The unabbreviated question, given as a statement is: “The Bible we have now has been changed over and over again in the centuries since it was written.”
“The Bible we have now” consists of 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. The Old and New Testaments span different eras, so, as is conventionally done, I will handle them separately. But as we’ll see, the conclusion for both will be the same. The Bible we have today is true to God’s word and has not been changed “over and over”, nor at all in the centuries since it was written.
The Old Testament Text
The text of the Old Testament in most bibles today is based on the Masoretic Text, from around 1000 AD. The text was copied by Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes who saw themselves as the keepers and guardians of the word of God and so were fastidious and precise in their copying. To ensure they copied correctly they employed a number of checks to guarantee accuracy such as exhaustive counting of various aspects of the new copy. The Masoretes would count:
“every letter, word, and verse in each book and in the entire Hebrew Bible. They also recorded the middle letter, middle word, and middle verse of each book. A new copy that did not match these counts was considered defective.” [1]
And that’s just one set of a number of techniques used to insure accuracy. So the Masoretes were exacting in the copies they made. But if the writing of the Old Testament began with Moses at the exodus which was 1446 BC, (see here on the date) how do we know the text we have today is accurate and has not changed?
It seems God prepared for that question and preserved for us a much older copy for comparison. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in caves near Qumrun in 1947, is a much older copy of the Old Testament (at least most of it) dating from about 250 BC to the time of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. (Brief video here.) So the Dead Sea texts are about a thousand years older than the Masoretic Text. Therefore comparisons can be, and have been made between the Masoretic text and the Dead Sea Scrolls. They found that there are no major differences in the text. The text has been preserved with amazing accuracy. There are minor textual variants of course—differences in spelling, etc., but none of these changes a major Christian or Jewish doctrine.
Unfortunately, though the Dead Sea Scrolls are mostly complete, it doesn’t contain all of the Old Testament. What about texts that are missing? There are other checks that can be made, using another old copy of the Old Testament text, the Septuagint. This is usually written as the LXX (Roman numeral for 70) due to the origin story that says the translation was worked on by 70 or 72 scholars and they all came up with the same text.
So we can use the LXX to compare texts which are not in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and use other methods as well, such as context to determine what was in the original. Let’s consider a well known text: 2 Sam 11:1(a).
In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army.
This is the passage that introduces David’s affair with Bathsheba. If you’ve ever heard a message on this passage (of which many have been preached) they often start with chiding David for staying at home and gazing at roof tops—where people went to escape the heat—instead of going off to war like the other kings did. Interestingly, a question arises on whether the word for kings is “kings” or “messengers”. The plural forms in Hebrew are very close:
“The Kings” is: הַמְּלָכִים – example Gen 14.17; Josh 9.1
“The Messengers” is: הַמַּלְאָכִים – example Gen 32.6
Already you can see they are very close, differing only by the highlighted aleph and the vowel point (a) beneath it, and the vowel point beneath the mem (מ, the second character from the right with a dot in it). The letter aleph (א )is not a spoken letter. It is like “h” in “honest.” [2] What you actually hear, if anything, is the vowel associated with it – if there is one. When we look at the 1 Sam 11. 1 passage, the text is not quite either one of the above, and we note there’s not a vowel beneath the aleph to make it a spoken sound. The text is הַמַּלְאכִים and translated as “the kings”
The original Hebrew did not have the vowel points beneath it. It contained only consonants. The Masoretes, wanting to add the vowels for precision. Since vowels can change a word (consider rum/ram, door/deer, etc.) they added the vowels beneath the text without changing any of the existing letters. So when you look at the highlighted aleph (א) in the 1 Sam 11.1 passage, you see there is no vowel beneath it. The Masoretes did not add the “a” vowel point that is added under the word “messengers” as in Gen 32.6, which means there would be no sound associated with it.
This removes a syllable from the 1 Sam passage and thus changes the pronunciation from “the messengers” – ham mal a chim, to ham la chim “the kings”; very close to the pronunciation of “the kings” in the Genesis and Joshua passages (ham mal chim).
Were they correct? We can check their understanding by checking the LXX Greek of the 1 Sam 11.1 passage. How do the (70?) LXX translators translate it? They translate the word as “Kings” Βασιλεων (of kings) referring to [the time] of kings (when they go to war). So the LXX translators agree with the Masoretes. The context also tells us the meaning. There’s no apparent connection in speaking of “messengers” going out to war because David is not a messenger.
So we see that even when there are minor variants in the text, we can still determine what the text says using a number of different methods. We also see in this case that the meaning did not change from the time of the LXX (translation started around 280 BC) to the time of the Masoretes (around 1000 AD). The Masoretic Text is still used today, so, for publishers who produce a faithful translation, there has been no change. The Dead Sea Scrolls, The LXX and The Masoretic text all confirm that.
The New Testament Text
Let’s remind ourselves of the question here. The question is: How do we know the text has not changed over the centuries?
The first thing to consider is that there are not a lot of centuries between when the texts were written and when they were locked down, in a manner of speaking, because their importance was realized. They were collected and guarded for preservation and study which also prevents further change.
The earliest New Testament texts we have are from the late 200s AD. Since the New Testament documents were written in the late first century (45-95 AD), and the earliest texts we have are from 200-400 AD that’s only one to three centuries between the writing and when they were “locked down.” We’re not talking dozens and dozens of centuries elapsing before the lockdown. For the earliest texts it’s one or two centuries.
Included with the UBS (United Bible Societies) [3] Greek New Testament is a handy folding card that summarizes the major New Testament documents, what type they are (papyri, uncial, etc.) and what century they’re from. See below:
The introduction in the UBS includes that information and adds the locations of where the ancient documents are located. (See here and here on that.)
From the card you can see that we have many early papyri that date to the late second century (about 200) and to the third century (201-300). Among the most reliable and therefore most valued, uncial texts listed in the intro are the codices Sinaiticus (א), Vaticanus (B), and Alexandrinus (A) which date to the fourth and fifth century AD. So, again, we’re not talking dozens and dozens of centuries where changes could have occurred. For the most important manuscripts it’s one to three centuries.
Next, let’s consider what it would take for a change to be made to a text that is undetectable. I’m specifying undetectable because we have literally hundreds of manuscripts, and we can compare between them to see the differences and see where changes were made. But this questioner is essentially assuming that over the centuries there have been changes made that we don’t know about. Thus they’re undetectable. Let’s look at why that is impossible.
Let us suppose, as some people actually believe [4], that a scribe did not like the way a particular teaching was presented in the text and wanted to change it—for whatever reason—whether as a polemic against Christians or to simplify a hard teaching. Whatever the reason, what options would he have to make a change?
We saw above in the case of the Masoretic Text that due to the extreme attention to detail and checking done to the text [5], it would be impossible for a text to be intentionally or unintentionally changed without it being detected. Can we say the same thing about the New Testament text? Yes, but in the case of the New Testament, it is not due to the fastidiousness of a group of devoted scribes like the Masoretes. It’s due to the overwhelming abundance of texts that we have. Consider the following graphic:
As you can see from the graphic, we have literally thousands of manuscripts that have been collected since the second century AD. But if you go back to the handy foldout above and start near the beginning, even then there are dozens are manuscripts.
So what would have to happen for someone to make an undetectable change? It would be insufficient to change merely his copy of the text, he would have to acquire and modify not only his manuscript but the already-existing dozens of other manuscripts. And he would have to do it in a way that was undetectable. He couldn’t, for example, just erase what he didn’t like and write in what he wanted. No, these were written with indelible ink. So there could be no erasures, no cross outs, no squeezing new text in the margins. All these would be easily detectable, making his attempt to make undetectable changes across dozens of documents a complete and utter failure. Clearly it is impossible to make undetectable changes across all the documents that would need to be changed.
Finally, consider we have an unbroken chain of the message of the gospel from Jesus, to the apostles, to the early church fathers as I describe in “Q.46 The Gospels were created by a “Telephone” game process that turned a real person named Jesus into a god.” So again, a change even early on would be easily detected by those well schooled and versed in the message of Jesus from the apostles to the disciples of the apostles.
Conclusion
There is no way to make undetectable changes to either the Old Testament or New Testament manuscripts. Any attempted change would be easily detectable and apparent. So this objection, “the Bible we have now has been changed over and over again in the centuries since it was written” is nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse for disbelieving the Bible and not doing as Jesus exhorts:
“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
Mark 1.15
Speaking of himself as the cornerstone which many, particularly among the Jewish leadership, had rejected, Jesus said:
Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
Matt 21.44
It’s better to break yourself on Jesus by doing what is necessary to repent and then look to the Lord for healing which he will graciously grant, than to be utterly crushed under the weight of God’s holiness from which there will be no healing for those who continue to reject him.
Duqane Caldwell | August 27, 2026 | Printer friendly version
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Related Article
Q.46 The Gospels were created by a “Telephone” game process that turned a real person named Jesus into a god
Notes
1. AI (Grok) query 8/23/26 Link
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2. Weingreen, J, A Practical Grammar For Classical Hebrew, Second Edition, London:Oxford University Press, 1959, p.
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3. United Bible Societies Third Edition of the Greek New Testament, K. Aland, M. Black, C. Martni, B. Metzger, A.Wikgren, editors, Stuttgart, West Germany:Biblia-Druck Gmbh, 1966 – 1983
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4. AI summary of some of the theories concerning intentional changes to the Biblical text: Grok Link 8/24/26
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5. For some of the checks employed by the Masoretes, see this AI Summary.
Grok Link 8/24/26
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Image
Scroll of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, from: Unearthed: Dead Sea Scrolls – The Dark Truth
Video: Unearthed: Dead Sea Scrolls – The Dark Truth, Science Channel Documentary, 2019
