This is a common misconception. Some people think that the Bible was written in one language, translated to another language, then translated into yet another and so on until it was finally translated into the English. The complaint is that since it was rewritten so many times in different languages throughout history, it must have become corrupted. The "telephone" analogy is often used as an illustration. It goes like this. One person tells another person a sentence who then tells another person, who tells yet another, and so on and so on until the last person hears a sentence that has little or nothing to do with the original one. The only problem with this analogy is that it doesn't fit the Bible at all.
The fact is that the Bible has not been rewritten. Take the New Testament, for example. The disciples of Jesus wrote the New Testament in Greek and though we do not have the original documents, we do have around 6,000 copies of the Greek manuscripts that were made very close to the time of the originals. These various manuscripts, or copies, agree with each other to almost 100 percent accuracy. Statistically, the New Testament is 99.5% textually pure. That means that there is only 1/2 of 1% of of all the copies that do not agree with each other 100%. But, if you take that 1/2 of 1% and examine it, you find that the majority of the "problems" are nothing more than spelling errors and very minor word alterations. For example, instead of saying Jesus, a variation might be "Jesus Christ." So the actually amount of textual variation of any concern at all is extremely low. Therefore, we can say that we have an extremely accurate compilation of the original documents.
So when we translate the Bible, we do not translate from a translation of a translation of a translation. We translate from the original language into our language. It is one step, not a series of steps that leads to corruption. It is one translation step from the original to the English or to whatever language a person needs to read it in. So we translate into Spanish from the same Greek manuscripts. Likewise we translate into the German from those same Greek manuscripts as well. This is how it is done for each and every language we translate the Bible into. We do not translate from the Greek to the English, to the Spanish, and then to the German. It is from the Greek to the English. It is from the Greek into the Spanish. It is from the Greek into the German. Therefore, the translations are very accurate and trustworthy in regards to what the Bible originally said.
2006-11-11
10:15:47
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11 answers
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asked by
Prodical Son
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