And I will do it again should you continue to make the claim that God was somehow unable to keep His very name intact in the New Testament as we have it today. The idea that man was somehow able to obscure God’s very name from any of the available Greek manuscripts we have today did NOT come from the Holy Spirit. I can assure you of that. To make the claim that the New Testament we have today in the Greek documents available to us has somehow been changed to obscure the name of God is to claim that those Greek documents are not the inspired, infallible words of God. If you promote that concept it’s logical to believe that there were other things in those manuscripts that were changed also, and that by definition is denying the infallibility of those Greek documents.
Denying that the Greek manuscripts are the infallible word of God seems very close to saying that only the Jews could have received God’s word. That Gentiles were not worthy. When we KNOW that NOW there is no difference in God’s eyes. WHO was He to give His word to? The Jews had been blinded and set aside. There was still the fullness of the Gentiles that He was bringing in. HELLO...WHO would He give His word to???
Then it should be easy for you to point to His name, right in the Bible you have in front of you... The names of his rivals remain well known, and are used as a matter of course world wide (when the commandment is to not even say them at all), Yet YHWH's name, which we are ordered to speak, is covered up completely in His own Word. The names of all the characters have been Hellenized, to include Yeshua Himself. Names do not get changed in transliterations - it is very uncommon, Else you would call a Mexican 'Michael' instead of 'Miguel', when speaking English, wouldn't you? Names MEAN things, and one wholly loses the Hebrew connotation of things, because the Greek supplants them.
If you promote that concept it’s logical to believe that there were other things in those manuscripts that were changed also, and that by definition is denying the infallibility of those Greek documents.
I am not 'promoting' anything. It is a BARE FACT that even among the Majority texts, there are differences. Even among the exemplars of the Textus Receptus, there is *not* perfect agreement. The very reason one can detect derivations of Eusebius within the assembled MSS is because He back-translated a verse out of LXX, and everyone who used his work carried the MISTAKE forward... And I don't know of a single translation that is pure to any exemplar, not to mention even the Byzantine family. THAT, my FRiend, is FACT.
What preserves the text is it's proliferation - It is 95% SOUND, across tens-of-thousands of manuscripts, so the vast amount, the lion's share, is wholly without question. Of the remainder, another 3% can be readily deduced. But even so, there are latter additions that can be strongly argued as inclusions, whether you believe them or not, and there are differences, especially between families, which necessitate the argument that it is not 100% pure.
But as I said, the Word is not the text on the paper. It is about discernment (Spirit), which as an Evangelical/Protestant, you must agree with. Rightly dividing is about observing structures, cultural norms, and most importantly running every thought and interpretation through the Torah, and through the Words of Yeshua (same thing). *NOT* running hither and thither, a verse here and a verse there - Which is how the Word is abused to cover every heresy there is... But rather, interpreting EVERYTHING in a way that the words that came before are *never* made empty. YHWH is the ONLY God who demands it so, and it is the primary evidence that He IS THE GOD. Every other 'god' authorizes his priests to change things after the fact.
And the accusation does not work with me anyway - I haven't derived ONE of the things I have said here outside of the Word itself (even if I might suspect tampering) - With the exception of the cultural knowledge I have derived from Talmudic (and other) sources for their cultural and historical import, which only allows me to see things from an Hebraic perspective... And that is exactly the RIGHT thing to do.
I KNOW you are aware of the Hebrew wedding - And no doubt you have gained immeasurable knowledge of the very covenant you are under because of that understanding - How much more to understand the Mikvah instead of the Greek baptism?
A SIMPLE understanding of 'disciple' in the Hebrew, where it is a very exacting thing, versus the Greek idea, which is more like a student, necessarily must cause one to question typical Christian thought, and rightfully so, or y'all may as well just wander over to those who claim to have the authority to change things after the fact - it isn't that the text can't change, because it does, into many different languages, sometimes better than others - What cannot change is the Word itself - what it says.
And knowing that a disciple *must* emulate the Master, must *never* destroy His Words, should be a HUGE wake-up call... Not only in your interpretations of His disciples, but in your LIFE, as you FRiend, are a disciple too.
One of the greatest themes in the Bible is that YHWH does_not_change, and that what He said in the beginning is what will most certainly BE. Add to that the knowledge that prophecy IS ALL the testimony of Yeshua (HE authored every word from 'in the beginning' to 'Amen'), how then can His coming have altered anything? How can He promote CHANGE to that which He Himself wrote was unchanging?
Yet looking at the traditions of Christendom, it is without a doubt that change has certainly occurred, and coincidentally, every visible change falls right in line with pagan traditions - How can that be right?