As the years advance, copies are made of the copy ( 2 nd copy & 3 rd copy). A professional class of people called scribes did the copying work. This original however does not last indefinitely, so before it decays, is lost, or destroyed, a manuscript (MSS) copy of it is made ( 1 st copy). This simplified diagram shows an example of an ancient document written at 500 BC. This figure illustrates the process by which any such writing has been preserved over time.Įxample of Stages in life of a hypothetical ancient document Naturally this question is true of any ancient writing.

Can this game be comparable to the passing of the Bible through time, so that what we read today may be substantially different from the original writings? Principles of Textual Criticism Then the last person says the message out loud and all participants note how it has changed so much from its start at the beginning of the human chain. Since the original manuscripts have long been lost, how do we know that what we read today in the Bible is what the original authors actually wrote long ago? As my resolute friend pointed out to me, many young kids often play a game called telephone, wherein a message is whispered into someone’s ear, and (s)he in turn whispers this message into the next person’s ear until the message has traversed all participants in the game. So the original manuscripts were copied by hand, generation after generation, as languages died out and new ones arose, as empires crumbled and new powers ascended. For most of these millennia there has been no printing press, photocopy machines or publishing companies. After all, it was written two thousand plus years ago. The question my inquirer was asking is fairly straightforward – many of us ask it, and rightly so! It stems from what we know about the Bible. “Why should I even consider the Bible? It was written so long ago, has had so many translations and revisions done to it – it is most likely that its original message has been altered and misunderstood over the course of time.” The young man who asked me this question was intent, wondering if there was any reasonable answer to his skeptical outlook about the Bible.

The living bible