If you look inside the cover of any modern translation you will see that it is taken from the original Greek and Hebrew texts. There is no intermediate source between the original language and the receptor language. While some older translations might have gone through several renditions, it was because hundreds of years ago, before the printing press etc., not many people had Greek Lexicons or papyrus fragments lying around! Even then, however, there was not more than one "meta-language". We can be sure that what we are reading today is an accurate translation from the originals (see Bible Translations).

Do we have the Autographs?

No, we do not have any of the first copies. The earliest piece of manuscript dates to close to the end of 1st century for the New Testament (the last book of the Bible was completed by A.D. 95); for the Old Testament, however, there are much older copies dating from around 125 B.C. Fortunately there is more manuscript evidence (copies from around the world) for the Bible than any other piece of ancient literature. God has preserved His word. And He did it in such a way that if errors were introduced, we would easily be able to spot them because of the huge amount of copies we have for comparison.

How Reliable are the Copies?

Old Testament

The Hebrew scribes were so concerned with copying God's word that they came up with rigorous tests for accuracy, and it showed. They had an extremely intricate system of transcribing synagogue scrolls that approaches fanaticism...when one considers the rigid rules and phenomenal accuracy of the Talmudic copyists in preparing a new scroll we begin to understand the absence of
numerous ancient Old Testament MSS, & one must also be convinced of their reliability.

•  Any scroll in which the below regulations were not strictly observed was condemned to
     be buried in the ground or burned; or they were banished to the schools for reading.
• Once a scroll was transcribed, the Talmudists were so convinced that it was an exact
     duplicate of the codex they copied from, they gave it equal authority.
• The length of each column must not extend over less than 48 or more than 60 lines; andthe breadth must consist of thirty letters.
• The  copy must be first lined; if three words be written without a line, it is worthless.
• The ink should be black, no other color... prepared according to a definite recipe.
• An authentic copy must be the exemplar, the transcriber ought not in the least deviate.
• No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him.
• Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene.
• Between every new parashah, or section, the breadth of nine consonants.
• Between every book, three lines.
• The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line.
• The copyist must not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dipped in ink.
• And should a king address him while writing that name, he must take no notice.
• They numbered the verses, words, and letters of every book.
• They calculated the middle word and the middle letter of each.
• They enumerated verses which contained all the letters of the alphabet, or a certain number of them; and so on.

Did it work? When the dead sea scrolls were discovered in the late 1940's they found manuscripts that dated one thousand years older than the oldest copies we then had access to. They were almost perfect matches. One text, the Isaiah scroll, matched within 95% of manuscripts dated hundreds of years later.

New Testament

We have more manuscript evidence for the New Testament than for any other ancient writing, more than 5,300 documented copies or fragments (compare to Homer's Iliad with less than 650, the most famous of the ancient Greek books). Even counting some variations in certain texts (none of them effecting doctrinal issues) we can be sure that we have accurate copies. Some like to point out 100's of 1,000's of variations between the copies, but consider how that count is made. If I have a single letter variation in a document (a "typo"), and then compare that to 5,300 copies that do not have that mistake... I would now have not 1 but 5,299 variations! This is hardly troublesome. In the New Testament only .5% of its words are in question, and again, they are variations...they are not missing. That is why alternate texts are included in the modern translations, so that you can read them for yourself. Commentaries exist from as early as A.D. 170 - we could reconstruct all but 11 verses of the NT from these alone! And true textual variants are rare (about 200 words [<.5%] are questionable). These create no doctrinal disputes.

The most important message of the Bible would not even require the Bible - we can practically reconstruct the gospel itself from non-Christian historians!

               1. Josephus (A.D. 70-100) Jesus called the Christ
               2. Eliezar (A.D. 90-100)  Jesus claimed to be God and would return
               3. Talmud (Babylonian) Jesus did magic, led Israel astray, hanged on Passover
               4. Tacitus (A.D. 100) Jesus executed in Judea
               5. Pliny the Younger (A.D. 112) Jesus' followers worshipped Him as God

While some might try to argue that errors came into being shortly after the originals were written (which they would have had to), it flies in the face of the facts, and does not explain the solidarity of such diverse writings and copies. It is an argument against the facts, not from them. The Bible has unsurpassed internal consistency: it is made up of 66 books written over a period of 1500 years, by 40 different authors, at different times in different places and yet all are in agreement.