The Bible: Lost in Transmission?

by kreitsauce on Feb.09, 2009, under Atheism, Bible, Doctrine, Philosophy

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This is my second post responding to my friend Nitwit’s article concerning supposed errors in the Christian perspective on Scripture. To get an idea of what has come before, you should probably go here to read the first article. Nitwit’s second point is, frankly, difficult to discern since there is a lot of terminology thrown around without being clearly defined. I can gather that Nitwit believes that the actual words written by God (which he technically doesn’t believe in) have been lost. Rather than directly respond to each thought of the article, I am going to positively state a Christian view of the Bible.

Inspired- “God breathed”- all Scripture originated from God, and humans wrote down what He said. (1 Peter 1:20-21)
Preserved- God has providentially ensured the accuracy of the transmission of both the Old and New Testaments (Matthew 24:35, 1 Peter 1:22-25)
Inerrant/Infallible- The Bible is without error. (Psalm 12:6, 19:7; Proverbs 30:5) Note: Some Christians distinguish these two terms, but my point is that you can’t have one without the other.

I’ve dealt with the translation issue and the transmission of the New Testament texts in four previous posts starting here, so I’ll not beat the horse to death (though some would argue that I already have…) Suffice it to say that, with 5,500 copies or partial copies of the New Testament in its original language, there is plenty of manuscript evidence concerning the New Testament. We are content with just having ten copies of the Greek classics in their original language. Also, New Testament copies originate only 100 years after the original autographs were penned, as opposed to Greek classics, whose extant copies are often available only 700-1400 years after their original composition. John A. T. Robinson writes: “The wealth of manuscripts, and above all the narrow interval of time between the writing and the earliest extant copies, make it by far the best attested text of any ancient writing in the world.”

As for the Old Testament, I know of very few serious scholars that would question its accuracy. Of course, we don’t have the original manuscripts. It would be a rare find indeed to find the completed autograph from nearly 4,000 years ago! What we do have is a knowledge of how the Old Testament was transmitted. The scribes and priests in general were given this task, and they faithfully did it for countless generations. After the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., the scribes continued their work in Egypt and Babylon. When the Remnant returned seventy years later, a strict method of copying was resumed, as outlined in Wikipedia (of all places) but confirmed in a number of books.

Only clean manuscripts could be used.
Each column must contain between 48 and 60 lines. (This kept the writing from getting too small so that the copy could not be copied.)
Even the ink had a special recipe, and it had to be black.
The scribe had to speak each word as he wrote it.
They had to clean both pen and body before they wrote God’s name.
Each copy was reviewed within three days of completion. If more than three pages required correction, the entire copy had to be rewritten.
The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if two letters touched each other. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.
The documents had to be stored in sacred places.
When the document became worn out, it had to be buried in a genizah.

After Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome in A.D. 70, the Jews continued their work of faithful copying, which culminated in the work of the Masoretes. The Masoretes used the ancient scribal system and even expanded it. According to F. F. Bruce, the Masoretes wrote “with the greatest imaginable reverence, and devised a complicated system of safeguards against scribal slips. They counted, for example, the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurs in each book; they pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and the middle letter of the whole Hebrew Bible, and made even more detailed calculations than these.”

The results of such careful transmission are clear. We have a Bible available today that we can have maximum security in, knowing and believing that God was faithful in preserving His Word.

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:Apologetics, Atheism, Bible, Bible Study, christianity, God, KJV, masorete, Old Testament, Philosophy, religion, sacred, textual criticism, translation issue, transmission, truth, Worldview

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7 Comments for this entry

nitwitnastik
February 9th, 2009 on 3:01 pm
Kreit please read my post again. You used your entire post to prove that the Bible is authentic and free of transmission errors when in fact It’s not me or any atheist who claims the problem with transmission/translation error in the Bible but Christians themselves and I was pointing out the problem with this line of reasoning by Christians when an error is detected.

So you basically disproved the claim of other Christians and Jews who claim that the Bible has translation errors and I can only thank you for that. Once All Christians can agree on one single bible which is free of translation error and decide not to use this excuse to interpret the bible, then only can we start talking about it.

2. Having copies of original is not the same as having the orignal. Any copy has the potential of transmission error. Can we surely say with 100% certainty that the copies did not have transmission errors?

3. Using the Bible to prove the Bible is circular reasoning and is a logical fallacy as you well know. If you think that it is correct to use logical fallacies to prove a point, I rest my case.

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kreitsauce
February 9th, 2009 on 3:08 pm
1. If I have proven believers wrong in believing we’ve lost God’s Word, then I’m thrilled to do so. It’s irritating to have people of like faith believe that they can’t know for sure what God said.
2. It’s impossible to still have the originals after thousands of years. We can’t know with absolute certainty that we have what the originals said. That’s why I used the phrase “maximum security.” We know that we have thousands of copies, some of them from just 100 years after the original was penned, but we cannot have absolute proof. Once again, this is an aspect of faith.
3. I used the Bible to list the promises of Scripture. I didn’t use it to prove my point.

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tpitts
February 9th, 2009 on 8:01 pm
Although, the promises in the scripture are usually very good for proving ones point.

The day that all Christians do come to the understanding that the Bible is in fact preserved in it’s inspired form will be a glorious day indeed.

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gross-sauce
February 10th, 2009 on 10:54 pm
I always get a chuckle when people throw out the “circular reasoning” excuse. The Bible believers are attacked for circular reasoning, yet the evolutionists are guilty of the same thing. i.e. “This fossil is millions of years old.”
“How do you know the fossil is millions of years old?”
“Because the rock around the fossil is millions of years old!”
“Well, how do you know the rock around the fossil is millions of years old?”
“Because the fossil in the rock is millions of years old!”
Now that is circular reasoning.

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nitwitnastik
February 11th, 2009 on 9:34 am
@gross sauce

I always get a chuckle when people who have no clue about science talk about science. Let me guess, you probably never read about carbon dating or really read a book on geological dating or archaelogy and made that up yourself. I have never heard any evolutionist worth his salt say that they guage dates by the rocks around it ONLY or use circular reasoning…evolutionists prove dates using carbon dating and stratification. I doubt if you ave any idea how scientific process works.

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gross-sauce
February 11th, 2009 on 8:47 pm
I am very familiar with the carbon dating process and its faults. There have been recently formed fossils through volcanic eruptions or mudslides that are dated thousands to millions of years old when they are newly formed. Carbon dating requires that the carbon molecules dissipate and break down at a continual pace in order to be accurate. It does not allow for sudden disasters such as volcanoes or a world-wide deluge (Noah’s Flood). Carbon dating has been proven to be very unreliable.

Nitwit, a study that you would find interesting is the after-effects of Mount Saint Helen’s’ eruption on May 18, 1980. A miniature Grand Canyon was cut through rock after the eruption in a matter of days, an event that was thought to only occur over millions of years of erosion from a river or stream. Layers of rock were also formed just from that one eruption (stratification), showing that layers of rock can occur in a short time. Here are some links to look into:
http://www.nwcreation.net/mtsthelens.html
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v6/i1/mtsthelens.asp
I hope these links help spark some interest in the findings of the eruption. I have had a great interest in geology since I was a child. I have a rock and mineral collection that would make a high school science teacher jealous. I was one of those rock collecting nerds. Just about the only rock I did not have growing up was a diamond…I have it now…it is on my wife’s hand.

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puckettsprophets
March 30th, 2009 on 11:02 pm
What a comeback by gross-sauce…I do believe that was a rope-a-dope tactic if I’ve ever seen one…very clever and amusing…

Reply