The Bible
Can the Bible be trusted? Isn't it full of errors?
Two questions hide in this one: was the Bible copied faithfully, and is what it says true?
Copied faithfully
The handwritten copies differ, as all hand copies do. Textual scholar Daniel Wallace estimates that less than 1 percent of the differences both change the meaning and could be original. The rest are mostly spelling and word order. Most Bibles footnote the ones that matter.
Written while eyewitnesses lived
Most scholars date the four Gospels between about AD 70 and 95, and some date them earlier. People who had seen Jesus were still alive to correct them.
“…even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order
Luke did his homework
Luke opens his Gospel by telling you how he worked: he went back to the eyewitnesses and checked.
- MatthewTwo women at the tomb
- MarkThree women
- LukeThree women, and others with them
- JohnMary Magdalene
Four witnesses, four angles
The Gospels differ on details like these. That's what you get when different people tell the same story. A court gets suspicious when witnesses match word for word.
The Bible we read is what was written, and it was written close to the events by people who talked to the eyewitnesses.
For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.