The Bible: Can We Really Trust It?

If you’re a Christian in high school today, you’ve probably heard some version of this question: “How can you trust a book that’s so old and has been copied and translated so many times?” Maybe you’ve even wondered that yourself but felt nervous to say it out loud.

Those questions don’t make you a bad Christian. They make you an honest one. In this article, I want to talk to you, as a fellow believer, about why you can have real confidence that the Scriptures you hold in your hands are reliable. We won’t answer every question, but we’ll walk through one strong line of evidence that should encourage your heart: the evidence for the New Testament as a historically trustworthy document. Then we’ll think briefly about why that matters for your faith.

1.       What Do We Mean by “Reliable”?

When we ask, “Is the Bible reliable?” we’re really asking a few things:

- Has the text been preserved accurately over time, or has it been changed?

- Do the documents reflect real events and real people, or are they legends?

- Is the Bible the kind of book that we can base our lives on?

Christians ultimately believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16), but God has also given us good reasons in history and evidence to trust that belief.

2.       A Strong Argument: The Manuscript Evidence for the New Testament

One powerful reason to trust the reliability of Scripture is the manuscript evidence behind the New Testament. That might sound technical, but it’s actually pretty simple to grasp.

a.       What is a manuscript?

Before the printing press, books were copied by hand. Each handwritten copy is called a manuscript. The more manuscripts we have, and the closer they are in time to the originals, the more confidently we can tell what the original said. We don’t have the original pieces of paper (or scrolls) that Paul, Luke, or John wrote on. That’s true for every ancient work. What we have are thousands of later copies. The question is: are those copies good enough to let us reconstruct what the authors actually wrote? For the New Testament, the answer is a strong, yes.

b.       How the New Testament compares to other ancient writings

Consider some famous ancient works historians trust:

- Caesar’s “Gallic Wars”: about 10 copies; the earliest is about 1,000 years after Caesar wrote. 

- Plato’s writings: around 7–20 copies; the earliest about 1,000+ years after he lived. 

- Tacitus (a Roman historian): around 20 copies; earliest about 800–1,000 years later.

No serious historian says, “We can’t know what Plato wrote” just because we don’t have the originals. The evidence is limited, but it’s good enough for history. Now compare that to the New Testament:

- We have over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament alone. 

- If we include early translations into other languages (Latin, Coptic, Syriac, etc.), the total goes up to tens of thousands of manuscripts. 

- Our earliest fragments date to within about 30–100 years of the originals, and complete books and collections appear within a few hundred years. In terms of number of copies and closeness to the originals, the New Testament is in a category of its own. If we throw out the New Testament as unreliable, we’d have to throw out almost everything we know from ancient history.

c.       “But aren’t there lots of differences between manuscripts?”

You might hear people say, “There are thousands of errors in the New Testament manuscripts!” That sounds scary until you understand what that means. When scholars talk about “variants,” they’re talking about any difference at all between manuscripts: spelling differences, word order changes, missing or repeated words, and so on. Most of these are tiny and don’t affect the meaning of the text.

- The vast majority of variants are things like spelling (“John” vs. “Jon”) or simple copying mistakes.

- Less than 1% of all variants are both meaningful (they affect the sense of the verse) and viable (they could be what the original said).

- No core doctrine of the Christian faith—things like the deity of Christ, the resurrection, salvation by grace—is based on a text that’s in doubt.

Because we have so many manuscripts from different times and places, scholars can compare them and see what the original most likely said with a very high degree of confidence. So the situation is actually the opposite of what critics often suggest: 

The abundance of manuscripts isn’t a problem; it’s one of our greatest strengths.

3.       The Nature of the Writings: Eyewitnesses and Early Accounts

Manuscripts tell us we can know what was written. But we can go further and ask: Are the writings themselves rooted in real history? Here’s where the New Testament, especially the Gospels and Acts, stands out:

- The Gospels are written either by eyewitnesses (Matthew, John) or by people who carefully investigated eyewitness testimony (Mark, who was close to Peter; Luke, who says he “carefully investigated everything from the beginning” – Luke 1:3).

- The events they describe take place in real locations that we can identify: Jerusalem, Capernaum, the Sea of Galilee, Rome, and more.

- The writers include historical details - names of rulers, cultural customs, local geography that match what we know from archaeology and non-Christian historical sources.

If the early Christians were inventing stories, they picked a very strange way to do it. They wrote their accounts in the style of ancient historical biography, anchored them in real places and people, and circulated them while many eyewitnesses were still alive, people who could have said, “That’s not how it happened.” Even non-Christian historians like Tacitus (a Roman) and Josephus (a Jewish historian) confirm important basic facts: that Jesus lived, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and that his followers believed he rose from the dead. In other words, our faith is not built on vague myths “long ago in a land far away.” It’s built on claims that were made in public, in history, and could be checked.

4.       Why This Matters for Your Faith 

You might be thinking, “Okay, that’s interesting. But what does all this manuscript and history stuff have to do with my walk with Jesus?” Let me connect the dots in three ways.

a.       You’re not believing a “made-up” book

When you open your Bible, you’re not reading a distorted, telephone-game version of some lost original. You’re reading a text that has been carefully preserved, studied, and passed down. God, in His providence, used ordinary human copying and scholarship to guard His Word over centuries. That means when you read Jesus’ words, you can be confident you are really hearing His teaching, not someone’s later invention.

b.       Your questions are welcome at the feet of God

Knowing that the Scriptures are historically reliable doesn’t mean you’ll never have questions. You might still wrestle with passages you don’t understand, or with how to apply God’s Word in a complicated world. But you don’t have to be afraid that one hard question will “break” your faith. God is not fragile, and neither is His Word. Psalm 119:160 says, “The sum of your word is truth.” The more we study, the more we see that is exactly what we find.

c.       God uses a trustworthy Word to do heart-deep work

At the end of the day, the Bible is not just an artifact to be studied; it is the living Word of God. Hebrews 4:12 says it is “living and active,” cutting to the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. The same God who oversaw the writing and preserving of Scripture is the God who wants to meet you in its pages, comforting you when you’re anxious, correcting you when you’re wandering, and strengthening you when you’re discouraged. You can bring your doubts and questions to Him, and you can open the Bible knowing you are not stepping onto thin ice. You are standing on solid ground.

5.       A Pastoral Encouragement

If you’re a Christian, you live in a world where the Bible is constantly questioned, mocked, or ignored. That can be heavy. You might feel like you’re swimming against the current every day. So, hear this: You are not crazy for trusting the Scriptures. You are not naive. You are standing in a long line of believers, from the earliest Christians until now, who have found the Bible to be both historically reliable and spiritually life-giving. The same Jesus who said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35) is the Jesus who holds you fast. He has given you a trustworthy Word, not to burden you, but to anchor you. So, keep reading. Keep asking good questions. Keep seeking answers. And as you do, let the reliability of Scripture strengthen your confidence not just in a book, but in the God who speaks through it.