Multiple Copies Preserve the Texts

The guardians of the earliest Bible texts, the Israelites, carefully preserved the original scrolls and made numerous copies of them. Israel’s kings, for instance, were told to write “a copy of this law from that which is in the charge of the priests, the Levites.”​—Deuteronomy 17:18.

Many Israelites loved to read the Scriptures, recognizing them to be God’s Word. Thus, the copying of the text was done with extreme care by highly trained scribes. One God-fearing scribe named Ezra is referred to as “a skilled copyist in the law of Moses, which Jehovah the God of Israel had given.” (Ezra 7:6) The Masoretes, who copied the Hebrew Scriptures, or “Old Testament,” between the sixth and tenth centuries C.E., even counted the letters in the text to avoid errors. Such meticulous copying helped to ensure both the accuracy of the text and the survival of the Bible itself despite desperate and persistent attempts by enemies to destroy it.

Soon after the writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures, or “New Testament,” finished their work, copies of their inspired letters, prophecies, and historical accounts proliferated. For instance, John wrote his Gospel in or near Ephesus. Yet, a fragment of that Gospel, part of a copy that experts say was made less than 50 years after he wrote his account, was found hundreds of miles away in Egypt. That discovery indicated that Christians in distant lands had copies of what were then recently inspired texts.

Although no original Bible manuscripts have yet been found, thousands of handwritten copies of the whole Bible or portions of it have survived to our day. Some of them are very old. Did the message contained in the original texts change as it was copied? Scholar W. H. Green stated concerning the Hebrew Scriptures: “It may be safely said that no other work of antiquity has been so accurately transmitted.” Concerning the Christian Greek Scriptures, a leading authority on Bible manuscripts, Sir Frederic Kenyon, wrote: “The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.” He also stated: “It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. . . . This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.”