Are there any errors in the Bible?

Dirk1540

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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!!
 
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coffeeandprayer

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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.

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.
 
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Philip_B

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I come from a tradition where we speak of Holy Scripture as inspired. Nothing should be required to be believed for salvation which cannot be demonstrated in Holy Scripture. I do not subscribe to any theory of errors in Holy Scripture, and yet I do think that there is an area between the text and the reader where the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Teaching of the Church, the Holy Tradition, and indeed Reason itself might help us truly understand what God has for us in the text.

In the words of the London Underground mind the gap because the problem may not be the text, but my propensity to read into the text that which I might want the text to say rather than to read out of the text that which the text says.

Another area here of course is context. My scripture teacher taught me that a text out of context in a con. As I have grown a little I have come to understand that part of the context I should understand is the historical and cultural context that gave birth to the text. A text like Psalm 137 makes a lot more sense when you place in in the context of the people in exile. It is the sound of the genuine lament of a stateless people, not a call to capricious violence against the innocent.
 
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Dave G.

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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?
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.

Let's put it this way, it isn't perfect but it's the best we have within a given language.. You can find known translation mistakes or what some perceive as a mistake in NIV, NKJV, KJV, ESV, NASB and on and on, just look up a general search sometime, just don't get too hung up on the hype.. I tend to read NKJV, I think I have 5 of them between paper and digital. But I still like to check it against KJV and sometimes ESV or even early NIV ( 1978 or so).

You won't pry the Geneva Bible out my wife's dead fingers when she passes. She believes in her heart it is most accurate and all the rest muffed something up. God bless her, I say read the one you got !
 
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ViaCrucis

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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?

The purpose of Scripture isn't to be a a kind of "magic book" as though it fell from heaven. The Bible is a collection of writings confessed and recognized as holy, sacred, and inspired in and by the Church. And the chief purpose of the Bible is to point us to Jesus. Recall John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God", and verse 14 of the same, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten Son of the Father full of grace and truth". Jesus is God's Word. The Bible is the word about the Word.

If there are minor errors here or there in the texts, that doesn't change the fact that Scripture, in its wholeness, faithfully communicates Jesus to us. It is also important to recognize that as Christians we do not believe in Jesus because the Bible says so, we embrace the Bible because we believe in Jesus. Christ stands first and center; Jesus is the object of our faith, the Bible serves to point to Jesus, not Jesus to the Bible.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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salt-n-light

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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?

Errors, yes. But a marginal error significant enough to deter the meaning and message? No, depending on the translation. Whenever things are translated, like with any language, its never with 100% accurancy, thats why context is important, the time of production is important, and having the guidance of the Holy Spirit is very important.

Does it lose credibility? No. But it should push us to be more aware of its nature and potential influences that can be on the Bible. The Word went through alot of cultural changes, and even now with the newer versions, alot more influences and agendas are widening that margin of error to the point where it does deter the message.

Now more than ever, we need to be careful of what we actually read, and know how to discern the Truth from counterfeits. And its hard to do that if we are not aware or close-minded to the forces that are working against Truth.
 
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salt-n-light

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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!!

With the amount of cultural changes the Bible endured, only the grace of God preserved it
 
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Winken

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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?
One translation after another.......... why???
The Bible is inspired, Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21. The HOLY SPIRIT reads it to me, not countless denominations, interpretations and applications of men..... and that includes all those commentators who came along a century or two after the Cross. How many commentators have written books explaining scripture? How many books are on the market today? How many TV preachers explaining scripture? TV preachers jump up and down due to a NEW revelation!!! New??? Christians, God bless them, jump on the bandwagon!!

It is all right there. Pick up your favorite translation. How does it compare to what the Holy Spirit is telling you?

How complicated is Christianity? Complicated? Give me a break!!
 
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CodyFaith

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And why couldn't God through the Holy Spirit inspire the writers and translators to put the correct and proper words?
He did with the KJV. There's a large number of Christians, myself included, who believe that the KJV is without error.

Also, hello from N.S.!
 
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joshua 1 9

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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?
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.
 
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joshua 1 9

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He did with the KJV. There's a large number of Christians, myself included, who believe that the KJV is without error.
Which KJV, the current one? Some of the translations are more of a Bible commentary then a translation.
 
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Gregory Thompson

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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?
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.
 
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Dirk1540

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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.
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.
 
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CodyFaith

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Which KJV, the current one? Some of the translations are more of a Bible commentary then a translation.
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.
 
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coffeeandprayer

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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.


Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I really appreciate it. God bless you.
 
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Waggles

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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?
Not in the original languages.
But there are some small errors of mistranslated words and an odd verse or two
inserted by those wanting to reinforce church doctrine at the expense of truth.

1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word,
and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
This verse is not in the original Greek and was inserted much later as a statement
to uphold the doctrine of the Trinity - the triune nature of the Godhead.
There are probably no more than half-a-dozen such interpolations in the KJV, etc.

How do we know what is the Hebrew and Greek of the original scriptures
inspired by God? I am glad you asked this question.

Bible numerics or gematria is the answer!
Ivan Panin was a professor of mathematics at Harvard University back in like the
1890s to the 1930s and while studying the orginal Greek he noticed that words
(like the definite article) were not used consistently and there were definite
patterns to the use of words in the original texts.

Our arithmetic numbers; 1, 2, 3, >9,0... came to us through the returning Crusaders
who read Arabic scrolls. These numbers came from India.
But in our ancient Greco-Roman world & the Middle East number values
were ascribed to the alphabet. Hebrew, Greek and Latin used letters of the
alphabet to indicate numbers.
The most familiar to us are the Roman numerals on old big clocks - I = 1 and
III = 3 or X = 10 and V =5 and C =100, and so on.
Thus 1996 in Roman numerals is MCMXCVI.

Ivan Panin discovered gematria or Bible numerics and proved that every single
word and verse in the 66 books of the Bible were sealed by God to protect
the purity and truth of God's word from Satan and other deceivers.

Ivan Panin's—Bible Numerics
God is a mathematician

Thy word is very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it.
Psalm 119:140
5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
6 Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.
Proverbs 30:
 
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Waggles

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15 And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
2 Timothy 3:
 
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Waggles

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19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed,
as unto a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in
your hearts:
20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

2 Peter 1:
 
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