Posted on 03/07/2012 6:43:36 AM PST by SeekAndFind
By Jonathan Dodson
Most people question the reliability of the Bible. You’ve probably been in a conversation with a friend or met someone in a coffeeshop who said: “How can you be a Christian when the Bible has so many errors?” How should we respond? What do you say?
Instead of asking them to name one, I suggest you name one or two of the errors. Does your Bible contain errors? Yes. The Bible that most people possess is a translation of the Greek and Hebrew copies of copies of the original documents of Scripture. As you can imagine, errors have crept in over the centuries of copying. Scribes fall asleep, misspell, take their eyes off the manuscript, and so on. I recommend telling people what kind of errors have crept into the Bible. Starting with the New Testament, Dan Wallace, New Testament scholar and founder the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, lists four types of errors in Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning.
Types of Errors
1) Spelling & Nonsense Errors. These are errors occur when a scribe wrote a word that makes no sense in its context, usually because they were tired or took their eyes off the page.Some of these errors are quite comical, such as "we were horses among you" (Gk. hippoi, "horses," instead of ēpioi, "gentle," or nēpioi, "little children") in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 in one late manuscript. Obviously, Paul isn’t saying he acted like a horse among them. That would be self-injury! These kinds of errors are easily corrected.
2) Minor Changes. These minor changes are as small as the presence or absence of an article "the" or changed word order, which can vary considerably in Greek. Depending on the sentence, Greek grammar allows the sentence to be written up to 18 times, while still saying the same thing! So just because a sentence wasn’t copied in the same order, doesn’t mean that we lost the meaning.
3) Meaningful but not Plausible. These errors have meaning but aren't a plausible reflection of the original text. For example, 1 Thessalonians 2:9, instead of "the gospel of God" (the reading of almost all the manuscripts), a late medieval copy has "the gospel of Christ." There is a meaning difference between God and Christ, but the overall manuscript evidence points clearly in one direction, making the error plain and not plausibly part of the original.
4) Meaningful and Plausible. These are errors that have meaning and that the alternate reading is plausible as a reflection of the original wording. These types of errors account for less than 1% of all variants and typically involve a single word or phrase. The biggest of these types of errors is the ending of the Gospel of Mark, which most contemporary scholars to not regard as original. Our translations even footnote that!
Is the Bible Reliable?
So, is the Bible reliable? Well, the reliability of our English translations depends largely upon the quality of the manuscripts they were translated from. The quality depends, in part, on how recent the manuscripts are. Scholars like Bart Ehrman have asserted that we don't have manuscripts that are early enough. However, the manuscript evidence is quite impressive:
What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”.
So, when someone asserts that the Bible says errors, we can reply by saying: “Yes, our Bible translations do have errors, let me tell you about them. But as you can see, less than 1% of them are meaningful and those errors don’t affect the major teachings of the Christian faith. In fact, there are 1000 times more manuscripts of the Bible than the most documented Greco-Roman historian by Suetonius. So, if we’re going to be skeptical about ancient books, we should be 1000 times more skeptical of the Greco-Roman histories. The Bible is, in fact, incredibly reliable.”
Contrary to popular assertion, that as time rolls on we get further and further away from the original with each new discovery, we actually get closer and closer to the original text. As Wallace puts it, we have "an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the biblical documents." Therefore, we can be confident that what we read in our modern translations of the the ancient texts is approximately 99% accurate. It is very reliable.
For Further Study (order easy to difficult):
What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”
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“That’s not a good enough reason to write a fictious book and call it the book of mormon to take the place of the Bible”
The US Army was really messed up until they came up with a common doctrine. The Bible is Christian doctrine.
It was the scholars looking at various comparisons of the ancient documents who did the work.
Since the ancient documents have varied so little over time, why do you have issues with them and claim they are more fallible than popes?
Thank you.
RE: The ancient patristic writings provides evidence of a universally accepted canon long before Constantine or any council of bishops.
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Also, LONG BEFORE CONSTANTINE AND THE COUNCIL OF NICEA...
The apostle Peter himself acknowledges that Paul’s writings his epistles) were SCRIPTURE. That’s CENTURIES before Constantine and Nicea.
See 2 Peter 3:15,16
“Bear in mind that our Lords patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15,16).
This statement of Peter tells us several things. They include the following.
First there were a number of Pauls letters that were circulating since Peter speaks of his letters. While he does not give the exact number of these letters they were circulating as a group.
Second, these writings of Paul were well known by Peter and the other believers. The fact that he could speak of these letters to his audience in this way assumes that they were familiar with them.
Third, Peter placed these writings of Paul on the same level as the Old Testament Scripture. He used the Greek word graphe to refer to Pauls writings. This Greek word is used fifty-one times in the New Testament and it refers to the Old Testament writings in every other occurrence. Consequently Scripture was a technical term that the New Testament used to refer to Gods divinely authoritative writings.
Also, Paul Quotes Luke As Scripture ( AGAIN CENTURIES BEFORE CONSTANTINE AND NICEA ).
When Paul wrote to Timothy he quoted a passage from Luke as Scripture.
For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads the grain, and, the laborer is worthy of his wages (1 Timothy 5:18).
The first verse quoted is from Deuteronomy 25:4. However the second is a quotation of one of our Lords statements recorded by Luke: The laborer is worthy of his wages (Luke 10:7). This saying is not found in the Old Testament. Paul uses the exact same Greek words that Luke used. Consequently it seems that Paul knew of Lukes gospel at this time and considered it Scripture. Paul quotes Luke on the same level as Moses. This implied equivalence.
So, The New Testament itself is quoted as Scripture twice. Paul quotes a saying of Jesus from Lukes gospel and calls it Scripture.
In addition, Peter acknowledges the writings of Paul were considered to be Holy Scripture. This shows that the idea of adding new Scripture, apart from the Old Testament, was already occurring in the early years of the church.
These writings had to be appended to the Torah (the Christian Old Testament) to give them any context, meaning, and to clarify what they are talking about. When it is written Jesus, said, “if you keep ‘my’ commandments” (Jesus is God in the Christian sense), I assumed he meant, “if you keep God's commandments” which would be the Judaic laws. In fact it is mentioned several times in the New Testement that Jesus prohibited the eating of blood. And yet, Christians eat blood and say, it is not what goes in your body that defiles a man, but what comes out. Which is good and great. I understand it. I love it! But Jesus still said do not eat blood, which would be a part of the Judaic laws of Kashrut. (Kosher)
None of the actual original Christian letters or “Epistles” have ever been found and authenticated. In that sense, the entire New Testament is a translation. It is difficult to argue that the text is true, but the translation is in error, when the entire thing is a translation, or an interpretation of a translation which was in turn translated.
The entire NT, according to my reading, is rife with the conflicted nature of the religion. Are we Jews or not. Do we circumcise or not? Do we obey the Mosaic Laws or not? It depends on which book you read and how you interpret it. Nothing is very clear. In my opinion, as the books were written separately at different places and by different translators, there were just too many cooks making the soup. That was my humble reading of it.
There are indisputable differences in the Books of the New Testament. One book has Joseph going to Egypt after the birth of Jesus, another has him returning home. One book names Thaddeus as an apostle, another replaces him with a second Judas.
As far as the Old Testament being manipulated, I have heard this and it may or may no be true. I don't know. But if it was manipulated, whoever did it did a poor job. There are many passages which condemn Jewish behavior and portray the Jewish people as less than stellar people and there are many prophesies of terrible things happening to Jews and the world in general. Certainly, if I were editing my own Bible, I would tend to leave the bad stuff out. I believe the oral laws have been manipulated or misunderstood throughout the millennium's, but the Old Testament is relatively straight forward and consistent in its theme. Thou shalt not kill, for example, should have been written, thou shalt not murder, which would be an entirely separate concept.
This is by no means an attack on God, Christianity or Judaism. I have no agenda to dissuade, change, or convert anybody to anything, least of all, to the way I think. I am just writing how I read the New Testament. It is one wayward person out in the nether regions of the Internet expressing an opinion, and I hope this forum is mature enough to allow me to say the way I read the Bible. To my humble brain, it was just confusing.
That is EXACTLY RIGHT, Colonel and SeekAndFind.
I find the Bible has a serious contradiction. On the one hand it reports that God is infinite in His love and mercy. On the other hand it reports that I, along with billions and billions of others, will be tortured with fire forever and ever without end.
In my case, I will be tortured (supposedly) because I studied the evidence carefully (I have a four year degree in Biblical Studies), and have decided that the evidence is insufficient. That’s my crime. It’s like asking a jury to weigh the evidence, then punish them if they make a mistake. Not just punish them, but torture them without end. How does that square with love and mercy?
I Samuel 20.20: "I will shoot three arrows on the side thereof."
Psalm 7.13: "He ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors."
Psalm 18.14: "Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them."
Wait. Was this about arrows or errors?
You make a lot of assumptions, my friend, and then assertions based on your assumptions. I assume you are mature enough to consider that your way of reading the Bible may not be leading you to greater understanding but less.
No. The Holy Spirit doesn’t guide anyone “fallibly.”
What to say when someone says to you, “The Bible has errors.”
Hmmm. My first response would be: Really? Show me such an error. Then explain to me how it is an error and how you know that.
You nailed it there. I attend a sunday school class with a teacher that is theology at Rhodes college in Memphis.
I have to admit for a lib, I do like her. But I can see a lot of things that she says are way out.
I am at the point that i want to ask her will what do you believe in?
probably doesn’t even believe in resurrection.
you know you can study theology without religion beliefs i think.
RE: No. The Holy Spirit doesnt guide anyone fallibly.
Next time, you are going to tell me the Sun rises in the East. That is not my question. My question is WHO does He guide infallibly?
The “universally” accepted canon were canons as in multiple. There were multiple versions of the various scriptures and most were not universally accepted. Most of the writings and scriptures of the time were rejected by the council of Nicea and the version the council approved was heavily influenced by the need for Constantine to bring together the various sects and and beliefs into a creed that could serve to unite his growing empire. Again, anything touched by the hand of man, even the apostle’s letters, were shaped by situational politics and individual point of view of the writers. Even today, many denominations profess their interpretations of scripture, old and new. The scriptures should be taken as providing lessons and insights into God and not necessarily as the infallible word of God. Put your faith in the message of the scriptures and not on the literal infallibility of a set of documents shaped by mans interpretations of God’s message.
The American scholar Milman Parry did groundbreaking work on oral poetry and recorded living oral poets in Yugoslavia in the 1930s (before his accidental death in 1935) to understand how they learned their craft--the recordings show how each performance was a little different.
Later there were people in Greece who memorized the Homeric poems word-for-word--Plato's dialogue Ion depicts a conversation between Socrates and one of these so-called "rhapsodes."
You nailed it there. I attend a sunday school class with a teacher that is theology at Rhodes college in Memphis.
I have to admit for a lib, I do like her. But I can see a lot of things that she says are way out.
I am at the point that i want to ask her will what do you believe in?
probably doesn’t even believe in resurrection.
you know you can study theology without religion beliefs i think.
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