How sure are we that we have Bible translations that are faithfull to the original manuscripts?

Question

I believe I have the answer but I wish to hear from others as to their thoughts on the matter. Are there any proofs in the reliability of todays transcriptions to the originials. How can we know for sure?

The relay of Biblical information, or most any ancient text, is not linear like the telephone game. Linear simply means that the information was passed from one to the other in a singular way. In the New Testament manuscripts we can find that one letter birthed five copies which became 25 and so on. The Bible manuscripts were passed not in a linear but a geometric fashion. From one copy to five, for example, and then we copy five copies from those five and so on. After the third generation we end up with 155 copies of the original Bible manuscript. The most recent count (1980) shows 5,366 separate Greek manuscripts.

Since the manuscripts were in written form they were not as easily susceptible to corruption and distortion. Written manuscripts can also be tested in a way oral communications cannot. Through textual analysis.

For most documents of antiquity only a handful of manuscripts exist, some facing a time gap of 800-2000 years or more. Yet scholars are confident of reconstructing the originals with some significant degree of accuracy. In fact, virtually all of our knowledge of ancient history depends on documents like these. By comparison we find the manuscript evidence for the New Testament to be extremely rich, we find over 5,000 separate Greek manuscripts. Some from the second and third century. We even have a newly-found small portion of John 18:31-33 discovered in Egypt known as the John Rylands Papyri which is dated on paleographical grounds at around A.D. 117-138(though it may even be earlier) , which has forced the critics to place the fourth gospel back into the first century, abandoning their earlier assertion that it could not have been written then by the Apostle John.

There was an historic find in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1947. A shepperd boy found sealed jars filled with biblical and old Jewish texts. After many years of excavating, archaeologists have found thousands of scrolls and fragments from 11 different caves in the area including the discovery of parts of all the books of the Palestinian Bible(Old Testament part of our Bible) except for the book of Esther . Within a fairly short time after the find, historical, paleographic, and linguistic evidence, as well as carbon-14 dating, established that the scrolls and the Qumran ruin dated from the third century BC to 68 AD . They were ancient indeed! There are from a time when Jesus walked the earth.

Since we know that these jars were untouched for nearly 2000 years, we can then know that these texts have never been tampered with in all this time. And when compared with the text of the Old Testament that we have today, we find them in remarkable agreement.

Answer 1

We have a great quantity of highly reliable copies of books of the New Testament.

There are more than 5,660 ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament from close to the time when the originals were written.

Furthermore, these copies are from many different geographical areas. In addition to the Greek manuscripts, we also have translations of the gospels in other languages at a relatively early time. For example, there are more than 8,000 ancient Latin copies of the New Testament. Even if we had no Greek manuscripts today, by piecing together the information from these translations we could actually
reproduce the contents of the New Testament.

In addition to that, even if we lost all the Greek manuscripts and the early translations we could still reproduce the
contents of the New Testament from the multiplicity of quotations in commentaries, sermons, letters, and so forth of the early church fathers.

The abundance of manuscript copies, about 24,970 manuscripts in all, makes it possible to reconstruct the original with virtually complete accuracy.

The oldest portion of the New Testament we have today is from the Gospel of John. It is called John Rylands Fragment (P52). Scholars have dated this portion of John’s
gospel to about 125AD. The interesting thing about this scrap is that it was found in a community along the Nile River in Egypt, far from Ephesus where the gospel of John
was written.

Two papyrus fragments of the Gospel of John dating from A.D. 100-150. They are in the John Rylands Library and are the earliest surviving manuscripts of any part of the New Testament.

Scholars have an excellent understanding of Greek and Hebrew and can accurate translate the meaning into our modern languages.

When it comes to the Old Testament, it is the careful copying techniques of the ancient scribes that can give us confidence that the original message has been accurately and faithfully preserved.

The scribes who copied the Bible were trained professionals with very strict standards and rules.

For example, the rules for the Talmudists (A.D. 100–500) included:

• The copyist must sit in full Jewish dress and be recently bathed.

• He should not begin to write the name of God with a pen newly dropped in ink.

• If a king addresses the scribe while writing the divine name, the scribe should ignore him.

• If there was one mistake on a scroll it was destroyed.

• No word or letter must be written from memory without the scribe looking at the original before him.

• Only an original could be used to copy from– no duplicates of duplicates allowed.

• Between every consonant the width of a hair or thread must intervene.

• Between every section (parashah), the breadth of nine consonants must intervene.

• Between every book, three lines must intervene.

• The fifth book of Moses must terminate exactly with a line, but the rest need not do so.

The Massoretes who followed (A.D. 500-900) likewise exercised great care in copying. They numbered the verses, words, and letters of every book. They calculated the
middle verse, the middle word and the middle letter of each. The enumerated verses which contained all the letters of the alphabet, or a certain number of them; and so on. These trivialities, as we may rightly consider them, had yet the
effect of securing minute attention to the precise transmission of the text. The Massoretes were indeed anxious that not one "jot nor tittle, not one smallest letter nor one tiny part of a letter, of the Law should pass away or be lost.”

No other ancient book has ever been preserved with such love, respect, care and attention to detail!

Answer 2

There are many people on the earth today who speak Hebrew. Unlike Greek it is not a dead language.
although some are very gifted in Greek.
In the 60's some dead sea scrolls were dug up in a cave in a vessel, sealed. They were very carefully copied and hundreds of pictures were taken and they were carefully examined being thousands of years old. Amazeingly they were very close if not exactly like the scriptures we had of those bible books. The Jews were very careful to copie exactly what was written. The scribes under threat of death could not make an error. Or he would lose his favored position as a scribe. Even the smallest error the work was destroyed. He was held as suspect.
Today it is not done so carefully nor did King James take such pains to make sure it was accurate. But we have enough found manuscripts to correct the errors he made.
so actually the new bibles unless they have changed the meaning which some bibles attempt to do to further their religious beliefs they are pretty accurate. Any change is called into question and re examined by experts.
No one book has had as much scrutiny as the bible.
Also, I believe God could direct their hand to ensure we get an accurate copy. I was amazed the effort this man went to in making a perfect translation into German. Studying years of Hebrew and Greek until he knew the language perfectly.
Making what is now known as the most perfect translation into German available today. In fact the bible has been translated into 2000 languages and different dialects.
By people who spent their whole life making it for their language from the men who made the French bible to the Dutch. Totally dedicated people.
A little German lady who was from Germany and came to the USA as a teenager had to learn English. Being here 20 years her English was very good. She had two bibles one in each language and she was amazed that they said the same thing. In things she was unsure of went to the bible translations to help her to learn how to say it in English.
Also, some do that with Spanish, learning a new language a bible is easy to get ahold of and find the same verse and there you can find out how to say it in English.
Or Ababic or any other language you may speak.

Answer 3

There are over 5,000 documents that confirm what is written in the King James Bible. These newer translations make subtle changes and complete omissions of scripture. We can also go to the writings of the Early Church Fathers. They wrote volumes of information about the four Gospels and the Epistles. There was a study done. She took ten years of her time and compared all of the translations and found some amazing things. Scripture about fasting were gone. Denying Jesus Christ as Lord of Lords, just to name a couple. Personally, I don't trust the newer versions, they compromise the Truth.

Answer 4

We don't.

God has no written guarentee that one translation is more faithful to the original spirit and meaning of the bible than others.

In fact, one translation may be more faithful to certain verses than another, but that other might be more faithful to the overall intent than the first. See what I mean?

Your best bet is to go with people who know a lot about those original languages and the culture the Bible was written in.

The best in that regard is the Jerusalem Bible. The translators amassed to translate it used all the newest information they had on the ancient languages and culture and then came from a variety of religion backgrounds themselves: Catholic, Protestant, non-affiliated, etc.

It has killer footnotes that give a lot of good information, like where they still don't know exactly what Koine Greek word meant back then in Jesus's time.

Answer 5

Because of what could be possible errors in translation -
we NEED the History, Tradition, and Teaching of the Catholic Church who has passed on what was believed, done, and taught by the Apostles.

It is the only constant. All other denominations and translations have changed or broken off from the original teachings and beliefs of the Apostles.

We cannot expect each man or woman to be able to accurately interpret documents that are millennia old, from a different culture, in different languages regardless of that man or woman's education, upbringing, and culture. We need an authority. That authority is clearly the Catholic Church since they teach from the Apostolic Tradition and have men that have dedicated their lives to learning the history, culture, and languages of the Biblical Age.

Answer 6

Original Hebrew manuscripts? Or the other stuff? There is no original of the other stuff, as it was a bunch of different books centered around the christ mythos that didn't agree with eachother, but the power that was, Constantine I, decided it would be easier to control all the differing beliefs by making one book out of the many that were in circulation. He got a bunch of them together and the different religious leaders voted which ones they would call the word of god. The rest were trashed. Of course, the new book didn't mesh well with Judaism, so the Hebrew bible was forbidden to followers of the christ mythos, as they would have easily seen that it was a sham. But hey, todays christians take every word as truth without even thinking about learning about Judaism, so I guess it doesn't matter if they have originals or not, they like their beliefs just the way they are, unfounded.

Answer 7

Modern scholarship does guarantee a high degree of accuracy, although the variety of mss. available and the poor condition in which some are (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls) means that cross-referencing is often the only guide to missing sections.

Of course, there is the problem of how to translate correctly certain Hebrew or Hellenic words in English. The term mallakoi is a classic example of how this word is translated according to cultural bias and prejudice because there is no clear equivalent in English.

Just a point of clarification. The plurals of anthropos and adelphos are anthropOI and adelphOI.

Answer 8

Which one? There are so many, and they differ quite a lot.

Actually, you can be pretty sure they are NOT faithful to the original manuscripts. Remember the game "Whispers down the line?" The original manuscripts are lost, they have been translated over and over again, and the people who did the translations had political and religious axes to grind. That's why it's nonsense to say you want to take it literally.

Read it for the value it has, and don't get hung up on every word.

Answer 9

Sol of Tar sis is visited by some spirit, and changes his name to Paul, and does what hes told to do by this spirit, preach about Jesus who's been dead for a while. He writes about 70thousand words in the form of his letters. Fast forward at least a hundred years and up pops John, Mark, Luke, Larry or was it Thomas, I"m missing one or two or three gospel writers I have a hard time keeping them straight, doesn't matter even christians don't have all the gospels. Bottom line is that the gospels aren't even close to Paul's letters witch makes them silly like all religions and there writings.

Answer 10

You can't be sure. There are no original manuscripts. Each book of the bible developed in its own unique environment, some, like genesis were compiled from various oral traditions and combined to suit the needs of the scribes and priests at that time. Others were copies of copies with dubious origins like some of Paul's letters which most serious bible scholars now recognize as being written long after Paul died. What we now call the bible was rewritten, translated, copied, and edited so many times that you can't take any of it as being anywhere near what the original documents actually were.

Now watch the hate pile on this one.