What kind of errors in the Bible?

by TheWonderofYou 49 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  TheWonderofYou

  The New Testament specialist Daniel Wallace notes that although there are about 300,000 individual variations of the text of the New Testament, this number is very misleading. Most of the differences are completely inconsequential--spelling errors, inverted phrases and the like. A side by side comparison between the two main text families (the Majority Text and the modern critical text) shows agreement a full 98% of the time.[18]

  Of the remaining differences, virtually all yield to vigorous textual criticism. This means that our New Testament is 99.5% textually pure. In the entire text of 20,000 lines, only 40 lines are in doubt (about 400 words), and none affects any significant doctrine.[19]

  Greek scholar D.A. Carson sums up this way: "The purity of text is of such a substantial nature that nothing we believe to be true, and nothing we are commanded to do, is in any way jeopardized by the variants."[20]

  This issue is no longer contested by non-Christian scholars, and for good reason. Simply put, if we reject the authenticity of the New Testament on textual grounds we'd have to reject every ancient work of antiquity and declare null and void every piece of historical information from written sources prior to the beginning of the second millennium A.D.

  Has the New Testament been altered? Critical, academic analysis says it has not.

  [18] Wallace, Daniel, "The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are They Identical?," Bibliotheca Sacra, April-June, 1991, 157-8.

  [19] Geisler and Nix, 475.

  [20] Carson, D.A., The King James Version Debate (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 56.

  Source: http://www.str.org/articles/is-the-new-testament-text-reliable#ANCHOR19
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  DesirousOfChange

  Let's assume that the test of the New Testament IS in fact "correct" as the original writings.

  SO WHAT? What does that get you?

  That does not mean that the statements made in its text are true. (True and accurate are not the same.)

  That does not mean that the claims of divine influence we find in its text are true or can be proven.

  That does not mean that the different writers of the text never make conflicting statements that cannot easily be harmonized. (Thinking Jesus vs. Paul.)

  The text of the writings of Plato, or Socrates, or Aristotle are probably accurate too. That doesn't mean their philosophy was correct.

  Doc
  
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  DarioKehl

  It'd be nice to have references more recent than 1991 & 1975.

  how about dr robert price for starters?
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  freemindfade

  I hear that batman comics have close to zero errors... proves alot...
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  moomanchu

  According to JW's the name of God himself has been removed from Christendom's bibles.

  The most important thing in the bible God's name was changed!

  I once asked my mom, if Jehovah can't even keep his own name in the bible how can I trust anything else in there to be correct?
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  prologos

  what matters are not nit picking spelling errors but "Jesus" endorsing the 3.5 days in a fish, the "flood", the Adam and the rib /cloning Eve story. and the like.
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  DarioKehl

  This post says nothing about the disharmony of the gospels, the Q source, evidence of plagiarism, historical revisions, later insertions, the nicene council's subjective "authorization" for selected apocrypha nor does it say anything about the fact that the oldest scripts are still decades older than the alleged death of heysoos and many of the fragments are no larger than a credit card. It's all crap
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  opusdei1972

  The main errors in the Bible are their moral and logical contradictions, as well as its false prophecies.
  
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  wizzstick

  Simply put, if we reject the authenticity of the New Testament on textual grounds we'd have to reject every ancient work of antiquity and declare null and void every piece of historical information from written sources prior to the beginning of the second millennium A.D.

  But the Bible makes the supernatural claim to be the Word of God. Thus your comparing to other works of antiquity makes no sense.
  

  If translators have to chose which copy of scripture to use when translating the Bible (which they do) you have to ask for evidence that God has guided them to chose the correct copy (and indeed that copy was what He wanted recorded for all time).

  No evidence? Then how can you be 100% what you read is from God?
  

  
  
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  truthseeker100

  In the beginning god created the heavens and the .........

  The word In might be historically accurate? As for the rest of it....... pure lies.