The Bible Was Not Changed
Whenever anyone claims that the Bible was edited or tampered with, ask them how much textual criticism they have studied. In essence, they don't know what they are talking about. There is no manuscript or archaeological evidence supporting their view that the Bible was changed. These critics appeal to a conspiracy theory of an altered Bible, because it so clearly and obviously condemns their views. At the end of this article I recommend a few books.
No document from the ancient world is as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament (Montgomery, History and Christianity, p. 29).
There are thousands of manuscripts for the New Testament, and no evidence of any tampering.
Greek manuscript copies, roughly 5,500.
Number of non-Greek manuscripts: 18,000.
G.D. Kilpatrick of Oxford said, "no one has so far shown that the New Testament is contaminated with the grammar or orthography [spelling] of a later period." (Wenham, Christ and the Bible, p. 179).
John Warwick Montgomery writes: "the time interval between the writing of the New Testament documents as we have them and the events in Jesus' life which they record is too brief to allow for communal redaction [editing or tampering with] by the Church." (Montgomery, Where is History Going? p. 50).
John Warwick Montgomery also wrote: "Modern archaeological research has confirmed again and again the reliability of the New Testament geography, chronology, and general history"...(see Montgomery, Human Rights and Human Dignity, pp. 143-144).
John Wenham writes: "The interesting and important thing about the late-second-century text is this: at the early date there was already a wide diversity of variants. These variants were of course mostly quite minor in character, but they show that there had been no recent systematic editing of the documents to make them conform to some standard version." (Wenham, Christ and the Bible, p. 178).
Sir Fredrick G. Kenyon, director and principal librarian of the British Museum said about the existing Greek manuscripts of the New Testament: "The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established." (as quoted in Montgomery, Where is History Going? p. 45).
Sir Fredrick G. Kenyon also wrote: "The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world." (Kenyon, The Bible and Archaeology----, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, 55).
The Harvard law professor Simon Greenleaf, credited with writing the standard study of legal evidence, wrote: "copies which had been as universally received and acted upon as the Four Gospels, would have been received in evidence in any court of justice, without the slightest hesitation." (Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists, 9-10).
Recommended Books:
The Early Text of the New Testament, by Hill and Kruger;
An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 2nd ed, by Robertson;
The Text of the New Testament, by Taylor;
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, by F.F. Bruce.