How reliable is the Bible?

Part II: Hasn't The Bible Changed Over Time?

If God exists and wanted to send a message to the human race, he may use different methods. He may speak in dreams, visions, or inspire people to record thoughts on paper. This is how the Bible began - people were moved to write and these writings were compiled to what is known today as the Bible. But many of you would be shocked to know that the original copy of the Bible no longer exists since the paper would have return to dust.

Thus, how do we know that the Bible we have today is the same Bible from ancient days? Actually, other ancient documents, such as the writings of Aristole and Tacitus, have the same problem; the originals no longer exist. Instead, scholar need to rely on hand-written COPIES of the original texts (there were not photocopy machines back in BC days). Interestingly, for the New Testament, we have over 24,000 copies of the New Testament compared to only 40 copies of Aristotle. And some of these Bible copies are as old as AD 123, which is only 25 years from the original. Furthurmore, other non-Bible ancient writings also speak about Bible events. Indeed, we can be pretty confident that the Bible we have today has been well-preserved and adheres to academic standards.