I’m taking a course on blockchains this semester, and I can’t stop thinking about the Bible, the Quran, and the transmission of manuscripts in the ancient world.
At its core, a reliable blockchain is:
- Distributed: Copies of the ledger (the “text”) exist on many nodes (“communities”).
- Immutable / Verifiable: Once a block is added, everyone can check its authenticity; it’s tamper-evident.
- Consensus-driven: The network agrees on a single canonical sequence of blocks, much like reaching consensus on an authoritative text.
- Transparent & Replicable: Any node can query the data, similar to scholars comparing multiple manuscripts to reconstruct the original.
When the New Testament gospels and epistles circulated in the first and second centuries, manuscripts were copied widely across the ancient world (i.e. distributed). Over time, questions arose about certain texts’ authenticity, much like disputed blocks in a chain. The Council of Nicaea (325 CE) functioned as a kind of consensus mechanism, helping the early church determine which books belonged in the canon.
As centuries passed, the text became increasingly resistant to alteration because of the sheer number of manuscripts in circulation. In this sense, the New Testament became “frozen” in much the same way a blockchain’s ledger preserves its history immutably: distributed, verified, and collectively agreed upon.
In stark contrast is the Quran. In some blockchains, if an entity controls more than 50% of the network’s validating power (a “51% attack”) they can potentially:
- Rewrite recent transaction history
- Invalidate blocks that were previously considered part of the chain
- Replace them with their own version of the ledger
In effect, the majority actor can enforce a canonical version of the blockchain while discarding alternative versions .This is honestly analogous to the early compilation of the Qur’an. Uthman and the early Islamic leaders effectively controlled which copies of the text were authoritative. They standardized the Qur’an, destroyed variant copies, and imposed a single, canonical version. Just as a majority actor in a blockchain reorg can dictate which blocks “count,” the early Islamic authorities dictated which textual variants would be preserved and which would be eliminated.
In contrast, the New Testament’s transmission was more like a decentralized, permissionless blockchain, with many communities independently copying manuscripts, making it difficult for any single actor to enforce a canonical text for centuries.