The Chinese Whispers Objection

Since the original Gospel accounts were written by hand, and then copied by hand, and copied again and again before we get to the copies we have, can we know what the originals said? The objection goes that this copying process would introduce errors, rather like a game of Chinese  Whispers.

In Chinese Whispers the first person in a line whispers a phrase to the second person. They then whisper it to the third and so on until the last person shares what they heard. This may be very different from what was whispered at the start. 

However, consider a variation of the game closer to the passing on of the Gospels. In this game the first person writes down the message as clearly as possible. They leave the room and the second person comes in and copies it onto another sheet of paper. They then leave the room taking the original. The third person comes in, copies the message and leaves with the second person's copy and so on. The last person's copy is compared to the original. There will be far fewer changes.

Now consider if there is a valuable prize for each person who makes an accurate copy. The early believers who produced the copies were, well, not surprisingly, believers.  They believed that the Gospels and other New Testament documents were hugely important.   John 6:68 "Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." For them, getting an accurate copy was a matter of life and death, heaven or hell. They were not collecting nice stories but holding onto the word of God. Each copy would have been made with care, not carelessly rushed off. There may have been times when persecution meant that the scribe was working under pressure.  But at the same time they would have been extra careful to be accurate. The imminent likelihood of martyrdom would make it even more important to have the accurate "Words of eternal life." With the motivation for careful copying and checking, even fewer mistakes will slip in.

But to make the game more realistic we need to introduce another feature. Suppose that the original message is given to several people to copy and pass on. By comparing the final copies produced it would be possible to spot where any errors had crept in. It would be unlikely for people in every copy chain to make identical mistakes. Especially if they are motivated to take care. Even more so if they belonged to a culture where this sort of copying to preserve and promulgate books was the norm.

Another key question though is "How long is the chain?"  If we can get some copies from fourth people in the chains, or even parts of their copies, these can help us evaluate the accuracy of the copies much further down the chain.    

So much for our game. How does this apply to the New Testament documents?  Also how does it apply to other ancient documents and how do they compare?

Author	Work	Date Written	Earliest Manuscript	Time Gap (Years)	Number of Copies
Homer	Iliad	800 BC	c. 400 BC	400	1,800+
Herodotus	History	480-425 BC	1stC AD	1,350	109
Sophocles	29 Plays	496-406 BC	3rd C BC	100-200	193
Plato	Tetralogies	400 BC	895 AD	1,300	210
Caesar	Gallic Wars	100-44 BC	9th C AD	950	251
Livy	History of Rome	59 BC–17 AD	Early 5th C AD	400	90 Partial & 60 copies
Tacitus	Annals	100AD	1st half: 850, 2nd: 1050	750-950	2 + 31 15 C copies
Pliny, the Elder	Natural History	49-79 AD	5th C 1 fragment  Remainder 14-15th C	400	200
Thucydides	History	460-400 BC	3rd C BC	200	96
	Greek N.T. Manuscripts	50-100AD	130AD	50	5,838
	Greek New Testament Early Translations				18,524
				TOTAL NT	24,362

Figures taken from Dr Josh McDowell Follow this link for a detailed examination of The Bibliographical Test for Manuscript Reliability.

Compared to the great works of antiquity the New Testament stands out head and shoulders, and chest and kneecaps above the rest in terms of having the shortest chain to the earliest copies and a vast reservoir of copies to compare. That means we can have a great deal of confidence that in every important detail, we know what the original message was.