Has the Bible Been Corrupted?—What the Scholars Say

Dave Miller, Ph.D.

Doctrinal MattersInspiration of the BibleTransmission/Textual Criticism

What have the world’s foremost New Testament textual scholars said about whether we have the Bible as God intended?

F.F. Bruce (1910-1990)

• Greek Professor: University of Edinburgh and the University of Leeds
• Chaired Department of Biblical History and Literature at the University of Sheffield
• Honorary Doctor of Divinity from Aberdeen University
• Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism & Exegesis at the University of Manchester
• Authored over 40 books
• Editor of both The Evangelical Quarterly and the Palestine Exploration Quarterly

“The variant readings about which any doubt remains among textual critics of the N.T. affect no material question of historic fact or of Christian faith and practice.”1

“In view of the inevitable accumulation of such errors over so many centuries, it may be thought that the original texts of the New Testament documents have been corrupted beyond restoration. Some writers, indeed, insist on the likelihood of this to such a degree that one sometimes suspects they would be glad if it were so. But they are mistaken. There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.”2

“Something more ought to be said, and said with emphasis. We have been discussing various textual types, and reviewing their comparative claims to be regarded as best representatives of the original New Testament. But there are not wide divergencies between these types, of a kind that could make any difference to the Church’s responsibility to be a witness and guardian of Holy Writ.”3

“If the variant readings are so numerous, it is because the witnesses are so numerous. But all the witnesses, and all the types which they represent, agree on every article of Christian belief and practice.”4

“If the very number of manuscripts increases the total of scribal corruptions, it supplies at the same time the means of checking them.”5

Bruce Metzger (1914-2007)

• Scholar of Greek and NT Textual Criticism
• Late Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary (46 years)
• Recognized authority on the Greek text of the New Testament
• Served on the board of the American Bible Society
• Driving force of the United Bible Societies’ series of Greek Texts
• Chairperson of the NRSV Bible Committee
• Widely considered one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the 20th century

“[E]ven if we had no Greek manuscripts today, by piecing together the information from these translations from a relatively early date, we could actually reproduce the contents of the New Testament. In addition to that, even if we lost all the Greek manuscripts and the early translations, we could still reproduce the contents of the New Testament from the multiplicity of quotations in commentaries, sermons, letters, and so forth of the early church fathers.”6

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901)

• Biblical scholar, theologian, textual critic
• Bishop of Durham
• Held the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge
• Co-edited The New Testament in the Original Greek

Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892)

• Textual critic
• Irish theologian
• Professor at Cambridge
• Co-edited The New Testament in the Original Greek

“With regard to the great bulk of the words of the New Testament…there is no variation or other ground of doubt.”7

“[T]he amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text.”8

“Since there is reason to suspect that an exaggerated impression prevails as to the extent of possible textual corruption in the New Testament…we desire to make it clearly understood beforehand how much of the New Testament stands in no need of a textual critic’s labours.”9

“[I]n the variety and fullness of the evidence on which it rests the text of the New Testament stands absolutely and unapproachably alone among ancient prose writing.”10

“The books of the New Testament as preserved in extant documents assuredly speak to us in every important respect in language identical with that in which they spoke to those for whom they were originally written.”11

“[T]he words in our opinion still subject to doubt can hardly amount to more than a thousandth part of the whole New Testament.”12

J.W. McGarvey (1829-1911)

• Minister, author, educator
• Taught 46 years in the College of the Bible in Lexington, Kentucky
• Served as President from 1895 to 1911

“All the authority and value possessed by these books when they were first written belong to them still.”13

Benjamin Warfield (1852-1921)

• Professor of Theology at Princeton Seminary (1887 to 1921)
• Last of the great Princeton theologians

“[S]uch has been the providence of God in preserving for His Church in each and every age a competently exact text of the Scriptures, that not only is the New Testament unrivalled among ancient writings in the purity of its text as actually transmitted and kept in use, but also in the abundance of testimony which has come down to us for castigating its comparatively infrequent blemishes.”14

“The great mass of the New Testament…has been transmitted to us with no, or next to no, variation.”15

Richard Bentley (1662-1742)

• English classical scholar, critic, and theologian
• Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
• First Englishman to be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning
• Known for his literary and textual criticism
• The “Founder of Historical Philology”
• Credited with the creation of the English school of Hellenism

“[T]he real text of the sacred writers does not now (since the originals have been so long lost) lie in any single manuscript or edition, but is dispersed in them all. ‘Tis competently exact indeed even in the worst manuscript now extant; nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them.”16

“Make your thirty thousand various readings as many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that sum; all the better to a knowing and serious reader, who is into the context, are so far from shaking the faith of the Christian, that they on the contrary confirm it.”17

Samuel Davidson (1806-1898)

• Irish Biblical Scholar
  • Professor of Biblical Criticism at Royal College of Belfast
  • Professor of Biblical Criticism in the Lancashire Independent College at Manchester
• Authored—

1. A Treatise on Biblical Criticism
2. Lectures on Ecclesiastical Polity
3. An Introduction to the New Testament
4. The Hebrew Text of the Old Testament Revised
5. Text of the O.T. & Interpretation of the Bible
6. Introduction to the Old Testament
7. On a Fresh Revision of the Old Testament
8. Canon of the Bible

“Having shewn the various attempts made to restore [the text] to its pristine purity, we may add a few words on the general result obtained. The effect of it has been to establish the genuineness of the New Testament text in all important particulars. No new doctrines have been elicited by its aid; nor have any historical facts been summoned by it from their obscurity. All the doctrines and duties of Christianity remain unaffected…. [T]he researches of modern criticism…have proved one thing—that in the records of inspiration there is no material corruption. They have shewn successfully that during the lapse of many centuries the text of Scripture has been preserved with great care; that it has not been extensively tampered with by daring hands…. [C]riticism has been gradually…proving the immovable security of a foundation on which the Christian faith may safely rest. It has taught us to regard the Scriptures as they now are to be divine in their origin…. [W]e may well say that the Scriptures continue essentially the same as when they proceeded from the writers themselves. Hence none need be alarmed when he hears of the vast collection of various readings accumulated by the collators of MSS. and critical editors. The majority are of a trifling kind, resembling differences in the collocation of words and synonymous expressions which writers of different tastes evince. Confiding in the general integrity of our religious records, we can look upon a quarter or half a million of various readings with calmness, since they are so unimportant as not to affect religious belief…. [T]he present Scriptures may be regarded as uninjured in their transmission through many ages.”18

Frederick H.A. Scrivener (1813-1891)

• Important text critic of the New Testament
• Member of the English New Testament Revision Committee (Revised Version)
• Graduated Trinity College, Cambridge
• Taught classics at several schools in southern England
• Edited the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis
• Edited several editions of the Greek New Testament
• Collated the Codex Sinaiticus with the Textus Receptus
• First to distinguish the Textus Receptus from the Byzantine text

“[O]ne great truth is admitted on all hands—the almost complete freedom of Holy Scripture from the bare suspicion of wilful [sic] corruption; the absolute identity of the testimony of every known copy in respect to doctrine, and spirit, and the main drift of every argument and every narrative through the entire volume of Inspiration…. Thus hath God’s Providence kept from harm the treasure of His written word, so far as is needful for the quiet assurance of His church and people.”19

Sir Frederic George Kenyon (1863-1952)

• Widely respected, imminent British paleographer and biblical and classical scholar
• Occupied a series of posts at the British Museum
• President of the British Academy from 1917 to 1921
• President of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem
• Made a lifelong study of the Bible as an historical text.

“One word of warning…must be emphasized in conclusion. No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading. Constant references to mistakes and divergencies of reading…might give rise to the doubt whether the substance, as well as the language, of the Bible is not open to question. It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. Especially is this the case with the New Testament. The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church is so large, that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.20

“It is true (and it cannot be too emphatically stated) that none of the fundamental truths of Christianity rests on passages of which the genuineness is doubtful.”21

“The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.”22

“Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”23

“The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear of hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, faithfully handed down from generation to generation throughout the centuries.”24

Summary/Conclusions

• The nature of this subject is such that it matters not that we consider what scholars from a century or more ago have said—because if the integrity of the Biblical text was established and authenticated at that time, it remains so today.
• We can confidently affirm that we have 999/1000ths of the original New Testament intact; The remaining 1/1000th is inconsequential.
• The Bible has not been corrupted in transmission.

Endnotes

1 F.F. Bruce (1975 reprint), The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), pp. 19-20.

2 F.F. Bruce (1963), The Books and the Parchments (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell), p. 178.

3 Ibid., p 189.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 181.

6 Interview in Lee Strobel (1998), The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), p. 59.

7 B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort (1882), The New Testament in the Original Greek (New York: Harper & Brothers), p. 2.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., pp. 2-3.

10 Ibid., p. 278.

11 Ibid., p. 284.

12 Ibid., p. 565.

13 J.W. McGarvey (1974 reprint), Evidences of Christianity (Nashville, TN: Gospel Advocate), p. 17.

14 Benjamin B. Warfield (1886), An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton), pp. 12-13.

15 Ibid., p. 13.

16 Richard Bentley (1725), Remarks Upon a Late Discourse of Free Thinking (Cambridge: Cornelius Crownfield), p. 68-69.

17 Ibid., p. 76.

18 Samuel Davidson (1853), A Treatise on Biblical Criticism (Boston: Gould & Lincoln), pp. 147-148.

19 Frederic H.A. Scrivener (1861), A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, & Co.), pp. 6-7.

20 Sir Frederic Kenyon (1895), Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode), pp. 10-11.

21 Ibid., pp. 3-4.

22 Sir Frederic Kenyon (1940), The Bible and Archaeology (New York: Harper & Row), pp. 288-289.

23 Ibid., pp. 288-289.

24 Our Bible…, pp. 10-11.

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