Those usually charged with this shameful crime of changing the Bible are Jews and Christians. Could this have been possible?
The Jews are well known for their zeal in preserving their sacred Scriptures. They know the exact number of words and letters it contains. Those scribes responsible for the copying of the ancient Hebrew text showed amazing reverence and deep respect for the Scriptures. If they made even a small mistake whilst copying, that whole section was disposed of. When they came to the name of God in the text, they would go and wash themselves before continuing. Such is their respect for their Holy Book.
We must also ask the question, "Why would the Jews wish to change the text of Scripture so that Jesus the Son of Mary is continually revealed as God's Messiah - an idea to which they became totally opposed?" That would make no sense whatsoever.
Well what about the Christians? Once again there is no evidence. The documents of the New Testament were written by Christ's Apostles or close companions of the Apostles. They were moved by God's Spirit to record Holy Scripture. They were eyewitnesses of the events of which they wrote. They watched Christ and knew him intimately. They loved him and were willing to die for what they heard Christ say and saw him do. Their writings come to us in an unbroken line of testimony. Their books from the very first have always been regarded as reliable Holy Scripture coming from God Himself.
Within a very short time Christianity and hundreds of copies of the Bible had spread over a wide area. There were translations of the Christian Scriptures into several languages distributed very early on. Because there were so many copies, written in different languages, in so many places, in the poss...
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...ost confidence that the Gospels that we have today is the same Gospels that were originally written.
Works Cited
(1) McDowell, Josh. The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), p. 55.
(2) Veteran, http://www.forerunner.com/discussion.
(3) Ibid.
{4} Strobel, p. 132.
(5) The renowned Jewish archaeologist, Nelson Glueck, wrote: "It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference." cited by McDowell, Josh. The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), p. 61.
{6} Geisler, Norman L. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998).
(7) Patrick Zukeran. Archaeology and the New Testament.
{8} Zacharias, Ravi. Can Man Live Without God? (Word Publishing, 1994), p. 162.
(9) Robert Jones
(10) William Lane Craig “Reasonable Faith”
^ a b c d e f g h i John Arthur Thomas Robinson (1919-1983). "Redating the New Testament". Westminster Press, 1976. 369 halaman. ISBN 10: 1-57910-527-0; ISBN 13: 978-1-57910-527-3
The study of textual criticism is important when talking about any historical manuscript or text. In particular, when talking about something with as much impact and influence as the bible, textual criticism is a necessary part of scholarship. Brad Ehrman does an excellent job in explaining the basics of textual criticism and how it can be used to determine the accuracy of biblical texts and manuscripts. His book, Misquoting Jesus, serves as a primer to the study of historical biblical manuscripts. As Ehrman states in his introduction, the thesis explained in the text is that biblical manuscripts have been changed throughout history, both intentionally and non-intentionally, and that those changes were affected by the attitudes and beliefs of the scribes.
There are several Egyptian documents that not only mention the Israelites in their texts, but also tie the Bible to historical facts. Egyptian documents such as the Tell el-Amarna letters, a large “stele” of the Menephtah, and the Elephantine papyri not only tell the history of Egypt, they also coincide with biblical scripture. The documents confirm not only dates, certain numbers, and rituals, such as circumcision, but places and event, e.g. The Exodus, of biblical stories.
Although the New Testament is the main source of information regarding Jesus’ life, Jews often disregard it as a reliable source of information. It was not written until two to three generations after Jesus, hence it cannot be considered a primary source. Also, from a Jewish perspective, the aim of the Gospels is not to give an accurate account of Jesus’ life and teachings; the Gospels served as missionary documents containing accounts recorded by biased evangelists. They reflect the aims of the church rather than actual facts, and their writers were more concerned with the advancement of Christianity than the transmission of factual historical information. For these reasons, it is impossible to separate the historical Jesus from the divine Christ presented in the Gospels, and Judaism regards the Gospels as unreliable and irrational.
“The King James Bible was 400 years old in 2011, and it remains one of the most favored translation used today” (“At 400, King James Bible still No. 1”). “Some statistics from a newspaper said, that out of the people polled thirty-one percent said the King James language was beautiful, and twenty-three percent said it was easy to remember” (“At 400, King James Bible still No. 1”). When the King James Bible was published in 1611 there were many ways it could have been improved. The King James Bible has had a huge impact on the world of today. The King James Bible was published by scholars that King James I gathered from 1604 to 1611. King James did this in order to create a
Kevin Killeen and Peter J. Forshaw. "The Word and the World." Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science, 220-225.
Damrosch, David, and David L. Pike, eds. "The Gospel According to Luke." The Longman Anothology of World Literature. Compact ed. New York: Pearson, 2008. 822-33. Print.
Harris, Stephen. Understanding The Bible. 6 ed. New York City: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2002. Print.
... in the manuscripts, we recognize that these mistakes originated in the hand of man and not God. Moreover, there exists the theoretical possibility of copying errors in the manuscripts, but the errors are not universal. Consider, for example, that a copyist from Rome made a mistake in copying Paul’s letter to the Romans. This error would stand out when compared to the other known copies of Paul’s letter, and the variants are minor, and they do not alter the primary message of Paul’s letter. We are blessed with more than 5000 copies of the New Testament, used by textual variant scholars that assure us of the accuracy of the New Testament.
The Old Testament and the Bible itself has been studied extensively for centuries. Archeologists and Scholars have labored and pondered over texts trying to decipher its clues. It does not matter how many times the Old Testament has been studied there will always be something new to learn about it or the history surrounding it. In the book Reading the Old Testament: an Introduction, the author Lawrence Boadt presents us with a few different authors of the Old Testament that used different names for God and had a unique insight into the texts. These four sources are titled P for priests, E for Elohim, J for Jehovah, and Y for Yahweh (95). These four unique sources help us realize that there is more than one author of the Pentateuch. These authors took the text and adapted for their culture. This independent source is used by scholars to help gain insight into what was behind the texts of the bible so we are not left with an incomplete picture of what went into the creation of the bible. Julius Wellhausen used these four sources to publish a book to able us to better understand the sources and to give it credibility with the Protestant scholars at the time (Boadt 94). These sources that is independent of the bible as in the DVD Who Wrote the Bible? and the Nova website aide in shedding light on the history that surrounded the writers who wrote the text and what inspired them to write it in the first place. The DVD shows the discovery of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the extensive history of the texts and all its sources in an effort to try to find exactly who wrote the bible (Who Wrote). These scrolls have aided scholars immensely by giving us some of the oldest known manuscripts of the bible in the world today. It shows that the bible w...
The four Gospels stand at the head of the New Testament, underlining their importance, forming a “seamless continuity between the story of Israel and the story of the church”. The four documents now known as the Gospels were not known by this name until late in the second century. Until then, there was only one Gospel, the proclamation of Jesus and the kingdom of God, with four books presenting it, each in its own way. Modern readers are so used to seeing the compilation of these writings as the New Testament that they forget that each one was originally conceived to stand on its own. Consequently, to understand the Gospels and the kind of literature that they are, it is crucial to look at them in the first century Palestinian environment in which they were written. At that time, the cultural landscape was dominated by three main elements: Roman rule, Hellenistic culture and, above all, the religious symbols of Judaism. In that context, Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God could be perceived as a challenge to Roman rule, a dismissal of Greek thought and an attack on Judaism.
In the Jewish Concepts of Scripture, Benjamin D. Sommer talks about what Scriptures mean and how they are important to different Jewish people. Sommer begins his Introduction with asking the question “What is scripture for the Jews?”. He starts to answer this question by talking about the different writings that are generally accepted as scriptures. Jewish religion differs from that of the Catholics or Orthodox Christians or because they accept more writings as scripture than the Jews do. Generally there are 24 books that make up the readings the Jewish people recognize as scriptures. These book are broken down into three parts: Torah, Nevi’im, and the Ketuvim. Together these books make up the Tanakh (Jewish Bible). All Jewish people
Jesus, the central character of the New Testament, makes a prominent appearance in the Quran. His purpose in the New Testament differs considerably from that in the Quran as can be observed in the level of importance attributed to him in the two texts. While Jesus is the protagonist of the New Testament, the Quran makes no such observations. The Quran claims to undo the distortions (called tafrih in Arabic) that had crept into the Injil (the Gospels) and the Torah. It further claims to restore the monotheistic nature of the Abrahamic religion, and thus directly refutes the Biblical depiction of Jesus.
The historical reliability of the Bible is the first matter that needs to be discussed. There are three criteria that the military historian C. Sanders lists as principles for documentary historical proof: the bibliographical test, internal evidence test, and the external evidence test (McDowell 43). The bibliographical test is the examination of text from the documents that have reached us. The reliability of the copies of the New Testament is tested by the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time intervals between the time in which the piece of literature was written and our earliest copy. There are more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and 10,000 Latin vulgate manuscripts, not to mention the other various translations.
It is widely accepted through the theological study of the Bible that the gathering and the selection of information included in the final compilation was an extensive and controversial process. Specifically, the events and movements that were influential in the recognition of the canonical books. According to Britannica, the canonical books are recognized as the quintessential corner stone of the New Testament, which also means that they are a foundational part of the current beliefs and practices of most of today’s Christians. Even more important is the process, culmination, and the compilations of events that lead to what Christians currently accept as the Word of God.