Bible "accuracy". Is it or not?

Question

I do not believe that bible is accurate. Jews have Torah that's the actual writing. When any translation from Hebrew is done in any other language a lot is lost or added. For those who know only English and not any other language, they don't know how the meaning of words are diffrent from a culture to culture and language to language. Even English translations differ so that we have 4-5 English translations of the bible. If you read the bible and it is like god is speaking to you... what about illiterates? And if you read to an illiterate, what intonation do you use? From your personality, from your dope, or from so called spiritual "Scotty beam me up"?

Answer 1

You may not believe that the Bible is accurate, but your belief is misinformed. Allow me to elaborate.

When the translators of the King James Bible wrote the Old Testament, the oldest available manuscript for them to use was known as the Masoretic Text. This had been written in the 9th century A.D. It was this text that the translators based their work on the Old Testament. In 1947, a shepherd boy discovered some pottery in caves in the area called Qumran, near the Dead Sea. In these jars, he discovered scrolls, which archaeologists and Bible scholars have researched ever since. Every book of the Old Testament (except Esther) was discovered. Most of these scrolls are dated to 150 B.C. After comparing these Dead Sea Scrolls to the Masoretic Text, the scholars discovered an amazing degree of unanimity between the two, although they were written 1000 years apart. Further, the Septuagint (the Greek language translation of the Hebrew Bible) was also compared. With all of these references, there is plenty of evidence that no biblical doctrine has been tampered with.

As far as the accuracy for the New Testament, there is no larger ancient body of manuscript evidence in the history of mankind, than the papyri and parchment manuscripts of the New Testament. With over 5,000 actual Greek manuscripts, and numerous other manuscripts in four other languages, there are about 24,000 available manuscript texts for the New Testament.

Even if we didn't have these documents, we could almost have a complete New Testament from extra-biblical sources, such as ancient lectionaries, church fathers' records/sermons/writings, etc.

No other body of ancient work comes close. No one really disputes Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars (10 manuscripts remain, with the earliest one dating to 1,000 years after the original autograph). No one really disputes Pliny the Younger's Natural History (7 manuscripts; 750 years elapsed). Or Thucydides' History (8 manuscripts; 1,300 years elapsed). No one disputes Herodotus' History (8 manuscripts; 1,350 years elapsed). No one really disputes Plato (7 manuscripts; 1,300 years elapsed). No one really disputes Tacitus' Annals (20 manuscripts; 1,000 years elapsed.) Homer's Iliad, the most renowned book of ancient Greece, is the second best-preserved literary work of all antiquity, with 643 copies of manuscript support discovered to date. In those copies, there are 764 disputed lines of text, as compared to 40 lines in all the New Testament manuscripts.

But we have ancient manuscripts of the New Testament that are written within a generation of Christ's resurrection. With that kind of evidence, you are not able to make a credible claim that the Bible we hold in our hand today is not the complete and accurate Word of God.

As to the number of English versions/translations of the Bible today, there are many more than 4-5. It's over 100.

Answer 2

Do you even know what the Bible even is? Have you studied where the canon of books come from? Have you studied the original manuscripts that we have today?

You know people get PhD's in this stuff. Why don't you do some homework and check into it? There is plenty of evidence out there for you. There are 5366 outstanding documents in support of the Bible written outside the Bible for you to critique. Ever heard of Josh McDowell? Read some of his books. He was a atheist who sought to prove the Bible was a myth. He is now a powerful Christian author. Think in terms of reality and not fantasizing Star Trek.

Answer 3

Modern Bible translations by reputable publishers (e.g., NIV, NASB etc) are translated by Hebrew Scholars (for the Old Testament) and Greek Scholars (for the New Testament) who ensure that the English translation matches the meaning of the Hebrew text (for old Testament) and Greek text (for new Testament).

Cordially,
John

Answer 4

I have mentioned before, the Bible is an excellent guide to live your life by, but it can in no way be 100% accurate. As you say, it has been changed and rewritten many, many, times and therefore no one can be certain of what it originally said.

Answer 5

Tim C. - No, i'm sorry. Christers run the bible belt, and they love youngster being pregnant. The unplanned underage being pregnant fee the following is actual, actual evidence of that. i'm not shocked with the help of a few thing on T.V. anymore.

Answer 6

The bible is a mixture of fact, fable, and fallibility. It has been authored by literally dozens of different people, some of which are still unknown. It has been copied by hand, & especially the New Testament has several different versions of the various books, most of which, if not all, were not written till way after Jesus death. I don't know if you've ever played the game of telephone but if you line up a group of people and whisper, "I caught fish today and cooked it for dinner. By the end of the line you might get, "He caught a huge trout while out on his boat, then fried it up at the diner." And another thing, they did not have Xerox machines back then. If I tried to copy even something I wrote and then go back and read it, there’d be mistakes all over the place. Believe me I’ve tried it. I do not believe that after thousands of years they were able to produce and exact copy of the original. I do not even believe there were even originals but that the various texts evolved over hundreds of years to become at some point a cohesive text further evolving with scribes that altered these texts either by mistake or intent. In fact at the end of the Torah and the end of the bible it says the exact same thing. I'll paraphrase it for you. If any adds or subtracts to these books let all the curses of this book be upon you. Usually endings have an extra weight when it comes to ultimate conclusions. Why would both the Old & New Testaments be so worried about something that was not going to happen? In fact it has already happened. The ending of Mark with the handling of Snakes was not found in any bible till after 1000 A.D. and the woman caught in adultery (though I believe it to be a true oral tradition) was not found in any bible till around 600 A.D. So as you can see adding has already taken place. But to me the crux of the issue isn't all that I have already said but simply man's fallibility. How can we trust the bible to be true in its entirety if man's is fallible? The doctrine of inerrancy is justified by a circular logic. Some where in the bible I think it is first Timothy it talks about how all scripture is useful for teaching and rebuke and all the jazz. This is the scripture fundamentalists will take you to justify inerrancy. But if I wrote on a piece of paper, "I AM God"? I could walk around with it in my pocket till I met someone and say, "Hi there. I am God". They could say, "Well how do you know"? And I could say, “because it says here on this piece of paper, ‘I am God’". And they would say, "No, I mean, how can you say you are God". Again I could point to the paper in which it says, "I am God" and so on and so forth. It is absurd logic but I’m sure most of us have experienced it so far. Oh don't get me wrong, I think there are many wonderful and useful aspects to the bible. But there is also and lot of bone headed and down right scary stuff in there as well. To not listening to ones heart by not taking what is good and leaving the rest is to commit intellectual hara-kiri leaving you wide open to be radicalized. I believe Jesus was revolutionary enough to have understood this by advising, “Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment.” I believe he also understood the essence of spirituality verses the legalized word by saving the woman caught in adultery, as well as by stating, “the letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life,” and finally by summing up the greatest commandments as to love your neighbor as yourself, and to love God with all you mind heart and soul. Many will fight tooth and nail to say Jesus would have believed every word of the Old Testament. First off orthodox Jews only followed the first 5 books of the Old Testament, which is called the Torah. Second he was revolutionary enough in his thinking to possibly not have believed every textual word literally. And third he was probably smart enough not to hint towards this possibility, but to segue into the truly spiritual elements of the Old Testament. It is hard to stone someone outright when it seems they are almost agreeing with you. But then you redirect their attention to certain functional passages they believe to also be the truth and nothing but the truth. I believe there are many modern day Pharisees out there and one of their doctrines is inerrancy which has been the justification of many horrible acts in the name of God. This is why I advocate being an independent thinker while at the same time being open to something beyond yourself. I believe if John the Baptist were here today he would not so much as point the finger at any one bible or verse as he would point it to the sky, basically calling on you to get in touch with the source itself. Too many Churches have duped the public into believing their relationship with God is through his “word” when it is really through your own heart.

Answer 7

Torah, Bible, Quran, none of them is accurate, and they're all completely man-made.