text: why do people think that things have been added to the bible? i keep seeing this accusation in other answers.    the bible is the single most cross referenced book ever written.  if anything had been added or deleted, it would easily have been detected.  in order to change it, you would have to have changed every version that existed at that time and every non scriptural book that referenced it as well.  i realize that the king james bible and those by william tyndale and martin luther were modified but those errors have been widely acknowledged by the greater christian community.  they just prove my point that you can't change it.    would somebody like to offer proof of its inconsistancy? it seems to go around the net because groups like chick publications put in out there that this happened.  i believe the origin of this particular urban myth comes from the retranslation of the kjv in the 1890's.  whole denominations' reasons for existence winked out of existence with that event.  also, people have edited the bible throughout history but generally not in a malicious way.  a clarification here or there, and edit etc by people who did not always have the best text to work from.  in that limited sense people did add or subtract, but it doesn't affect us today.  it is also probably exaggerated by the prior existence of more slanted texts done so as to support a particular theological cause.  this is mostly rare now and isn't done to support theology so much as internal church politics and audience needs.  using multidenominational translation teams put and end to the likelihood of that occuring.  the other thing is a misunderstanding of the deuterocanonical books.  they were not added, luther removed them.  they had always been there.  the only major early authority who suggest their removal is jerome and i believe anthanasius, but anthanasius has i believe seven additional texts in his new testament.  also most people are unaware of the process by which the books were assembled into a canon for all of christianity.  they are not aware that it was the pope who promulgated the list and it is on papal authority that the list rests.  a local synod at carthage, following the work of one at hippo regius and a local synod at rome sent their lists to the pope.  he promulgated the list using his authority, also with a list of excluded books and so closed the issue until luther.  luther did remove james, jude, revelations and the deuterocanonicals as they didn't agree with him.  the charge ever since is that catholics added books to the bible.