How were words and phrases acurately recorded for the Bible?

Question

Wasn't it written hundreds of years after the events?

How did the scribes know exactly what was said word for word?

Anyone ever played Chinese Whispers?

Answer 1

I rather doubt the accuracy. The words and phrases were translated from ancient languages and retranslated from King James to "modern English". There have to be inaccuracies.

Answer 2

In his book, The Bible and Archaeology, Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, former director and principal librarian of the British Museum, stated about the New Testament, "The interval, then, between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established."{8}
To be skeptical of the 27 documents in the New Testament, and to say they are unreliable is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as these in the New Testament.

Answer 3

The Bible is a collection of 66 books.

Some of those books, should as the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles come from official court records kept by historians during the lifetime of the different kings.

Some, like the book of Psalms, are songs of praise that could be written at any point in history. The results is that the changing of even one word within the poem is going to be very obvious. It is referred to by schalors as "oral tradition".

The Jews, like most cultures of that day, had people who were schooled in the peom/stories that told their cultures history. To be choosen to memorize and pass on the poem was a great honor. The teller would often carry a special object (usually a staff)

Some, like the letters of Paul, were written by him during his lifetime and sent to friends and churches who saved them.

Some, like the Old Testament prophets, wrote down their teachings during their lifetimes. Jeremiah tells about how he wrote his early prophecies and gave them to the king. As he read them, the king torn off each page and threw it into the fire. So Jeremiah had to rewrite the whole thing.

Some, like the book of Acts, are first hand accounts of the event, in which the author appears saying "we went here", and "we did this".

About the only section of the scriptures can not be accredited to someone who actually witnessed the events are the opening 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. They tell the creation (1-4), Noah's Ark (6-9), and the Tower of Babel (10-11). That is about 0.002% of the entire Bible.

We have manuscripts of many of the Bible books that date back to less then a generation from when the originals were written still in existence today. Such as a fragmented manuscript of all the letters of Paul. They have been able to reconstruct about 72% of the manuscript and it is word for word indentical to the Bible text used for translating Bible today.

Or a manuscript of the gospel of John that dates with 25 years of the original. They have been able to reconstruct 809 1/2 of the 893 verse of the book so far - and are working on the rest. Again, identical to what we have today.

Or the five copies of Isaiah found in the Dea Sea Scrolls that appears to date within a generation of the original. There were five words different (three of which were just different spellings) from what we use as Isaiah today.

When one actually looks at the abundance of Bible manuscripts, there idea of a "Chinese Whisper" is not demonstrated. For example, there are over 7,500 extent ancient manuscripts of the New Testament (2,300 of those from the first 200 years of the church). When compared, they read word for word the same 99.7% of the time. Of the 0.3% variant, the majority are different spellings of the same word, or the reverse of two words such as "Christ Jesus" instead of "Jesus Christ". Of those, the majority occur once - meaning there are 7,499 manuscripts that say "Jesus Christ" and 1 that says "Christ Jesus" - making it easy to guess what the correct reading is. In total, there are about 40 words out of the entire New Testament on which there is any real debate. None of them affect a major Christian doctrine.

Answer 4

Yeah, basically some dude called Lazarus had been in a coma for a couple of days, and Jesus manged to jump start his heart somehow, but by the time this event had reached the ears of whoever was writing the bible at the time the story had been blown wildly out of proportion, like many other stories in thr bible.

Answer 5

Paul's books are considered to be the first NT writings, followed by the gospel of Mark no earlier than 70 A.D. No one knew "exactly" what was said, which is why Christians must claim divine inspiration. But even that falls apart under scrutiny, since the Bible contains errors yet is purported to be inerrant. Hmm.

Answer 6

The bible was inspired by God. If you believe in God you will believe in his abilities. So don't you think he would be able to make sure that the correct versions of accounts were noted?

Evidence has been found also that supports the bible. Places mentioned have been dug up centuries later with it set out just as described.

For those not believing in God thios would be hard to understand but a belief in God will also bring a belief that God would not allow mistakes t have been made when the accounts were recorded.

Answer 7

As far as I know, the Bible which we have now was recorded from secondary source.

The actual wording of the Bible is in Aramic (one of the Hebrew Language). But the Bible that we have now was copied from the Bible that was written in Greek. The Bible written in Greek is not the original Bible written in the era of Jesus.

Answer 8

IF the Bible was truly inspired by an all knowing, all seeing super-being, it would be faultless! The Bible is littered with errors and contradictions, and as with all human inventions, has been modified, deleted,translated, re-translated, amended, and interpreted in a way that supports the `message`. Not the truth, just a message supporting wishful thinking.

Answer 9

thats a question know one can answer so dont believe any thing they say because they're just saying what they heard. please dont take efence because im just saying my opinion. Eveything that has been said in the bible is a myth. Have you ever read a asin bible or jewish or russian or any other culture? they're all differnt stories!

Answer 10

It was written through the inspiration of the holy spirit