Can We Trust the Bible?
If you’re going to build your life on Scripture, you want to know it isn’t a corrupted game of telephone. This page walks through manuscripts, copying, and history — and why the Bible is more reliable than almost any other ancient text.
You don’t have to turn your brain off to trust the Bible. When you actually look at the data, it holds up better than most people realize.
1. What does it mean to “trust” the Bible?
People usually have three big concerns:
- Did the events actually happen? (history)
- Did the text get changed over time? (copying & transmission)
- Did we end up with the right books? (canon)
This page focuses mainly on the second and third — how the Bible was copied, preserved, and recognized — and why you can trust that what you’re reading is what they wrote.
— 2 Timothy 3:16–17 (KJV)
2. How many copies do we actually have?
• 5,000+ Greek manuscripts • 10,000+ Latin manuscripts • 10,000+ in other ancient languages
Fragment copies appear as early as 30–80 years after the originals were written.
• Plato: ~7 manuscripts • Aristotle: ~49 • Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars: ~10 • Tacitus: ~2 major copies
If we reject the Bible on manuscript grounds, we’d have to throw out almost every other ancient author.
— Isaiah 40:8 (KJV)
“For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.”
— Psalm 119:89 (KJV)
3. Wasn’t it copied and changed a million times?
Yes, the Bible was copied by hand for centuries. That’s how every ancient book survived. The question is: how well was it copied?
But the vast majority are minor: spelling differences, word order changes, or repeated words — things that don’t change the meaning of the sentence.
Less than a tiny fraction of variants touch any serious doctrine, and even then, no core Christian belief rests on a verse that is textually unstable.
Because we have so many manuscripts from different regions and time periods, scholars can compare them and see where a scribe added, dropped, or swapped a word. The more copies you have, the harder it is to hide a change.
— Proverbs 30:5 (KJV)
“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
— Matthew 24:35 (KJV)
4. What about the Old Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls?
For a long time, the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts we had were from around 900–1000 AD. Critics claimed the Old Testament must have been changed over time.
These scrolls contain portions of almost every Old Testament book, dated about 1,000 years earlier than those medieval copies.
When scholars compared them, they found remarkable consistency — not a totally different Bible, but the same text with very minor spelling differences.
In other words: the Old Testament wasn’t rewritten in the Middle Ages. It was carefully copied over centuries.
— Psalm 12:6–7 (KJV)
5. Did people just pick their favorite books?
The word canon means the recognized list of books that belong in Scripture. Contrary to internet rumor, this wasn’t decided by one shady meeting in a smoke-filled room.
• Was it written by an apostle or close associate? • Does it agree with the known teaching of Jesus? • Was it widely used across different churches, not just one fringe group?
Councils primarily confirmed what churches were already treating as Scripture — they didn’t reinvent Christianity from scratch.
Some books were debated at the edges (like Hebrews or Revelation), but the core of the New Testament was recognized very early by believers who were willing to die for what they witnessed.
— 2 Peter 1:16, 19–21 (KJV)
6. How did Jesus treat the Scriptures?
If you trust Jesus, it makes sense to care what He thought about the Bible.
- He quoted the Old Testament constantly and treated it as God’s word.
- He said “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).
- He used specific texts to stand against temptation (Matthew 4).
- He treated figures like Jonah, Moses, and David as real, not myths.
Jesus didn’t act like Scripture was a flexible suggestion pile. He saw it as the Father’s voice — and He fulfilled it, not replaced it.
— Matthew 5:17–18 (KJV)
“The scripture cannot be broken.”
— John 10:35 (KJV)
7. So… can we trust it?
No ancient text is copied perfectly. That’s not the claim. The claim is that God, through very human processes, has faithfully preserved what we need.
— Romans 15:4 (KJV)
“But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”
— John 20:31 (KJV)
You can bring your questions. You can test it. But you don’t have to fear that God’s message has been lost in the noise. He’s better at preserving His word than we are at trying to destroy it.