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John Piper: The Few Differences in Ancient Bibles Do Not Change the Truth of the Gospel

John Piper, author, DesiringGod.com blogger, and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, being interviewed for a podcast at Westside Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Friday, July 31, 2015.
John Piper, author, DesiringGod.com blogger, and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, being interviewed for a podcast at Westside Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Friday, July 31, 2015. | (Screengrab: YouTube/DesiringGod)

The small number of differences within various ancient copies of the Holy Bible do not change the truth of the Gospel message, says Pastor John Piper.

In a recent podcast posted to Piper's website desiringgod.com, the theologian and author was asked about verses known to have been added to the Bible later on.

"Pastor John, how can I trust the Bible if there have been so many add-ins, such as Mark 16:9–20 and John 7:53–8:11 and 1 John 5:7–8," asked one listener.

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"If these verses have been added into the Bible, and should not have been, how do we know other things have not been added into the Bible as well?"

Piper responded by noting that there is a field for this, called "textual criticism," which can effectively weed out any added verses.

A picture depicting the 10th century Aleppo Codex is displayed during a news conference at Jerusalem's Yad Ben-Zvi institute December 2, 2007. The institute said last month that a 1,000-year-old parchment, the size of a credit card, forms part of the Aleppo Codex, viewed by scholars as one of the most authoritative manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. The parchment was kept as a lucky charm by Sam Sabbagh, a Syrian Jew who in 1947 plucked it from the floor of an Aleppo synagogue that was torched after a United Nations decision to partition Palestine, paving the way for the creation of Israel.
A picture depicting the 10th century Aleppo Codex is displayed during a news conference at Jerusalem's Yad Ben-Zvi institute December 2, 2007. The institute said last month that a 1,000-year-old parchment, the size of a credit card, forms part of the Aleppo Codex, viewed by scholars as one of the most authoritative manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. The parchment was kept as a lucky charm by Sam Sabbagh, a Syrian Jew who in 1947 plucked it from the floor of an Aleppo synagogue that was torched after a United Nations decision to partition Palestine, paving the way for the creation of Israel. | (Photo: Reuters)/Ammar Awad

"It specializes in comparing thousands of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and deducing from those comparisons where there are differences between two or more dozen documents and, where there are differences, which reading is the more likely to be original," responded Piper.

Piper noted that scholars have around 5,800 Ancient Greek manuscripts of either all or parts of the New Testament, making it very easy to compare documents and determine what was added in later.

"In other words, when the text critics sit down to do their work, they are not comparing three or four or 50 manuscripts which might leave us wondering what the original wording was," continued Piper.

"They have thousands of texts from different places in different types that function as confirmations of what the original wording was."

With this noted, Piper went on to state that, as others have noted, where there is some uncertainty as to exact wording, this uncertainty doesn't "have any effect on the essential truths of the Christian message."

"It is important to keep in perspective the fact that only very small part of the text is in question, approximately 10% of the Old Testament, 7% of the New Testament. And of these, most variance make little difference to the meaning of any passage," said author Paul Wegner, as quoted by Piper.

Piper's comments come not long after a recent critique of traditional biblical Christian belief was declared by its own discoverer as likely being a hoax.

Over the past several months, a manuscript purporting to claim that Jesus was married was denounced by the professor who found it as likely being a fake.

Professor Karen L. King of Harvard University's Divinity School told The Associated Press in June that she no longer considered the document valid.

"If you ask me today which direction am I leaning more toward — ancient text or a modern forgery — based on this new evidence, I'm leaning toward modern forgery," stated King.

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