I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
Yes. And this is where a lot of Christians get freaked out because they start out with bad assumptions, as if Biblical documents fell from heaven. Biblical documents are what I like to think of as the cleanest articles of clothing in the hamper...the hamper being ANCIENT documents (they will not be as rich as documents from say 1700 AD).I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
Yes. And this is where a lot of Christians get freaked out because they start out with bad assumptions, as if Biblical documents fell from heaven. Biblical documents are what I like to think of as the cleanest articles of clothing in the hamper...the hamper being ANCIENT documents (they will not be as rich as documents from say 1700 AD).
They are the cleanest clothes in the hamper, however they still ARE ancient documents, and it comes with the territory of ancient documents that there will be puzzles and issues involved.
A few in translation, depending on the version you read as well. Even the venerable KJV. It occurs in that one because of both translation to English from Greek or Hebrew and then into the flourished English of Shakespeare, where they juggled words around so it read with some sense to it. The NKJV was done to correct for that, not just to update the English for reading but accuracy. You will never in a million years convince a KJV advocate of that, even though we know Jesus didn't walk around speaking Shakespearean English or any other English. It's possible for there to be two words in English when translated and depending on the one used it could change the meaning. This is why many pastors will confirm by books or these days programs. There are also known bogus versions out there too, some later NIV for instance have left whole passages out, the earlier ones pretty good. Some bibles cater to the gays, leaving out words describing the no no of it all.I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
Yes. And this is where a lot of Christians get freaked out because they start out with bad assumptions, as if Biblical documents fell from heaven. Biblical documents are what I like to think of as the cleanest articles of clothing in the hamper...the hamper being ANCIENT documents (they will not be as rich as documents from say 1700 AD).
They are the cleanest clothes in the hamper, however they still ARE ancient documents, and it comes with the territory of ancient documents that there will be puzzles and issues involved.
As a matter of fact textual criticism has revealed some problems to us. Having said that...let's talk about how impressive their accuracy is to other ancient documents!!
One translation after another.......... why???I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
He did with the KJV. There's a large number of Christians, myself included, who believe that the KJV is without error.And why couldn't God through the Holy Spirit inspire the writers and translators to put the correct and proper words?
God watches over His word to perform and to do what He says He will do. If there are any errors in the Bible they are extremely rare in the original language. The scribes had a counting system to make sure they had not made any mistakes. People do not understand the mathematical precision of the Hebrew language.I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
Which KJV, the current one? Some of the translations are more of a Bible commentary then a translation.He did with the KJV. There's a large number of Christians, myself included, who believe that the KJV is without error.
There are variations in translation, since I tend to take all the variants in a "yes and" capacity and test to see which ones God blesses most.I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?
Which KJV, the current one? Some of the translations are more of a Bible commentary then a translation.
There is a lot to learn about context that can give us clues that a lot of 'Complaints' from the skeptics might actually turn out to be things we'd expect to find based on Biblical cultures. Let's take the Gospels as the example.Thanks for explaining this.
Does that mean some verses lost their meanings over the years?
And why couldn't God through the Holy Spirit inspire the writers and translators to put the correct and proper words?
I understand words, saying, and language in general change over time, which is normal, and I am not talking about that.
I just read from the Authorized one. Never really looked into it much, just believe with faith. If there are many differences from the 1611 one than my own, they're very minor and I just trust God will not lead me into error.Which KJV, the current one? Some of the translations are more of a Bible commentary then a translation.
There is a lot to learn about context that can give us clues that a lot of 'Complaints' from the skeptics might actually turn out to be things we'd expect to find based on Biblical cultures. Let's take the Gospels as the example.
Getting the proper 'Gist' of historical Jesus and Christian beginnings out of the Gospels/Acts, as opposed to an inspired version that was written word for word in stone, is actually what some research suggests that we ought to find based on an illiterate oral culture. For starters ancient illiterate/low literate societies were not idiots by any means, they practiced memorization much better then our culture, people in Biblical times have been known to commit the entire OT scriptures to memory.
There have been studies done on illiterate story telling societies and what they have found is that there are story telling times set aside where certain people in the community, or heads of family, etc, would reinact the telling of their history (think about old native Americans sitting around the campfire as an example). Researchers, some who have even lived with these primitive illiterate peoples for a time, have noticed that an approximate range of 10% to 40% of the story could vary during each retelling to add flavor to the story. Focus can be heightened on certain characters during one retelling, a different moral lesson might be honed in on another retelling, etc.
However, immovable foundational details MUST be told during every retelling, and it was actually the duty of the listeners to correct the story teller if any of the core facts were misrepresented. If you just reverse the percentages this means on average 60% to 90% of the core facts had to be present every time. This 'Oral Culture' research is fairly new compared to other Biblical research...but what this is telling us is that all of these skeptical complaints over the years about how the Gospels are 'Different/Contradictory' actually could have been the normal practices of an oral culture of 1st century Israel, so that the 'Same yet different' flavors that you find in the 4 Gospels is NOT a problem after all. Furthermore this helps explain how you wouldn't really expect to get a sort of hard coded written in stone version of the Gospels, a presumption that the 21st century mind would expect.
There are other things to consider as well, such as our 21st century minds assuming that ancient Graeco-Roman biographies should be in chronological order, this was not at all necessary in those cultures. Look at my avatar, the book is called What Are The Gospels by Richard Burridge, it is a very involved book on comparing the Gospels to lots of other ancient Graeco-Roman writings, and making a full case for the Gospels as being ancient Graeco-Roman biography, and that they need to be judged on the standards of what ancient Graeco-Roman biographies were, NOT on what 21st century minds think.
As for Gospel errors...here's the thing, textual criticism tells us that we found some errors, but thanks to textual criticism WE KNOW what the errors are!! And they are very very few, and none of them effect a single foundational teaching of Christianity. If I remember correctly the two most notoriously disputed texts are the final verses of Mark (handling of snakes), and the good Samaritan story. There is very little, the huge majority of errors were things like a scribe accidentally misspelling or skipping a word and things of that nature. And this has never been a secret, your Bible version may even have footnotes that tell you that those verses in Mark are not found in the earliest manuscripts.
Not in the original languages.I understand and believe the Bible is God-Breathed, however over all the years, has there been any errors in the Bible, due to translation or any other reasons?