (Nachal Darga) have shown, in a striking way, how accurately the Old Testament has been handed down to our time.
After many years of research, Qumran scholars have concluded that the Masoretic Text (MT) is superior. It is hard to believe that the orthography of the MT is generally more archaic than that used in numerous Qumran manuscripts, as it corresponds roughly to that of the 6th/5th century BC. Compared to the MT, the spelling in many Qumran manuscripts seems downright “modern” because, as a reading aid, additional letters were added to the original consonants to indicate which vowels should be pronounced when reading the text. The complete Isaiah scroll from 125 BC, for example, has a clearly “modernized” orthography. It corresponds to the state of the 2nd century BC. In contrast, although 1000 years younger, the MT reflects a significantly older state, namely that of the 6th/5th century BC!
Up to and including Malachi, the last prophet of the Old Testament, around 400 BC, prophets in Israel were inspired by the Spirit of God. Only they were permitted to adapt the older books of the Bible to the later period in orthography by gently inserting consonants to represent vowels. This was intended to facilitate later generations‘ reading of ancient texts. This adaptation took place between the 7th and 5th centuries BC. Significantly fewer consonants were added to the five books of Moses than to the later books. After Malachi, the spelling was no longer changed.
Research on classical Hebrew spelling in recent years has made clear that the MT, preserved in thousands of manuscripts from the Middle Ages, retains archaic spelling attributable to the 6th/5th century BC. This corresponds to the time of the last prophets of the Old Testament authenticated by God. Only they still had the authority, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to edit the orthography of the Old Testament to simplify reading. After this time, this was no longer possible. The text was thus finally fixed.
The text types of the Samaritans and the Septuagint
In addition to the MT, there are, of course, the Samaritan texts and the texts of earlier translations, for example, the Septuagint (the oldest Greek translation of the Old Testament, from Egypt, 3rd century BC). However, Qumran research in recent decades has made it clear that the MT far surpasses all other text types in quality; accordingly, even among certain liberal scholars, it is reasonable to regard the MT as the most reliable text in cases of doubt. Manuscripts with modernized spelling were not the only ones found in the Judean Desert. Many Qumran texts correspond to the MT of the Middle Ages. This type of text from Qumran, which corresponds to the medieval text, is called the “pre-Masoretic text” or, more scientifically, the “protomasoretic text.” But because it is much older, it is not called the “Masoretic text,” but rather the “pre-Masoretic text.” Evidence regarding the quality of the MT provided by research has clear implications for contemporary work on new Bible translations: the MT must be the basis of the Old Testament text in every Bible!
How is it possible that a medieval text can be better and more accurate than some manuscripts that are up to 1000 years older?
The Bible in the Temple
The rabbis in the Middle Ages copied the text of the Old Testament using the counting methods mentioned above. This enables its reproductionwith practically perfect accuracy. Furthermore, the Masoretes ( “transmitters”) had access to a textual tradition of “official” Judaism characterized by the highest purity. I emphasize “official” Judaism because, for example, the Essenes of Qumran, who had separated themselves from the Temple in Jerusalem and thus from official Judaism in the 2nd century BC, were denied access to the best manuscripts. The very best manuscripts of Judaism were kept in the Temple. They were available there as templates for calibrating and correcting manuscripts from synagogues throughout the country. Compare this with Haggai 2:5, where the God of Israel said with regard to the Second Temple in Jerusalem:
“According to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so My Spirit remains among you; do not fear!’”
The translators of the Septuagint worked in Egypt. Geographically, they were far removed from the official and authoritative scrolls in Jerusalem. In addition, the Sinai desert, which was very dangerous for travelers, lay between them. They based their work on the manuscripts that were available to them in Egypt. The same applies, in principle, to the Hebrew texts of other ancient translations. At the time of their seclusion, the Essenes of Qumran took with them the texts that were accessible to them. They simply collected everything they could obtain. That is why a number of different types of texts have been found in their caves (Septuagint type, pre-Masoretic type, orthographically “modernized” Masoretic type, Samaritan type, etc.).
The manuscripts from Wadi Murabba’at
In this context, I would like to point out a phenomenal archaeological find that is still virtually unknown to the general public. As already mentioned, scrolls were also discovered in Wadi Murabba’at (Nachal Dar-ga) south of Qumran. They originated among Jews during the Second Revolt against the Romans (132–135 CE). In addition to a Twelve Prophets scroll, a number of fragments of the Torah, the five books of Moses, were found here. They are now dated to the period before 66 CE. These Torah fragments correspond, letter for letter, to the medieval Masoretic text. There is not a single exception! How is this possible? These are texts from official Judaism, which were dependent on the central text of the Temple. And it is precisely this textual tradition that the Masoretes of the Middle Ages have handed down to us! This is also the type of text on which the comprehensive and vast rabbinical literature of the Talmud, the Targumim (Aramaic translations of the Old Testament), the Midrashim, etc., is based!
Although the Shekinah was no longer present in the Second Temple, according to Haggai 2:5, the special presence of the Holy Spirit in this sanctuary was to be a clearly perceptible fact. In addition, the Second Temple was designated as the special repository of the Holy Scriptures chosen by God.
It was not permitted to take any books onto the Temple Mount. Apart from the Bible, only very specific writings, such as Levitical and priestly genealogical registers, were allowed to be kept in the temple. The Talmudic tradition explicitly mentions three Torah scrolls kept in the Temple. Of particular significance is the mention of a Torah scroll called “the Book of Ezra.” This copy of the Mosaic law books was attributed in Judaism to the scribe and priest Ezra, who himself was one of the inspired writers of the Bible. According to the Talmud, he wrote the books 1 and 2 Chronicles and the book of Ezra, named after him.
Rabbinic sources attest that not only the Torah but also, apparently, all the canonical books of the Old Testament were kept in the temple.
Professional maggihim (= proofreaders/revisers) were also employed from the temple treasury. Their task was to monitor the accuracy of the copying and transmission of the biblical text. The care that was taken in copying the central text in the temple can be seen in the words of admonition addressed to a copyist by Rabbi Yishmael (around 130 CE): “My son, be careful, for your work is the work of heaven. If you omit a letter or add a letter, you will find yourself in the role of a destroyer of the whole world.”
Let me summarize what has been said: The temple played a very important role in the preservation and transmission of the Bible. The best biblical text was preserved in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Masoretic text of the Old Testament, which recent textual research has rediscovered as the purest tradition, goes back directly to the so-called Protomasoretic text of the Second Temple. This text must be regarded as the authoritative “Jerusalem Central Text.”
The two silver strips from Ketef Hinnom
In 1979, two silver strips from the middle of the 7th century BC, bearing texts from the Old Testament (the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24-27), were discovered in a tomb at Ketef Hinnom, west of the Old City of Jerusalem. What is notable is that these Bible texts, which are over 2600 years old, correspond to the text of manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Every word matches the text from the Middle Ages, even in spelling; every letter is the same except for one small exception: in one place, two identical consonants follow each other directly in the medieval text. At the corresponding point in one of the silver texts, however, there is only one consonant. According to the spelling rules in Hebrew, the doubling of consonants at this point could be omitted if necessary. Since the silver strips are so small and the scribe was grateful for any means of saving space, this difference can effectively be interpreted as the scribe omitting one consonant for reasons of economy. These silver texts are now on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
One additional point must be noted in this context: the Old Testament contains numerous names of kings from Israel’s foreign-language environment. Many of these names could be compared with contemporary inscriptions of these kings! It was found that even with names from foreign languages (e.g., Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Moabite), the Bible’s copyists adhered to correct spelling with remarkable precision—despite the particular difficulties associated with such a transfer. The precision in the spelling of foreign kings’ names makes it clear why we can reasonably be sure that the copyists also transmitted the rest of the text with the same conscientiousness.
In addition to the thousands of Hebrew manuscripts mentioned above, there are approximately 20,000 manuscripts of ancient translations (e.g., into Aramaic, Greek, Ethiopian, Coptic, and Latin). In addition, there are countless biblical quotations in the extensive rabbinical literature, which are also of great value for the transmission of the text.
Since 1956, useful Old Testament text material has been collected and studied in Jerusalem. The work being done in this field at the Hebrew University exceeds all previous projects in its monumentality. The results are published on an ongoing basis as part of the Hebrew University Bible Project. This work is progressing slowly, but remains ongoing. However, those interested in the entire Hebrew text of the Old Testament already have access to a major scholarly work from Germany, which remains the standard edition of the Hebrew Old Testament to this day: the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), which broadly reflects the latest state of textual research.
Conclusion: In the wealth of manuscripts preserved today, we still have the text of the Old Testament as fixed by the biblical prophets.
Modern research can only confirm what the prophet Isaiah wrote as early as 700 BC:
„The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.“ Isaiah 40:8