Is the Bible reliable?

Is the Old Testament reliable?

The short answer

The Old Testament is a carefully preserved and historically anchored collection. Jewish scribes copied it with famous care, and the Dead Sea Scrolls showed that the text we have matches copies from over a thousand years earlier with striking fidelity. Many of its kings, nations, and events have been confirmed by archaeology and other ancient records. It is diverse literature, history, law, poetry, and prophecy, that has proven trustworthy where it can be tested.

Two questions come up: has the Old Testament been preserved accurately, and does it connect to real history. On both counts the evidence is reassuring.

Preserved with remarkable care

The scribes who copied the Hebrew Scriptures were meticulous, counting letters and lines to guard against error. In 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, manuscripts a thousand years older than what scholars had before. When compared, the text had been transmitted with extraordinary faithfulness across the centuries. What Israel read, we read.

“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.”
Isaiah 40:8

Rooted in real history

Kings of Israel and Judah, empires like Assyria and Babylon, and countless customs and places in the Old Testament are attested outside the Bible in inscriptions and ruins. Scholars still debate particulars, and the books use the literary forms of their age, but the world they describe is a real one, not a myth cut off from history.

It comes back to Jesus

For Christians the Old Testament matters most because it sets the stage for Jesus. Its promises, its longing for a rescuer, and its picture of a suffering servant who bears the sins of many all point forward. To read it is to watch a story lean toward the one who came to fulfill it.

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