Did you know that there are over 65,000 textual errors in the King James version of the Bible?
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Actually it isn’t nearly that many, and I don’t use the KJV. If you want a lesson on variants I can give you one.
Neither the errors of the KJV translators nor the variants make the Bible unreliable in matters of faith and doctrine like the LDS church (which beck belongs to) claims.
I also have several years (and degrees)of Biblical Hebrew, Koine Greek, Latin, Biblical Studies and Church History under my belt. Furthermore I used to be LDS, which is why I recognized LDS propaganda when the following first came out...
What did beck get wrong? This conversation has appeared on several threads and goes to show that a) he is brainwashed, b) he has no discernment in spiritual matters, and c) his research is sloppy.
22:40: Glenn: “…the Dead Sea Scrolls, you know what they are? Stu, do you know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are?
Stu: Well, of course I do…
Glenn: Now, c’mon, most people don’t.
Stu: Well, I heard of them, I don’t really know
Glenn: You don’t really know. You have no idea why they were there. Sara average person doesn’t know. Any idea, take a guess on why the Dead Sea Scrolls were there, or anything else.
Sara(?): Something religious.
Glenn: Okay, good. Even though I’ve explained this on this program a couple of times, I’m glad to see that even the people that work with me don’t even listen.
So here’s what happened. When Constantine decided that he was going to cobble together an army, he did the Council of Nicea, right, Pat?
Pat: Yea.
Glenn: The Council of Nicea, and what they did is brought all of the religious figures together, all the Christians and then they said, “Ok, let’s put together the Apostles’ Creed, let’s you know, you guys do it.”
So they brought all their religious scripture together, that’s when the Bible was first bound and everything else.
And then they said, “Anybody that disagrees with this is a heretic and off with their head!”
Well, that’s what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. The Dead Sea Scrolls are those scriptures that people had at the time that they said, “They are destroying all of this truth.”
Whether it’s truth or not is up to the individual, but at that time those people thought that this was something that needed to be preserved and so they rolled up the scrolls and put them in clay pots and they put them in the back of caves where no one could find them.
They were hidden scripture because everything was being destroyed that disagreed with the Council of Nicea and Constantine. That’s what those things are.”
I am an art historian by education. The early Christian and Middle Ages were of particular interest to me, and I specialized in illuminated manuscripts. I have been a professional calligrapher in past decades.
Most folks don’t realize that for most of Chrisianity, bibles were copied by hand, often by people who couldn’t read. For three-quarters of the history of Christianity the bible was known to most only from having listened to excerpts read out loud. For a person to even possess a bible was a capital crime; only Catholic church priests and officers were to possess and read bibles, interpreting the doctrine for the simple folk.
Yes, there were elaborate missals created for the rich and powerful during the late Middle Ages, but not entire bibles.
The medieval Christian church was all about control and particularly controlling the message. It started very early with Pope Gregory (the Great).
All unapproved gospels were ordered destroyed by the Catholic church. That fact is irrefutable. So when texts like the Gospel of St. Thomas and Gospel of Mary Magdalen appear after being hidden in an Egyptian oasis for centuries, it is exciting for what they can reveal about what the early church wanted to hide or selectively control.
The comment about over 65,000 textual errors originated with Bart D. Ehrman, and is from his book, Misquoting Jesus.