There are punctuation problems in the Greek manuscripts of the Bible which are significant. We ran across one such in James 2: 14 -26, where there is one reading with commas but another if the commas are removed. The Greek had no punctuation commas. Meanings can vary based upon commas or no commas. But to change texts in order to remove false passages or change entire chronologies is much more than mere punctuation difficulties. Authors writing daventure novels occasionally make such errors (I write them so I know of what I speak!). God does not make such mistakes.
Perhaps God doesn’t make such a mistake, but man certainly can.
How many translations into English of the Bible are there? How many doctrinal disagreements could be derived thereby? How many of said translations should be considered “valid” scripture?
In my opinion, God is worried much more about the essence of the doctrine being presented in the text, than He is about the precise wording, spelling, or grammatical errors in the text.
I find that a genuine seeker of truth will normally disregard errors of man and search after the truths outlined in the text. It is the fault-finder who reads a holy text with an eye toward disproving it.
One must be very careful in trying to disprove the Book of Mormon with this category of criticism. The Bible would have to be discarded on the basis of many of these same questions.
Personally, I don’t wish to see either discarded. But, if this discussion continues, I will make it a practice to ask the same questions of the Bible; if the Bible fails by the given standard, then consistency demands that the question be disregarded.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about:
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1197
In the above article, the author is defending the Bible against the charge that it has suffered more than 100,000 changes. I agree with the author. I accept his explanations.
Interestingly, the same breed of explanations are being used to justify the changes in the Book of Mormon. If you do not accept the explanations in the case of the Book of Mormon, and reject as a result the Book of Mormon’s divine origination, than it is therefore impossible to accept the Bible as divine.
Many of the changes of the type you cite in your previous post, MHG, are quite possibly resulting from the fact that the Book of Mormon had to go through a layer of interpretation that, to the best of our knowledge, the Bible never faced - that being a hostile printer. The 1837 edition was the first time that there was an opportunity to correct the inconsistencies of this category. I’m looking for better evidence of this, but I think it is plausible.
Given this information, this argument against the Book of Mormon would be much more convincing were there to be serious changes between the 1837 and later editions. I have not found evidence of such.
“There are punctuation problems in the Greek manuscripts of the Bible which are significant....The Greek had no punctuation commas.”
And this would mean that there are not punctuation problems
in Greek! :-)