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     There were hundreds of reporters accompanying the troops in Iraq (2003).  The news was filled with varying and even conflicting accounts of what happened.  Historians will write their viewpoint of which battles were significant to victory or defeat.  In later decades or more, revisionists will have their shot at it, the result of which will be at least somewhat different than what was originally reported.  Since the Bible’s internal claims assert that it was written over the course of 1600 years, between 1445 BC and A.D. 95, by 40 different writers, and in view of possible revisionism, should we not also ask the question “Do we have the Bible as it was originally written?”
     Until the middle of the 20th century critics questioned the reliability of the Old Testament because the earliest complete Hebrew manuscript was dated to the 11th century AD, fully 1500 years after the last Old Testament prophecies and 1000 years after Jesus of Nazareth was born.  The implication was that the prophecies of Jesus could have been written into the Old Testament after He was born, thus showing that He was not prophesied at all.  Such would present a profound question - “Is Jesus in fact God as He claimed to be?”  The critics’ claims were vaporized by the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (written between 100-200 years BC) which included the entire book of Isaiah and fragments of every Old Testament book, except Esther.  Comparison with the AD 9th to 11th centuries, Old Testament manuscripts revealed some copyist’s errors, but no changes in the text.  This proved that the Old Testament had been meticulously copied for over 1000 years, thus reflecting the reverence that the scribes had in their accurate transmission of the Hebrew text.
     The New Testament was written between AD 55 to 95 in Koine Greek, the world’s common language of that era.  No other book in history has been attested to by the preponderance of ancient manuscripts as the New Testament, which in itself points to the importance people have attributed to it over the last two millenia.  Among the 5600 Greek manuscripts and fragments there are 400 variations, most of which are copyist errors.  Fifty of the errors have significance, but none affect the New Testament’s teachings.  When one considers that corrective eye glasses were not developed until 1370 and that the ancient ink faded and flaked, it is most remarkable that we enter the 21st century with a New Testament text that is 98.33% pure.  We can only conclude that the copyists were extremely meticulous in duplicating the biblical text and that such care has given us a Bible that is reliable and can be trusted to be as it was originally.  But this only proves that the Bible has been carefully and accurately transmitted to us, but it does not prove that it is inspired.  How do we know it is inspired by God?

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