Is the Bible Reliable?

“The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.”

Psalm 119:160

A question like “Is the Bible reliable?” usually means: Can I trust what’s been handed down to me? Has it been changed? Are we reading something close to what was originally written?

Scripture answers that with confidence in God’s faithfulness — and history gives us real, testable reasons to trust that the Bible has been preserved with remarkable care.

A gentle, clear answer

Yes — the Bible is reliable in the sense that we have strong historical and textual evidence that the biblical text has been transmitted faithfully, and that modern translations are built from a wide base of ancient witnesses.

That doesn’t mean every copyist was perfect. It means we have so much manuscript evidence that the original wording can be studied carefully and compared across thousands of sources.

1) Reliability doesn’t mean “no differences” — it means differences can be checked

When people hear “variants,” they often assume “corruption.”

But in textual history, variants are expected when documents are copied by hand across centuries. The question is: Do we have enough evidence to identify and evaluate those differences?

For the New Testament especially, the answer is yes: we have thousands of Greek manuscripts to compare. The Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) notes that more than 5,500 Greek New Testament manuscripts are known.

2) The New Testament has unusually strong manuscript support

A few steady points that are widely acknowledged in the field:

The Greek New Testament is preserved in thousands of manuscripts, commonly discussed in the 5,500+ range, with ongoing catalog updates.

Some very early fragments exist, including P52, often cited as among the earliest surviving New Testament fragments (commonly dated to the 2nd century, though exact dating is debated).

Modern Bible translations typically rely on critical editions of the Greek text (like Nestle-Aland), which are constructed from comparing manuscript evidence.

What that means in plain words: modern translators aren’t guessing. They’re working from an enormous library of evidence.

3) The Old Testament has powerful confirmation through the Dead Sea Scrolls

One of the simplest, most concrete examples of reliability is this:

Before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered (1947–1956), our oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts were much later than the biblical period. The Dead Sea Scrolls gave us biblical manuscripts about a thousand years older than many previously used Hebrew copies — and they showed substantial continuity in transmission.

The Israel Museum (Shrine of the Book) describes the Dead Sea Scrolls as ancient manuscripts discovered in that 1947–1956 window, preserving many biblical texts and related writings.

The point isn’t that every letter matches in every copy. The point is: the core text was not reinvented. It was preserved and transmitted in a way that can be checked against older witnesses.

4) “Has the Bible been changed?” A careful answer

Here’s the most honest and reassuring way to say it:

Copying by hand introduced differences (spelling, word order, occasional additions or omissions).

Because we have so many manuscripts, those differences can be compared and weighed.

The existence of careful critical editions (like NA28) is actually evidence of transparency: scholars show the data and document key variants.

So yes, copies differ in places — but that is not the same as the Bible being “unreliable.” It’s the normal reality of ancient texts, handled with unusually strong evidence.

5) The deeper question: can Scripture be trusted to lead us to Christ?

Textual evidence matters. But Scripture also invites a relational posture:

Jesus treated Scripture as trustworthy and appealed to it as God’s word while correcting misuse and distortion.

This is important: many people weren’t hurt by the Bible — they were hurt by someone using the Bible without love, context, or honesty.

Reliability includes this too: we read carefully, in context, without coercion.

A calm takeaway

If you are seeking steadiness, you don’t need to pretend there are no hard questions. You can ask them openly.

And you can also rest in this: the Bible is not a fragile document that collapses under honest inquiry. The manuscript evidence is substantial, and the text has been preserved with a depth of support that is historically unusual.