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Many of us hold the Bible as the ultimate authority, but how much do we really know about how this book came to be in our hands? Even skeptics who regularly dismiss the Bible seem remarkably uninformed when it comes to the facts supporting the transmission of the Old and New Testament. How do we know that the Bible has been copied accurately over such a long period of time? Who decided what books to include, and which to exclude? How do we know that the text has not been changed since we don’t have any of the original manuscripts? How should we treat the “extra” books found in some Bibles? What does it mean to say that the Bible is “inspired” by the Holy Spirit? How much human involvement was there in the writing of the scriptures? Where does the doctrine of inerrancy come from, and is the Bible really without error? If so, what do we do when we discover an apparent error or contradiction? How has the Bible been translated from its original languages, and why do translations sometimes differ? Which are the most reliable versions of the Bible?
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