The Odyssey, the Bible, and the Telephone Game
Author: Stan Guthrie
August 05, 2026
Did you ever play the telephone game as a child? A message is whispered from one player to another to another. By the time the message reaches the final person in the circle, it has usually been horribly garbled. This fun game reveals how quickly errors can accumulate in transmission.
Lots of people distrust the Bible for precisely that reason. They say that its various books were written so long ago, and were copied and recopied so many times, that the Bible we have in our hands cannot possibly be the Bible that was originally written. The Bible, these critics assert, has been changed, perhaps radically.
This theory sounds plausible, but is it true? No. The Bible is, by far, the best-attested body of ancient literature in the world. (See the accompanying graphic.)
According to Daniel B. Wallace, Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, “We have more manuscript evidence for the New Testament than for any other work of antiquity, and it is of earlier date than almost any other.”
That assessment most definitely includes the Odyssey, currently enjoying a popular renaissance thanks to Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie. But let’s stipulate that the Odyssey is extremely well attested compared with most ancient literature. We have thousands of ancient fragments of the Odyssey and a handful of early, substantial manuscripts.
None, however, were completed anywhere near the time of composition (c. 8th century B.C.). Our earliest texts of the epic come from the 3rd century B.C., roughly 500 years after Homer, the bard who finally set the long oral tradition down in writing.
So the Odyssey is very well attested for a work of classical Greek literature—but the Bible’s manuscript tradition is vastly larger, earlier, and more diverse. For example, we have nearly six thousand New Testament manuscripts in Greek.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls last century, meanwhile, has confirmed the meticulous accuracy of the Old Testament that has been passed down to us. And while we do encounter slight existing textual variants in some texts, no important Christian doctrine is in doubt.
As Bible scholar Craig Blomberg notes, “We have massive amounts of support for our convictions that the sixty-six books of the canonical Scriptures accepted by all branches of Christianity have been extraordinarily well-preserved.”
So don’t believe it if someone says that we cannot trust the Bible to be an accurate representation of what the biblical writers wrote. Compared with the Odyssey, the Bible’s manuscript tradition is vastly superior in number, diversity, and proximity to the original writings.
The Bible you read is the Bible that was written—telephone game or no telephone game.
Stan Guthrie is Director of Outreach and Mobilization for New Covenant Church in Naperville, Illinois. He is the author of A Concise Guide to Bible Prophecy.
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