[freedumb2003]

The translations of the Bible are guided by God’s hand. They are meant to instruct us on matters of life and morals. It is how God tells us of our relationship to Him and, for Christians, His Son.

It is when people try to use it for other purposes, such as a science text, that translation errors (what was meant by “yom” anyway?) become important. The point of Genesis is that God created the world and us. It isn’t a “how to” guide.

[grumpa]

See www.faithfacts.org for more apologetics facts.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

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!

That opinion is not universal, the great mass of Byzantine manuscripts include it. I think a very strong case can be made that the last 12 verses of Mark are the inspired Word of God. I'm afraid exclusion rests on isolated manuscripts and subjective academic imagination producing an artificial "eclectic text".

[WalterSkinner]

..since the beginning God's Word has been under attack

But in modern times with Harold Lindsell's "Battle for the Bible" a warning went out to the church in general that this was happening in every seminary of every denomination and would destroy much of the foundation of visible church

I believe Francis Schaeffer called this the watershed issue in "The Great Evangelical Disaster"...

[cripplecreek]

I call em a doodie head and move on.

[mnehring]

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"

Why the assumption it was because they were 'tired or took their eyes off the page'? That seems like quite an assumption. It could easily been simple context we don't understand. Just like in your example, we call children 'kids' but in some cultures, that means baby goats.

Imagine two thousand years from now, someone reads that "SeekandFind took his Jaguar to watch the Rams battle the Lions. They later ate Buffalo Wings and drank Fuzzy Nipples". Without context, the picture that paints is quite different from reality.

[GonzoGOP]

Unfortunately this doesn't help much. The part of the Bible that most people have problems with, myself included, isn't the New Testament, but the Old Testament. Specifically Genesis, which is the oldest book of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament was an oral tradition for a very long time, even by its own chronology. It was not written down until Moses did so at end of Exodus. There is no good way to track down changes made to an oral tradition as, by their very nature, earlier versions leave no evidence.

In addition there are edits. Words that only came into use during the Babylonian exile appear in text of the earlier books. I don't have the examples at hand but in my Theology class 20 some years ago a number of them were pointed out. The one I remember most clearly is when Moses comes down from getting the ten commandments and finds the Israelites in sin. One group is continuously exonerated of being part of the rabble, but the words used would not be ones used by someone before the exile. Clearly some scribe, a member of the latter group, decided to exonerate his ancestors when he made a later copy of the Torah.

The final difference between early Greek and Roman histories and the Bible is the ability to criticize parts without criticizing the whole. I can use the history of Rome to say that Rome had kings, then there was a rebellion and it became a republic. I can do this despite saying that Romulus and Remus weren't raised by wolves because wolves eat babies not raise them. The early oral tradition creation story can be separated from the historically consistent, and relevant later sections.

The Bible in contrast is often presented as all or nothing. Either you take every word, including 7 day creation, 6000 year old Earth and mega flood or nothing. Most of the Bible holds up extremely well historically. Even Exodus hold up as Egyptian hieroglyphics show Ramses attacking the Israelites (he claims to have driven them out, turns out they had Baghdad Bob back then too). What is important is that the hieroglyphic shows the Israelites as a nomadic people. His grandson also mentions the Israelites, but in that case the hieroglyphic shows them as a settled people. Close enough to 40 years of wandering for me.

But Genesis just has to be taken purely on faith. Unlike the gospels of the New Testament this is faith in opposition to otherwise provable facts.

[Lazamataz]

This Bible has NO ERRORS.

[Rich21IE]

ping

[vanilla swirl]

Keeper, thanks!

[mikeus_maximus]

later.

[moonhawk]

Goes to the basic problem with sola scriptura: too many personal interpretations and errors introduced by biases and the like.

Christ founded his Church and promised that the Holy Spirit would guide it in all Truth.

That promise was True.

[Tennessee Nana]

What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”
___________________________________________

“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”

[blueunicorn6]

The US Army was really messed up until they came up with a common doctrine. The Bible is Christian doctrine.

[240B]

The Christian Church has no Bible of it's own. What is called the New Testament, is merely a compilation of letters, visions, hopes, aspirations, and journal notes of the apostles and others written after the death of Jesus.

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.

[Lucas McCain]

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?

[Belteshazzar]

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.

[DaveMSmith]

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.

Statements like this are dangerous.

As we all have a interior, spiritual self so does the Word. It's internal sense is that known in heaven and is written in correspondences. As for horses, Swedenborg writes:

That a horse means the understanding is derived from no other source than from representatives in the spiritual world. Horses are seen there frequently, and persons sitting upon horses, and also chariots. And in that world everyone knows that they indicate intellectual and doctrinal things. I have often observed, when any there were thinking from their understanding, that they appeared as if to be riding on horses. Their meditation represented itself in such a manner before others, they themselves being unconscious of it. There is also a place there, where many come together who think and speak from the understanding concerning truths of doctrine. And when others come to that place, they see that entire plain filled with chariots and horses and novitiates, who are curious to know whence this comes about, are taught that this is an appearance resulting from their intellectual thought. That place is called the assembly of the intelligent and wise. I have even seen shining horses and fiery chariots when some were taken up into heaven, which was a sign that they were then instructed in the truths of heavenly doctrine, and had become intelligent, and were thus taken up. As I beheld this attentively, there came into my mind what was signified by the chariot and horses of fire by which Elijah was taken up into heaven, and also by the horses and chariots of fire seen by Elisha's servant when his eyes were opened. ~ White Horse #3

[DocRock]

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