In the last post, I left you with a pretty big question: Can I actually trust the Bible? Because if I was going to question years of beliefs, traditions, doctrines, and things I had been told were absolutely, positively, unquestionably true and then test those things against Scripture, Scripture itself couldn’t get a free pass. That wouldn’t make any sense. I couldn’t say, “I’m no longer going to believe something just because someone told me to,” and then immediately believe the Bible just because someone told me to.

I needed to know why. Was the Bible actually reliable? Had it been copied and recopied so many times that we had no idea what the original authors wrote? Had things been added or removed? Could I trust the English translations sitting on my bookshelf? What about the historical and archaeological evidence? I had already spent enough time accepting things because someone in a position of spiritual authority said them confidently. I wasn’t interested in doing that anymore.

No, ma’am. As Elle Woods once said, I needed “evidentiary support???”

So, I started digging. What I found wasn’t that every question surrounding the Bible has a neat little answer tied up with a bow. It doesn’t. What I found was much more important to me: the Bible can handle being investigated.

What Does “Reliable” Actually Mean?

Before we go any further, we need to separate two questions Christians sometimes mash together. First, can we reasonably know what the biblical authors originally wrote? Second, is what they wrote actually true and inspired by God? Those questions are related, but they aren’t the same thing.

Having thousands of ancient manuscripts doesn’t automatically prove divine inspiration. Archaeology cannot dig up the Holy Spirit. Finding a place mentioned in Scripture doesn’t prove that every event Scripture says happened there actually happened. Christians do ourselves an extreme disservice when we overstate what evidence can prove. If something is true, we don’t need to exaggerate the evidence supporting it.

What manuscripts, archaeology, history, and textual scholarship can help us determine is whether the Bible we have today bears a reliable relationship to ancient texts and whether those texts fit within the historical world they claim to describe. Before Scripture could become my measuring stick, I needed to know whether I could reasonably trust the measuring stick itself.

Hasn’t the Bible Been Copied Too Many Times?

You’ve probably heard this one: “The Bible has been copied and translated so many times that nobody knows what it originally said.” I pictured the world’s longest-running game of Telephone. Paul writes something in Greek, somebody copies it, somebody translates that copy, somebody translates that translation, and a couple thousand years and several questionable decisions later I pick up an ESV at Hobby Lobby.

WRONG.

For the New Testament, scholars can work directly with surviving manuscripts written in Greek and compare those manuscripts with one another. There are thousands of Greek New Testament manuscript witnesses catalogued today. They aren’t all complete Bibles—some contain books or larger portions, while others are fragments—but having so many witnesses gives scholars something incredibly valuable: the ability to compare them.

That comparison is part of a fun or boring field, depending on your personality—no judgment, but y’all already know I’m a nerd—called textual criticism. Scholars compare surviving copies, study where they agree and disagree, and work toward determining the earliest recoverable wording of the text.

And yes, manuscripts have differences called textual variants.

Cue the dramatic gasp and dun-dun-dun music.

Ancient scribes occasionally misspelled things, repeated or skipped words, changed word order, or made other copying errors. There are also places where scholars continue debating which reading is earliest. But here’s the thing: nobody is hiding that. Depending on the Bible you’re holding, some of those differences are probably printed right there in the footnotes: “Some manuscripts read…” or “Some of the earliest manuscripts do not include…”

They’re telling us. Openly. Right there.

I didn’t need someone assuring me every surviving manuscript was perfectly identical because that simply isn’t true. I needed to know whether we had enough evidence to recognize, compare, and study the differences.

And we do.

And Then We Found Some Really Old Scrolls

There’s a show my kids have watched, I think it’s Dora, with a little song about the grumpy old troll who lives under the bridge. SUPER catchy. Every time I think about scrolls, I think about trolls. Why? I have no idea, but I digress.

There were some dusty old scrolls living under a…rock? Well, in caves actually. Beginning in 1947, ancient manuscripts were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea. What became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls included around 230 manuscripts containing works that are now part of the Hebrew Bible, along with many other ancient Jewish writings. Some date to centuries before Jesus.

That is a BIG deal. YUGE, if you will.

These discoveries gave scholars biblical manuscripts many centuries older than the medieval Hebrew manuscripts that previously made up much of the physical evidence available for studying the Hebrew Bible. Suddenly, scholars could actually compare much older copies with later textual traditions.

Now, you’ve probably heard someone say, “The Dead Sea Scrolls were virtually identical to our Old Testament!” That is an oversimplification. Some are remarkably close to later Hebrew textual traditions, while others contain genuine variations.

And you know what? That doesn’t scare me. We can physically examine biblical manuscripts from before the time of Jesus and compare them with texts from centuries later. We can see both continuity and variation in their transmission.

Faith doesn’t need us to fudge the evidence.

Okay, But What About Translation?

Maybe we have Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, but I don’t read ancient Greek and my Hebrew skills are nonexistent. If we’re being completely transparent, some mornings my English skills are questionable until I’ve had a Red Bull, and even then it’s probably more cornbread than what anyone would call refined English.

So how do I know my English Bible accurately represents those ancient texts?

Your ESV isn’t a translation of the NIV, which was translated from the KJV, which was translated from some other English Bible until eventually somebody reaches Greek. Major modern translations are produced by scholars working from the ancient-language texts themselves.

Different translations make different choices because languages aren’t mathematical equations. Sometimes there is an obvious equivalent for a word. Sometimes several English words capture different shades of its meaning. Sometimes translating word-for-word works beautifully, and sometimes it leaves you with a sentence that sounds like Yoda wrote it.

That’s why I own almost every popular translation in hard copy, although y’all, we have them all available on our phones now too. When I’m studying something closely, you can bet there are going to be two or three Bibles out ready for notes. Different English wording doesn’t automatically mean somebody changed the Bible. Sometimes translation is simply complicated.

Does History Know Jesus Existed?

Yes. Yes, they do. And this is one of the coolest parts of history to me because we can look at Jesus from sources outside Christianity.

The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in the early second century, discussed Nero’s persecution of Christians. He wasn’t writing Christian propaganda—not even close—but he referred to Christus, connected the Christian movement to Him, and reported that He had been executed during the reign of Tiberius under Pontius Pilate.

Another Roman official, Pliny the Younger, wrote to Emperor Trajan in the early second century because he was trying to figure out what in the world he was supposed to do with all these Christians. He reported that Christians gathered and sang hymns to Christ as to a god.

Neither man proves Jesus rose from the dead. I’m not going to make historical sources say things they don’t say. What they do establish is that Jesus and Christianity aren’t floating around outside history. Very early non-Christian sources knew about Christians, connected the movement to Christ, and knew those Christians were worshiping Him.

When the Ground Speaks

Alright, y’all, I will be honest. I am not an outdoorsy type. Bugs? No thanks. Dirt under my nails? Hard pass. The heat? Absolutely not. However, I have one daughter who wants to be an archaeologist, another who wants to be a geologist, and a boy who thinks he should build and rebuild all the things outside in the mud, so apparently I cannot escape it.

One of my favorite archaeological examples comes from John 5. John describes a pool in Jerusalem called Bethesda and gives an oddly specific detail: it had five roofed colonnades, or porches. A normal rectangular pool should have four sides, so five seems strange. Archaeological work at the site revealed two adjacent pools separated by a central partition, an arrangement that explains how the complex could have five colonnades.

Fist bump, John. I always believed in you.

Does finding the Pool of Bethesda prove Jesus healed someone there? Nope. Archaeology cannot dig up a miracle. What it does show is that John’s strangely specific description fits an actual place in ancient Jerusalem.

And this is where I think Christians need to be careful. There are other archaeological claims involving the Bible that remain debated. Jericho, portions of the Exodus and conquest, and proposed locations for places like Sodom are examples where you’ll hear people make much stronger claims than the evidence necessarily allows.

I’m okay saying that.

If the evidence is strong, say it’s strong. If scholars disagree, say they disagree. If we don’t know, say, “I don’t know.”Remember that from the last post? We’re allowed to do that here too.

I don’t believe God needs me to exaggerate evidence to defend Him.

So, Can the Bible Be Trusted?

Here’s where everything finally came together for me. Manuscript evidence cannot prove divine inspiration. Archaeology cannot prove a miracle. Tacitus cannot prove the resurrection. Those are different questions, and pretending otherwise doesn’t strengthen Christianity.

But remember what I was trying to determine. I needed to know whether the Bible was some hopelessly corrupted ancient book that had been copied, translated, edited, and manipulated beyond recognition.

The evidence didn’t lead me there.

Instead, I found thousands of manuscripts scholars can compare and study. I found ancient Old Testament manuscripts allowing us to examine how those texts were transmitted across centuries. I learned that modern translation isn’t a centuries-long game of Telephone. I found historical sources outside Christianity that place Jesus and the earliest Christians firmly within ancient history. I found archaeology repeatedly illuminating the real places and cultures described in Scripture.

And maybe most importantly, I found scholars openly discussing the difficult parts—the variants, uncertainties, disagreements, and questions.

Nobody had to hide those things for Scripture to survive examination.

There are still things about Scripture I don’t completely understand. There are passages Christians have debated for a very, very long time. There are historical questions where I could give you several scholarly arguments and then shrug my shoulders because I simply don’t know which one is right. There are also things Scripture makes incredibly clear, and I no longer feel the need to create certainty where Scripture itself leaves room for questions.

But after examining the evidence, I had what I needed.

A measuring stick.

Paul wrote:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

— 2 Timothy 3:16–17, ESV

Now, the Bible saying it is from God cannot be our only historical evidence that it is from God. That would be circular reasoning. But after determining that I had good reason to take the text itself seriously, I could wrestle honestly with its biggest claim: Is this actually the Word of God?

For me, the answer became yes.

Not because somebody told me I wasn’t allowed to question it. Not because I was afraid of what would happen if I questioned it. I believe it after questioning it. I investigated. I found places where Christians had overstated evidence and corrected what I believed about those things. I found questions without perfect answers and learned to live with “I don’t know.” But I also found a textual and historical foundation far stronger than I realized.

I had Jesus.

And now I had a measuring stick I was willing to trust:

Scripture.

That meant the real work could finally begin. I had to take Mormonism, legalism, things I had been taught in churches, things I had been taught by people I loved, and perhaps most uncomfortably, things I wanted to be true, and measure them against Scripture.

Some of those beliefs held up beautifully.

Some of them didn’t.

And that’s where we’re going next.

Because if we’re really going to rebuild a faith that is Unshaken, we can’t be afraid to find out which pieces were never sitting on the foundation in the first place.

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Want ALL the nerdy details?

Believe it or not, this is the short version. Remember, Unshaken was originally written as a book before I decided to share it here for free, and biblical reliability was something I dug into deeply because I needed to understand it for myself.

There is so much more we could talk about: manuscript numbers and dates, textual variants, the Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeological discoveries, ancient historical sources, translation methods, the Cyrus Cylinder, Jericho, biblical prophecy, and all the sources behind what I’ve shared here.

I decided not to make y’all read a small dissertation in the middle of a blog series. You’re welcome. LOL.

But I also don’t want to throw all that research away. So if you’re like me and you’re thinking, No, actually, give me ALL THE THINGS, email me at ashlieverydayamen@gmail.com. I’ll happily send you the longer, research-heavy version along with the sources so you can dig into it for yourself.

Because you don’t have to take my word for it either.

Go look. Ask questions. Research it. Test it.

That’s kind of the whole point.