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This is where I stand on this... Originally posted by www.equip.org:
reliability of the bible manuscripts
Non-Christians, (skeptics like New Agers or Mormons) claim that in the process of copying Scripture the text of the Bible was corrupted. Is this really true?
Suppose you wrote an essay and asked five friends to copy it. Each of them in turn asked five more friends to do the same â?? kind of like a chain letter. By the fifth â??generation,â? you would have approximately four thousand copies. Now, obviously, in the process, some people are going to make some copying errors. The first five people to copy it would make mistakes, and then most of the people who copy from them will make some more mistakes. Eventually youâ??d have thousands of copies and all of them flawed.
Sounds pretty bad, right? But hold on. Your five friends might make mistakes, but they wouldnâ??t all make the same mistakes. If you compared all of the copies, you would find that one group contained the same mistake while the other four did not â?? which of course, would make it easy to tell the copies from the original. Not only that, but most of the mistakes would be obvious â?? things like misspelled words or words that were accidentally omitted. Anyone looking at all four thousand copies would have no trouble figuring out which was the original.
Thatâ??s essentially the same situation with the Bible. Weâ??ve got thousands of copies of the Bible in its original language, and scholars who have studied them have been able to classify them into groups and in most cases determine what the original documents actually said. The few cases which are still debated by scholars really donâ??t affect the basic message of the Bible at all.
In fact, interestingly enough when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran, they predated the earliest extant text â?? the Masoretic text by almost one thousand years â?? yet in spite of this vast span of time, there was no substantive difference at allâ?¦..In fact, in looking at Isaiah 53 there were only 17 changes between the Masoretic text and those found at Qumran â?? 10 involved spelling, 4 style and 3 involved the Hebrew letters for the word light in verse 11. However, none of these differences were substantive â?? God has indeed preserved His Word.
On Manuscript reliability, thatâ??s the CRI Perspective. Iâ??m Hank Hanegraaff.
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Originally posted by www.equip.org:
the RELIABILITY OF THE BIBLE
Obviously, a vast amount of time has passed since the Bible was first penned. So, how do we know that the Bible is reliable?
The Bible is a historical document. Interestingly enough, if you subject it to the same tests that you subject other historical documents to, youâ??ll discover that the Bible proves itself to be far superior to any other ancient writing.
First, letâ??s look at the New Testament which, incidentally, was originally written in the Greek language between 50 and 100 A.D. Although we donâ??t have the original autographs, there are presently some 5,000 Greek manuscripts in existence, with as many as 25,000 more copies. Just as amazing is the fact that the earliest manuscripts can be dated back as far as 120 A.D. This is tremendous when you consider that only seven of Platoâ??s manuscripts are in existence today â?? and thereâ??s a 1,300-year gap which separates the earliest copy from the original writing! Equally amazing is another fact; and that is, that the New Testament has been virtually unaltered. This has been demonstrated by scholars who have compared the earliest written manuscripts with manuscripts written centuries later. And remember, the accounts in the New Testament were recorded directly by eyewitnesses, (or by those who were associated with them) and in fact had close contact with the events themselves.
But what about the Old Testament? Letâ??s take a quick look at one of the most incredible finds of the century â?? the Dead Sea Scrolls. With the discovery of these manuscripts at Qumran in 1946, texts were found that were about 1,000 years older than any previously-known Old Testament manuscript. And when compared with the later texts, these writings proved to be virtually identical.
With every turn of the archaeologistâ??s spade, we see further evidence of Scriptureâ??s trustworthiness. Such renowned and historical scholars as William Albright and Sir Frederick Kenyon have clearly testified that the findings of archaeology have served to underscore the authenticity of the Bible. Well, is the Bible reliable? I believe the evidence speaks for itself. And with that, I rest my case.
On the reliability of Scripture, that's the CRI Perspective. Iâ??m Hank Hanegraaff.
The point is, is that the Biblical text is VERY accurate to the original documents that we have our hands on. In other words, it's not partially accurate, it's not halfway accurate, but very accurate.
The fact remains that most translations that we have today are more of a thought for thought translation. That means that words, letters, spellings etc are going to be different. The meaning isn't different, just the way it's said. The King James was more a word for word translation. What truly matters though is this...
THE MESSAGE IS THE SAME!!
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