Getting stoned

[Sketcher]

Hi,
John 8 1-11 seems like one of the key Bible stories and carries an important lesson.
But my Bible (NIV) seems unsure if it belongs there. There seems to be a whole debate about what verses, and even what books should be in the Bible.
How can we be certain if something is biblical or not if we can't define what is or isn't part of the Bible? Especially when so much seems to hang on the subtle nuances of what is written.

Would you include John 8 1-11 in the word of God?

It's in my Bible, so I include it.

 

[Tellyontellyon]

I got this Bible because it seemed very clear in its wording. Maybe God is happy that there is some variation? Variation in scripts and in how people understand them?
Perhaps a degree of variation is ok?

 

[chevyontheriver]

I got this Bible because it seemed very clear in its wording. Maybe God is happy that there is some variation? Variation in scripts and in how people understand them?
Perhaps a degree of variation is ok?

I get it. And the NIV IS a very readable version. Far more readable than the King James Version (KJV). Readability matters. And I own a NIV myself and have read the whole thing.

Over time I have read many different versions. As translations they all have issues. . For many years I had settled on the Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition (RSV-CE) as both literal and literary and in modern enough English. For My next Bible translation I am starting the English Standard Version (ESV) and will eventually get the ESV-Catholic Edition. Small differences but it's probably the best at the moment in being literal and literary and in common modern English.

Something to consider is that you can get Bibles with minimal notes, with a moderate amount of notes and some cross-references, or a massive amount of notes and even commentary. The latter are called Study Bibles. For right now you may not want to get bogged down with lots of notes, but just to let you know there are such things. It's kind of like Shakespere, where one version is just the text, and the other version explains every little odd word and reference.

You are right about variability, especially in teanslation. We are not only translating words but cultural concepts. Different translations help us see a bit of that. No translation is perfect, so using more than one helps out.If you continue to be interested, find an ESV-CE and see how that goes. You will be getting the canon of Scripture that Catholics have used for more than 1600 years. And that is an asset.

 

[ChetSinger]

I got this Bible because it seemed very clear in its wording. Maybe God is happy that there is some variation? Variation in scripts and in how people understand them?
Perhaps a degree of variation is ok?

What's important to me, as a Christian, is whether what I read is what the authors wrote. And I've been convinced that it is. While there are a huge number of copying errors (which would be expected by people making many thousands of copies by hand) the message is remarkably unchanged, even after 2,000 years. So I'm satisfied that I have what I need to follow Christ.

 

[ChetSinger]

I get it. And the NIV IS a very readable version. Far more readable than the King James Version (KJV). Readability matters. And I own a NIV myself and have read the whole thing.

Over time I have read many different versions. As translations they all have issues. . For many years I had settled on the Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition (RSV-CE) as both literal and literary and in modern enough English. For My next Bible translation I am starting the English Standard Version (ESV) and will eventually get the ESV-Catholic Edition. Small differences but it's probably the best at the moment in being literal and literary and in common modern English.

Something to consider is that you can get Bibles with minimal notes, with a moderate amount of notes and some cross-references, or a massive amount of notes and even commentary. The latter are called Study Bibles. For right now you may not want to get bogged down with lots of notes, but just to let you know there are such things. It's kind of like Shakespere, where one version is just the text, and the other version explains every little odd word and reference.

You are right about variability, especially in teanslation. We are not only translating words but cultural concepts. Different translations help us see a bit of that. No translation is perfect, so using more than one helps out.If you continue to be interested, find an ESV-CE and see how that goes. You will be getting the canon of Scripture that Catholics have used for more than 1600 years. And that is an asset.

I've become a fan of the ESV and it's the version I use for daily reading. I like how it's based on modern scholarship and how it retains many of the original Hebrew and Greek phrases such as "Abraham lifted up his eyes" rather than simplifying it to "Abraham looked up".

 

[Radagast]

Hi,
John 8 1-11 seems like one of the key Bible stories and carries an important lesson.
But my Bible (NIV) seems unsure if it belongs there. There seems to be a whole debate about what verses, and even what books should be in the Bible.

It is a fact that the passage is missing in several ancient manuscripts.

My personal opinion is that the passage was in the original, and was then removed by some people and re-inserted by others. We have evidence from Saint Augustine that this happened.

 

[Radagast]

Presumably though all the ancient manuscripts that were originally written by the apostles are now long gone, we have copies of copies of copies... how can we really know which ones are older?

There are standard methods for dating manuscripts by writing style. Many partial manuscripts of the New Testament have been dated to before the year 300.

The Codex Sinaiticus dates to about 350, and has the full New Testament. It is all online at Codex Sinaiticus - Home

 

[Hawkins]

I got this Bible because it seemed very clear in its wording. Maybe God is happy that there is some variation? Variation in scripts and in how people understand them?
Perhaps a degree of variation is ok?

It means God doesn't need humans to be perfect for His message of salvation to convey. Today is compiled both from churches early documents and the large amount of ancient scrolls made available to us. Contextual that's more than enough for the Word of God to be revealed to us. It's due to human incapability that we failed to keep the original ancient scrolls used to canonized the Bible, with the factor that we had waves of Roman wide persecutions including the the burning of Christian books during the first several centuries. By God's will, this Roman wide action didn't seem to fully cover the area of Egypt, we thus have some main artifacts recovered from Egypt, which are kept by our today's Church. We thus have more than one sources to validate our Scripture, from what traditionally conveys and from mass of ancient scrolls (thus the saying that some verses are with its original scrolls missing, or they are not in the current scrolls found).

What matters is that God is in control, under the circumstance that humans lack the ability to discover more scrolls (or the scrolls are simply buried in history). The Bible is theologically consistent, whether you would include or exclude those verses with their scrolls not found or missing. God doesn't need humans to be perfect for His salvation message to convey. The theology is also complete, and since our Church acts as the guardian of the Bible you can trust those verses in our current major translations even though the original scrolls are not found or missing.

Satan on the other hand, will leverage that human incapability for you to doubt the truth conveyed. So it's time to put your trust to God or being fooled. God is in control, while Satan is exploiting the human inability. That's the situation. Regardless, the Bible doctrine is sound!

In the end, the Bible will work for His sheep, and perhaps His sheep only,

Matthew 25:29 (NIV2011)
For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.