Let's make it make sense. This is an exposé. It's a long read, deliberately so.
The Bible was written hundreds of years after the fact. As a believer, it should never be your case that you are not interested in knowing how your faith came to be. If you show resistance in this area, it is fear-based and God has not given us the Spirit of fear but of power, love, and a sound mind. Too many Christians function with power and love, but they leave sound mind out of the equation. So there is no agency, no ability to contribute meaningfully to intellectual discussion, and almost zero ability to defend their faith, talk less of advancing it...because they don't have the knowledge to support their faith claim. I find a lot of Christians avoid questions that hinge on logic and reasoning conveniently forgetting that God said to bring forth your strong reasons. We must not only lean on power because not everyone is looking for a miracle. While the Jews seek Jesus for a sign, the Greeks seek Him for Wisdom - and Christ has been made both the power and wisdom of God!
And that’s why we'll talk about this topic today, is the bible the true word of God? Was it inspired by God? Does the bible have holes? Are there contradictions in the scriptures?
Atheists and unbelievers will have you believe that the bible has holes, there are contradictions and men wrote it...and they are right to some reasonable extent. The Bible was formulated, assembled, modified, censored, and transmitted first orally, and then in writing by different human beings…and yes, human beings cos goats and cows can’t write! I wonder what you expected, but that’s by the side. God himself did not write the Bible, the Bible had many contributors over many centuries and people who translated the earliest known texts are susceptible to adding their worldviews, political concerns fears, convictions, and motivations now captured in this book we call the Bible. We’ll get back to this when we talk about canonization.
The scriptures are divinely inspired by God; the Bible? Probably not.
In fact, during the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, church leaders formed a significant alliance with political authorities. This alliance allowed them to leverage religious doctrine to legitimize the rule of kings and maintain social order. By controlling access to religious texts and interpretations, they consolidated their power, effectively using the bible as a tool of oppression.
These are the facts. But as thinking Christians, the intelligent thing to do is to understand, not to dispel these facts and ignore them.
Translation and transliteration
Accurate scriptural interpretation must begin with .... knowledge. And knowledge has a source, we must quiz the source of knowledge, if not, we stand the risk of basing our entire belief on a lie.
What texts or scrolls did we get the bible from? The text that is translated into various versions today is the text in the Masoretic form of Hebrew, which was standardized around the 11th century AD. Take into account that this is a type of 11th-century standardized Hebrew version, this indicates that there had been another version of Hebrew with small differences. You are reading the translation of scriptures taken from an 11th-century BC manuscript, but before the 11th century, many variations of the manuscripts were already in existence, until it was consolidated. When you pick up a bible, you're reading a translation from the 17th century of a manuscript from the 11th century of a text that wasn't stable one thousand years ago, actually, two thousand years ago when it was written.
All types of human sentiments have been captured in the text we have today, human beings who ascribe meaning and context during the translation and transcription of manuscripts, make typos, and choose which version of the multiple available originals they prefer. So yes, every one of our bible translations today came from a manuscript from the 11th century, a Hebrew text called Leningrad Code X, which can be found in Leningrad. We translated from the Leningrad code X. Each manuscript is a bit different. So, you’ll find we have different translations of the bible and that’s because manuscripts have differences.
Mistakes in translations are common during text translation, and the KJV is not the most accurate!
Yes, I know pastors who will die on this hill, they believe the KJV is the only true version. The reality is that as we progress in knowledge, scholars have found some typos and gained new understanding. There were words scholars of old who originally translated the scriptures didn’t know and we know them now, and these are progressively being corrected in more recent translations. If you are following, you’d have deduced by now that’s why we have the NKJV, to incorporate some of the new corrections.
Folks, I am bold to announce to you that newer translations are more accurate in terms of translation than the KJV. So I’ll share a very basic example of when translations can easily go wrong, this example doesn’t alter the interpretation of the text. Hebrew scholars have identified a very tiny typo in the Leningrad Code X: a tiny tick of a line between the word HAR (behind) and the word HUD (one). The presence of this line translated the bible from "Abraham saw a ram" to "Abraham saw a ram behind him" and this example is small and doesn’t alter the interpretation of this verse, but others do. So the KJV has this typo because it was translated from the Leningrad Code X but has been corrected in the Jerusalem Bible and The Jewish Publication Society version which was published about 400 years after the King James Version.
To understand this in our day and time, it's like "LI". What we have here is the capital letter L and the small letter L. But if we were to make it a small letter L and capital letter I, it would move from "LI" to "lI". You can see how in literally translating this text, small letter L could easily be mistaken for capital letter I. Tiny errors like this meant words didn’t make sense when it was originally being translated, so scholars at the time had to take a crack at it. But people, we grow in understanding daily and we are doing better at these small confusing letters.
Language evolves, it is not static
While the first example above is a mistake in translation, scholars have had to make decisions of adding and subtracting things as the language evolved. Transliteration is normal. There was no letter J in the original Hebrew, so the name Jesus did not exist at the time and has only been in existence for about 400 years. Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters in predictable ways, so a reader who knows the system can reconstruct the original spelling.
Canonization
In early Christian times, the pope commissioned a scholar, Jerome, to translate existing scriptures into Latin. Jerome would dispatch this duty efficiently and it culminated into what became known as the vulgate bible. One of the challenges Jerome faced was that there were several manuscripts for the book of Mathew and there were all saying different things. One of Jerome’s many responsibilities was to figure out which version of the book of Matthew he aligned with and determine if it should go in the bible. Canonization is the process that determines what is written in the bible. We won’t have the time to jump into how the Eastern churches didn't like the book of Revelations and the Western churches didn't like the book of Hebrews, and how they eventually ironed it out. Back in the day, the bible wasn't available to everyone, so the original problem was not what to put in the New Testament but what to read out loud in church.
The Western bible, this one we are more familiar with was translated from Aramaic and Hebrew to Greek to Latin to German and English. That's a lot of translations and there were numerous errors
Forged Verses claims in the bible
1 John 5:7 is not found in any known manuscripts. Is this true?
Among scholars, this is known as the Johannine Comma, there are no Greek or Latin manuscripts from the 10th century CE where this text is found. It is useful to note though that it was written on the margins of some 9th-century CE manuscripts, it was scribbled by the side as a reference, not in the main body of the text, and before that, in a 4th-century apologetic text called the Liber Apologeticus. It is widely agreed by scholars that this addition to the bible came in at a much later time. It is not found in early translations, so it was moved from the margins into the actual body of the text some 1,000 years later. Dan McClellan did an amazing expose on this recently and answered the question of why it is in our King James Version of the bible.
Recall the Jews seek Jesus for a sign but the Greeks come for knowledge. At some point in the 2nd century, at the height of the Greko-Roman era, Apologists came together to try to make the gospels very intellectual so the Greeks could accept them – not just as something inspired by God, because it was impossible to get the Roman elites to accept God’s word. So people started to consolidate the “New Testament” together as one book, taking different pieces and fitting them together. By the 5th century, the project was complete.
It was during this era scriptures like 1 John 5:7 were moved from the margins into the main body of the text, one of the major reasons being that “Let us make man in our image” from the Torah needed to make sense.
We have a ton of scriptures that made it from the margins into the main body of the text or are commonly omitted in newer translations in light of new knowledge.
Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14. Mark 7:16, 9:44,46, 11:26, 15:28, Luke 17:36, John 5:4, Acts 8:37, 15:34, 24:7, 28:29, Romans 16:24, 1 John 5:7-8.
You’ll find these texts in the KJV and older translations due to the source they were derived from - before the 16th century CE, all translations of the New Testament were based on the Latin Vulgate, originally worked on by a Dutch scholar named Desiderius Erasmus. At some point, he produced a dual-column Latin and Greek New Testament which provided protestants with a source text to translate the New Testament. This was what Martin Luther used for his German Translation, and William Tyndale also used this for his English translation.
Zooming in on 1 John 5:7-8, Erasmus did not have that body of text in his first edition. 1 John 5:7 in Erasmus's first edition simply reads "There are three that bear witness, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree". However, in Erasmus' third edition, he added the Johannine Comma but noted that he could not find it in any Greek manuscripts. Weirdly, not long after that, someone turned up with a brand new Greek manuscript known as Montfortianus and suddenly, the Johannine Comma was on the page! Worthy of note is that the Montfortianus was copied from a script that did not contain it so the general agreement among Scholars is that this was added to the Greek manuscript to get Erasmus to add it. So it popped up in Erasmus' third edition which he called the Novum Testamentum Omne, which will later become known as the Textus Receptus. This was the base text for English translations including the KJV - which suggests that the KJV is less accurate than the newer editions of the bible that omits this and about 15 other passages from the New Testament.
Man-made decisions
1 John 5:7 is a classic example of not just stating how the bible has gone through people adding their sentiments, and world views and having to pick what goes in, but has also formed the basis of theology as we know it today. For instance, a widely debated subject originates or is solidified by this particular verse in 1 John, which we have now established was not found in any of the original texts. The concept of the trinity is widely debated today, the facts are that the Trinitarian creed wasn't established for over 400 years, and there were Christians who didn't believe in the trinity of Jesus. Some people believed that Jesus was God only when He was on earth and that at his death, God left him.
The opposing concept was the idea of Arius which stipulated that Jesus was a created being rather than a begotten being and that there was a time when Jesus didn't exist because he was created. This suggests that Jesus was subordinate to the Father. However, by the 4th century, Greek philosophical frameworks had super-changed the entire narrative, because if the elites never accepted the divinity of Jesus, the gospels won’t hold power.
At a later time, the council of Nicea DECIDED to leave Arius (the belief that Jesus was created rather than begotten) out of the bible. This means 1 John 5:7 which wasn't found in the earliest manuscripts but appeared weirdly in very later versions was adopted by the Council of Nicea because the council was formed by people who believed, based on the philosophical school of thought they agreed with, that Jesus was equal with God and, in fact, was God...and we must also point out that scholars like Irinaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Justin Martyr all agreed that Jesus is God, not created. It seemed to the Nicea council that Arius introduced a new teaching.
I went through all that just to point out that the bible we read today has undergone the influences of men who made certain decisions based on what they materials they were exposed to at the time.
Little nuances
Let's start with the missing verses. Acts 8:37 - You'll find it in the KJV, Geneva, and several other translations. However, when you get down to the NIV or ESV, it skips 37 and adds a little footnote that verse 37 was found in some manuscripts.
Now let’s get into something more controversial.
Matthew 1:22-23 adapts the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14 which is Isaiah giving comfort to King Ahaz. Isaiah went on to talk about the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians in 722 BCE. Follow me closely, you'll find that the prophecy in the book of Isaiah was limited to the 8th century. The original text reads
“14. Therefore the Lord himself will give you all a sign. Behold, the young woman is pregnant and about to bear a son, and you, [young woman,] will call his name Immanuel.
15. He will eat butter and honey when he knows to refuse evil and choose good
16. For before the child knows to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you abhor will be forsaken”
The original text says a young woman is pregnant, present tense. And then says before this child gets to an age of discretion, the land they abhor will be deserted and laid waste. That’s interesting, because King Ahaz at the time, in the and of Judea was battling against Israel and Syria. Both Israel and Syria had formed a coalition and we see from the bible that not long after the prophesy, Pekah, the son of Remalia was killed by Hoshea and Rezin was killed by the king of Assyria.
So how come the second part of the prophecy was fulfilled while the first part was still pending?
Some 5 centuries later, when scripture was translated into Greek for the Septuagint, only the second part of the prophecy had been fulfilled but if the text would still be relevant to anyone in the Greko-Roman period of Judaism, it had to be reworded. So the Greek Septuagint doesn’t read "A young woman has conceived", it reads “a young virgin will conceive” and this is the text you find all over the KJV and other translations.
So this changes it from a completed action to something that will happen in the future. The author of the book of Matthew does the same thing, takes the text, that a parthenos (virgin) will conceive and she will call Him Emmanuel, the author of Matthew changes that to "They will call Him Immanuel".
Why is this relevant?
The very small changes to the text make a big difference. So someone asked why we believe that Jesus is the Messiah when Isaiah clearly said they will call Him Emmanuel, but He is called Jesus...and on that ground, she doubts the Bible. The very minor change from "she", the virgin will call Him Emmanuel to "They" will call him Emmanuel sparked questions – this shouldn’t be an issue because it was Mary that was prophesied to call Him Immanuel, and He is Emmanuel because He manifested “God with us”.
Going forward, if you've engaged with atheists enough, some people say Jesus was not the name given, and they point out that there is no J in Greek. Greek has no symbol that represents J nor does it have a sound that is equivalent to our J sound. The letter J was added to the Latin alphabet in the Middle Ages to distinguish it from the consonant I.
Little nuances matter. For instance, when Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" that particular body of text leaves a lot of questions - where was God before the beginning? Because when you say in the beginning God created, it suggests that God has a beginning and everything that has a beginning has an end, it means God exists within time, which is inaccurate. So in the book of Revelations when God said I am the Alpha and the Omega, it was God coping with human primitivity and level of understanding. We know God exists outside of time, God IS! The implication of the way KJV has translated it suggests that nothing (ex nihilo) existed before the creation of the heavens and the earth. The proper translation of that text is "When God began to create the heaven and the earth" as written by the Jerusalem bible or the Jewish Bible Society translation which is more accurate about the original manuscripts in light of new understandings.
So our translations in this day and age are based on the choices highly intelligent translators made, or their lack of understanding as the case may be.
If we were to go in-depth, we would tear apart 1 Thes 4:4 in a word study, but this is not the time for it.
What have we said so far?
Yes, when you pick up your KJV, you read the bible as it is but you don’t know what choices the transliterators had to make because you don't know the source...so every translation is JUST a version of the text. We’ll get to this in a moment, it is not a problem as atheists will have you believe.
The script we are all looking at is from the 11th century, a thousand years old. But there are other scripts from 2,000 years ago called the Dead Sea Scrolls.
So which manuscripts are you supposed to lean into? The Dead Sea Scrolls are different from our current Hebrew texts and preserved the multiple versions. The oldest text we have, the Greek Septuagint is from the 3rd Century BC, before the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since the Septuagint isn't the same as the Hebrew, they are different, the Greeks seem to be translating a different version of the Hebrew we have today, which do we give more credit to? The book of Jeremiah when translated from the Greek Septuagint is way shorter than the book of Jeremiah when translated from the Hebrew texts we have today. They both have claims to antiquity, there are also 2 different versions of the book of Samuel, both equally attested at Kumron, the Dead Sea Community, which means people believed both were good.
The reality is that the texts we have access to today have been altered, but I must also point out that the earliest texts have also undergone some challenges - whole texts have been removed from different versions, and whole verses have also been added. The challenge this poses is this: imagine you run your country’s constitution through a translator every 2 or 3 years, and you tell people to objectively follow it!
So what now? Should we dump the bible?
Having laid that context, can we begin?
Here is the hard truth - it is ok for the bible to have holes, it was written 300 years after Jesus, even if we were to play the popular game of whispers, where I whisper a tongue twister to you and you whisper to the next person, we can't go round a room and have the exact origin, talk less of a book 300 years after the fact, translated by people who didn’t have half the knowledge we have today.
The most important thing is that the historical evidence points to Jesus and the legitimacy of a person who existed at one point in time. The oral transmission of the original text is based on the trustworthiness of eyewitnesses is a vital part of why we believe in the bible.
So here’s the thing you’ve been waiting to hear.
This is a hard thing to say as a Christian - the bible is not the anchor of our faith. The anchor of our faith is in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. So there were people who captured the experiences Jesus had, the event of His death and resurrection - the bible is JUST a documentation of the movement…and I use that word carefully – “JUST”. We’ll unpack it in a moment.
Why do I believe in the bible? And why should you too?
Every truth is based on 3 things: the anchor, the movement, and the documentation. See it broken down below:
1. We have the anchor (the event of His death and resurrection)
2. The movement (Experience and expression of the event)
3. The book (the documentation of the experience)
Without the book, you cannot validate the experiences (you know what they say, the dullest pen is sharper than the smartest brain). Without the book, that is the documentation, we depend on hearsay. The book was documented by those who experienced or secondary sources to those who experienced the movement. So it allows us to judge the movement and our exposition on the anchor. The book is the greatest document and the next best thing for those of us who came after the movement. The real validation of our experience in Christ is through the book, it points us to the Anchor, which is Christ.
So when you hear people point out tiny errors and what they view as contradictions in the bible, it is because they have prioritized the documentation but discounted the anchor.
Think of this in 3 folds - there is the body, spirit, and soul that form a man. In the same way, there is the book (physical, touchable. Think of this as the body), there is the anchor (think of this as the spirit) and there is the movement (think of this as the soul). All 3 are connected to give authenticity to Christ.
The Bible is a fascinating book with over 65k cross references or hyperlinked verses. That’s not a coincidence, there are a lot of things written we can prove in our observable world today. So when next you pick up the bible, is not just a book we read, it is a point of contact attesting to what is possible.
The summation of this all is that the bible is broken into 3:
1. The academic part of it - what you are taught
2. The Educational part of it - what you teach yourself
3. The Revelational part of it - what you are given as you study.
Studying the Bible is a point of contact only to the extent that you do not engage it as just educational or academic material, but that you engage it as a tool that can position and align you to the will of God.
So when next you hear someone tell you how inconsistent the bible is, or when they tell you verses were forged or removed, or that bible language is different from ours, agree with them. It’s all true. But get them not to prioritize the documentation. The focus is on the Anchor, the person of Jesus.
The intellectually stimulating and spiritually rich experience begins with understanding. Here is something for you to understand:
1. To make the most of your belief in God, you must become more spiritual and less religious…for the letter killeth the Spirit gives life.
2. Don't get hung up on the little details. Love God genuinely and cultivate a relationship with the Holy Spirit. You’ll find that this Holy Spirit will no longer be just a fable, He is real, He speaks, He listens, He is God with us.
