Preservation of the Bible: Manuscripts and Textual Variants

Many have claimed that the Bible has been changed over time—but this is simply untrue. The LDS Church’s Articles of Faith say that Mormons “…believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly” (Articles of Faith 8).

Latter-day Saints often believe that the Old and New Testaments are untrustworthy because they have not been “translated” correctly. By this, Mormons mean that the Bible has not been completely preserved, not correctly translated from the original languages. Both of these claims, however, are unsubstantiated.

In this podcast episode, Bradley and Garrett interview Luke Wayne of CARM.org about whether or not the Bible was accurately preserved through the ages. We talk about the history of the Bible, the transmission of the New Testament text, the manuscript tradition, and the textual variants that are found within these manuscripts.

If you’ve wanted to learn about the reliability of the Bible, then this would be a great podcast episode for you to listen to! While we certainly are talking through these things with Latter-day Saints in mind, these truths are encouraging for anyone curious to know about the transmission of the Bible.

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16)