Can you buy a Bible that is the original Bible, with the exact words of God & his Disciples in it?

Question

if so, how do you know, list your source.

Who printed the first bible and when?

How many diferent transliterations have been published since?

Who published the old testement? How many years before Jesus was born?

Does the New Testement ever refer or relate to the Old Testement?


If you can answer all these, tell me your religion.

Answer 1

First off, I'll say I'm doing this by memory, which is pretty hazy, so there may be BIG mistakes...

The old testament books were written individually over a span of about 2,000 years somewhere between about 3,000 BC to about 1,000 BC. These were the religious texts of the Jews, who kept all manner of various writings with them. They were especially fond of the books of the "Law," such as Exodus-Deuteronomy, as well as the "Prophets," Chief of which were Jeremiah and Isaiah. Several books that were not in the modern bible were also often kept, but different groups differed on which books were acutally to be kept, and often availability dictated what was in any particualr synagogue.

Around 68 BC or so a growing population of Greek speaking Hebrews in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria.... and the big library there... led to a demand for the sacred Jewish scriptures to be written down in Greek. Old tradition has it that a group of 72 Hebrew Rabbis did this at the request of Ptolemais... But that was just an excuse to get a bunch of wise sayings written down into a nice book of sayings by the 72 rabbis.

The tradition stuck though, and these new greek versions of the Hebrew religious texts often contained much of what we consider to be the new testament in a "Septuagint" (Septuagint is greek for 70.) These almost always had Genesis-Leviticus, most of the prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, and various other stuff.

The Septuagint versions also had some additions that we do not see in most modern bibles. These include additions to the book of Daniel, which features the three young men singing a song while in the fiery furnace, Pagan priests stealing food from their temple, and a "dragon" that Daniel kills by feeding it a gross ball of hair and grease and such. There is also usually an additional psalm in the book of psalms, a book of "Baruch," the scribe of Jeremiah, a book of "Tobit," which discusses a family with a blind father, and a woman that is guarded by a demon who kills her suitors. There's also a "Wisdom of Sirach" book, and one to four books of "Maccabees." The Maccabees were jewish rebels that fought with the Romans, and the Haunukah ceremony commemorates the main event of Maccabees. The septuagint was the first real collection of the "old testament," but since there were no printing presses or publishing houses, it was not "published" until well after Jesus was dead. Instead, it was hand-copied, mostly by rabbis, and a copy would have set you back almost as much as buying a house... But being hand-copied, there were probably a few mistakes in every single one.

This "Septuagint" bible is what Jesus and his Disciples would have had. However, most scholars argue that it's a crappy translation. A lot of the hebrew words don't translate well, and some take on new meanings. Others don't translate at all, and whole paragraphs (and books) are sometimes added in, or taken out. Moreover, at best, it is a translation of a translation, since the original old testament was written all in hebrew by the jews.

When Jesus followers started getting greek converts, they of course used the Septuagint bible, because few greeks spoke hebrew. However, the Jews viewed Christianity as a cult (Like many christians view mormons today...) and, fearing that this septuagint greek translation contained the seeds of this "cult," they forbid their members to use it, and stuck with the Hebrew texts they had. Then, they realized that nobody had a list of what texts were holy, and which were not, so they got all the learned rabbis together to discuss the matter, and they sorted through the texts they had, and threw out some, and kept others, and decoded that anything written after about 300 BC (They of course used a different dating system) was too recent, and was probably tainted by this Christianity thing. Eventually, they came to the list of books of the bible that you can find in a Protestant old tetament.

The Christians meanwhile, were using their septuagint bibles quite happily, and as time went by, they often forgot they were even related to the Jewish tradition. Around 1200 or so, certain questions about the Catholic church, especially between the Catholics in Rome, who had a pope, and the Catholics in Byantium, who had an emperor that acted as their pope, led to them dusting off the old bibles, and they discovered that the Jews had older bibles than they did, only the jewish bibles were in Hebrew, not in Greek, and there were fewer books. So, the Catholics grilled the jews about how that happened, and after much deliberation, they decided to keep the additional books in the Septuagint bible... but Martin Luther came on the scene around 1500, and got excommunicated by the Catholics, so, bitter about that, he turned to the bible, and found out the exact same thing. After talking to the jews about it, he decided that these additional books, which were all written before Jesus were born, was just Catholic propaganda, and a way for them to keep control, so he cut them out of his bible, which he translated into German, and the first bible was then PRINTED, on a PRINTING press in Guttenburg, Germany, in German. Before then, there had been some hand-written ones floating about among the Catholic scholars in most every European Language.

So, that's the old testament.

The NEW Testament was produced in a similar fashion. The earliest material in the new testament are the letters of Paul, who was writing just that: letters. Buisness letters in fact, abot how the early churches that he founded should conduct themselves.

A lot of his early letters discuss matters of only local importance, such as how a bishop should be selected in one particular church, or how women should dress in another church to avoid being mistaken for a whore (Thank god he didn't write to an arabic church on that one!) Soon, other people, such as Paul, and James were writing letters too, and a lot of the really well written ones got copied down, sometimes even edited and combined, to pass on the good advice of these people.

Later on, people became a bit confused about what exactly Christianity was all about. Cults began to form up, claiming that Jesus was always a ghost, that he hadn't been killed, that the God of the Old testament was the Devil of the Christians... Some even claimed that because Jesus forgives, we can, and SHOULD do whatever we want, including rape and murder.

To ease a lot of this confusion, the gospels got written. Most people believe that Mark wrote the first gospel, followed by Luke, Mark, and then John. They say these were written some time between 70 AD-200 AD. Most think gospel writing really took off around 80 AD. A number of additional "gospels," Such as the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Mary also got published, but these were pretty different from what we know today. Scholars claim that there must have also been at least one additional gospel, which they call "Q," that is now completely lost.

Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a sequel to his popular gospel of Luke, and somebody named John wrote Revelations, and this was about all of the books of the new testament. A lot of other things also got written, but around... Ummm... 200 AD, I think, the "pope," who at that time was really pretty much just a bishop in Jerusalem, got worried about all the cults, and Romans killing Christians for their weird beliefs, so he decided it was time to sort out just what was and was not the basic religious books of Christians. They argued, and fought, and came up with the list that we know today. A lot of these books were originally written in Aramaic, but all we have today are Greek copies.

So, no, there is no "Original" bible today, and there never was, because by the time all the books of the bible were written, all the originals of the first books had long since crumbled into dust, and we were using copies of translations of copies... which is about what we still do today.

Every now and then, somebody digs up some more really old scrolls, of which some are fragmentary books of the bible that are older than what we've got, and a little bit different, and a new version of the bible comes out. The oldest "version" of the bible we have today is the "King James Version," which has obvious mistakes because it was all based on the Septuagint, but they only used the books that the Jews believed were sacred, and it's also in that freaky Thee and Thou language.

Soon after the King James bible was published, some guy decided it was really confusing, and broke the whole thing up into chapters and verses, and a new edition with those included for easy reference was added... but sometimes his verses and chapters are in odd places, possibly even intentionally. Read the first two chapters of Genesis sometime. There's obviously two DIFFERENT stories of creation, but one ends around Verse 1:4, rather than at a chapter, which makes it hard to recognize.

Your best bet is to buy a few different versions (At least one protestant, and one catholic) and kind of see what the gist is.

The new testament frequently refers back to the old testament, especially in the book of Matthew, where Matthew pulls the slightest detail of Jesus' life, and explains that it is to fulfill this or that prophecy in the old testament (You'll have to look at the foot notes, Matthew's old testament wasn't neatly divided into chapters and verses for him to reference) A lot of the "prophecies" aren't even really prophecies, and one, the "virgin birth" is a translation error. Matthew was reading the Septuagint version, but in greek the word for "Young woman," and "Virgin" are the same. In hebrew, they are different, and Jeremiah says a "Young woman" shall concieve.

Well, maybe that answered all your questions. If so, I am a member of the United Methodist church, but I've been planning on starting a cult... J/K!

Answer 2

What you are asking for is a lifetime and career of study and thought. Scholars have searched for the "original" texts of the Old and New Testaments almost as long as those documents have existed.

The Old Testament is a collection of myths and stories collected by ancient Rabbis and first written ("published?") perhaps 1000 years BCE. Many of these stories were first written in Cuneiform, Arabic, or Phoenecian texts dating back as far as perhaps 7,000 BCE. The story of Noah and the Ark, for example, dates to the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, which predates writing, and Sargonistic Cuneiform documents.

In other words, the "Original" Old Testament was built from scattered sources to serve a religious function in the Rabbinical era of the Babylonian exile. It is by sheer accident that the assembled Hebrew texts have survived. Or perhaps by the sheer determination of the descendants of those original writers. And it is only by accident of history that the OT is still taken seriously by some people.

Similarly, the New Testament is a collection of stories from various sources, mostly originally written in Greek in Hellenic culture between about 80 and 300 years CE. There is a constantly growing body of historical evidence that contradicts most of the Gospel stories. At the same time, an increasing number of "lost" stories are surfacing in our time, some of which agree with, and some of which contradict the stories that were assembled into what we call the New Testament.

In the early Fifth Century, the Roman church commissioned the creation of the Vulgate, which is the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament translated into Latin. Previously there existed Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible. The best known is called the Septuagint, and was "published" between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE.

There were several early translations of these documents into English in and around the 16th Century. The best known is the Authorized Version (as in authorized by the Church of England for service readings), which is more commonly known as the King James Version. The KJV is based on the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew bible itself, and the Old Testament is somewhat garbled (as if it wasn't already). The KJV also assembles the best known of the extant Greek texts of the accepted NT stories.

The KJV is very close to a word-for-word translation of the Greek NT, as well as scholars of that day understood the Greek language and history. It was not until the 1940s that a complete English language Bible existed that used the methods of modern scholarship and included a complete translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. This was called the Revised Standard Bible, and there now exists an improved version called the New Revised Standard Bible, which is probably the best all around bible you can buy in a store today.

I can't tell you how many versions there have been. Hundreds.

The NT refers to OT events, characters, and prophecies every 2-3 paragraphs. It's a lifetime study.

The sources for all this are many and varied. Into the thousands. If you are really curious, I recommend formal study. Most colleges and universities offer courses in NT and OT, biblical languages, theology, and related topics. Greek is not hard to learn, and if you really want to deepen your experience of the Bible, that is an excellent first step.

There is a reason why there are so many different Bibles. The Bible is chiefly a political document, and has been used and abused down through the centuries to make various influential people's points at different times.

If you would like a quick run-down on the history of the Bible, I recommend a neat little book by a British scholar named J.W. Rogerson and titled "An Introduction to the Bible." Be careful! There are literally hundreds of books with that title, and most of them are garbage. Be sure and order J.W. Rogerson's Introduction to the Bible. Any book store can order it for you.

Oh! My religion? I am a Modern Liberal Protestant, and I belong to a well known downtown church denomination.

Answer 3

I do not believe you can find any one Bible like that. Each translation is for a different focus (i.e. word for word translation, dynamic translation, easy to read/understand). The original documents and letters were primarily owned by the Catholic church. You might try "The Precise Parallel New Testament" (by Oxford University Press). It includes the Greek text and seven different Bible translations on each page: Greek, King James Version, Rheims Bible, Amplified Bible, New International Version, New Revised Standard Version, New American Bible, and the New American Standard Bible. Even easier (and cheaper!) go to www.blueletterbible.org for different translations. I imagine there are innumerable transliterations.

The first 39 books of the Bible (Old Testament) were hand written manuscipts in a collection around 500 B.C. Roughly 300 yrs. later the 14 books of the Apocrypha were included. At that time most likely the only people who had these writings were the Rabbis and Priests and other members of the clergy. They were all hand written. The New Testament began to be written in forms of letters, etc... during the first 100 yrs. after Jesus was crucified.

(Johan Gutenberg "printed" the first Latin Bible (actually he invented the printing press and the Bible was the first book he printed on it)).


The New Testament very frequently refers to the Old Testament (many translations will reference the location of scripture in the O.T. at the bottom of the page, or in the margins...they can be difficult to figure out). Conversely, the Old Testament has many 'prophasies' in the book of Isaiah Chapter 54 concerning the coming of Jesus.

An interesting book about the New Testament is "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart D. Ehrman. An interesting book about "religions" (mainly Christian) is "A Generous Orthodoxy" by Brian McLaren.

I am a follower of Jesus' teachings. I am non-denominational and am still growing and changing. I am at this time trying to decipher what is true (What God really wants from us.) and what is merely what I've 'heard' through the years. I challenge you to actually read the Bible for yourself. There are many things commonly taught in most Christians religions that are 'doctrin' (man-made) not God spoken.

Answer 4

you can buy a bible that is hebew in the old testament and greek in the new testament if you wish. The first bible was printed around 1592, before that the bibles were translated directly from the original source so to avoid mistakes. the tranlators were extremely careful and did a darn good job. before the print. press there were few bible so only the authorities had them. every translation is from the ORIGINALS, the current bible is about 97.5% accurate!! Jesus Christ fullfilled over 360 old testament prophecies!! (christian)

Answer 5

You cannot buy one, but you can get one free from Jehovah's Witnesses, who used the oldest scrolls still held by the Vatican. But, even they only date back to the third century. Theirs is the only one listed in the Congressional Library as being a translation, rather than a version. The New International Version Bible advertised itself as a modern English translation, but it didn't meet the requirements as such, because they still changed word to match standard Christian beliefs, such as the signs of the second coming of Christ. The Greek word being translated as coming actually means presence, meaning that if the signs of the last days are taking place, than Christ has returned. Change the word to coming and it changes the meaning of the sentence from present to still on his way.

The King James Version has over 20,000 translation errors, including whole scripture that were added at the time of its creation. It is a condensement from five different Bible being used in England at the time. In fact, is the mother of King James had not died, the Bible may have had a different name, as it was her idea. She died before it was finished, and he wanted his name remembered for all time.

Answer 6

No you cant and you wouldnt have been able to read it anyways bibles werent actually written until the medieval times there are many translations. No I cant answer all of these but Im a Christian or I would like to think so.

Answer 7

The 700 Club just answered all of these questions the other day, but I can not remember most of them. Check the website.

You should be able to buy the "original" but it would be in Greek i believe. And might expensive I would imagine

Christian

Answer 8

God did not write the Bible.

The King James Version is considered to be the most correct.

Live the teachings and do not worry about the rest.