Are There Imperfections In The Bible

ARE THERE IMPERFECTIONS IN THE BIBLE?

Brett A. Todd

ARE THERE IMPERFECTIONS IN THE BIBLE?  As always, our answer to this question may come from what you’ve heard in Sunday school.  If you belong to a conservative evangelical church, your answer might be that certainly there are no mistakes found in the Bible.  “How could there be mistakes if God wrote the Bible or if God inspired people to write the Bible?”  God certainly doesn’t make mistakes, right?  If you are from a mainline church, you might just say the opposite.  “Of course, there are mistakes in the Bible--and a lot of them.”

Are there imperfections and mistakes in the Bible?  Yes, and there are a lot of them and there are more mistakes than what most people might think, even what your pastor might think.  I don’t just say this because I’m a part of a more liberal church, rather, I say this because of my years of research.  There are a lot of imperfections and mistakes in the Bible.

Let me give you an example from the Greek New Testament manuscripts where we get our English Bible translations, the very Bible you hold in your hand.

The New Testament of the Bible was originally written in the Greek language.  We now have over 5800 Greek manuscripts from ancient times that are copies of copies of copies of the first Greek manuscripts from which we get our New Testament English Bible, and none of these Greek manuscripts are the same.  It is estimated there are more than 500,000 differences.  Scholars call these differences textual variants.  Think of this for a moment, there are more than 500,000 differences.  That is a lot.  In fact, it is more than double the English words found in your New Testament Bible.  Granted, most of these differences are misspellings, omissions, and additions by the scribes, but remember, they are mistakes.

There are also some pretty significant differences as well.  Let me give you one example used by scholars of someone adding words to a New Testament Greek manuscript.  

If you turn to 1 John 5:7 in your King James Bible, you will discover it has these words that are not found in most of our modern English translations of the Bible, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”  You will not find these words in our earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts.  For this reason, most modern translations of the Bible omit these words.  Why were these words added to some of the Greek manuscripts?  Whoever added these words more than likely wanted to bolster their position on the teaching of the Trinity (See, "A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament"). 

Interestingly, there are other glaring mistakes and changes in the Bible in which ancient scribes complained in the very margins of these Greek manuscripts.  One such complaint read, “Fool and knave, can’t you leave the old reading alone, and not alter it!”  

So yes, there are imperfections and mistakes in the Bible.

In our next study, we will look at the sayings of Jesus by asking, “Did Jesus really say that?”