The New Testament was not altered

Summary:

It is true that we no longer possess the original manuscripts of the New Testament. While this may be problematic for those unfamiliar with textual criticism, it is actually quite normal. We do not have in our possession any original manuscripts of ancient texts. For instance, we do not have the original, hand-written text of Plato's Republic, Homer's Iliad and Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. The same applies to the works of the best-known Roman and Jewish historians of the 1st century, such as Flavius Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, Tacitus' Annals, Suetonius' writings, etc. These works were written on papyrus or animal skins that have disintegrated over time. Fortunately, textual criticism is fully capable of reconstructing the content of the original documents. As long as we have enough ancient manuscripts, we can compare them and reconstruct the original text with a very high degree of accuracy.

n fact, for many works of antiquity, we possess only a few manuscripts, sometimes a single copy of the original written hundreds or even thousands of years later!Yet this does not prevent historians from studying these sources seriously and extracting the essence of the original writings. For example, even though we no longer have Plato's writings, we can compare the 250 copies of the manuscripts in existence, in order to reconstruct the original manuscript and find out what Plato really said.

Some skeptics argue that there are between 200,000 and 400,000 variants in the 24,000 New Testament manuscripts in our possession, suggesting that the Bible could therefore have been corrupted by numerous changes over the centuries. But this criticism doesn't impress textual critics. First of all, although such a high number of variants may seem high, it is actually quite low: only 8 to 17 variants per manuscript on average.

By comparison, if we look at the first six books of the Annals by the Roman historian Tacitus (our primary source for knowledge of ancient Rome), there is only one manuscript, dating from around 1,000 years after the original. No variant exists for this work, because there is no other manuscript to compare it to! And we have no way of knowing whether this actual manuscript represents exactly, word for word, what Tacitus himself said. 

The point is: the greater the number of manuscripts, the greater the number of variants. The existence of these manuscripts, along with their variants, allows us to compare them and be certain that the original text has been preserved over the centuries. A New Testament with many manuscripts (and therefore many variants) is far more reliable than one with few manuscripts (and therefore few variants).

What's more, modern textual criticism makes it possible to resolve almost all of these variants. These include:

• 75% typos or misspellings that do not affect the meaning. If a single word is misspelled in 3,000 manuscripts, exegetes count it as 3,000 variants.
• 15% substitutions with synonyms that do not change the translation of the text (e.g. "Jesus Christ" instead of "Christ Jesus").
• 9% variations on late manuscripts, which can therefore be easily corrected by comparison with older manuscripts.
• Only 1% concern early manuscripts and change the meaning of the text. However, none of these variants affect any of the central doctrines of Christianity as they are anecdotal in nature.

In this last category, only 40 could not be resolved by textual criticism. This represents only 0.5% of the text, which means that there is no doubt about the remaining 99.5%! This is by far a record: by comparison, the Iliad achieves a score of 95% preservation. In the 0.5% of the text that remains unresolved, the substantive meaning is often the same and poses no problem of comprehension.

For example, some versions of 1 Corinthians 1:4 read "I give thanks to God continually", while others vary slightly by saying "I give thanks to my God continually".

Another verse that could not be resolved by textual criticism is John 3:16. It is translated slightly differently in some manuscripts:

-"For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (Jerusalem Bible).

-"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life."(New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE)

-"God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who has faith in him will have eternal life and never really die." (Contemporary English Version - New Testament, First Edition, American Bible Society)

This clearly shows that the few unresolved variants pose no problem to the general understanding of the text, and in no way call into question the tenets of the Christian faith.

The eminent exegete Craig Blomberg confirms this:

 Author of this article

"Only about a tenth of 1 percent are interesting enough to make their way into footnotes in most English translations. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that no orthodox doctrine or ethical practice of Christianity depends solely on any disputed wordings. [...] Tellingly, in the appendix to the paperback edition of Misquoting Jesus, (atheist exegete) Ehrman himself concedes that ‘essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament’"Craig Blomberg, Can we still believe the Bible? An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions, Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2014, p. 27-28.

Going further:

Craig Blomberg, Can we still believe the Bible? An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions, Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2014.

More information:

• Michael Jones (Inspiring Philosophy), The Reliability of the New Testament (Textual Corruption), January 23, 2015.
• Michael Jones (Inspiring Philosophy), The Reliability of the New Testament (Introduction), December 21, 2014.