Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
The first formulations of the doctrine of inerrancy had not been established according to the authority of a council, creed, or church, until the post-Reformation period. The critic would argue how Jesus could have believed in a view that was not in existence until 1,500 years after his life. How would you respond?
In the case of the New Testament papyri manuscripts, our early evidence for the Greek New Testament, size is irrelevant. They range from centimeters encompassing a couple of verses to a codex with many books of the New Testament. But all of them add something significant.
When you open your Bible today, can you be confident that the words you are reading are, in fact, the very corresponding English words that were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, and Jude nearly 2,000 years ago? Confident, you say? Just how confident are you? Are you confident because of what you know or what you hear?
Even though there has been a serious decline in Christianity over the past 70 years, the Bible is still the bestselling book throughout the world. In fact, it seems that since 1960 there have been dozens of new translations over the years.
Sadly, 30 years ago, almost all Christians would have been stunned if they had heard that there were intentional and unintentional changes made in the process of copying the manuscripts of the New Testament over a 1,400 year period, some 400,000+ variants. What does this mean for our translations? Can they be trusted?
IS IT TRUE OR FALSE THAT the Bible has been handed down through the ages without alteration? IS IT TRUE OR FALSE THAT the hundreds of thousands of variations in Bible manuscripts weaken its claim that it is the Word of God?
In recent years, a number of scholars have suggested that Jesus could not read and that in all likelihood, none of his disciples could read either. Is this true and what does the historical evidence say?
THIS BLOG ARTICLE IS BASED ON THE OFTEN MADE CLAIM BY BART D. EHRMAN: "Not only do we not have the originals, We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals." - Misquoting Jesus (p. 10)
What is it that makes P66 P75 א B 'quality external evidence' or very weighty evidence over A* Θ Ψ 050 f1, Maj? Maj refers minuscules The Majority Text; that is, a group that is made up of thousands of minuscules that display a similar text. So, here we see that counting the manuscripts (the majority wins) does not mean that the majority is evidence for the preferred reading being original.
How trustworthy is the New Testament? After reading this article, you can decide for yourself whether the New Testament merits your trust. This subject deserves more than your passing interest. This article is a must-read and should be shared!
