Bible Versions - Page 2

alexie · 07-06-2007, 08:47 PM

Hi Guys

The early accounts of Jesus supports the faith we have in Christ.
Josephs was a great Jewish historian of his time. He wrote about Jesus stating “there was a wise man called Jesus… he was known to be virtuous…he appeared to them 3 days after his crucifixion…he was perhaps the messiah…”
This is one of the many accounts of Jesus outside the Bible. There are at least ten known non-Christian writers who mention Jesus within 150 years of His life. In the same period there are nine non-Christian authors who mention the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar. One less than Jesus. So to say Jesus did not exist says much in our history did not. Then to say that these authors lied about Jesus or all were ill informed requires much evidence and faith. Put together all the Christian authors and you find that writings about Jesus number 43 to 10 against Tiberius.
The Bible is used as historical text for many. Why?
There are at nearly 5,700 handwritten Greek texts of the New Testament. There are 9,000 in other languages. The next closest work is Homer’s Iliad with 643 manuscripts. Few historians question the historicity of the other works such as Homer.
The time gaps between original and later copies is interesting to look at. The New testament can speak of 25 years with some texts. Plato is 1,200 years with 7 copies. People do not question his existence or what he said.
In A.D 303 The Roman emperor Diocletian ordered persecution of Christians. He called for the destruction of churches, manuscripts, books and Christians.
Hundreds, if not thousands of texts were destroyed. Even if he succeeded we could still piece together and reconstruct the New Testament. Why? The church fathers quoted the New testament as much as 36,289 times. That means today with no New Testament you can go to the library and read the New Testament through the church fathers. The New testament has been assessed for errors many times and is cited as having 99.5% accuracy.
We have people saying that we cannot our history so well and these people are the same people who ignore the above information yet say that life evolved from nothing from goo. They say that the early Christians were biased. That means that no one in their field of expertise can comment on this area as they may be biased.
There is so much more about the Bible and its truth. Another area is that not one aerological dig contradicts the Bible. Some are so sure the Bible is wrong yet cannot find any negative evidence in this area.
To disbelieve all these facts you must deny much of history or have faith greater than a Christian to believe it is wrong and that there is no God.

alexie

alexie · 07-06-2007, 08:51 PM

Some more detail

Sorry, some of this overlaps the previous as I wrote this for a friend of mine last year. I thought it would be good to dig this up here for your perusal.

Dramatically, when the Bible manuscripts are compared to other ancient writings, they stand alone as the best-preserved literary works of all antiquity. Remarkably, there are thousands of existing Old Testament manuscripts and fragments copied throughout the Middle East, Mediterranean and European regions that agree phenomenally with each other. 1 In addition, these texts substantially agree with the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which was translated from Hebrew to Greek some time during the 3rd century BC. 2 The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in Israel in the 1940's and 50's, also provide astounding evidence for the reliability of the ancient transmission of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament) in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries BC. 3
The manuscript evidence for the "New Testament" is also dramatic, with nearly 25,000 ancient manuscripts discovered and archived so far, at least 5,600 of which are copies and fragments in the original Greek. 4 Some manuscript texts date to the early second and third centuries, with the time between the original autographs and our earliest existing fragment being a remarkably short 40-60 years. 5

Interestingly, this manuscript evidence far surpasses the manuscript reliability of other ancient writings that we trust as authentic every day. Look at these comparisons: Julius Caesar's The Gallic Wars (10 manuscripts remain, with the earliest one dating to 1,000 years after the original autograph); Pliny the Younger's Natural History (7 manuscripts; 750 years elapsed); Thucydides' History (8 manuscripts; 1,300 years elapsed); Herodotus' History (8 manuscripts; 1,350 years elapsed); Plato (7 manuscripts; 1,300 years); and Tacitus' Annals (20 manuscripts; 1,000 years). The academic discipline of "textual criticism" assures us that the Bible translations we have today are essentially the same as the ancient Bible manuscripts, with the exception of a few inconsequential discrepancies that have been introduced over time through copyist error. We must remember that the Bible was hand-copied for hundreds of years before the invention of the first printing press. Nevertheless, the text is exceedingly well preserved. Again, I pondered this -- of the approximately 20,000 lines that make up the entire New Testament, only 40 lines are in question. These 40 lines represent one quarter of one percent of the entire text and do not in any way affect the teaching and doctrine of the New Testament. I again compared this with Homer's Iliad. Of the approximately 15,600 lines that make up Homer's classic, 764 lines are in question. These 764 lines represent over 5% of the entire text, and yet nobody seems to question the general integrity of that ancient work.
To my real surprise, I discovered the Bible to be better preserved -- by far -- than other ancient works I've read and accepted over the years, such as Homer, Plato and Aristotle.

alexie

jaej · 07-07-2007, 10:39 PM

Quote:

The early accounts of Jesus supports the faith we have in Christ.

This is the second time I've seen you write this, and it's obvious absurdity makes me question whether or not I'm reading it right...you're saying the accounts you have of jesus are supportive of what you believe about him...? Am I the only one that sees the absurd obviousness of this?

And anyway, the problem with the bible isn't the originals-well it is, and just because there's a load of them doesn't make them accurate. But one of the biggest problems is translation, or rather mis-translation. Of words like adam. And virgin.

moorehurst · 07-08-2007, 05:17 PM

Oh goodness gracious me...

Look, one of the great achievements of christian civilisation was the preservation of classical literature after the fall of the Roman Empire. However they were a tad selective in what they chose to hang on to.

The art of writing was preserved, on the whole, by monks and christian scribes in the eastern Roman Empire. So naturally they translated the Bible more often than they translated Caesar's account of the Gallic Wars.

Take Suetonius for example: why did his "lives of the twelve Caesars" survive but not "lives of famous Roman whores" which would have been a great read?

So while I agree with what you say generally, you are stating the obvious a tad. It doesn't make the life of Christ as stated in the bible any more or less factually correct than Herodotus' account of the Persian wars.

jaej · 07-08-2007, 08:36 PM

Not to mention the bible's basic problem of historical inaccuracy.

Chapstiquelova · 07-08-2007, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KJV

Are you aware there are many different “Bible” versions today claiming to be the Word of God. Each one tells us that it is the most reliable, most accurate, etc. etc.. But which of them is God’s Word? Since they all disagree with one another, we can’t possibly say that they all are. Can we? Are we to suppose that God has written more than one Bible and that he makes statements in one and then disagrees with himself in another? No, of course not. God only wrote one Bible. How, then, do we go about determining which “Bible” is the Bible? If we look to human opinion for the answer, we will find nearly as many opinions as we find people. One person will like one. Another person will prefer another. Yet a third person will assure us that it really doesn’t matter, telling us that any of them will do just fine. Since we aren’t interested in human opinion here, we need to look to scripture for help in resolving this issue. There are two questions that we will need to consider. (1) Which are the correct manuscripts?
(2) Which is the proper translation of those (the correct) manuscripts?

I found that NIV and NASB seem to be pretty accurate maybe NASB more than NIV .

jaej · 07-09-2007, 09:01 AM

Accurate in terms of what? And compared to what? Have you studied the original greek and hebrew and aramaic manuscripts (which don't exist anymore)? Or were you around back then to know what really went down.

Chapstiquelova · 07-09-2007, 12:58 PM

whoa buddy I wasn't trying to strike up debate.
I looked at the new testament in the original greek and compared it. But i don't have an old testament orginal hebrew bible , i was giving my opinion, not tying to strike up debate..lol...

Og · 07-09-2007, 01:06 PM

Much of our understanding of the language of the texts has expanded since the discovery of the dead sea scrolls and the nag hamadi library in 1945. Versions after this discovery have benefited greatly from this expanded base of texts for contextual clues to certain meanings.

Versions from before these huge discoveries do not benefit from the improved scholastic understanding and are more error prone.

alexie · 07-11-2007, 02:54 AM

I will say it again."The New testament has been assessed for errors many times and is cited as having 99.5% accuracy."
Quite good for a book written by many authors with hundreds of years between them and vastly different backgrounds.
Again I say if you reject the Bible histroy then you reject all of ancient history.
Now for some logic. If the Bible is so inaccurate and especially so after the Roman occupations or even the counciel of Nicea, then where are all these so vastly different texts? Just because one version uses the word bad and one abomination does not make it inaccurate. Have you ever used a thesaurus? You can use words in the one sentence, change them and retain the meaning too.

alexie