Do you realize the printing press wasn't invented until 1445?

Question

Which means texts were hand transcribed before that. And what makes you think people would copy things the same way for 1300 years without adding to it or subtracting from it when, generally, they can't keep a rumor straight for even a few days?
Again, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BE A FUNDAMENTALIST because YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE BIBLE IS.

Answer 1

Even assuming they DID copy it down the same way every time, it doesn't change the ~1000 years prior to the printing press where the Church leaders "decided" which books went into the Bible.

Answer 2

Your dates are a little off. Gutenberg came up with the idea of removable wooden or metal letters in 1436 and completed his invention of the printing press in 1440.

The first major publication was a German translation of the bible, better known as the Gutenberg Bible. From that point, publications of the great stories and myths from the ancient Greeks began coming off the printing press. This resulted in the ushering in of the Renaissance which literally means, "rebirth." So on one hand - Gutenberg was responsible for producing the bible cheaply enough that the average person could afford to buy one - while on the other hand - he was also responsible for the great awakening that took place in Europe - creating a rebirth of intellectual, creative and scientific growth.

And what of his bible? Is it an accurate recreation and translation of the original?

These questions are impossible to answer because there is no original bible. No such work survived into Medieval or modern times. Consequently, we have nothing to compare to what we have now. For all we know it could be a total mess. Except for one part of it. The Old Testament. Specifically, the Torah part of the bible. In this case, great care was and is taken by the Jews to make absolutely certain that not a single letter or punctuation mark is incorrect. Not a "jot or a tittle" can be changed. That's true to this day with every Torah scroll used in a temple being hand written. If a single mistake is made while writing it, the scroll must be thrown out and a new one started.

Unfortunately, we cannot say the same thing for the remainder of the biblical text.

Answer 3

Even though the KJV Bible wasn't printed until 1611, it was commissioned in 1604! Ever wonder why it took SEVEN YEARS to print the final edition? It was due to the fact that the manuscripts from the Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic languages were HAND TRANSCRIBED to ensure the words were CORRECTLY translated! There were 50 men involved in this project and it STILL took this long because if they got to Revelation 5:12 for instance, and found a grammatical error, they didn't reprint Rev. 5:12 and keep going; they REDID THE WHOLE THING FROM GENESIS 1:1 ! That's how they copied the Bible the way they did EVEN 150+ years AFTER the invention of the printing press! The invention of the printing press had NOTHING to do with the ACCURACY of the transcription! DEDICATION to correctness is what ensured the truth among the languages had been accurately represented.

Answer 4

This may be some what true for the NT texts although we'd need to compare texts from various times to verify how much drift, if any, had occurred. The OT or the Jewish books at least, was meticulously copied and inspected and this has been verified by comparing scrolls dating back to around the 10th century BC.

This still doesn't mean that the Bible in any form is true, just that many parts have been accurately copied.

Answer 5

I'm not a fundementalist, but it is my understanding that the texts of (at least the Old Testament) are pretty much 100% the same as they were 4000 years ago (compareing ancient scrolls with modern copies). Ancient Jewish scribes were very careful to preserve the Holy Word, even going so far as to NOT correct percieved errors in their base text, but point it out in the margins of their new copy, so it could be compared later on to other copies of that holy scroll.

I think that there are better arguements agaisnt fundementalism than the fact that the Bible is somehow distorted.

Answer 6

You precede on a false assumption. The fundamentalists argue that everything before the King James Version was wrong. The Dead Sea Scrolls are irrelevant since they were found after the KJV was published, and in comparison, they contain numerous errors.

Answer 7

There were hundreds of Bibles back then. The Hebrew Bible, Torah. was written on scrolls and only the rabbis could read from it and the scholars were the ones that wrote them. It took them years to write one out because they took they precious time to make sure no errors were made. They couldn't erase back then either. And before the written Torah, it was all oral. God's Holy Spirit guided the words of the authors. It was after the Catholic bible was being written and men broke off from the pope and started their own churches and rewrote the bible did they take things from the bible and add things to the bible. That's where we get the NIV and the KJV.

Answer 8

The Bible we read is from around 2,000 years ago, and the copies we found are nearly identical. We have between 1,000 and 5,000 copies (that were sent to early church groups) scattered all over the Mediterranean area, North Africa, Europe, the Mid East and Israel, which were about 98% EXACTLY the same. The verses that vary between manuscripts are marked in the modern translated Bible with footnotes, and none of those verses vary the central message of the scriptures.

Answer 9

The problem with your assertion is that we have roughly 30,000 full and partial manuscripts of the New-Testament, of which 5,000 are in the original language of Greek. There is an absolutely astounding amount of agreement in these manuscripts and it is true that not one major doctrine of Christianity hinges on any contested reading. You need to do more research before you ask questions. The Bible is the most well attested piece of ancient writing that we have, bar none. You are, of course, free to be unbelieving; but it is indisputable that the Bible that we have now is the same one the early Church had.

Answer 10

Very good point...and I see you keep getting asked if you've heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Haven't we all?
Those were hidden away long before the Bible was put onto paper, and had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact most fundamentalists would consider the scrolls to be apocryphal.