Part 1. Is-Today-Bible-The-Real-Bible From-bible-reliable.html Concerning N0.11 Part 2 in Bible-Question-N0-11.htm
Their
Commentary on
Is-Today-Bible-The-Real-Bible is quite enlightening-- but question. 11 sends you to
their-- Statement of
Faith
Bible-reliable.html Christ: We believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God; He
became man without ceasing to be God, Statement of
Faith
It
needs to be known--That the 1ST Century Christains did not teach -Jesus to be God—Study ( N-C-O-W2 & NCOW )
And we are inspired to Imitate the 1ST Century Christains (open) Imitate--
n (1) Compare Sbt’s Commentary
Note.htm—
n Plus--Jesus ask
his disciples --15 He said to them,
“But who do you say that I AM?”.htm?-open 1Matt-16-13-17.htm & 15
n John-20-28.htm 1GOD
or god”(2) Who did
the angel Gabriel and the demons say Jesus is-JohnAndTheAngelGabriel.htm
(3)
Bible-Question-N0-11.htm-Who
First Introduced The Term Trinity.htm
(4)
AllManuscriptsWereWrittenInAllCaps.htm –Plus The GWGPNC Rule.htm Who did Jesus
say He was and is open Jesus
Sbt Starts with their Conclusion
The Bible, despite textual
variations, has been preserved over the centuries with a remarkable degree
trustworthy. Though variations exist, the four rules of textual criticism
allow us to have a Bible that is very close to what the prophets of
Keith E. Gephart, a professor at
It is a commonly recognized
fact that 80-85 percent of all the manuscript evidence is in total agreement
even on such matters as spelling and punctuation. [He added in a footnote that
the percentage “rises considerably” when spelling and punctuation differences
are eliminated.] …. [S]ome of these
variants do affect the theology (Theology) of those
particular verses. But even in these instances, our doctrine is not affected since there are so many other verses
which teach the doctrine in question.11 11
is their Statement of
Faith
Start
Is-Today-Bible-The-Real-Bible
Starts Here
We have good reason to be confident that the Bible as
we have it today is indeed faithful to the original.
*Daniel Bowman is a graduate student at Grand Rapids
Theological Seminary.
Is the Bible which I own and read today the real
Bible? Or has it been distorted? How can I believe the Bible if I do not even
know if it is accurate? Nowadays, there are scores of English versions of the
Bible. Many people wonder how accurate these Bibles are. When people ask about
the accuracy of the Bible, there are two different issues they might have in
mind:
- Is
the Bible really from God?
- Has
the Bible been accurately preserved over the centuries?
This article focuses on the second question, trying to
figure out how the Bible has been passed down from the original form to the
texts used for modern translations. Specifically, it’s the accuracy of the
transmission, not the translation, that this article
will examine.
The Problem
Why is this even an issue? Besides the fact that the
original Bible and modern Bibles are in different languages, one of the major
problems is that the original manuscripts don't exist anymore. So we can't
compare modern Bible versions directly to the originals. Furthermore, the
manuscripts which we do have are not exactly what was
originally written. To explain, the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament go
back to 250
Why don’t we have the original copies which were
penned by the Bible writers? A number of factors caused the disappearance
or destruction of ancient manuscripts. They were normally written on papyri
(ancient paper-like material) or animal skins. Over time, these materials would
decay and no longer be readable. Simply being used for many years could also
ruin the manuscripts. In many areas of the world, humidity destroyed
them. The only reason we have some manuscripts from as far back as 250
What is left are copies of the original Bible
manuscripts, and these do not all match each other perfectly. This fact has led
many people to doubt the accuracy of the Bible's transmission. However, we
shouldn’t be too hasty and conclude that an accurate biblical text is a lost
cause. Let’s first look at exactly how Jewish and Christian scribes over
the centuries did their job and what the scholars who study this area have learned
about the surviving Bible manuscripts.
Copying the Bible
First, we need to learn a little about the copying
process for the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). The Old Testament was written in
Hebrew, a language which originally did not use written vowels. Ancient Jews
were able to read this vowel-less text because they knew the language
intimately, especially the traditional reading. To preserve this
traditional reading, a group called the Masoretes added vowels and punctuation
between 500 C.E. and 1000 C.E. That means they added vowels from 1000 - 3000
years after the books were written. This version of the Hebrew Old Testament
was known as the Masoretic Text.
The care with which these Jews edited the text has
been described by F.F. Bruce, a well-respected biblical scholar:
[The
Masoretes wrote] with the greatest imaginable reverence, and devised a
complicated system of safeguards against scribal slips. They counted, for
example, the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurs in each book;
they pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and the middle letter of
the whole Hebrew Bible, and made even more detailed calculations than these.1
In 1948, some Old Testament manuscripts (along with
some non-biblical writings) were found in caves near the
The New Testament was copied more quickly,
and thus less carefully, than the Old. It is likely that this happened in order
to immediately spread the good news about Jesus. F.F. Bruce wrote, “The New
Testament was complete, or substantially complete, about AD 100, the majority
of the writings being in existence twenty to forty years before this.”3 To those of us who have become accustomed to hearing today’s
news about the world, 50 years between event and record may seem like a
lot. However, this seems like a moment in time compared to other ancient
literature.
In philosophy and history classes, for instance,
students read the works of Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient writers,
assuming that the authors wrote exactly what they study. Unfortunately, much
time passed between the original writing and the earliest surviving
manuscripts. So we cannot know how much the text was altered in the in-between
time.
Let’s compare the quality and quantity of surviving
New Testament manuscripts to other literature from the ancient Near East. 4
|
Name |
Number of years
between original and earliest surviving manuscript |
Number of
existing manuscripts |
|
Caesar’s Gallic Wars |
900 |
10 good ones |
|
Tacitus’ Annals |
1,000 |
2 |
|
Thucydides’
History |
1,300 |
8 |
|
History of Herodotus |
1,300 |
8 |
|
New Testament |
150-200 |
1 (entire book of John) |
|
250 |
1 (almost entire New Testament) |
|
|
Less than 300 |
2 (complete New Testament) |
|
|
Within first few centuries |
Over 5,000 Greek fragments; 24,000 in other languages |
For most ancient literature there is a thousand years
or more separating the original writings and the oldest surviving copies. However, in the case of the New Testament,
there are two complete copies of books that date within three hundred years of
the original composition, as well as thousands of partial copies that date even
earlier! Thus, the transmission of the Bible, while not perfect, is vastly more
accurate than any literature from the ancient world.
Textual Criticism
There are 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament,
5,000 of which were written in the original Greek language. Of these thousands
of manuscripts, no two manuscripts are identical. These differences lead to
hundreds of thousands of variations. At first impression, this fact makes the Bible
sound like the most unreliable book possible! These variations, however,
are surprisingly not a major concern. Rather, more manuscripts lead to a
greater possibility of figuring out what the original was. F.F. Bruce explained
it well:
Fortunately, if
the great number of
For instance, if I only have 2
manuscripts, I would be unable to figure out which of the following is correct:
Manuscript #1: In the beginning, God created the
heavens and the earth.
Manuscript #2: In the beginning, God created the earth
and the heavens.
Either of these could be correct. It’s a 50-50 chance.
However, if I have more manuscripts, it
will be quite easy to figure out what was most likely the original passage,
even though none of the following are exactly correct. I have marked which
parts of each variant are differing from the others. By removing each of these
variants, I will be able to best get at the original phrase:
Manuscript
#1: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Manuscript
#2: In the beginning, God created the earth and the heavens.
Manuscript
#3: At the beginning, God made the heaven_ and the earth.
Manuscript
#4: In the beginning, Jesus created the heavens and the earth.
Manuscript
#5: In the beginning, God created the sky and the earth.
*Original: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth.
Thus, even though none of the multiple
manuscripts match up exactly, they allow us to find the most probable original.
The process of finding the original text is called
Textual Criticism, which does not mean criticizing the text! Rather, it is a
systematic way to determine which text was more likely the original. Very
basically, four points show how to find the preferred text: 1) The shorter
text, since scribes would rather add to God’s Word than risk taking anything
away, 2) the older text, for it had less time to be corrupted, 3) the harder
reading, because scribes tried to smooth out the reading and make it more
understandable, and 4) most importantly, the text from which the others could
have come. Textual criticism is more complicated than this, but the idea is the
same—in most cases, it is easy to find the original reading.
Common Copying Errors
There are two kinds of copying errors: (1)
those done accidentally, and (2) those done intentionally.
Accidental. Many of the variations in the biblical
manuscripts can be easily explained in several ways. First, bad eyesight was common
because the Bible was copied in places which often were poorly lit. Scribes, working with the text for many hours each
day, sometimes had trouble reading the details necessary to correctly write
each work and phrase.6
Second, a word may be replaced by a similar sounding
word. Sometimes, instead of each scribe reading a manuscript and copying it,
one scribe would read the manuscript aloud while others copied the words. For
instance, 1 John 1:4 states, “We write these things so that ____ joy may be
full.” Does this verse say that the author wrote so that “your joy may be
full” or so that “our joy may be full”? Multiple manuscripts contain each
reading. Just like “your” and “our” in English, the Greek words
‘υμων and ‘ημων are spelled nearly
identically and they sound similar. Either of these could have been the
original. Though the meaning of the sentence is slightly changed depending on
which word was written, no important beliefs are challenged. This kind of
mistake is merely a misspelling.7
A third type of unintentional mistake is caused by
repeated words. In John 17:15, one manuscript8 is missing
the following part in the bracket: “I do not pray that you should take them
from the [world but that you should keep them from the] evil one.” Notice how
the sentence still reads properly with the bracketed material, even though the
meaning was changed.
The Greek manuscript that the scribe was copying from
most likely read:
..............................
α̉υτους ε̉κ
του
κοσμου........................................
..............................
α̉υτους ε̉κ
του
πονηρου.......................................
After reading and copying the first line, a scribe’s
eyes could easily recognize the three identical words on the third line and
then begin the copying on the fourth line.9
Intentional.
Scribes, in their earnestness to have the correct text, would try to correct
the text. Sometimes scribes would combine together multiple passages that were
similar, called harmonizing. When talking about Jesus on the cross, John
Another intentional mistake is called conflation. This
is when a scribe would combine multiple readings instead of choosing one over
another. An example of this is the end of Luke. Some manuscripts said that the
disciples ‘were continually in the temple blessing God’ while others read ‘were
continually in the temple praising God.’ Rather than discriminating
between the two, later scribes decided that it was safest to put the two
together, and so they invented the reading ‘were continually in the temple
praising and blessing God.’10
Conclusion
The Bible, despite textual variations, has been
preserved over the centuries with a remarkable degree trustworthy. Though
variations exist, the four rules of textual criticism allow us to have a Bible
that is very close to what the prophets of
Keith E. Gephart, a professor at
It is a commonly recognized
fact that 80-85 percent of all the manuscript evidence is in total agreement
even on such matters as spelling and punctuation. [He added in a footnote that
the percentage “rises considerably” when spelling and punctuation differences
are eliminated.] …. [S]ome of these variants do affect the theology of those
particular verses. But even in these instances, our doctrine is not affected
since there are so many other verses which teach the doctrine in question.11
We have good reason to be confident that the Bible as
we have it today is indeed faithful to the original.
*Daniel Bowman is a graduate student at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.
Notes
1 F.F. Bruce, The
Books and the Parchments (London: Pickering & Inglis Ltc., 1963), p.
117.
2 Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. The Old
Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant? (
3 F.F. Bruce The
New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? 6th
ed. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1981), 9.
4 Bruce,
The New Testament Documents, 11.
5 Bruce, The
New Testament Documents, 14.
6 Bruce Manning Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1968), 186-188.
7 Metzger, The
Text, 191.
8 This manuscript is the Codex
Vaticanus.
9 Metzger, The
Text, 189.
10 Metzger, The
Text, 200.
11 Keith
E. Gephart “Are Copies Reliable?” in God’s Word in Our Hands, ed. James
B. Williams and Randolph Shaylor (Greenville, South Carolina: Ambassador
Emerald International, 2003), 164.
From
http://server%20at%20www.irr.org/about-us.html
http://www.irr.org/Bible-Reliable.html
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Compare
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=5766-&-Doctrinal-Statement-Bible-org.htm
SBT Notes-- It is a commonly
recognized fact that 80-85 percent of all the manuscript evidence is in total
agreement even on such matters as spelling and punctuation. [He added in a
footnote that the percentage “rises considerably” when spelling and punctuation
differences are eliminated.] …. [S]ome of these variants do affect the theology
of those particular verses. But even in these instances, our doctrine is not affected since there are so many
other verses which teach the doctrine in question.11
Compare
Many Surveys Show that Most Bible
Discussions turn into Heated Arguments because of Traditional (Christendom)htm Church Teachings--that goes all the way back to the
year 325 A.D.—which stems from hard to understand Bibles Written in Old
Language.And little to No Translators Notes--- as they are the Best Aide You
can get.
It does Little to No Good to
discuss the Bible-- and the Man
made Doctrines
with a Person who has not Systematically Studied the Bible,-- and
the Makings of the Bibles,-- and how the Bible has Survived the last 1900 +
years to this date and all the New Changes in the Modern Translations --- New Translations are Much Better
Today!!!
Learn some main points of the
last 100yrs+
To Make a Clear Informed
Decision on any thing –One must have Accurate Historical Documented Facts of
the Subject in Questionton be able to come to an accurate decision—That’s when a person can truly say –I Have
Made an Informed Decision about my Beliefs.
Surveys have shown that—Today there
is probably less then 5% real difference between one New Bible and another.
They Have All Corrected the
It is pretty safe to say that
there is REALLY only Two Types of Bibles Today--Read
Statement of
Faith
Bible: We believe that the sixty-six books
of the Bible as originally given are in their entirety the Word of God, that
they are unique and final, and that they are therefore the supreme authority
for faith and life (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21). We believe that God has
providentially preserved the integrity of these biblical scriptures down
through the ages so that they remain reliable today (Matthew
God: We believe that there is one true
and living God, who is the creator and ruler of heaven and earth. He is
inexpressibly glorious in wisdom, power, and holiness, and worthy of all
possible honor, confidence and love. In the unity of the Godhead there are
three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in every divine
perfection, and executing distinct but harmonious offices in all their works
(Matthew 3:16-17; 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14).
Christ: We believe that Jesus Christ
is the eternal Son of God; He became man without ceasing to be God, having been
conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin, so that He has two distinct
natures, divine and human, in one Person forever (John 1:2-3; Philippians 2:6;
Colossians 1:15-16; Hebrews 1:2-3).
Holy Spirit: We believe that the Holy
Spirit is a Person and not an influence; He is the third Person of the Trinity,
and as such is co-essential and co-equal with the Father and the Son (Acts
5:3-4). His convicting, regenerating and sanctifying activity is based upon the
redemptive work of Christ and the preaching of the gospel (John 16:13-14; Titus
3:5,6; Ephesians 2:22).
Man: We believe that through the
disobedience of Adam all have become sinners both by nature and choice (Psalms
51:5; Romans 5:12ff), and that apart from regeneration, we are at enmity with
God (Romans 8:7), disposed only to doing our own will (Ephesians 2:1-3).
Salvation: We believe that God in His
grace has provided salvation through the Person and work of Jesus Christ, who
bore our sins in His own body on the cross (1 Peter 2:24); that salvation is
apart from any human merit; that it is the accomplished by the regenerating
work of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5), producing repentance from
sin and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and that this is manifest in
a life characterized by obedience to the will of God as it is made known in the
Word of God (Matthew 7:21-24; Ephesians 2:10).
Church: We believe that, upon
personal trust in Jesus Christ, the believer is baptized by the Spirit into the
Church which is the body of Christ (1 Corinthians
Missions: We believe that as Christians
we are called to make the gospel known to our neighbors and to all nations
(Matt. 28:19-20), and to make disciples through prayerful instruction in the
Scriptures, with the aim of building up local congregations that are mature in
the faith (Ephesians
Last Things: We believe that
Jesus Christ will return bodily at the end of the age to judge the living and
the dead; that all people will be raised, those who have personally trusted in
Christ to a resurrection of life, and the lost to be sent into eternal
punishment (John 5:29; Revelation 20:11-15).
From http://server%20at%20www.irr.org/about-us.html
--Open Statement of
Faith
God: We believe that there is one true
and living God, who is the creator and ruler of heaven and earth. He is
inexpressibly glorious in wisdom, power, and holiness, and worthy of all
possible honor, confidence and love. In the unity of the Godhead there are
three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in every divine
perfection, and executing distinct but harmonious offices in all their works
(Matthew 3:16-17; 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14).
SBT Note See
(7) points in
http://simplebibletruths.net/Bible-Question-N0-11.htm