50,000 Errors In The Bible?- What’s This All About?

When discussing the authenticity of the Bible with Muslims, one of the most likely issues that will come up, among others, is the title of the publication of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, called Awake. I have seen most Muslims quoting this publication, saying that the Jehovah’s Witnesses claimed that there are 50,000 Errors in the Bible.

This argument has gone viral like wildfire, no thanks to the late Ahmed Deedat, who also made this popular in his publication, and without investigating this issue, most Muslims believed that this was the position of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In this article, you will not only learn and discover that this is nothing but a misrepresentation of what the Jehovah’s Witnesses published, but a misunderstanding of the study of Textual Criticism as well.

The Background.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses published an article in their journal called AWAKE! on the 8th of September 1975 with the title “50,000 Errors in the Bible?”

The very first thing you notice right off the bat is the titling. This is quite different from what the Muslims or Atheists would present to you; they often tell you that the JW professes that the Bible contains 50,000 Errors,  however, this isn’t what the JW are saying. Instead, they are making an attempt to refute that notion.

What the JW set out to do in this publication is to prove that the Bible is authentic and does not contain 50,000 errors as claimed by the gentleman they are responding to in the article.  I have included the image of the said publication in question for easy assimilation and verification.

Even though the JW believed the bible is still in its pristine form without the alleged errors ascribed to it, they JW believed that translations like the King James and that of the Catholic Douay Translations were the reference point of the writer as to the text which contains these errors.

So, having realized what the background was, let us talk about the main theme of the Journal.

What’s the Journal About?

The main purpose of the Journal, as published by the JW, is to show that the Bible is authentic and that it is, without a doubt, God’s word. The JW noted that these errors have been corrected by Modern translations of the Bible, and there is no need to worry about this. The question remains, what exactly were these errors?

Discussing Textual Variants
One of the most important subjects in the field of Textual Criticism is the textual variants. Textual variants take place when a copyist makes deliberate or unintentional alterations to a manuscript that is being reproduced.

So, we are talking about errors, mistakes, or alterations that scribes make when copying a manuscript. This is nothing new, and has been recognized by textual critics as something that all ancient documents that were hand copied go through. Just recently, Dan Brubaker released his book on the 20 corrections in the earliest manuscripts of the Qur’an, detailing examples of mistakes that scribes copying the text of the Qur’an make,  so this is not a new phenomenon. You can check out the video Jay Smith and Al Fadi on this here.

It is very important that most of these errors made by scribes, which result in variants, are very minute and do not affect the core of the Christian faith. Some of the errors are spelling mistakes, word order, repetition of words, and omission.

However, there are three texts which were also mentioned, two (Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53–8:11) out of which remain a debate among Scholars, while one of them (1 John 5:7) has not been recognized as a later addition. Again, as stated, these two textual variants, namely, the longer ending of Mark and the Pericope Adulterae, do not in any way affect the core essentials of the Christian Faith.

It is important to note that while the JW are making a case for the reliability of the Bible in this journal called AWAKE, they also promoted their translation of the Bible, the New World Translation.

In conclusion, the argument of the Muslims and the misrepresentation of the JW  publication in an attempt to undermine the reliability of the Bible is not only cheap, but also evidence of the misunderstanding of the manuscript tradition of the Bible.