Perhaps as you read these line you have made your mind up about the Bible? Is it not all some made-up
stories written by some people - and not God - years ago and changed so much over the years so that it
has no resemblance to the original?

I remember a while back, before becoming a Christian, I had more or less the same idea. I did not see any
point in even browsing through it. I thought that, after so many years, it had become unreliable and
irrelevant or full of things we hear over and over again. How wrong I was! What I found out later that it
was not the Bible I should reject, but merely my own unstudied and prejudiced view of it. And this is so
easy to do, but is it the right thing to do? I was in discussion with a young Muslim lady about Bible and
she was startled to find me believing in it. She was saying "how come you don't know it is corrupted?
Everybody knows it!".

Now please bear with me as I would like to present you with three arguments that I find very persuasive: - Is the Bible text historically reliable?

The Bible is one of the best-kept historical artefacts in history. It is the most printed, studied, analysed
and challenged text in the world. It is true that during the middle ages, it was out of reach for many
people but after the reformation it was translated into almost all languages. While critics would not
dare to challenge it during the Middle Ages, in recent times the Bible has been put to test by Christian
and secular scholars alike and has survived great scrutiny. It has been found that Biblical text has been
preserved in many different manuscripts and apart from very minor differences, they all match. It is also
important to note that extracts from the Bible were quoted in many early manuscripts(2nd and 3rd
century AD) so that the Bible can be literally reconstructed wholly from these quotations.

Check for yourself and see what I say is true (contact me for further information and books to read on
this subject). Now you are free to reject the Bible and not to believe in what it says, but do not question
its historical accuracy just because you heard someone say so.

- Has Bible been corrupted over the years?

You might be one of the people that have heard that Bible is corrupted beyond recognition. I also heard
this and took it for granted. Later I found to my amazement that there are not many different versions
of the Bible but none of these has had any incremental change from the original. We can be as sure as
history could ever provide that what we have what early Christians had at the first century AD.
- What about all different translations?

Bible's original language is Greek. As you might have heard, there are many English translations
available: King James Version, New International Version, New Living Translation and many many others.
While these translations each represent a flavour of its own, they all remain true to the original text.
These are all designed to help you read the Bible in your own language making understanding of the
text easier. Now if you do not find one translation useful or inspiring choose another. If you don't like
that, choose yet another. If you do not like any, read the original text in Greek!

So what I really wanted to do was to encourage you to just forget all you have heard and just look
afresh. Don't even believe me! Go and investigate for yourself. Read the Bible, study the Early
Church Father's writings, compare the Bible's historical manuscripts and check them, because if you do,
you will get challenged and out of that the truth will shine! Just one more word from me, as
someone who thought he was an intellectual and has studied thousands and thousands of pages of
literature, philosophy and technical books. I have found the Bible is by miles the most challenging and
yet mind-blowing book I have ever read.