I don’t know if I can trust my Bible…
Alright, y’all. We have previously talked about the Bible several times. Check out those posts here and here. Today’s dig deeper into the Bible is about why some passages appear to be deleted in our current copies of the Bible and does this mean that our copies of Scripture are unreliable.
The passage that comes to my mind immediately when I think about this is the ending of Mark. In fact, the heading in most translations include something about the following being the longer ending of Mark.
I appreciate that most Bibles (if not all??) will have a footnote to explain why a passage has been removed or what the questionable nature is. The footnote is the little text at the bottom of the page, sometimes notated by an * in the passage itself. For example, in my NLT Life Application Study Bible, the footnote for Mark 16:8 says “The most reliable early manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark end at verse 8. Other manuscripts include various endings to the Gospel. A few include both the “shorter ending” and the “longer ending.” The majority of manuscripts include the “longer ending” immediately after verse 8.”
I have another similar type of footnote by Mark 16:14 that starts by saying “some early manuscripts add:...”
Stop reading this and go look at your Bible… do you have footnotes like these next to these passages? (If you’re on a Bible app, you may have to tap an icon to show you the note. On Youversion, the icon looks like a speech bubble with lines inside.)
Other examples include: Mathew 23:14, Matthew 17:21, Matthew 18:11, Mark 7:16, Mark 9:44, Mark 9:46, Mark 11:26, Mark 15:28, Luke 17:36, John 5:4, Acts 8:37, Acts 15:34, Acts 24:7, Acts 28:29, Romans 16:24.
Likely, unless you’re reading a KJV Bible, then these verses aren’t there and you have a footnote stating what the verse may have been.
Now that we have established that these “missing” or “inaccurate” verses are a thing, let’s figure out what they’re all about.
Back in Jesus’s time, there was not a bound book of Scriptures like we think of as the Bible. They would have had many different scrolls for each book or part of Scripture. As I’m sure you can guess, there was also no copy machine or printer to simply make more copies so each Synagogue could have a copy to read from. Instead there were Scribes who would diligently copy each text, word for word by hand.
Just imagine for a moment how tedious and monotonous this task would be. Do you think you’d be able to copy entire books of the Bible by hand without making any errors? I couldn’t even get through typing this post without using my backspace key.
Each scroll of a text, or manuscript, was then shared all around to different Synagogues, or sometimes to the more wealthy people. It would make sense that some manuscripts may have small differences than others, especially when you think about the vast number that have been recovered- over 6,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament alone.
Considering there are well over 31,000 verses in the Bible and over 99% of them are the exact same in all known manuscripts, it is pretty safe to say our Bible is very reliable, also known as infallible.
I appreciate the fact that even if there were only a few manuscripts that had an addition, our Bible will include a footnote about it. That in itself proves that translators were very careful and diligent in their work to be transparent and express the reliability of Scripture.
Because of this, we have no need to worry about the fact that some verses appear to be missing. Further reason to not worry about this is that none of the verses in question affect foundational Christian doctrine.
God made the world. We chose sin. Jesus Christ was born as a human, died, and rose again to cleanse us of our sin. Now we have the ability to choose to follow Christ and commit our lives in support of His will. That Gospel truth is the same no matter what translation of the Bible you read, or what manuscript you may have the ability to decipher. So you can absolutely 100 percent trust your Bible!
