Language of the Bible: Part 1

Is the Bible an Accurate Translation?

Language is fascinating - all of us tend to take this remarkable skill—speaking a language—for granted. We go about our day without ever really thinking twice about it, yet it fundamentally enables us to achieve what would otherwise be impossible. Whether saying thank you to the bus driver, using sign language to ask a deaf colleague a question, or reading the latest news story, language allows us to convey information and share ideas.

Language is also inherently intertwined with identity. This is true with cultures across space and time, and many researchers argue that language and identity are actually inseparable. As Professor John Joseph at the University of Edinburgh succinctly states,

“Identity… is grounded in beliefs about the past: about heritage and ancestry, and about belonging to a people, a place, a set of beliefs, and a way of life. Of the many ways in which such belonging is signified, what language a person speaks and how he or she speaks it, rank among the most powerful, because it is through language that people and places are named, heritage and ancestry recorded and passed on, and beliefs developed and ritualized” (Joseph, 2016, p.19).

Language is, of course, absolutely key to our beliefs as Christians, and the Bible holds the roots of our collective spiritual wisdom. So, what can we learn about the language of the Bible itself?

This year in St. Moluag’s Coracle, we’re going on a deep dive into the language of the Bible. On this linguistic tour, we’ll cover the significance of certain words like ‘trees’ (most mentioned living thing in the Bible other than God and people) as well as seek out how ancient languages (like Greek and Latin) shape the way we think about God today.

The first part in this series is about translations. Specifically, we’re going to investigate whether the modern Bible is an accurate translation, or if it has been changed and corrupted along the way.

The Questions Around Translation Accuracy

It shouldn’t be surprising that this question is as common as it is. After all, the Bible in full has been translated into nearly 800 languages, with the New Testament being translated into 1,815 languages. Including partial translations (books or chapters), the Bible has been translated into over 4,000 languages. Mind you, this is also across nearly 2,000 years of human history.

There’s no point in being subtle—whether the Bible is an accurate translation is a BIG question with massive repercussions. Scripture and tradition are the foundation of our faith, and we rely on its accuracy to justify our beliefs. You certainly cannot blame someone, whether they are simply curious or a skeptic, for wondering how the Bible could possibly have stayed accurate over that time. You might even wonder this yourself! The journey from Greek manuscript, to Latin Vulgate, to Old English manuscripts, and its modernization through Middle and Present Day English is a long one. For English alone, our Bible has passed from one scribe to another and resulted, over nearly two thousand years, into the New Revised Standard Version, the King James Version, the New International Version, and the English Standard version.

 The argument has been made that the development of the Bible may resemble a game of telephone, where the initial message gets slowly changed as it progresses through a chain of people. What might start with one word being accidentally misinterpreted could lead to whole sentences being altered—on and on until the original meaning has been lost or critically changed. So, with two thousand years going by, passing from one writer to the other, we might wonder if the Bible’s original message has been lost in translation. Can we really trust what it says?

 Fortunately, by understanding the source material of the Bible and recognizing how academics evaluate the authenticity of ancient documents, we can actually be confident that modern translations are highly faithful and reliable. Here’s how.

The Source Material

The first step is to know what the original source material of the Bible is, and to do this we need to separate the Old and New Testament.

The Old Testament

Scholars rely on five Hebrew manuscripts (portions of the Masoretic texts) to translate and transcribe the Old Testament, each of these dating around AD800-1000. While these five are not representative of the entirety of the Masoretic texts, they are often the focus of textual criticism considering their nearly complete states. They include the Aleppo Codex (AD930), Leningrad Codex (AD1008/9), Codex Sassoon (10^th cent. AD), Cairo Codex of the Prophets (AD895), and British Library MS Or 4445 (10^th cent. AD). At first glance, one might reasonably be skeptical that these manuscripts are over 1000 years after the originals were written. However, the reason why there seems to be a dearth of older manuscripts is because the Hebrews would destroy older, worn-out copies once a new copy was transcribed and available due to their confidence in the transcribing process. Indeed, the accuracy of these later manuscripts was confirmed with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls—a total of approximately 200 manuscripts of the Old Testament dating from BC250-AD100—which were by and large identical to the later manuscripts from the 9-11^th centuries. Furthermore, the Septuagint—the oldest Koine Greek translation of the Old Testament completed by the first century BC—also corresponds with the later Masoretic texts, though the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered more important for validation purposes considering they are older and in Hebrew.

The New Testament

The earliest surviving sources of the New Testament are Greek manuscripts, with the oldest dating to approximately AD117-135. These were hand-copied writings on a paper-like material called papyrus. Because papyrus is organic, it decays easily, meaning that the vast majority of the early material survived only in the arid regions of Egypt. Now, the oldest fragment of the New Testament (the P52 John Rylands Fragment, a portion of the Gospel of John) was itself found in Egypt, far from where the Gospel of John was written. This shows how at the turn of the first century, the gospel was already being written at scale, circulated, and copied within a few decades of its original composition.

In all, there are over 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. The sheer number of these manuscripts is critical, as it allows scholars to compare and reconstruct the original text with high confidence.

The “Triple-Test” Framework

Now comes the test—how can we use those early manuscripts to verify that the copies we use today are accurate? And can we use those manuscripts to confirm that they are accurate transcriptions of the original compositions? The answer is yes, and it is done through the Triple Test Framework.

The triple-test framework is a standard method used by historians and literary critics to determine the historical reliability and transmissional accuracy of ancient documents. It evaluates a text through three distinct lenses: Bibliographical, Internal, and External.

Bibliographical Test: Examines the transmissional accuracy of the text. Since original “autographs” are almost never found, this test evaluates the quantity of available manuscript copies and the time gap between the original writing and the earliest surviving copy.

Internal Evidence Test: Investigates the credibility of the content within the document. It asks if the authors were eyewitnesses, whether the text is self-consistent or contains blatant contradictions, and if the writers’ character suggests they were honest and competent.

External Evidence Test: Looks for corroboration outside the document itself. This includes comparing the text with archaeological findings and other historical writings from contemporary non-Christian or pagan sources.

Is the Bible an Accurate Translation?

Using the Triple-Test Framework, specifically the bibliographical test, we can indeed confirm the accuracy of the Bible translations we use today. First and foremost, the survival of 5,800 Greek manuscripts (and more than 24,000 total early manuscripts in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and more) gives very high levels of confidence. This is paired with the time gap of only 25-50 years from the earliest surviving manuscript to the original composition.

Importantly, by using those thousands of early manuscripts, scholars and linguists are able to reconstruct the original composition with 99.5%-99.9% confidence. This means that out of the thousands of copies, we can know the original wording of the source material with near-perfect certainty. The variations in those early texts (preventing a 100% confidence interval) are overwhelmingly due to spelling and grammatical variations—none of those variations compromise any core Christian doctrine.

As a result, scholars often cite the New Testament as the best-attested document in all of antiquity; it is the “Gold Standard” of accurate translations of ancient documents. In contrast, the Iliad by Homer has only 1,750 surviving copies with a time gap of at least 500 years from the earliest surviving manuscript to the original composition, writings by Sophocles have only 193 manuscripts with a time gap of around 1,400 years, and Tacitus’ Annals have only 33 manuscripts with a time gap of 1,000 years. For those texts, scholars are relying on smaller numbers of manuscripts with hundreds of years (if not a thousand) separating them from the original—if one copy has an error, there may be no others to correct it. But for the New Testament, the sheer volume of copies acts as an automatic “spell-check”, and the comparative time gap of a couple of decades is absolutely minimal compared to other ancient documents.

While the bibliographical test affirms translation accuracy, the internal and external evidence tests of the Triple-Test Framework provide a layer of historical accuracy analysis to the Bible. The results are fascinating, giving high credence to the Bible being historically reliable documents, but that is perhaps a topic for another article.

To conclude: yes, the modern Bible as we know it is indeed accurate to how it was originally composed. As the paleographer and textual critic, Frederic Kenyon, stated, “The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries.”—quoted by Philip W. Comfort, The Complete Guide to Bible Versions, (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.) 1991.

By Jack Heitman