How We Got the Bible
How We Got the Bible: Origins and Reliability
Where did the Bible come from, and can we trust it? This is a guide to the real history: how the books were recognized as Scripture, the manuscript evidence behind the text, the Dead Sea Scrolls, how the Bible was translated into English, and the honest answers to the hardest questions, including whether the Bible was changed and what the lost gospels really were. The aim is accuracy: strong evidence stated plainly, and open debates named as debates.
Start here
- What Is the Biblical Canon?The canon is the list of books the church recognizes as Scripture: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New, 66 in all in most Protestant Bibles. A c…
- The New Testament ManuscriptsThe New Testament is the best-attested text of the ancient world. Around 5,800 Greek manuscripts survive, along with many thousands more in Latin and…
- The Dead Sea ScrollsThe Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts discovered from 1947 onward in caves near Qumran by the Dead Sea. They include the…
- How the Bible Was TranslatedThe Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic (the Old Testament) and Greek (the New Testament). Over centuries it was translated: into Greek (the Septu…
- Is the Bible Reliable?The Bible is exceptionally well-attested as a text: we can be confident that what we read today closely matches what the authors wrote. That is a ques…
- Was the Bible Changed?The claim that the Bible was changed is common, and it deserves a careful, honest answer. Scribes did make copying errors, and a few passages are text…
- The Lost Gospels and the ApocryphaTwo different things get lumped under 'lost gospels.' The Apocrypha (deuterocanonical books) are Jewish writings like Tobit and 1 Maccabees, included…
Where this leads
The manuscripts and the history are worth studying honestly. But the Bible exists to bring you to a Person. The oldest and best-attested testimony in it is the witness to Jesus of Nazareth, his life, his death, and the claim that he rose. If the documents are trustworthy, the next question is what they say.
Beyond the evidence, the Person
The history and the manuscripts matter, and it is good to weigh them honestly. But the Bible was never meant to end in a footnote. It exists to bring you to a Person. The best way to test whether it rings true is to read the Gospel for yourself and watch what Jesus says and does. The Gospel of John is a gentle place to begin, and it costs you nothing but a little quiet and an honest look.
Read the Gospel of JohnWho is Jesus?The resurrectionJesus Christ is Lord.