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What to Say When Someone Says "The Bible Has Errors"
Christian Post ^
| 03/07/2012
| Jonathan Dodson
Posted on 03/07/2012 6:43:36 AM PST by SeekAndFind
What to Say When Someone Says "The Bible Has Errors"
By Jonathan Dodson
Most people question the reliability of the Bible. You’ve probably been in a conversation with a friend or met someone in a coffeeshop who said: “How can you be a Christian when the Bible has so many errors?” How should we respond? What do you say?
Instead of asking them to name one, I suggest you name one or two of the errors. Does your Bible contain errors? Yes. The Bible that most people possess is a translation of the Greek and Hebrew copies of copies of the original documents of Scripture. As you can imagine, errors have crept in over the centuries of copying. Scribes fall asleep, misspell, take their eyes off the manuscript, and so on. I recommend telling people what kind of errors have crept into the Bible. Starting with the New Testament, Dan Wallace, New Testament scholar and founder the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, lists four types of errors in Understanding Scripture: An Overview of the Bible’s Origin, Reliability, and Meaning.
Types of Errors
1) Spelling & Nonsense Errors. These are errors occur when a scribe wrote a word that makes no sense in its context, usually because they were tired or took their eyes off the page.Some of these errors are quite comical, such as "we were horses among you" (Gk. hippoi, "horses," instead of ēpioi, "gentle," or nēpioi, "little children") in 1 Thessalonians 2:7 in one late manuscript. Obviously, Paul isn’t saying he acted like a horse among them. That would be self-injury! These kinds of errors are easily corrected.
2) Minor Changes. These minor changes are as small as the presence or absence of an article "the" or changed word order, which can vary considerably in Greek. Depending on the sentence, Greek grammar allows the sentence to be written up to 18 times, while still saying the same thing! So just because a sentence wasn’t copied in the same order, doesn’t mean that we lost the meaning.
3) Meaningful but not Plausible. These errors have meaning but aren't a plausible reflection of the original text. For example, 1 Thessalonians 2:9, instead of "the gospel of God" (the reading of almost all the manuscripts), a late medieval copy has "the gospel of Christ." There is a meaning difference between God and Christ, but the overall manuscript evidence points clearly in one direction, making the error plain and not plausibly part of the original.
4) Meaningful and Plausible. These are errors that have meaning and that the alternate reading is plausible as a reflection of the original wording. These types of errors account for less than 1% of all variants and typically involve a single word or phrase. The biggest of these types of errors is the ending of the Gospel of Mark, which most contemporary scholars to not regard as original. Our translations even footnote that!
Is the Bible Reliable?
So, is the Bible reliable? Well, the reliability of our English translations depends largely upon the quality of the manuscripts they were translated from. The quality depends, in part, on how recent the manuscripts are. Scholars like Bart Ehrman have asserted that we don't have manuscripts that are early enough. However, the manuscript evidence is quite impressive:
- There are as many as eighteen second-century manuscripts. If the Gospels were completed between 50-100 A.D., then this means that these early copies are within 100 years. Just last week, Dan Wallace announced that a new fragment from the Gospel of Mark was discovered dating back to the first century A.D., placing it well within 50 years of the originals, a first of its kind. When these early manuscripts are all put together, more than 43% of the NT is accounted for from copies no later than the 2nd C.
- Manuscripts that date before 400 AD number 99, including one complete New Testament called Codex Sinaiticus. So the gap between the original, inerrant autographs and the earliest manuscripts is pretty slim. This comes into focus when the Bible is compared to other classical works that, in general, are not doubted for their reliability. In this chart of comparison with other ancient literature, you can see that the NT has far more copies than any other work, numbering 5,700 (Greek) in comparison to the 200+ of Suetonius. If we take all manuscripts into account (handwritten prior to printing press), we have 20,000 copies of the NT. There are only 200 copies of the earliest Greek work.
- This means if we are going to be skeptical about the Bible, then we need to be 1000xs more skeptical about the works of Greco-Roman history. Or put another way, we can be 1000 times more confident about the reliability of the Bible. It is far and away the most reliable ancient document.
What to Say When Someone Says “The Bible Has Errors”.
So, when someone asserts that the Bible says errors, we can reply by saying: “Yes, our Bible translations do have errors, let me tell you about them. But as you can see, less than 1% of them are meaningful and those errors don’t affect the major teachings of the Christian faith. In fact, there are 1000 times more manuscripts of the Bible than the most documented Greco-Roman historian by Suetonius. So, if we’re going to be skeptical about ancient books, we should be 1000 times more skeptical of the Greco-Roman histories. The Bible is, in fact, incredibly reliable.”
Contrary to popular assertion, that as time rolls on we get further and further away from the original with each new discovery, we actually get closer and closer to the original text. As Wallace puts it, we have "an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the biblical documents." Therefore, we can be confident that what we read in our modern translations of the the ancient texts is approximately 99% accurate. It is very reliable.
For Further Study (order easy to difficult):
TOPICS: Apologetics; Religion & Culture; Theology
KEYWORDS: bible; historicity; inerrancy
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To: what's up
Of course they did not individually translate anything but they selected the scholars and influenced the path taken to “translate”. The scholars were men who held position based on their social and political position with regard to the monarch. The process has all of the same aspects as politically appointed judges who foul the Constitution with their individual and politically influenced interpretations of the founding document.
I have no belief in the infallibility of the pope any more than I believe that the old testament is completely literal truth. I am adenominational. Churches of whatever denomination are contrivances of men with their own interpretations of what the scriptures mean and more importantly how they should be interpreted. They all believe one way or the other that they are correct (infallible) and that all others will not see salvation if they don’t believe the same way they do. If they didn’t believe this way they would not be a separate denomination. I don’t feel the need to base my beliefs in God on any flawed human being’s interpretation of what he/she believes to be God’s word.
41
posted on
03/07/2012 9:01:48 AM PST
by
RJS1950
(The democrats are the "enemies foreign and domestic" cited in the federal oath)
To: SeekAndFind
"The worker is worthy of his pay" is found in almost the same words in both Luke 10.7 and Matthew 10.10. That the phrase also appears in I Timothy 5.18 doesn't necessarily mean that Paul has read Luke--it could be known from oral tradition, or from the written collection of Jesus' sayings that many scholars argue for (to explain the many resemblances between Matthew and Luke when they have material that is not also in Mark).
II Peter is the most controversial book of the New Testament as to authenticity (whether it was actually written by the Apostle Peter or by someone else, between 100 and 150, using the name of Peter). Already Origen refers to the doubts about authenticity. The Wikipedia article on Second Peter has a lot of footnotes--the first one takes you to an article on bible.org which outlines all the arguments for and against authenticity (that writer accepts it as authentic).
To: grumpa
43
posted on
03/07/2012 9:14:22 AM PST
by
Salvation
("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
To: freedumb2003
The translations of the Bible are guided by God’s hand. This is incorrect. The doctrine of biblical inspiration and inerrancy extends only to the original manuscripts. If the above statement was true, we would have to accept translations such as the Jehovah's Witnesses' New World Translation, which mistranslates certain passages related to Christ's Deity, as "guided by God's hand."
Most translations are acceptable and strive to faithfully translate the best available Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, but we certainly must not claim that the translations themselves are inspired.
44
posted on
03/07/2012 9:30:04 AM PST
by
tjd1454
To: RJS1950
but they selected the scholars and influenced the path taken to “translate”. If their influence had been draconian you would have seen huge fights over how they were attempting to distort what had been laid down in the most ancient of texts.
This didn't happen.
In fact, is it remarkable how true to the original texts the more modern versions are.
When you read most editions of the Bible today, the sense is clear for a vast majority of the verses.
People quibble over the meaning of "infallible"...it is extremely clear what the scriptures intend to say whether you read the original languages or the vernaculars.
To: 240B
"according to my reading".
Millions of theologians and scholars have studied the Bible for approximately 2,000 years. Most people, when it comes to any other field of study - I like to use the engineering world as an example - would never think to say they knew anything about a field of study before actually studying it. If a person has zero knowledge of computer programming, they have some learning to do before they can successfully write a complex program. And just to accomplish relatively easy programming goals, they would struggle mightily unless they read up on what programmers who have gone before them have come up with.
With the Bible, unbelievers often dismiss it out of hand with their outward words, though I have no idea what is going on in their hearts and minds as they do this. How does one profess the great wisdom to dismiss something out of hand as being false when a) it is a large topic that people make a career of studying, b) many smart people have studied it over a span of 2,000 years and c) one has not undertaken any sort of quality study of what has been written on the subject ?
I assume some of those who studied were much smarter than I and had a much better knowledge than I. Lo and behold, I discovered that I had zero understanding of the Bible, and if I just read it, and no commentary on it, I could read it for my whole life and not understand the theology it presented. Practically every verse in the Bible refers to other verses and teachings somewhere else. Part of what Scripture teaches is that ordained pastors have a duty to teach Scripture. Not just memorizing the words, but teaching what is meant by them. There are many wonderful commentaries written by theologians. Many of these are rubbish, many of them offer excellent insights into Biblical meanings. The seeker will seek.
The whole idea behind the Reformation was to fix errors in doctrine - the basic idea being that if the Bible was the document that conveyed the meaning that the Church was based on, but the Church was departing from the Bible in it's doctrine and practices - and the Bible specifically warns to not do that as a common theme throughout - then the Church needed to be reformed. In many places the Bible decries hypocrisy and it never says that hypocrisy is acceptable. The whole Reformation was based on an honest read of the Bible and common sense; and to that end, many people were put to death and did not recant. In my goofy little mind, I wondered, "gee, maybe there's something there".
What is truly amazing is that an honest study reveals a perfect truth. A lot of the heavy lift of study is accessible at http://www.biblegateway.com and then looking at the Matthew Henry commentaries (click Show Resources) right alongside the King James text.
The Bible is not a cookbook with recipes that can each be studied separately from each other; the whole must be brought to mind at once. For example, your comments on Jews and Jewish behavior; the Bible does not "portray the Jewish people as less than stellar people". I remember in this case the significant verses:
Acts 10
"34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
35 But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. "
In various places Scripture declares that no man is worthy of God. It is only by the sovereign (God is the Creator) grace of God that man is saved.
If a man designs and builds something, he has control over the thing; how it will function, every aspect of it's nature. Why should not God be sovereign over his creation ?
The truth must be sought in order to be understood.
46
posted on
03/07/2012 9:54:07 AM PST
by
PieterCasparzen
(We have to fix things ourselves.)
To: GonzoGOP
What you say is true about the Iliad.
However, Homer was not primarily an historian, but a poet. He was not so concerned with getting the details right, but evoking the Trojan heroism/pathos regarding events which took place 400 years earlier.
Did Moses have the same intents as Homer? Judging from the text, I think Moses for the most part was much more intent on transmitting historical events rather than pathos.
To: GonzoGOP
In addition, Homer may very well been dependent only on oral tradition, whereas as I said before Moses had access to the best available written records.
To: 240B
In fact it is mentioned several times in the New Testement that Jesus prohibited the eating of blood That's untrue.
Are we Jews or not. Do we circumcise or not? Do we obey the Mosaic Laws or not? It depends on which book you read and how you interpret it. Nothing is very clear. In my opinion, as the books were written separately at different places and by different translators, there were just too many cooks making the soup. That was my humble reading of it.
No, it doesn't depend on which book you read. The NT is quite clear that to be Jewish is not required...that's the general overall message and the very reason for which Christ came.
Paul is the very clearest on the issue...he discusses the issue head-on. But all books agree if you really devote yourself to reading them.
To: Lucas McCain
How does that square with love and mercy? You never mention another part of God's character which is plain in both Old and New Testament. That is His justice.
The mercy is shown to those who will escape from His judgment. We are all under His judgment unless we accept the solution for escape.
To: RJS1950
the version the council approved was heavily influenced by the need for Constantine Somehow, I don't think Athansius was steered into what he thought were inspired books by Constantine.
To: GonzoGOP; SeekAndFind; mnehring; rusty schucklefurd; what's up; Colonel Kangaroo; 240B; ...
Words that only came into use during the Babylonian exile appear in text of the earlier books. I don't have the examples at hand but in my Theology class 20 some years ago a number of them were pointed out. Well, your first mistake was listening to your theology professor. I have been one (Ph.D. in Religion/Theology), so I know... Unfortunately untold numbers of impressionable college students have had their faith undermined by their professors. "Let not many among you be teachers, for they shall receive a double judgment."
For all those who claim that the Bible contains historical errors, my own experience teaching the historical and archaeological background of the Bible on site while living in Israel for several years has only confirmed my confidence in the historical accuracy of the Bible. Curiously, upon questioning, I have often found that the skeptics lack first-hand knowledge or experience that would lead them to conclude that the Bible is historically inaccurate. Rather, they have simply chosen to believe some "authority" rather than accept the authority of God's Word.
Of course, there are difficult passages, which the Apostle Peter admits:
"He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:15-17. I have found that there are reasonable answers to these difficult passages and apparent contradictions.
Regarding the claim that Genesis employs supposed anachronistic terms which came into use only at a later time, such assertions are notoriously subjective. Many theology professors question the authority of the Biblical text because such theories are part of the "received orthodoxy" taught them by their professors. Trendy theories have a way of becoming "gospel truth," and are taught as such until they are finally discarded only after they have wrongly influenced a generation of scholars, who in any event are hesitant to "rock the boat" and jeopardize their tenure.
Similar theories were used to argue against the early dating of the book of Daniel (which "obviously" could not have predicted events beforehand, which would be a miraculous event, which we in the modern age "know" do not occur). Legions of theologians were taught that Daniel could not have been written in the 6th century B.C. because the book used terms which only came into use much later.
However, with the passage of time true scholarship asserted itself and became inescapable: it was grudgingly conceded that many of the so-called anachronistic terms actually appeared in Greek literature dated to the same era as the book of Daniel. Never mind: many professors, having been trained in the old theory, continue to parrot the skeptical, anti-supernatural "orthodoxy."
One might also take issue with the complaint: The Bible in contrast is often presented as all or nothing. Either you take every word, including 7 day creation, 6000 year old Earth and mega flood or nothing.
Consider this: if you make yourself the judge of what is "true" or "inspired" or whatever in Holy Scripture, then you have become the final arbiter and authority, not Scripture. Thomas Jefferson allegedly created his own "bible" in which he discarded all passages which offended his sensibilities. It was said to be a rather thin volume.
When it comes to God and His Revelation, we are given the freedom to accept or reject it (and suffer the consequences); we are not free to selectively accept only that which suits our fancy.
52
posted on
03/07/2012 10:34:06 AM PST
by
tjd1454
To: what's up
In addition, Homer may very well been dependent only on oral tradition, whereas as I said before Moses had access to the best available written records.
That posits of course that those written records existed. Evidence however doesn't support that assumption. For the simple reason that to have written records you need one critical thing. Writing!
Egyptian hieroglyphs only go back to 3200 BC. Linear A, one of the oldest known non pictographic written language, comes from 2000-1900 BC. However neither of those languages would have been known to the Israelites until Joseph took his people into Egypt. That is usually assumed to be during the reign of Seti I (1290–1279 BC)
Hebrew as a written language only goes back to 1200-1000 BC. Coincidentally around the time Exodus is dated to. And in a way that makes sense. Moses wrote it down as soon as it became possible for him to do so. So if you state that it is was written down before that the whole Old Testament becomes not only an oral tradition but the translation from a completely dissimilar language.
So even if you accept the young Earth creationist view that the world is only 6000 years old, there still had to be thousands of years of oral tradition before anyone got around to inventing writing. Then at least a thousand more before the Israelites got exposed to it. Then a translation to get it into Hebrew.
53
posted on
03/07/2012 10:58:47 AM PST
by
GonzoGOP
(There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
To: Lucas McCain
I find the Bible has a serious contradiction. On the one hand it reports that God is infinite in His love and mercy. On the other hand it reports that I, along with billions and billions of others, will be tortured with fire forever and ever without end. In my case, I will be tortured (supposedly) because I studied the evidence carefully (I have a four year degree in Biblical Studies), and have decided that the evidence is insufficient. That’s my crime. It’s like asking a jury to weigh the evidence, then punish them if they make a mistake. Not just punish them, but torture them without end. How does that square with love and mercy? If you are open to advice, if I were you I would make it my life's overarching, compelling imperative to reexamine the evidence, in case, perchance, your conclusion is incorrect.
The reason I suggest this is because many others (myself icluded) have also diligently studied the Bible, and have come to the opposite conclusion.
Now, those who come to a different conclusion as yourself may be right, and they may be wrong. But as you yourself have stated, the stakes are very high.
I am curious as to what kind of universe do you think you are living in? One created by a loving God, or the result of blind, impersonal chance. If the latter is correct, then nothing much matters, does it? As Dostoevski famously noted: "If there is no God, then everything is permitted." I.e., to speak of "injustice" in a universe without a Righteous and Just Judge is meaningless. Evolution is a cruel and heartless Master, and knows nothing of "justice".
Thus the question presents itself: on what basis do you speak of God as being "unjust"? None of us can pretend to know what God's judgment will be regarding each of us, but I am confident that His Judgment will be just, and on that Day every mouth will be shut:
"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." Romans 1:19-21 .
54
posted on
03/07/2012 10:58:55 AM PST
by
tjd1454
To: tjd1454
I am curious as to what kind of universe do you think you are living in? One created by a loving God, or the result of blind, impersonal chance.
False choice. I may choose to believe that we live in a world created by a supreme being, just that it might be slightly more than 6,000 years old. How do you explain billions of years of stellar processes to an illiterate goat herder. How can a person, who has probably never traveled few miles from home, know if the Himalayan mountains were covered in water when he doesn't even know they exist. And those are the people you would need to hold the tradition until writing got invented. I just happen to be a bit more open to errors in transmission during the thousands of years when Genesis was an oral tradition.
55
posted on
03/07/2012 11:11:03 AM PST
by
GonzoGOP
(There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
To: GonzoGOP
Joseph took his people into Egypt. That is usually assumed to be during the reign of Seti I (1290–1279 BC) Not sure why you cite those dates. Most likely he went to Egypt during Hyksos rule.
Hebrew as a written language only goes back to 1200-1000 BC
This is beside the point.
I was referring to documents which Moses had ACCESS to. These would be the ancient texts which you correctly stated would have been written long before he was born.
To: GonzoGOP
However neither of those languages would have been known to the Israelites until Joseph took his people into Egypt. That is usually assumed to be during the reign of Seti I (1290–1279 BC) Hebrew as a written language only goes back to 1200-1000 BC.
Both of those statements are based upon suppositions which are open to serious question and, in my opinion, wholly insupportable.
Furthermore, such assertions (admittedly part of the "revealed orthodoxy" among skeptical professors who hold anti-supernatural presuppositions), belie a parochial and condescending cultural superiority towards the ancient Israelites, who are assumed - with no direct evidence - to have lacked written language until later in their history.
Clearly the written language of the early Hebrews developed just as every language has developed (including the English language). Thus, the classical Aramaic script of today's Hebew Bible developed out of earlier scripts, but that certainly does not imply that the Israelites lacked written language. To claim as much would be to hold a very weak position, as continued archaeological discoveries can only disprove such a belief, and are in fact doing so in contemporary Israel, where earlier inscriptions are being discovered.
57
posted on
03/07/2012 11:17:16 AM PST
by
tjd1454
To: GonzoGOP
False choice. I may choose to believe that we live in a world created by a supreme being... False choice? You seem to want to have things both ways. On the basis of your comprehensive studies (four monumental years of study, I believe you said), you have concluded that God is "unjust" for presuming to judge someone as intellectually honest as yourself.
So the Just God of the Bible does not exist, or certainly does not exist as described in the Bible? But you still want to talk about what is just and what is unjust? What if my concept of justice is diametrically opposed to yours? Who will decide between thee and me? As Einstein postulated in his Special Theory of Relativity: a finite point without an infinite reference point is meaningless.
Sorry, but you cannot appeal to an objective sense of justice which can only be rooted in God, to claim that God is unjust.
As for your smug dismissal of the crude "myths" of the "illiterate" Israelites, and acceptance of the absolute, unquestionable authority of evolutionary theory, I would once again cite a greater Truth:
"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." Romans 1:19-21
58
posted on
03/07/2012 11:36:59 AM PST
by
tjd1454
To: tjd1454
False choice? You seem to want to have things both ways. On the basis of your comprehensive studies (four monumental years of study, I believe you said), you have concluded that God is "unjust" for presuming to judge someone as intellectually honest as yourself.
Take a chill pill and read my posts. Show where I ever said God was unjust. DO IT NOW OR TAKE BACK YOUR RANT.
59
posted on
03/07/2012 11:43:15 AM PST
by
GonzoGOP
(There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
To: tjd1454
Both of those statements are based upon suppositions which are open to serious question and, in my opinion, wholly insupportable.
The oldest known Hebrew text was found in November of 2008. it is a 3,000-year-old pottery shard with five lines of text was found during excavations of the Elah Fortress, the oldest known biblical-period fortress, which dates to the tenth century BC. It was written in Proto-Canaanite script.
If you have anything older on hand show it. If not you have 3,000 years of oral tradition to account for.
60
posted on
03/07/2012 12:01:29 PM PST
by
GonzoGOP
(There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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