1. Anyone who has any formal training in the Scriptures (and many who have had
informal training) are aware that the Bible has not been perfectly preserved.
There are alternate readings, there is text which has been dropped out, and a
number of things which indicate to us that, the manuscripts which we have are
not perfect.
2. The question is, why? After all, God is omnipotent; God could have chosen to
perfectly preserve the Word of God exactly as it was originally recorded.
3. First of all, God did not want there to be veneration or worship of the Scriptures
themselves. We respect the ancient manuscripts which have been preserved
and we work hard to make the information of these Scriptures available, but there
is no church of the Holy Scriptures where a supernaturally preserved manuscript
is under glass and men all go there to worship it. We are never given objects to
worship in Christianity (or, in the worship of Jehovah Elohim).
4. The key to the Word of God is, to get the information from the Word of God into
our souls. This cannot be done if the Scriptures themselves are an object of
worship.
5. The Bible needed to be translated into the languages of the people. If we had the
Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts perfectly preserved, then there might
be less call for them to be translated into another language. After all, what we
have is perfect, so why would you want to change perfect? As a result, only
scholars of these 3 languages would be able to study and appreciate the Word
of God.
6. How many scholars of these languages would dare to try to teach the Scriptures
by providing a modern translation of this or that passage? This may have been
seen as adding to or taking from the Scriptures.
7. The focus of teaching would either be removed from the actual content of the
Word of God, as there would be those who had no such formal training. So,
veneration of the manuscripts themselves in the original languages would result
in teaching that is separate from the Scriptures or the teaching would be so
focused on each letter and word that little learning would occur. Let me give you
an example: Keil and Delitzsch have written an excellent commentary of the
Scriptures, but it is so thick with language and language references that it is hard
to read and understand even a single paragraph before your mind goes numb.
8. If I know that I have access to the exact perfect words of God, recorded as they
were originally in the original languages, I am going to be much less likely to
translate these words imperfectly into another language. There may be some
countries and churches which would even forbid such a thing from being done.
However, I am less overwhelmed by this perfection if I know there are a few
textual problems here and there. As a result, we have hundreds of translations
into so many different languages. I personally refer to over 50 translations into
the English alone. Furthermore, I have come to appreciate many of the looser
translations to the point where, once and awhile, I understand a verse only
because I see how the NIV or the Living Bible translated it, and the meaning
becomes more clear to me than I find in the KJV, the NKJV or the NASB.
9. The textual problems which exist—and there are many in the book of Samuel, for
example—have absolutely no affect upon our doctrinal understanding. There are
at least 4 places in the text of 2Sam. 13 where there are major problems with the
text. No matter how what text and what version we choose to believe is the
original text, our understanding of the fundamentals of the faith are unchanged.
I cannot choose one set of readings, someone else chooses another set of
readings, and the end result are two very different theologies. That will not
happen, even with the errors and textual problems that exist.
10. Consequently, God has allowed the imperfections of the world to have an effect
upon the text of the Word of God without destroying its power or its meaning. As
believers, this is reflected in our lives. We fail again and again; but, as long as
we remain alive on this earth, God’s plan continues for our lives, despite our
imperfections.
11. Because the text is imperfect, there is not an overwhelming need to make every
Bible translation into a word-for-word translation. What the New Living
Translation may lack in exactness of translation, it makes up for in reaching
people who would not have any interest in reading the King James Version. The
gospel and most fundamental doctrines are as clear in the Living Bible as they
are in the KJV.
12. Similarly, we have other translations in simple English, so that a person on a 6th
grade reading level and lower can understand what he is reading.
13. We know from history that the Catholic church persecuted and even executed
those who attempted to get the Word of God into the hands of the people in a
language that they understood. That is key. The idea of having services in Latin
is absolutely ridiculous; there is nothing that can be learned, unless the people
know Latin.
14. We develop an appreciation for the scribes who preserved the Scriptures over the
past 3000 or so years. We have come to learn what they did and the lengths that
they went to in order to preserve the Word of God.
15. Knowing the lengths that the Scribes went to in order to preserve the Word of
God tells us that they had tremendous respect for those old manuscripts as the
Word of God. This indicates to us that the Bible was recognized as the Word of
God very early on.
16. God has given us enough manuscripts of various kinds so that we can determine,
in almost every case, exactly what is in the Word of God. In the places where we
have difficulty, most of these difficulties are minor, and involve number or
modernized spellings or change of script. I may come up to a verse that I do not
have a complete grasp of; however, I almost never come up to a verse where I
am unable to understand it or explain it because I might not have the exact
correct text to work from or text which is close enough to the original to work from.
In other words, almost never do I come across a verse and say, “Well, I do not
have a clue as to how this should actually read in the original language; and
therefore, I have no clue as to how to explain it.” I may be unhappy with my
explanation, but it is almost never because of a problem with the text.
17. As a result of text being imperfect, there have been men of all sorts of spiritual
gifts rise up and tackle the problem of textual criticism, and their thoughts and
work on these matters are often quite helpful in determining what is to be found
substantively in any verse. God has granted men spiritual girts which allow them
to deal with imperfect text.
18. The inexact text (and some of this is a result of the changing of the spelling of
some words or the insertion of glosses) keeps people from getting weird with the
text, and looking for hidden messages unearthed by various numerology
methods. There are some goofballs out there who claim to find the Kennedy
assassination and a variety of other things hidden in the text of the Word of God
by taking, say, every tenth letter and stringing the results together, but this falls
apart as, by the end of Gen. 1, we do not truly know what the tenth letter was
(which may be, by the way, because of a simple change in spelling a word).
19. I would argue that, the pastor who is moderately obsessed with determining the
correct text will also, in this search for the correct text, be able to best present the
meaning of the passage in question to his congregation.
20. One may reasonably argue that God has preserved His Word. There is nothing
more hated and more attacked throughout world history than God’s Word (except
for the Jewish people). Yet, we have 26,000 full and partial manuscripts of the
New Testament (no other ancient manuscript has anywhere near that many
preserved copies) and the time between the original manuscripts being written
and the first copies to emerge is far shorter for the New Testament than for any
other ancient document.
21. When it comes to the Old Testament, its accuracy was preserved in a much
different way. For many years, our Old Testament text was based upon
principally one manuscript copied perhaps 1300 years after the canon for the Old
Testament was closed. Since then, only a handful of manuscripts have been
discovered—and then came along the Dead Sea Scrolls, which confirmed the
accuracy of the few manuscripts that we have. 2Sam. 13 is perhaps one of the
weakest and most poorly transmitted chapters in all of the Bible. And yet, the
problems we unearthed in this chapter have nothing to do with the fundamentals
of the faith. We are not questioning any of God’s attributes, the advent of His
Son, His death on the cross for our sins, etc. The textual problems that we come
across do not affect the information that we have.
22. Now, although there are only 7 or so complete or near complete ancient
manuscripts of the Old Testament (along with the Dead Sea Scrolls), the Old
Testament has been preserve in the Greek, the Latin, the Syriac, the Arabic, etc.
So, when we are confused about, say, the meaning of this or that word, this or
that phrase, or about the transmission of the text, we have several other
languages to go to, translations made 1000–2000 years ago and more (from
more ancient manuscripts than we possess today), and we can see how they
understood it.
23. One may argue as to the corruptness and apostasy of the Catholic church;
however, St. Jerome’s Latin translation (which was adopted by the Catholic
church) is outstanding; it is accurate; and it has been preserved by the Catholic
church, despite the problems within that institution. And, if one ignores the
apocrypha, you can pick up any English translation approved by the Catholic
church and use that as your main Bible, and your spiritual life will not be harmed.
24. In John Lee’s The Greatest Book in the World, we read: It seems strange that the
text of Shakespeare, which has been in existence less than two hundred and
eight years, should be far more uncertain and corrupt than that of the New
Testament, now over eighteen centuries old, during nearly fifteen of which it
existed only in manuscript...With perhaps a dozen or twenty exceptions, the text
of every verse in the New Testament may be said to be so far settled by general
consent of scholars, that any dispute as to its readings must relate rather to the
interpretation of the words than to any doubts respecting the words themselves.
But in every one of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays there are probably a
hundred readings still in dispute, a large portion of which materially affects the
meaning of the passages in which they occur.1 Assuming the truth of this
quotation, that would make the Bible supernaturally but not perfectly preserved.
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