How much of Scripture is inspired?

[Kevin H]

Originally Posted By: Kevin H

God raised his voice twice with us, with both Canright and Rea. Will God have to raise his voice the third time? And how much louder and how much more heart-ache will this louder raising of God's voice to show us that Fundamentalism is wrong before we finally learn our lesson?

I don't believe Rae and Canright were the voice of God. I think they were used by Satan.

But God used them to show the end results of Fundamentalism. For some neurotic reason Seventh-day Adventist want to prove to the world that we are good Baptists. God used Canright and Rea to show us the end results of Fundamentalism. They rejected Mrs. White because she does not fit the Fundamentalists ideal of what an inspired writer should be. Yet we keep wanting to present ourselves as Fundamentalists. Rea use to sound a lot like Pipim, but those views are what caused him to say "Hey, Mrs. White's writings don't fit what inspiration should be, therefore she must not have been inspired." and he decided to instead of giving up his views to give up his prophet. God has used Canright and Rea to raise his voice saying "Look, this is what Fundamentalism leads to, are you sure you want to be Fundamentalists?" and we become more liberal durring times such as a Canright or Rea, but sadly as soon as the crisis passes we jump back to supporting Fundamentalism. When are we going to learn our lessons.

[Guest]

Scripture's Trustworthiness.

Ellen G. White affirmed the trustworthiness of the Bible's

historical accounts, since the Holy Spirit "guided the pens of the sacred historians" in such a manner that "the Bible is the most instructive and comprehensive history that has ever been given to the world. . . . Here we have a truthful history of the human race, one that is unmarred by human prejudice or human pride" (Gospel Workers, p. 286; Fundamentals of Christian Education, pp. 84-85; cf. Education, p. 173).

There are no distortions in the biographies and history of God's favored people for, in the words of Ellen White, "this history the unerring pen of inspiration must trace with exact fidelity" (Testimonies for the Church, 4:370). Whereas uninspired historians are unable to record history without bias, the inspired writers "did not testify to falsehoods to prevent the pages of sacred history being clouded by the record of human frailties and faults. The scribes of God wrote as they were dictated by the Holy Spirit, having no control of the work themselves.

They penned the literal truth, and stern, forbidding facts are revealed for reasons that our finite minds cannot fully comprehend" (ibid., p. 9). Even the Bible's science is authentic. "Its sacred pages contain the only authentic account of the creation. . . . There is harmony between nature and Christianity; for both have the same Author. The book of nature and the book of revelation indicate the working of the same divine mind" (Fundamentals of Christian Education, pp. 84-85).

"Inferences erroneously drawn from facts observed in nature have, however, led to supposed conflict between science and revelation; and in the effort to restore harmony, interpretations of Scripture have been adopted that undermine and destroy the force of the

Word of God." Ellen White rejected naturalistic evolution and the long ages of geology.

"Geology has been thought to contradict the literal interpretation of the Mosaic record of the creation. Millions of years, it is claimed, were required for the evolution of the earth from

chaos; and in order to accommodate the Bible to this supposed revelation of science, the days of creation are assumed to have been vast, indefinite periods, covering thousands or even millions of years. Such a conclusion is wholly uncalled for. The Bible record is in harmony with itself and with the teaching of nature" (Education, pp. 128-129).

Thus, any distortion in the Bible's message would not come from the Bible writers themselves who were guided in their writing of Scripture. We should not expect distortions in the Word as it came from the hands of the Bible writers. Any distortions will have to come, not from the original copies (the autographs which no longer exist), but rather from either copyists and translators as they transmitted the sacred texts or from contemporary interpreters

in their effort to understand the inspired message.

[oldsailor29]

Historical distortions? There are a few. One such distortion is the inaccurate lists of generations from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abram. Many, we do not know how many, generations were omitted from these lists. This is why we cannot believe in archbishop Ussher's chronology of the Earth.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Historical distortions? There are a few. One such distortion is the inaccurate lists of generations from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abram. Many, we do not know how many, generations were omitted from these lists. This is why we cannot believe in archbishop Ussher's chronology of the Earth.

How do you know that many generations were omitted from the lists? How can you know something you don't know?

[Guest]

Yeah oldsailor HOW?

[Kevin H]

No one said that the Bible is not trustworthy, nor historical, just as Mrs. White is trustworthy and historical. Richard, you need to realize the difference between being trustworthy and Fundamentalism's errency. You have read my posts here, do I sound like someone who does not trust the Bible or Mrs. White? Remember A. G. Daniels and W. W. Prescott and Willie White believed without being Fundamentalists (and lost their jobs over it) Yet they trusted the Bible an Mrs. White.

[Guest]

You have read my posts here, do I sound like someone who does not trust the Bible or Mrs. White?

A little bit, yeah.

[Guest]

Copyists' and Translators' "Liberating the Word":

Minor Distortions of the Word

While no distortions came from the hand of the original Bible writers, some alterations and minor distortions have crept into the Word during the process of transmission and translation. This section will attempt to show the nature of these minor distortions at the hand of copyists and translators.

The Old Testament section of our Bibles is a translation of manuscripts that were originally written in Hebrew, with a few portions of Ezra (4:8-6:18; 7:12-26), Daniel (2:4-7:28) and a single verse in Jeremiah (10:11) written in Aramaic. Aramaic is a sister

language to Hebrew, just as Swedish is to Norwegian. The New Testament section of our Bibles is a translation from manuscripts originally written in Greek.

Since we do not have authentic autographs from the hands of the Bible writers themselves, our Bibles represent, at best, handwritten copies of the original writings (manuscripts). Most likely, they are made from copies of copies, or maybe copies of copies of copies. And for most church members, these copies are available only as translations.

[Guest]

Remarkable Accuracy.

In an earlier chapter, Trusting the Word, we noted how very

accurately the manuscripts of both the Old and New Testaments were copied and transmitted. But whenever the inspired texts of Scripture are copied or translated into other languages there is always the possibility that some alterations and minor distortions of the Word will take place. Ellen White confirmed this possibility, suggesting that there may have been occasional errors or even deliberate text manipulations by some copyists (Selected Messages, 1:16; Early Writings, pp. 220-221).

However, scholars generally agree that these transmission errors can be identified by the discipline known as textual criticism, sometimes called lower criticism to distinguish it from the higher criticism of liberal scholars. By analyzing and evaluating the various ancient manuscripts, this scholarly discipline seeks to ascertain which reading of a passage is closest to the original.

[Guest]

Distortions by Copyists

Old Testament Manuscripts (MSS).

The Jews did a magnificent job in copying the Old Testament manuscripts. Until the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the Jews kept standard copies of the Scriptures in the temple in Jerusalem, just as we keep standard weights and measurements in museums. In order that all copies of the Old Testament would conform to the standard copy in the temple, strict rules were followed.

As we noted in Chapter Two, the Massoretes, the group of Jews who around A.D. 700 invented a system for writing Hebrew vowels, drew up tables, one for each book of the Bible, showing how many times a particular letter appeared n that book. No word or letter could be

written from memory. After a scribe had finished his work of copying out a book, he had to count the letters in it and compare his scores with those in the standard table. If his did not tally with the standard score, his newly copied manuscript was to be discarded entirely and the task begun again. This process ensured remarkable accuracy.

But human nature being what it is, one wonders if a scribe would scrap a whole book if he fell short by one or two letters in his count. One can expect some deliberate textual manipulations in such instances. Some minor distortions may also have occurred unintentionally.

[Guest]

Nature of Old Testament Errors.

Problems occurred when a change of vowels resulted in a change of meaning. Let's illustrate with the English word LEAD. Prior to the invention of written vowels for Hebrew around A.D. 700, if there were a word LEAD, this word would have been spelled in Hebrew as LD.

Now, lead can have at least two meanings. There is one meaning in the sentence "lead me home," and another in "heavy as lead." If different vowels are attached to these two consonants, one can come up with words like lead, lid, lad, led, laid, lied, load, loud, old. In deciding what word LD should be, the context of a passage is helpful.

But sometimes, the context can go either way. For example, "LD me home" can be rendered "lead me home," "led me home," "laid me home," or even "load me home"! Assuming we try the other sentence "heavy as LD" one can translate it as "heavy as lead," "heavy as [a] lad,"

or "heavy as [a] load." One can imagine other different ways LD can be read.

Fortunately, written Hebrew does not depend as heavily on vowels as English does. The Massoretes, fluent in Hebrew, had very little difficulty reading without written vowels--just as Israelis today read their newspapers without vowels.

Also, since a number of Hebrew letters resemble other letters closely, a copyist could make scribal mistakes. For example, we find the names Hadadezer (2 Sam 8:3) and Hadarezer (1 Chron 18:3) referring to the same person. The difference here is the Hebrew letter "d" ( d ) being mistaken for the letter "r" ( r ). We can understand a copyist's blunder when we realize: (i) how much alike some words look in the Hebrew--e.g., Zabdi ( ydbz, Josh 7:1) and Zimri ( yrmz, 1 Chron 2:6); or (ii) how easy it is for letters to be transposed, as we do when we write "thier" instead of "their"; in the Old Testament, we find, for example, instead of Hasrah, the

name of a person, we have Harhas; instead of kebes, the word for a lamb, we have keseb; instead of algum, the name of a tree, we have almug; instead of Timnath-heres, the name of the city where Joshua was buried, we have Timnath-serah.

The above examples illustrate the distortions that have arisen during the transmission of the Old Testament manuscripts.

[Guest]

Remarkable Accuracy.

However, in spite of problems like these, the Old Testament

manuscripts exhibit remarkable accuracy. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, the oldest known Hebrew manuscripts had been copied around the tenth century A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls, however, were hidden away in caves just before A.D. 70, when the Romans invaded Palestine. Many of them were already one or two hundred years old at the time.

Doubts about the reliability of the tenth-century manuscripts were dispelled when they were compared with the Dead Sea Scrolls, a thousand years older. One leading authority remarks: "The new evidence confirms what we had already good reason to believe--that the Jewish scribes of the early Christian centuries copied and recopied the text of the Hebrew Bible with the utmos fidelity." In all likelihood our Old Testament is remarkably similar to

the Old Testament Bible Jesus used.

[Guest]

New Testament Manuscripts.

The copyists of the New Testament did not match those of the Old in terms of high standards. This does not mean that the manuscripts of the New Testament are bad, but only that the quality controls in place for the Old Testament were not there. A few of the copyists' distortions will illustrate this point.

Nature of New Testament Errors.

If a New Testament copyist was writing down what was being read to him by another, he might hear something incorrectly and therefore make a mistake. For instance, the manuscript variants in Romans 5:1 may result from a copyist

hearing echomen ("we have") instead of echomen ("let us have").

Similarly, because the pronunciation of ou and u is often indistinguishable, we may understand why there are variants in Revelation 1:5. Thus, whereas the King James Version (KJV) reads "and washed us," based on a manuscript that reads lousanti, other versions, such as the New International Version (NIV), on the basis of other manuscripts that read lusanti, have "and freed us."

Again, similarity in pronunciation may explain the discrepancies in the manuscripts of 1 John 1:4. Did the apostle John write his letter so that "our joy" may be complete (NIV, RSV) or in order that "your joy" may be full (KJV)?

The Greek pronouns hemeis ("we") and humeis ("you"), when inflected to express possession ("our" and "your," respectively), were

pronounced very much alike, a fact reflected in variant manuscripts.

On the other hand, if instead of listening to a reader, a scribe was reading and copying a manuscript by himself, several kinds of inadvertent errors could occur. One of them happens when there are similar endings of lines or words (the technical name for this kind of copyist error is homoeoteleuton).

A scribe copies what he sees, but when his eyes return to the parent

manuscript, he mistakenly skips to the second of these similar items, leaving out some material; or he might copy the same line twice when his eyes skip back to the earlier

occurrence.

Other errors include intentional changes, either for the copyist's own personal or theological reasons, or when he thought he was correcting the mistakes of a preceding scribe, whom he believed may have made some mistakes in grammar, vocabulary, or spelling. Ellen

White noted: "I saw that God had especially guarded the Bible; yet when copies of it were few, learned men had in some instances changed the words, thinking that they were making it more plain, when in reality they were mystifying that which was plain, by causing it to lean to their established views, which were governed by tradition" (Early Writings, pp. 220-221).

Sometimes, a scribe had several manuscripts from which he made his copy. If he discovered that the manuscripts read differently, he made a judgment by either choosing one reading and leaving the other, or in some cases, putting the two together to make a conflated

reading. Thus, if a manuscript has "church of God" in Acts 20:28, and others have "church of the Lord," a later copyist, who wants to provide readers with the benefit of the two readings, may conflate the two to produce "church of the Lord and God."

[Guest]

Reasons for New Testament Errors.

Generally, the New Testament copyists were not as rigorous in their work as were the scribes of the Old Testament writings. Unlike the

well-trained Jewish scribes who copied the Old Testament so meticulously, the early Christian believers often came from the lower classes and lacked the professional skill of the scribe. Consequently, the few who could read and write produced copies of the inspired autographs with little or no proofreading.

Moreover, persecution and confiscations of their sacred books often led them to copy the texts hastily. Heretical groups also made their own copies, sometimes deleting portions and mutilating others. Only after emperor Constantine (A.D. 274/80-337) was converted to

Christianity were there enough freedom and resources for Christians carefully to copy and proofread manuscripts. Because most of the New Testament manuscripts that exist today came from this Byzantine period, they are referred to collectively as the Byzantine text.

[oldsailor29]

The New Testament is much easier to study mainly because it was put together much differently. While the Old Testament has different authors edited together in the same books through Chronicles, I can't think of any of this kind of editing in the New Testament.

[Guest]

Compensating for Disadvantages.

The disadvantages of the New Testament manuscripts, however, are offset by their numbers. There are far more New Testament than Old Testament manuscripts from which one can make comparisons. About 5,000 separate manuscripts of the Greek New Testament exist in the different museums and libraries around the world. While some are only fragments, about 50 contain the entire New Testament.

Besides, many early copies were translated into other languages. Some 6,000 Latin manuscripts have survived, plus about 1,000 other manuscripts in languages such as Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, and Gothic. Further, large parts of the New Testament

are quoted in early Christian writings. The sheer quantity and reliability of the New Testament manuscripts far exceed any other historical material that has survived from antiquity.

[Guest]

The New Testament is much easier to study mainly because it was put together much differently. While the Old Testament has different authors edited together in the same books through Chronicles, I can't think of any of this kind of editing in the New Testament.

You could be right.

[Guest]

Remarkable Accuracy.

When one recognizes the conditions under which the New Testament manuscripts were copied and the fact that the copyists did not have the advantages of printing presses and computer spell-checkers, it is remarkable to find among the existing manuscripts a 99.9% accuracy.

Even where there are variations, most concern specific words where the scribes made copying mistakes. So accurate are the New Testament manuscripts that someone has estimated that if all the uncertain words in a five-hundred page Greek Testament were assembled, they would occupy only four-tenths of a single page! That is, the

uncertain words from the different existing manuscripts are only about 0.08% of a 500-page book.

Even here, this insignificant percentage is possible only by assuming that the ending of Mark (16:9-20) and the passage about the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) were not part of the autographs. But if one accepts these passages as part of the original text (they appear in some 99% of Greek manuscripts, and they are attested in numerous places in the writings of Ellen G. White), the purity of the New Testament manuscripts is even higher.

Though variations may allow us to speak only of a high degree of relative accuracy of the texts, the differences are so minor that no viable variant affects any major Christian doctrine.

One knowledgeable scholar states: "What is at stake is a purity of text of such a substantial nature that nothing we believe to be doctrinally true, and nothing we are commanded to do, is in any way jeopardized by the variants. This is true of any textual tradition [family of texts]."

[Guest]

Divine Guidance in Transmission Process.

Such remarkable accuracy is possible only if the Holy Spirit guided the transmission process. Ellen White confirmed that even though

scribes may have made some copying mistakes, God Himself guarded the transmission process so that the Bible is God's trustworthy book. "This Holy Book has withstood the assaults of Satan, who has united with evil men to make everything of divine character

shrouded in clouds and darkness. But the Lord has preserved this Holy Book by His own miraculous power in its present shape" (Selected Messages, 1:15, emphasis supplied).

Probably the Lord kept the original manuscripts from us so that we would not make shrines or idols of them. But as further manuscripts are found buried in ruins or in forgotten monasteries, and as computer technology is refined to analyze existing various manuscripts, we may yet establish even more reliable texts than the 99.9% accurate texts from which most of our present Bibles have been translated.

The minor nature of the alterations and distortions that have occurred in the transmission of the inspired Bible messages suggests that whenever Bible students study their Hebrew and Greek Bibles, they can count on these texts to convey the message God inspired thousands of years ago. The example of Jesus and the apostles in treating copies of the Old Testament as "Scripture" (Greek graphe) teaches s to do the same.

Although the autographs no longer existed, Christ read from "Scripture" (graphe) in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:21); Paul read from "Scripture" (graphe) in the synagogue in Thessalonica (Acts 17:2); the Ethiopian eunuch was reading "Scripture" (graphe) when Philip met him (Acts 8:32-33); and the apostle Paul writes that the "Scriptures" (graphe) that were being used by believers in his day are all inspired (2 Tim 3:16). These copies were not the

autographs; no doubt they contained some scribal errors. Yet the Bible calls the copies "Scripture" (graphe).

Therefore, Bible students who are able to read and understand copies of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles can be quite sure that they are studying essentially the same Old Testament Hebrew text that Jesus used and the New Testament Greek text that the Spirit of Christ

inspired the apostles to write. In the words of Ellen White, "The Bible is the most ancient and the most comprehensive history that men possess. It came fresh from the fountain of eternal truth, and throughout the ages a divine hand has preserved its purity" (Education, p. 173, emphasis supplied).

[oldsailor29]

Okay Richard, you have accounted for most of the scribal and translation errors, but those are not the errors of which a fundamentalist speaks when they say the Bible is inerrant. The fundamentalist knows of these errors, and does not count them. The errors of which the fundamentalist says there are none, are those made by the originators of the autographs. If one believes the originals contained no errors, then that person believes the scriptures are inerrant. This is a deception from Satan because he knows there are two different narratives and two different sets of prophets heard from in the Old testament. If the Bible writers were using their own words, then the differences are not that significant, but if the Holy Spirit gave them the words, then those small differences become cause for enormous amounts of verbal dancing, in order to explain them away.

[Guest]

The Bible writers were using their own words. The thinking, Visions, and dreams etc. behind those words, came from God.

[Guest]

Distortions from Translators

Since very few of us can read and understand the Bible's original languages, we must rely on translations. But every translation of the Bible is an interpretation. In order for the inspired

message to be understood, the translator must put the biblical message in a form that will produce the same effect on the contemporary reader as it did on the original recipients of the

inspired message.

In some cases, a literal, word-for-word translation (called formal or complete equivalence), in which the grammatical structure of the original language is reproduced as much as possible in the receiving language, may be hard to understand. In order for the text to

be clearer, one must rephrase the message without losing the original intent (this is referred to as dynamic equivalence).

However, those who do oral translations for speakers will readily

admit that, despite their best intentions, there are occasional distortions in the message. These translation losses and translation distortions may not necessarily be the fault of the translators.

[Guest]

Kinds of Translation Distortions.

While the distortions of the Word that were introduced by copyists of the ancient biblical manuscripts were minor (less than 0.1%), Bible translations or paraphrases introduce their own kinds of distortions in the message of the inspired writers.

Not infrequently, these errors stem from how translators embark upon their task. Translators introduce two major kinds of errors.

First, some translation errors result from the assumptions the translators bring with them.

For example, errors may creep into the biblical message if translators are driven by some hidden or explicit theological or ideological agenda. One can point to the New World Translation (the Jehovah's Witnesses' Bible) as a translation driven by the anti-Trinitarian theology of a religious group. Another example is the National Council of Churches' gender-inclusive Bible, the New Revised Standard Version [NRSV], which, despite some strengths, is driven by a desire to rid the Bible of the alleged gender-bias of the Bible writers.

The same can be said of certain other translations in which references to the "right hand" of God have been replaced with "the mighty hand" of God, in an apparent effort not to offend

left-handed people!

Second, distortions in translations occur if translators use faulty, questionable, or too few Greek and Hebrew manuscripts as the basis for their translations, or if they do their work without much input from a wide range of people. This point puts in better perspective the debate about the King James Version (KJV) vis-a-vis modern translations.

[Kevin H]

The Bible writers were using their own words. The thinking, Visions, and dreams etc. behind those words, came from God.

Can I say that the big difference I'd say is that the Bible writers were using their own words, thinking, culture and research, collection and use of research material, editing of research material, while the visions, dreams and framework of the message came from God. The different between me and the Fundamenatlists is that one is more like someone discribing a picture they were shown and the other reading a speach they were given.

Have to get up for work in the morning, so we can go more into the details later.

[Guest]

The King James Version.

Our popular King James Version Bible is based on the work of

the foremost sixteenth-century Renaissance Dutch scholar, Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536).

To produce a copy of the New Testament text for publication on the newly estalished movable-type printing press, Erasmus went to Basel, Switzerland, where, upon examining a number of Greek manuscripts in its libraries, he selected a half-dozen of them as good

representatives. After nine months of work, he produced an edited version from the chosen Greek manuscripts.

Although Erasmus himself acknowledged that his work was "done headlong rather than edited," his Greek New Testament became the standard, almost the sole printed Greek text from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. It is often known as "the Received Text" (Latin, Textus Receptus), a title given to it almost 100 years after Erasmus's death in publisher Elzevir's second edition of the work (1633). This Greek text, which later became the basis of the King James Version of the Bible, "is not the 'received text' in the sense that it has been received from God as over against other Greek manuscripts. Rather, it is the 'received text' in the sense that it was the standard one at the time of the Elzevirs."

However, since the nineteenth century, when scholars began to discover other manuscripts, many translations of the Bible have been made. Unlike the King James Version, most of the recent translations did not use only a half-dozen Greek manuscripts, but rather hundreds of early manuscripts; their Greek texts required not nine months of work, but rather years of labor; not one person, but dozens and scores of scholars have collaborated in producing the current standard Greek New Testament texts.

While there are variations, the differences between "the Received Text" of the King James Version and the present standard Greek texts are so minor that there is practically very little difference between the two. As explained earlier, if the uncertain words in a five-hundred page Greek Testament were assembled, they would occupy only four-tenths of a single page!

Therefore, while the controversy over the merits and demerits of the King James Version cannot be dismissed lightly, neither should the issue be over-exaggerated. The degree of uncertainty raised by the various Greek texts is far less than the distortions introduced by

contemporary interpreters.