Page 49 - Doctrine and History of the Preservation of the Bible Student Textbook

Study Section 7: The History of the Preservation of the Bible

7.1 Connect

History is a very important subject. Knowing our roots and why things happened in the past the
way they did helps us understand our own personal situations now. The Bible has a history of
its own. Over the years, hundreds of copies have been made and shipped all over the world.
Men have attacked it and tried to destroy it. But God has miraculously preserved its integrity
for us today. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to look over the years to see how God has kept the
Bible true for us today? Let’s do that….

7.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to describe how believers recognized the correct books to place in the
canon of Scripture.

2. The student should be able to describe how the historical characters God were used to preserve the
integrity of God’s Word.

7.3 How do we know the Bible is completely true?

Inerrancy means that Scripture is without error. It tells the truth. And we believe that the very
words of the original autographs were written without error. However, we do not have any of
the original autographs today. So we have a problem.

Inerrancy is an issue because some religious “scholars” have repeatedly redefined such terms as
“infallible” to mean the Bible could still have factual historical errors. When inerrancy is not
held, one by one certain Bible doctrines (deity of Christ, etc.), historical facts (such as the literal
creation), and other biblical views (on issues such as homosexuality or women’s roles) are denied.

The science of Textual Criticism is to review the various copies or manuscripts
of the Bible that we have found to see if we can detect any variants in copies
the original autographs. The New Testament has been preserved in more
manuscripts than any other ancient work, having over 5,800 complete or
fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300
manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic,
Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian.

The History of the Revelation

The first recorded instance of God’s Word being written down was when the Lord Himself wrote it down
in the form of Ten Commandments on the stone tablets delivered to Moses at the top of Mount Sinai.
This occurred between 1400 BC and 1500 BC, almost 3500 years ago. The language: Hebrew (probably
the language of Adam).

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