How can anyone trust the Bible today when it has been translated so many times?

In my numerous conversations with people all over the world, the two most solicited attacks are 1) the Bible is full of contradictions (for the record, there are no Biblical contradictions), and 2) Biblical inerrancy. Such misinformation is then shared as factual reality and from there it takes on a life all its own. For the record, I have come to learn that what a person thinks about God's Word, in reality, reflects what a person thinks about God.

What the Bible claims itself to be

Over 2,000 times in the Old Testament alone, the Bible asserts that God spoke what is written within its pages. From the beginning to the end and continually throughout, this is what Scripture claims.

The phrase, "Word of God" occurs over 40 times in the New Testament. It is equated with the Old Testament (Mark 7:13). It is what Jesus Himself preached (Luke 5:1) and the Apostles taught (Acts 4:31; 6:2). It was the message Paul preached in his three missionary journeys (recorded in the Book of Acts, which also describes the spreading of the early Christian church).

The Publishing Process

The Bible does not expect its reader to speculate on how these divine qualities were transferred from God to His Word, but rather anticipates the questions with convincing answers. Every generation of skeptics has assailed the self-claims of the Bible, but its own explanations and answers have been more than equal to the challenge.

Revelation

God took the initiative to disclose or reveal Himself to mankind (Hebrews 1:1). The Vehicles varied; sometimes it was through the created order, at other times through visions/ dreams or speaking prophets. However, the most complete and understandable self-disclosures were through the propositions of scripture (I Corinthians 2:6-16). The revealed and written Word of God is unique in that it is the only revelation of God that is complete and that so clearly declares man's sinfulness and God's provision of the Savior.

Inspiration

The revelation of God was captured in the writings of Scripture by means of inspiration (II Timothy 3:16 and II Peter 1:20-21). This has more to do with the process by which God revealed Himself than the fact of His self-revelation. By this means the Word of God was protected from human error in its original record by the ministry of the Holy Spirit (Deuteronomy 18:18, Zechariah 7:12, and Matthew 1:22). This ministry of the Spirit extended to both the part (words) and to the whole in the original writings.

Canonicity

It is important to recognize that the Bible is actually one book with one Divine Author, though it was written over a period of 1,700 years through the pens of 40 authors whose spoke different languages and lived on different continents. This then gets to the heart of your skepticism, "How do we know what supposed sacred writings were to be included in the canon of Scripture and which ones were to be excluded?"

Over the centuries three widely recognized principles were used to validate those writings which came as a result of divine revelation and inspiration. First, the writing had to have a recognized prophet or apostle as its author (or one associated with them, as is the case of Mark, Luke, Hebrews, James and Jude). Second, the writing could not disagree with or contradict previous Scripture. Third, the writing had to have general consensus by the church as an inspired book. Thus, when various councils met in church history to consider the canon, they did not vote for the canonicity of a book but rather recognized, after the fact, what God had already inspired.

With regard to the Old Testament, by the time of Christ all of the Old Testament had been written and accepted in the Jewish community. The last book, Malachi, had been completed about 430 BC. Not only does the Old Testament canon of Christ's day conform to the Old Testament which has since been used throughout the centuries, but it does not contain the uninspired and spurious Apocrypha, that group of 14 rogue writings which were written after Malachi and attached to the Old Testament about 200-150 BC in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament called the Septuagint, appearing to this very day in some versions of the Bible. More importantly, not one passage from the Apocrypha is cited by any new Testament writer, nor did Jesus affirm any of it as He recognized the Old Testament canon in His era (Luke 24:27, 44).

By Christ's time, the Old Testament canon had been divided up into two lists of 22 or 24 books respectively, each of which contained all the same material as the 39 books of our modern versions. In the 22 book canon, Jeremiah and Lamentations were considered as one, as were Judges and Ruth. Here's how the 24 book format was divided:

Law
The five Books of Moses

Prophets
Joshus
Judges
I and II Samuel
I and II Kings
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
The Twelve minor prophets

Writings
Psalms
Proverbs
Job
Song of Solomon
Ruth
Lamentations
Ecclesiastes
Esther
Daniel
Ezra-Nehmiah
I and II Chronicles

The same three key tests of canonicity that applied to the Old Testament also applied to the New Testament. In the case of Mark and Luke/ Acts, the authors were considered to be, in effect, the penmen for Peter and Paul respectively. James and Jude were written by Christ's half-brothers, while Hebrews is the only New Testament book whose authorship is unknown for certain, its content is so inline with both the Old Testament and New Testament that the early church concluded it must have been written by an apostolic associate. The 27 books of the New Testament have been universally accepted since 350 AD as inspired by God and have verifiably remained fully unadulterated.

It is important to point out that the translators were not the only ones who spoke these languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic). There were hundreds of thousands of people who also shared the same common language and who could read those manuscripts for themselves. Even today, one can verify these original manuscripts to any modern English version of the Bible. Just bring any one of the millions of people who speak Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic (fewer people speak Aramaic) and view the originals for yourself.

Consider this example: Let's say I wanted to try and manipulate history by claiming UFO's crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 rather than terrorist, hi-jacked airplanes. Now, if I write these reenactments in English, how many people will refute what I am writing? What are the chances my version would replace the truth? I would say zero. Why? Because hundreds of millions of people visibly saw what truly happened and recorded it.

Preservation

So, how can I be sure that the revealed and inspired, written Word of God, which was recognized as canonical by the early church, has been handed down to this day without any loss of material? One of the Devil's goals is to undermine the Bible. In the beginning he denied God's Word to Eve (Genesis 3:4). Later he attempted to distort the Scripture in his wilderness encounter with Christ (Matthew 4:6-7). Through King Jehoiakim, he even attempted to literally destroy the Word (Jeremiah 36:23). And even to this day the battle for the Bible rages, but Scripture has and will continue to outlast its enemies.

Isaiah 40:8
"The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever."

Isaiah 55:10-11
"For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it."

Peter tells us that no inspired Scripture has been lost in the past and still awaits discovery.

I Peter 1:23-25
"having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because 'All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away, But the word of the Lord endures forever.' Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you."

The Translation Process

Now, let's examine the mapping process to see if words could be mismatched.

As Christianity spread, people desired to have the Bible in their own language which required translations from the original Hebrew and Aramaic languages of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament. No one can question that the manual work of translators could provide and opportunity for error, but publication, which was done by hand copying until the printing press arrived in 1450 AD, also afforded continual possibilities of error.

Through the centuries, the practitioners of textual criticism, a very precise science, have discovered, preserved, catalogued, evaluated, and published an amazing array of biblical manuscripts from both the Old and New Testaments. In fact, the number of existing biblical manuscripts dramatically outdistances the existing fragments of any other ancient literature. By comparing text with text, the textual critic can confidently determine what the original prophetic/ apostolic, inspired writing contained.

Although existing copies of the main, ancient Hebrew text (Masoretic) date back only to the tenth century AD, two other important lines of textual evidence bolster the confidence of textual critics that they have reclaimed the originals. First, the tenth century AD Hebrew Old Testament can be compared to the Greek translation called the Septuagint (written 200 BC). There is amazing consistency between the two, which speaks of the accuracy in copying the Hebrew text for centuries. Second, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947-1956 (manuscripts that are dated 200 BC) proved to be monumentally important. After comparing the earlier Hebrew texts with the later ones, only a few slight variants existed, none of which changed the meaning of any passage. Although the Old Testament had already been translated and copied for centuries, the most recent translated copy was essentially the same as the earlier ones.

The New Testament findings are even more decisive because a much larger amount of material is available for study; there are over 5,000 Greek New Testament manuscripts that range from the whole testament to scraps of papyri which contain as little as part of one verse - a few existing fragments date back to within 25 years of the original writing. New Testament textual scholars have concluded that 1) 99.99 percent of the original writings have been reclaimed, and 2) of the remaining one hundredth of one percent, there are no variants affecting any Christian doctrine.

With the wealth of biblical manuscripts in the original languages and with the disciplined activity of textual critics to establish with almost perfect accuracy the content of the autographs, any errors which have been introduced and/ or perpetuated by the thousands of translations over the centuries can be identified and corrected simply by comparing the translation with the reassembled original. Through this means, God has made good His promise to preserve the Scriptures.

I Thessalonians 2:13
"For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe."

Tens of thousands of people have witnessed and recorded historical events, this is how we have that information today. Tens of thousands also witnessed the events of the Old and New Testaments and that too is how we have them today.