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...written, re-written, organized by committee, translated, re-translated, re-organized, re-written, and re-organized again by the feeble hands of men. You've been taught some mighty inaccurate stuff.

You should look up the history of the Bible. 49th is quite correct. There are no original copies of the Gospels. Some of the Gospels appear to have evolved from an older version that no longer exists. There was a selection process to determine what scripture was canon and what wasn't. There were many different sects of Christianity in the first few centuries A.D. and the Catholic church did the first major editing. In the subsequent centuries, there have been innumberable translations of both the Old and New testaments, each with its own spin. Like the King James version, which were translated to give political spin for political purposes of that time. You even have it going on today with political revisions such as changing the Son of God to the Child of God (gender neutral version). And on top of that, modern translations lack the cultural and slang contexts from the time when the oldest existing documents were written. Someone reading the parables Jesus used gets a very different meaning than a listener from 2000 years ago.

Elsi,

doc is using an old strawman argument that clearly original documents are required to prove inspiration, which is not the case at all.

You may be interested in the work of Dr. Ivan Panin. (easy google)

He did research on numerical patterns in the Biblical text and made discoveries that point to a single set of texts as the inspired basis for the Old and New Testaments.

Those texts would be the Received Hebrew Text and the Westcott and Hort text. They are the basis of the KJV version, which is the only 'modern' version to use these texts. The rest all use Alexandrian or other versions of the text and do not display the same beautiful patterns discovered by Dr. Ivan Panin.

This is the foundation of the KJV-only position and, while I do not agree that only the KJV translation can be used, I do agree that only the Received Hebrew Text and the Wetcott and Hort texts should be used as the single source of the inspired text.

doc makes the claim that it is impossible for God to communicate his Word uncorrupted. Of course, that merely denies the omnipotence of God, but what else is new?

I think that God has provided clear evidence of the inspired text through Dr Panin's work, but I also recognize that there will never be sufficient proof for those who are determined to undermine the authority of the Scriptures. Heb 11:6 tell us as much.

The way the line was written implied that Document O(ringinal) had been translated to O1, then that to O2. O2 mangled to O3+stuff; that to O3+S Ver 1.2 and so on.

Some of the Gospels appear to have evolved from an older version that no longer exists.

(Remember - this is how EVOLUTION is supposed to work)

I do not disagree that many translation spins have been created, but REPUTABLE modern translations ALWAYS try to use the OLDEST known documents as a basis for starting.

To imply that ALL the 'bibles' we have today are so messed up to be unusable is disingenuous to say the least.