WHICH BIBLE? - Part One

 WHICH BIBLE? - AN EXAMINATION OF TRANSLATIONS - 2 Timothy 3:10-17

I am often asked for advice on which Bible to use and why.  With so many Bibles on sale from which to select, I can appreciate the difficulty in making such a choice, and it is not getting any easier with new versions and editions constantly appearing.  What are the differences between them, and does it really matter which version you use?

I hope that this series of posts will assist you in assessing the quality of a particular translation.  I also hope to address in brief the claim that the King James Version is the only true Bible for English-speaking people.

 I will approach this subject using the following steps: 

1.                  The Original Manuscripts and Subsequent Copies

2.                  The Biblical Text contained in the Copies

3.                  The English Translation of the Text

4.                  Modern Versions & Method of Translation

 I will cover each of these over the next four posts.  The first one deals with how the Bible is founded on the original manuscripts and subsequent copies.

 1.   THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS and SUBSEQUENT COPIES

       The Original Manuscripts

       Our Bible reading taken from Paul’s last letter makes reference to God’s Word using the

       descriptions, “the sacred writings” and “All Scripture” (2 Tim 3:15, 16).  These included the Old

       Testament and those New Testament documents that had been written thus far and were yet to be

       written after 2 Timothy.  God provided a written record of His revelation using three normal human

       languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.  He so controlled the biblical writers by the power of the

       Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21) that they wrote exactly the wording that God wanted, yet from their

       own vocabulary, reflecting their individual personality.

       Only these original products were divinely inspired and thus without error.

      The Subsequent Copies 

As durable as these original products were, they were eventually in need of replacement and, in        addition, more than one copy was necessary to meet the spiritual needs of a growing number of            believers.  As a result, copies were made and in the case of the New Testament, they number in            the thousands. 

These copies were not divinely inspired and thus were subject to possible error.  What is so amazing is the incredible consistency over a large span of time for the fewer copies of the Old Testament.  The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed the veracity of the Hebrew Masoretic Text and affirmed the accuracy of the copying process, which had been going on for over a thousand years.  This consistency is also evident within the text of the large number of copies for the New Testament.  Even the variations that occur in the Greek manuscripts are minimal, easily explained as copyist errors, and have no impact on essential truths.

Often the preservation of the biblical text is attacked to undermine its accuracy and usefulness, but a comparison with other ancient writings clearly highlights the hypocrisy of such proponents and blatant bias against the Bible.  There are over 5,000 partial and complete manuscripts for the New Testament known to us today, whereas for Homer's Illiad only 643 exist, for Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War only 8 exist and for Tacitus' works only 2 exist.  What complicates the picture even more for these other writings is the gap between the copies and the time of writing, being 500 years for Homer's Illiad, 1,300 years for Thucydides and 900-1000 years for Tacitus.  Add to this the degree of textual variation in the copies and you have an incredibly higher level of accuracy for the New Testament manuscripts than the best of other ancient writings, whose veracity is not questioned.  (see A Ready Defense by Josh McDowell, pp. 42-55 for a fuller discussion) 

It is sufficient to say that God preserved the original text of both the Old and New Testaments in these copies.  Next post, I will discuss the biblical text within these copies.