Why do people look at the Bible as the "EXACT" word of God when it has been changed & rewritten so many times?

Question

My auntie was watching the Christian Channel on TV when they had a segment about the Jews and how they're God's people and how they've been wronged through History. The next part they showed was about Adolf Hitler and what influenced him to do what he did to the Jews. Part of the reason why he did what he did was from a book that he read by "Martin Luther"( the Martin Luther who spearheaded Protestant Christianity, the Christianity that most Americans follow today) After I heard this I did my own research and indeed found out that Martin Luther said what he said about the Jews. ( just search for it on Wikipedia or go to your public library) After I read this I just started to read about Christianity and where it came from and I read about my denomination and how its a sub-denomination from Protestant and I read about the Bible and how it was hand written, then went from that place to this place & from this place to that place. It was changed so many times! How could it be the original?

Answer 1

Oddly, many protestants believe the King James Bible is the perfect one. Their choice.

I am Jewish, and the Torah (the five books of Moses) are the law, the rest of the so called old Testament is just tales, not the law.

Now, as to translations, you are correct. If you can read Hebrew, and want to study Torah, then you get it without someone else's sense. A good example is some Christian Bibles state that Moses had horns coming out of his head. You see that reflected in art. The problem is that Ray and Horn are the same in Hebrew, and context explains the word. In this case, a translator took what was meant to mean Rays (of light) coming out of his head, and said Horns. The Horns was long held belief of some, why Jews kept their head covered. Go figure.

Answer 2

The Bible has never been rewritten. Where did you get that? The books were written by scribes but there is only one version of each one - any other account or belief about that is fabricated or assumed. Don't do that. There are translations (King James, modern English, children's) but the translations are false if they change any slight meaning of the text. Some religions like the Mormons believe in ongoing revelation, it makes them a cult - the Bible is whole and complete, it does not need to be rewritten. God doesn't need rewrites. Martin Luther did write some horrible things about Jews - but that is NOT the Bible. Contrary to the above by definition all true Christians will beleive that the BIble is the inspired word of God.

Answer 3

What we refer to as "The Old Testiment" was supposed to have been handed to Moses, along with the 10 commandments, by God. These books of the Bible form the Torah, which is the Jewish holy book.

The new testament is the work of men, some parts penned some 400 years after the event, although the bits that mostly form the bible were laid out by Saul/Paul. What to put into the bible was also debated at a great meating held in Rome by Constantine, who had his own agenda.

In addition to this dubious text, Hitler also believed that the Arean race originated in Atlantis. SS recruites had to attend secret serimonies that were supposed to re-create something or other related to Atlantis and the Teutonic knights.

You can therefore conclude that Hitler was probably misgueded anyway and was mearly using certain texts from the New Testament as a tool to gain power.

Pass.

Luck

Answer 4

Marcus,
You're right that Martin Luther was pretty scathing about Jews and Catholics. His value was that it caused many people to re-examine their faith and look at their personal relationship with God and... to actually read the Bible (something that was rarely done at the time). I'll set that aside for now. I'd also suggest you let go of Catholocism, Protestantism etc... those are man made. Let's stick with those who are Christians, i.e. believe in God, Believe that Jesus is God's son and through him and belief in him is the key to their salvation. Let's also set aside the debate about whether one religion is right or wrong. Those will all just push us away from your question.

Your question is how can the Bible be the "exact" word of God? Right?

Ok, so first, I am a "literalist" in that I believe that if it is in the Bible, it is truth. The Bible is the "inspired" word of God meaning that God was the inspiration of the authors who wrote the 66 "books" of the Bible. As you have suggested, the book that we have today has been copied by hand over the centuries and has been printed millions of time a year today.

There is no way that the Bible CAN be the Exact word of God... but not because of that. It's because the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek (with some translation into Latin). These languages have a very different lexicon than other languages. Take the word LOVE for example. When I say I "love" something, it can have a lot of meanings. In the Greek, LOVE, has very distinct meanings related to love for a family or friend, love related to phyiscal love (Sex) and "Agape" (A gop Ay) love meaning unconditional love (the love God has for us). When we read our Bible, we just see the word "love". Well, that's not very exact and it's one of the reasons the Bible can be so easily misinterpretted, or worse, twisted by some.

That doesn't mean the Bible you can read today is flawed. In fact, I strongly believe (like with every part of me) that God has preserved the Bible. The issue isn't the words, it's underlying meaning.

It also means that when we first "made" the Bible, that it was right. If that wasn't true... well, then we have a bigger issue.

If you read about how the Bible was formed (it's called "cannonized"), you'll be pretty amazed at how "right" it really was. First, the Old Testament was already done by the time that the New Testament was being collected so the councils that formed accepted exactly what the Hebrew Jews had as their sacred books that they believed (and had tested) as being from God. There were councils from Churches (two of them to be exact) and everyone one brought all their "letters". You see, the Letters that were written, like Paul's Letters to Corinth, or his letter to Titus or the letter that was written to chronicle the Acts of the Apostles in forming the early Church (The "book" of Acts). Anyway, all of these churches, circulated their letters to each other. Copies were made and were circulated. So when they decided to create a "cannonized" scripture, they had all the Churches bring all of their letters to the council. Keep in mind that these letters were preserved and protected like they were the President because they were so important to the early Christians.

Anyway, once the letters were all there, they began to go through all of them. They grouped the common ones together. Someone had to testify that they had seen the letter come from an Apostle, i.e. they had to PROVE that the letter was from whom they said. If they couldn't prove it, they threw it out. Then for one letter (like Acts) the looked at all the copies to find the EXACT wording. Most often, over 95% of the letters were exact. Then, when they had done that, they voted on only those that they had proven were exactly what had been written. That became your New Testament.

Since that day, a lot of copies have been copied, re-copied etc. But we've uncovered some things in the last 20 years that has helped us to test how good it the Bible has been preserved. The biggest ones were the Dead Sea Scrolls which parts of books and books that were mostly there that were found in the, I think, 1970's. These had been hidden away during the time of Christian persecution and were discovered by a young shephard that was playing around the caves.

These scrolls were written in Greek and Hebrew and some, I think, may have been in Latin. Anyway, the languages haven't changed since ancient times. So, they were able to literally "read" these and compare them to the greek versions of the Bible today (which are still used to interpret and verify scripture for other languages).

Guess what. They were "perfectly" translated to about 96% from the scrolls found. Bigger than that there was ZERO, 0%, errors found related to any major doctrine, key belief that would invalidate the Bible, or something similar. In other words, the roughly 4% of the errors were related to words like "the", or how we'd used the "an" instead of "a"... stuff like that. NOTHING Material.

So... Is our Bible the "original "Bible today. Well, it's written in English so, of course not!

BUT... Is our Bible the "Original" in Terms of What God intended to Say to US. ABSOLUTELY and it's been pretty much proven to be the case.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

You're right. It has been rewritten and translated throughout the centuries. There are many denominations that use the Bible as a guide and believe it as the christian gods written word. How do they know for a fact it is? The don't, (although they say it is". They have "Faith" that is. The Bible means many different things to many people. All believing that their right and everyone else is wrong. So, I'll just sit in my little Pagan corner, smile & nod, and be nice to everyone.
Love & Light

Answer 6

Not all of it is the exact word of God. According to legend, the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) were written by Moses. These are supposedly direct from the source, so to speak. Everything after them is commentary. As for accuracy, I'd bet the Hebrew chroniclers were as near perfect as humanly possible. When Yigal Yadin excavated Masada (site of the mass suicide of the zealots) he discovered a 2,000 year old version of Deuteronomy (the oldest biblical text known) and there were only 3 differences between that text and the one we use today, all of them minor. How's that for accuracy?

Answer 7

I often remind people that the stories in the Bible were told orally for thousands of years in a language that nobody speaks anymore. They eventually were written in a dialect of Hebrew that is not spoken anymore, either.

Eventually, they were written in Hebrew, then translated to Greek, then translated to Latin, then translated to German, and then translated to 17th century English, the same kind of English that Shakespeare used. The Bible is made up of language that is constantly changing! There are still new translations being made everyday! I have three versions of the Bible in my house, my sister has five!

I can't imagine why people think of the Bible as "God's final word."

Answer 8

it's not original. no god point his finger on the ground and magically materialize a book and told everybody to follow it. remember that during the middle ages a lot of people could not read only the nobility and clerics. so if the king doesn't like a passage he probably changed it.
people have said to me that the bible is like a history textbook. well as textbooks now they have been rewritten over time and who knows what the original had in mind. remember the holy grail is a woman. (now watch as i get bashed for saying that)

Answer 9

The Bible was composed of written works of different people, but what was put into the Bible was actually chosen by a man who was on the verge of losing all of his power. There are many books that are not part of the Bible that were composed by women, and other men that never saw the light of day. Sad really, that we base a religion on something that one man had the power to shape the way he did.

I'm a Christian, but I also know that there is much that we do not know about what happened back then.

Answer 10

You are a very astute young man. The Christians have perpetrated a very cleaver bit of mind control or propaganda to keep Christians from using their minds to think. They say such tings as there will be many false prophets to disbelieve logic and they also say that the biblical writers were inspired by God. They say that the Bible is a living and breathing document but it stopped living and breathing over two thousand years ago. It is very easy to believe in a greater power and not become duped by the politicization of organized religion.