is the text of Bible complitly true?or it has changed from time to time?

Question

ive heard and read that ,the text of Bible has changed in 15-16 centuries ,now i wanna see if its true or not.you know they say that there has been many bibles like may be 30 or 40 of them and they have brought it all together in 4 books.know i wanna see whats your opinion.thanks.bye

Answer 1

We today do not have any of the “autographs” — the original manuscripts of the Bible in the very hand-writing of the authors. But as mentioned earlier, men carefully copied, quoted, circulated, and translated God’s word through the years. As a result, we today have volumes of evidence to establish what the original texts said.

1. We have more than 4500 hand-written copies of the Bible in the original languages.
Some of these manuscripts are complete, others are partial or fragments. Some of them are dated to within a few centuries of the time of the New Testament writers, and a few are dated to within a few decades of their time.

2. We have many ancient translations of the Bible into other languages.
3. We have thousands of Scripture quotations found in ancient non-inspired writings.
In fact, all but a few verses of the New Testament could be reproduced just from these uninspired quotations.

Compared to the writings of other ancient authors, our evidence for the Bible’s content is overwhelming. For other writings, “convincing evidence” may consist of just a few manuscripts dated less than 1000 years from when the men lived. But with the Bible we have thousands of manuscripts dated less than 1000 years from when Jesus lived, and many manuscripts dated within just a few centuries.

These manuscripts were copied by men such as the “Scribes” of Jesus’ day, who were fanatically precise in their work. They checked their work by counting number of letters and words per line, per page, etc. No errors were tolerated. Remember that Jesus often disagreed with these men about their explanations of the Scriptures, but He never criticized the accuracy of their copies of the Scriptures.

B. Variations in the Manuscripts
But what are the “thousands of errors” critics claim exist in the text? These are differences or variations that can be found when ancient manuscripts are compared to one another. With all these hand-written copies, one would naturally expect some variations to have crept into the text, despite the copyists’ best efforts.

But the main reason we have so many variations is that we have so many manuscripts to work with. For example, if 2000 manuscripts spell a word one way and 2000 others spell the word a little differently, that is counted as “thousands of variations.”

So the very volume of evidence we have is what leads to the large number of variations. This should be taken as evidence supporting the preservation of the Bible, instead of evidence against it. Would critics be better satisfied if we had far fewer manuscripts and therefore far fewer variations?

What is the nature of these variant readings?

1. Different spellings which in no way affect the meaning of the text:

These account for fully one half of the variant readings! This would be like the difference between “Elias” and “Elijah” in our English versions. No diligent student could ever misunderstand God’s word because of such variations.

2. Differences in word order which in no way affect the meaning
Examples might be “the Lord Jesus Christ” as compared to “Jesus Christ the Lord.” No one could be misled by such instances. And due to the grammatical structure of the languages, such variations in word order are of enormously less significance in Hebrew or Greek than they are in English.

3. Insertion or omission of a word, or use of a different word, but the meaning is not affected:

Examples might be "God your Father" compared to "God the Father," or simply "the Father."

4. Variations in which whole phrases or sentences are inserted or omitted.

These may seem to be real problems. But in fact none of these variations affect our understanding of God's word, because the teaching in the questionable texts can be found clearly taught in other passages which are unquestioned. Often a questionable phrase (for example, perhaps a phrase in Matthew's account) can be found word-for-word in a parallel account which is beyond question (such as perhaps in Mark's account).

In other cases, the teaching may not be found word-for-word elsewhere, but the concept is unquestionably taught elsewhere. Men who study these problems say these "significant variations" make up less than 1/1000 of the text of the New Testament. If all of them were put together, they would take up less than half a page. And none of them affect the total content of teaching of God's word!

Sir Frederic Kenyon, who served 21 years as Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum (which houses many significant ancient manuscripts of the Bible) said: "The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries." Many similar statements can be quoted from other such men.

(Material in this section is gathered mainly from: How We Got the Bible, by Neil Lightfoot; The Theme of the Bible, by Ferrell Jenkins; and A Book about the Book, by John Jarrett.)

C. The Apocrypha
The Apocrypha refers to 7 Old Testament books plus portions of other books, that are accepted by the Roman Catholic Church as being inspired, but are rejected as uninspired by non-Catholics. Consider these observations regarding the inspiration of the Apocrypha.

There is no disagreement as to which books belong in the New Testament.

The disagreement concerns only Old Testament books. But God’s commands for today are in the New Testament, not in the Old. So the Apocrypha are of little doctrinal significance. A person can surely learn the truth about how to be saved by studying the Catholic Bible, provided he obeys the text of the New Testament, not the Old Testament (and certainly not the uninspired footnotes that the Catholic church has added.)

The Hebrew Old Testament, as accepted by Jews both today and in Jesus' day, rejects the inspiration of the Apocrypha.
This fact is also undisputed. For example, Catholic Bibles plainly admit the following in the introduction to the apocryphal book of 1 Machabees: “Jews and Protestants do not regard these books as Sacred Scripture…” (quoted from the St. Joseph New Catholic Edition).

But remember that Jesus and His apostles used the Old Testament as the Jews of Palestine accepted it. They taught Jews from the Jewish Scriptures and corrected the Jews on every point in which the Jews erred, but they never once disagreed with them about what books they accepted in the Scriptures. Clearly Jesus and His apostles agreed with the Jews about which books to accept in the Old Testament. And the Apocrypha were not included.

Jesus and His apostles repeatedly quoted Old Testament books, but they never quoted nor appealed to the authority of any of the apocryphal books.

Even the Catholic Church did not officially require Catholics to accept the Apocrypha as canonical until the Council of Trent in 1546 AD.
The Catholic Dictionary by Addis and Arnold (pp. 107-110), while claiming that the books are canonical, yet admits the following facts: (1) The tradition of Palestinian Jews in Jesus' time did not accept the Apocrypha (remember, Jesus was a Palestinian Jew who lived and taught among Palestinian Jews). (2) Church "fathers" held various views on the issue, and at least one Catholic council held the books to be non-canonical. (3) Finally the Council of Trent declared the books must be accepted as "sacred and canonical" under penalty of anathema.

Much more evidence exists, but this is sufficient to show that the Apocrypha should not be viewed as true Scripture. And again there is no question about what books should be included in the New Testament, which we must obey to be saved.

Conclusion
God’s word has been preserved for us today in a form that is complete and reliable. Our faith in the preservation of the Bible should be based on the promise of God that He would preserve His word. He has demonstrated throughout history that He has kept His promises and will continue to do so.

We should appeal to the Scriptures as our only infallible source of God’s will. We ought to study them diligently, obey their precepts, and teach others to do the same. If this has not been your attitude toward the Bible, we urge you to begin now to study and obey it.

Answer 2

As others have said, we do not have access to the original texts. What we use to translate the text are copies of copies of copies of the originals that were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Just looking at the N.T. Greek texts, there are more differences between the existing copies than there are words in the N.T. This is problematic because if one assumes that the Bible is absolutely infallable and accurate, then there should be agreement between the different textual witnesses. Some of the points of variance are obviously accidental, some do not change the meaning of the text but just relate to word order or an extra 'and,' yet some of the differences are quite obviously purposeful and premeditated. For instance, the beloved story of the woman caught in adultry in John 8 and the ending of Mark's gospel (after verse 8) were not original to the earliest manuscripts but were later additions to the text.

The text is unfortunately contaminated, which makes believing that it is all true a bit difficult. If God did indeed dictate the divine word to the author's of the Bible, why didn't God also make sure that scribes didn't change it. And if the text contains contamination of details, additions (accidental or otherwise), could it not also contain theological error? I am hard pressed to say that it does not. The Bible is a very human document that presents a particular view of God from a particular point in history from a particular group of people which makes pulling the text into our own context quite a challenge if we attempt to preserve any of the original meaning and context. Hope that helped a bit.

Answer 3

Changed? The Bible is trash.

The Bible is the biggest load of garbage and codswallop ever written by man, and I’m sure it will go down in history as the greatest load of gobbledygook ever to inflict such traumatic mental and physical damage on humanity, but still today, some people sadly believe the Bible to be true. That’s very sad indeed. Very sad.

When people quote various passages from the Bible, for example ...

Mathew 5:29-30 God encouraged self-mutilation.
Isaiah 13:15-18 God allowed women raped and little children slaughtered.
Genesis 6:11-17 and 7:11-24 God is the greatest mass murder in history.

What happens? Religious people pop up from under every stone with the same old garbage. “That was the old Bible, or we’ve changed the meaning, or wrong interpretation, or we’ve changed the context, or the quotes are out of context or or or, excuse after excuse.”

The fact is, they are Bible quotes, and the Bible is full of evil atrocities which religious people continually cover up, yet seem happy to drum into the minds of gullible little children. This is such a shameful disgrace in a civilised world.

If religious people are unable to apply commonsense and logic to develop a simple moral code to live by, then perhaps they could strip out of the Bible the evil, murders, rapes, abuse, and all traumatic references. Granted there will not be a lot left to read, but at least religious people may end up with a decent moral code to follow based on good, and not scare the living daylights out of innocent little children.

Answer 4

Well... I'd worry about calling it completely true. The stuff about Jesus, written by his apostles, about events they actually witnessed? That's probably not so far off. Genesis, Noah, Moses, Joshua? I'd worry about that - we can be pretty sure those books were put together during the 6th century BC (during reforms of Josiah - you can read about that in the Bible, too :). It looks like there were records of the actual events, but they were patchy and partially destroyed.

I dunno, have you read the first couple of books? They're all about purging Canaan so the Jews can have it, and I think it's Jericho where Joshua's men run around it seven times blowing horns and the walls magically fall. I don't know - sounds like legend to me. Especially considering the time gap (Joshua was waging war about 1200 BC, book written 570 BC...)

Check the history. It DOES have a history, and you can be scientific about it - just because it's in "The Bible" doesn't magically make it God's truth, IMO.

Answer 5

The Colby bible is pre King James's "VERSION"
As the meaning of words are changed the understanding of them changes.
When I was in grade school the wourd "gay" meant happy, good, fun. Now it means homosexial.
Quear meant odd , strange , differant . now it means homosexial
Pre-cival war Bibles have in the Ten Comandments says "Thou shelt not commet murder" now it says kill. Two differant words two differant meanings even though they have to deal with death.
This is how the differant "churches" can read the same passage and get a differant understanding.
Look up the meaning of VERSION

Answer 6

Limited option don't you think.
Is the bible 99% true or 100%?

How about 100% false and made up.

Have you even read an original language bible from year 0. NO cause there isn't one.

http://flushaholybook.com

Answer 7

The Bible is completely true and unchanged. The different translations that you refer to are exactly that, translations. The translations may be accurate or not, depending on how they are done. The original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts of the Bible are infallible and unchanged.

Answer 8

It probably has changed numerous times. I studied religious texts for many years and even the mistranslations have led to wrong interpretations. Having said that, the idea that a holy book could have parts rewritten (even the Qur'an for those muslim assholes who are reading) doesn't seem too far off.

Answer 9

ROFLMAO
We have the original text, now you can interpret as you see fit, but anyone with a concordance can take a word back to the original meaning!

Answer 10

Bible is written by people. 4 gospels contains different information. Nobody knows where is original Bible- word of God given to Jesus.. I have 3 bibles in different languages, they say different.
I think you have answered your question urself

Answer 11

Find a 30 year old bible and compare it to today's version. You might well be shocked. - Religion ain't what it use to be, and it looks like it won't ever get any better, either.