Introduction: The Bible is the inspired, infallible, inerrant Word of God, and yet the Bibles we have today contain a lot of mistakes and textual problems. In a few moments I will show you some of these. You and your children need to understand that our English Bibles today are the end result of 3500 years of a combination of inspiration and complicated transmission. We need to know that lest some sceptic comes along and makes shipwreck of your Faith by pointing out some of these errors. For good health, we get innoculations. A small bit of the dead disease is injected into our bodies, and our bodies then create anti-bodies. Today I'm going to give you a spiritual innoculation to protect you from sceptics. I have five points.

I. God gave us the Bible, and preserves it, PROVIDENTIALLY, not MIRACULOUSLY.

A. The Mormons say they got the Book of Mormon miraculously. An angel guided Joseph Smith to it. He dug it up. He was given magic spectacles for translating it.

B. The Muslims say that Mohammed merely wrote down what was dictated to him from Heaven.

C. The Bible was given to us a piece at a time. Sixty-six individual "books," written by many different people, over 1600 years, and gradually collected by ordinary people into the book we now have. God guided this entire process providentially, but the only part of the Bible given miraculously was the 10 commandments written on stone by the finger of God.

D. Peter put it this way:

2 Pet 1:20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.
2 Pet 1:21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

E. And Paul wrote:

2 Tim 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
2 Tim 3:17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

F. The Bible wasn't dictated by God, neither has He seen fit to preserve the original manuscripts. It came by natural means through authors writing in their own languages, with their personal educations and writing styles, mis-spelled words, and cultural baggage. It has been copied and translated many times, and some mistakes have been made. As we read the Word of God, we must also be aware of the human fingerprints which are all over it.

II. Anonymous editors have changed the Bible in various ways.

A. We have changed Hebrew and Greek alphabets and writing forms. Moses wrote in an ancient form of Hebrew. Not even a copy of that original form exists. We only have copies of a translation into the more modern Hebrew alphabet. Likewise, our earliest Greek New Testaments have Greek that is entirely in capital letters, and with no spaces between words, and with no punctuation, such as commas, periods and question marks.

B. Well-meaning editors have added to what the original authors wrote. For example:

1. Genesis 14:14. Some editor who lived after the era of the Judges, came back and changed Moses' original "Laish" to "Dan," a place which did not have that name until after both Moses and Joshua were long dead (Judges 18:29).

2. Other passages added by unknown authors: The story of the death of Moses, tacked on to the end of Deuteronomy. The story of the woman taken in the act of adultery in John 8. The ending of Mark (Mark 16:9-20), and other verses.

III. Copyists have (naturally) made many mistakes. Imagine if I gave you my own hand-written copy of the Gospel of John. You copy it, and give your copy to the person next to you. He copies it, and gives his copy to the person next to him, who copies it, and so on. It wouldn't take long before our final copy was full of all kinds of errors. Not only that, but suppose some of the copyists decide to make their own little comments in between verses. Here is where we find most of the contradictions that sceptics bring to challenge our faith in the Bible.

For example:
(And I quote the KJV here, because the NIV editors have already edited out many of the contradictions.)

A. I Kings 4:26......And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.....versus 2 Chron. 9:25 ....And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.

B. 2 Samuel 24:13.....So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? or that there be three days' pestilence in thy land? now advise, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me. versus I Chron. 21:11-12........11 So Gad came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Choose thee either three years' famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel. Now therefore advise thyself what word I shall bring again to him that sent me.

C. Matthew 27:27-28......Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe....versus John 19:1-2....Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head, and they put on him a purple robe.

D. Matthew 27:5-7....... "And he (Judas) cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in....versus Acts 1:18....Now this man (Judas) purchased a field with the reward of (his) iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

IV. The present multitude of English translations have introduced corruptions in the text.
For example, in Romans chapters 7-8, Paul teaches that the great source of sin and temptation against which we must struggle is "the flesh." The KJV reads "the flesh," and that is what it says in the original Greek. But the NIV has changed every reference to the flesh to something called, "the sinful nature." There are no such words in the Greek. The NIV has corrupted the text of God's Word in this case.

A. The spread of Christianity in the first two centuries of the Church necessitated translations into Coptic, Ethiopian, Gothic and Latin. In 405 St. Jerome finished translating a Latin version that was based in part on the Septuagint (the old Greek translation of 200 BC). This Latin Vulgate, became the standard of Western Christianity for a thousand years or more.

B. Wycliffe translated the Bible into English in 1382. Luther finished his German Bible in 1534. The Roman Catholic Church produced the "Douai-Reims Version" in English (New Testament, 1582; Old Testament, 1609–10). At this present time, the entire Bible has been translated into about 250 languages.

C. When I was a boy, everyone used the good old King James Version of the Bible. Now the most popular English translations are the New King James, the Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible, the American Bible, the Jerusalem Bible, the New International Version, the Living Bible, the Amplified Bible and the New American Standard Version. (Please forgive me if I have left out your favorite version!) There are dozens of other modern English translations by both Protestants and Catholics; and even "dialect" versions, such as the one in Gullah, and the "Cottonpatch Bible," written in old southern black dialect, such as "Uncle Remus" used in telling the story of "Brer Rabbit."

D. Jesus cast the money-changers out of the temple, but they have returned in droves. Bible selling has become a big billion dollar business. The merchants have gotten a firm hold on the Bible now, and it is being marketed in every possible way to every possible demographic group. (Read the list from the CBD catalog.) We are now hearing a lot in the news about a new version of the NIV about to appear, that will be "gender neutral."

V. The Bible is still the infallible, inerrant, authoritative Word of God, in spite of all the editors, copyists and translators have done. Very few of the errors they have introduced have any bearing at all on any of the doctrines of the Christian Faith, or about how to live a Christian life. Nearly all the new Bibles coming out, whatever the version, can be read with real spiritual profit. Jesus Himself testified to the enduring authority of the Bible:

Matthew 5:17-19
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

Conclusion: Moses wrote the Pentateuch around the year 1500 BC. The other books of the Bible were written later in several languages, by many authors, over a time span of 1600 years. Copyists and editors have introduced many little contradictions. Translating it into English and the languages of the world also introduces changes in the meaning of the text. But, nevertheless, the Bible remains the authoritative Word of God. If we hope to understand the Bible, and live by it, we need to come to it with an understanding of its inspiration, its history and transmission, and the limitations of our translations.