a related issue

[herev]

MLML, you might need to take a deep breath and calm down.

It seems by you suggesting God hasn't kept His Word intact,

Perhaps, depends on what you mean by intact.

that you are silently saying Jesus lied or didn't mean what He said when He said His Word will never pass away.

And God's Word (Jesus) has never passed away--his word (scripture) has never passed away, but do we have exact words anywhere?

Maybe I just misunderstood you, I hope.

probably

I think by this discussion we are trying to do what the Pharisees did in Jesus' day.

They focused so much on specific matters, that they lost the message.

True, this is what so many have said here about focusing on a specific chapter or story in the Bible and connecting it to faith or salvation.

I believe in most of the translations we have - I say most because there is one that perverts the entire truths of the Bible by promoting such things as homosexuality through Paul - the message is intact. Would you agree the message is still there?

Of course I would agree, that's actually my point exactly. If the message is still there, but the exact words are not--then can we ever be 100% sure of our interpretation--sure enough to tell others that they simply are wrong!

If one is looking to get deeper into the Bible, other then understanding salvation, then I would think it would be wise to learn Hebrew and Greek and study the original languages.

Agreed, but even there, we do not have any original manuscripts.

One thing to keep in mind, the more we learn about God and His Word the more we will be held accountable for.

OK

 

[California Tim]

Agreed, but even there, we do not have any original manuscripts.

With permission, I'd like to chime in one last time on this issue regarding the "original" manuscripts. We are very fortunate that the process of making copies in ancient Biblical times was amongst the most rigorous in history - including to this day (short of a zerox copy). These standards, applied fanatically, assured each and every copy was an EXACT copy of the original. Here is some information regarding the copies of the original manuscripts to enlighten any who'd consider it:

These “Ba’alei Masora” - the traditionalists - painstakingly created a vowel and organizational system, laboriously counting every word and letter of the Bible. The Masoretes’ instructions were very exact: for example, no word or letter could be copied from memory and God’s name (the tetagrammaton) could not be written with a newly inked pen. Indeed, if any one of these rules was broken, the scroll was to be destroyed. The extreme caution of the Masoretes is part of the reason why we have so few early Hebrew manuscripts (most of them date back to only the ninth century). After all this meticulous work, if there were no errors, the scroll was immediately declared authentic and in equal standing with the older version from which it had been copied. The adeptness of the Masoretes was plainly seen when the famous Dead Sea http://home.messiah.edu/~ds1253/​

 

[herev]

The MT dates from the ninth century, that leaves 800 years of copying before that
even so, with what little we have to compare, when we look at two copies of say the 3rd or 4th century manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark--either whole or pieces--no two agree. I don't think we can really point to any ONE as THE ONE that was copied exactly

With permission, I'd like to chime in one last time on this issue regarding the "original" manuscripts. We are very fortunate that the process of making copies in ancient Biblical times was amongst the most rigorous in history - including to this day (short of a zerox copy). These standards, applied fanatically, assured each and every copy was an EXACT copy of the original. Here is some information regarding the copies of the original manuscripts to enlighten any who'd consider it:

These “Ba’alei Masora” - the traditionalists - painstakingly created a vowel and organizational system, laboriously counting every word and letter of the Bible. The Masoretes’ instructions were very exact: for example, no word or letter could be copied from memory and God’s name (the tetagrammaton) could not be written with a newly inked pen. Indeed, if any one of these rules was broken, the scroll was to be destroyed. The extreme caution of the Masoretes is part of the reason why we have so few early Hebrew manuscripts (most of them date back to only the ninth century). After all this meticulous work, if there were no errors, the scroll was immediately declared authentic and in equal standing with the older version from which it had been copied. The adeptness of the Masoretes was plainly seen when the famous Dead Sea http://home.messiah.edu/~ds1253/​

 

[Vance]

In the late middle ages, they discovered a new manuscript of one of the gospels that was earlier than anyone they had available before. It differed in a number of instances from the text they had been using, so they simply used the text from the earlier MS in all later translations, including the ones we have now. But this means that for more than a 1,000 years, Christians had the wrong text (or we do now). Nothing major, but an indication that God is less concerned about the actually wording of the text than we might insist.

Also, what about those 300 years or so when they didn't even have a complete text of the NT collection, but just a collection of what they could get their hands on? How did they live their Christian life in full abundance without it?