The books of the Old Testament were written from approximately 1400 BC to 400 BC. The books of the New Testament were written from approximately AD 40 to AD 90. So, anywhere between 3,400 and 1,900 years have passed since a book of the Bible was written. In this time, the original manuscripts have been lost. They very likely no longer exist. Since the time the books of the Bible were originally written, they have been copied again and again by scribes. Copies of copies of copies have been made. In view of this, can we still trust the Bible?
The Holy Scriptures are God-breathed and therefore inerrant (2 Timothy 3:16–17; John 17:17). Of course, inerrancy can only be applied to the original manuscripts, not to the copies of the manuscripts. As meticulous as the scribes were with the replication of the Scriptures, no one is perfect. Through the centuries, minor differences arose in the various copies of the Scriptures. The vast majority of these differences are simple spelling variants (akin to American neighbor versus British neighbour), inverted words (one manuscript says “Christ Jesus” while another says “Jesus Christ”), or an easily identified missing word. In short, over 99 percent of the biblical text is not questioned. Of the less than 1 percent of the text that is in question, no doctrinal teaching or command is jeopardized. In other words, the copies of the Bible we have today are pure. The Bible has not been corrupted, altered, edited, revised, or tampered with.
Any unbiased document scholar will agree that the Bible has been remarkably well-preserved over the centuries. Copies of the Bible dating to the 14th century AD are nearly identical in content to copies from the 3rd century AD. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, scholars were shocked to see how similar they were to other ancient copies of the Old Testament, even though the Dead Sea Scrolls were hundreds of years older than anything previously discovered. Even many hardened skeptics and critics of the Bible admit that the Bible has been transmitted over the centuries far more accurately than any other ancient document.
There is absolutely no evidence that the Bible has been revised, edited, or tampered with in any systematic manner. The sheer volume of biblical manuscripts makes it simple to recognize any attempt to distort God’s Word. There is no major doctrine of the Bible that is put in doubt as a result of the inconsequential differences among the manuscripts. - from Got questions
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From CARM.org
This is a common misconception. Some people think that the Bible was written in one language, translated to another language, then translated into yet another and so on until it was finally translated into the English. The complaint is that since it was rewritten so many times in different languages throughout history, it must have become corrupted . The "telephone" analogy is often used as an illustration. It goes like this. One person tells another person a sentence who then tells another person, who tells yet another, and so on and so on until the last person hears a sentence that has little or nothing to do with the original one. The only problem with this analogy is that it doesn't fit the Bible at all.
The fact is that the Bible has not been rewritten. Take the New Testament, for example. The disciples of Jesus wrote the New Testament in Greek; and though we do not have the original documents, we do have around 6,000 copies of the Greek manuscripts, some of which were made very close to the time of the originals. These various manuscripts, or copies, agree with each other to almost 100 percent accuracy. Statistically, the New Testament is 99.5% textually pure. That means that there is only 1/2 of 1% of of all the copies that do not agree with each other perfectly. But, if you take that 1/2 of 1% and examine it, you find that the majority of the "problems" are nothing more than spelling errors and very minor word alterations. For example, instead of saying Jesus, a variation might be "Jesus Christ." So the actual amount of textual variation of any concern is extremely low. Therefore, we can say that we have a remarkably accurate compilation of the original documents.
So when we translate the Bible, we do not translate from a translation of a translation of a translation. We translate from the original language into our language. It is a one-step process and not a series of steps that can lead to corruption. It is one translation step from the original to the English or to whatever language in which a person needs to read. So we translate into Spanish from the same Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. Likewise we translate into the German from those same Greek and Hebrew manuscripts as well. This is how it is done for each and every language into which we translate the Bible. We do not translate from the original languages to the English, to the Spanish, and then to the German. It is from the original languages to the English or into the Spanish or into the German. Therefore, the translations are very accurate and trustworthy regarding what the Bible originally said.
Comparison Chart
The following chart represents a compilation of various ancient manuscripts, their original date of writing, the earliest copy, the number of copies in existence, and the time span between the originals and the copies. If the Bible is singled out to be criticized as unreliable then all the other writings listed below must also be discarded.