How the Bible was changed by man! Is this true?

[roli]

Another source for research Origin Of The Bible

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Another source for research Origin Of The Bible

It's garbage ...

 

[roli]

It's garbage ...

...and your sources are thoroughly reliable....how fitting!!!!

 

[Chookna]

Originally from the 1994, copy of Crying in the Wilderness Newsletter (a Roman Catholic Quarterly Produced by the Benedictine Monks of Most Holy Family Monastery). This newsletter contained an article entitled, "Answers to 25 Questions on the History of the New Testament which completely refute the Protestant’s ‘Bible Only Theory’". (This article, in turn, was taken from the book, The Catholic Religion Proved by the Protestant Bible). "Former Catholics For Christ" have decided to use this issue to answer each of their 25 questions and comments.
ANSWERS TO 25 QUESTIONS ON THE​

HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WHICH COMPLETELY REFUTE THE "BIBLE ONLY" THEORY

SEVEN
Between what years were the first and last books of the New Testament written? This first book, St. Matthew's Gospel, was not written until about ten years after Our Lord's Ascension. St. John's fourth gospel and Apocalypse or Book of Revelations were not written until about 100 A. D.
COMMENT: Imagine how the present-day privately interpreted "Bible-only" theory would have appeared at a time when the books of the New Testament were not only unavailable, but most of them had not yet been written.
FCFC’S ( "Former Catholics For Christ"): By 100 A.D. all the books were completed. Until the testimony of Jesus was written down, they depended on the Old Testament, which prophesied of that same grace. (1 Pet.1: 10-12) As the apostles wrote the epistles, faithful men copied them and sent them to all the churches commanding them to be read. This means that the early Christians had access to the word of God at all times. How else could the Bereans search the scriptures daily?

 

[Chookna]

EIGHT
When was the New Testament placed under one cover? In 397 A. D. by the Council of Carthage, from which it follows that non-Catholics have derived their New Testament from the Catholic Church; no other source was available.
COMMENT: Up to 397 A. D., some of the Christians had access to part of the New Testament; into this situation, how would the "Bible-only privately interpreted" theory have fitted?
FCFC’S ANSWER: The true Bible was placed under one cover no later than 145A.D., and was known as the Syrian Pe****to. The "Old Latin Vulgate" was the next Bible to be compiled by the year 157 A.D. The corrupted Latin version of Jerome, translated by order of Constantine, was published in about 380 A.D. The RCC chose the name "Vulgate" or "Common" for Jerome’s translation in an attempt to deceive loyal Christians into thinking that it was the true common Bible of the people. It was rejected by real Christians such as the Waldenses, Gauls, Celts, Albigenses, and other groups throughout Europe who held doctrinal purity dear to their hearts. According to Dr. Bill Grady, in his book Final Authority, page 34:
"For the Syrian people dwelling northeast of Palestine, there were at least four major versions: the Pe****ta (A.D. 145); the Old Syriac (AD. 400); the Palestinian Syriac (A.D. 450); and the Philoxenian (A.D. 508), which was revised by Thomas of Harkel in A.D. 616 and henceforth known as the Harclean Syriac. True to the meaning of its name (straight or rule), the Pe****ta set the standard because of its early composition and strong agreement with the Greek text underlying the King James Bible. Because of the obvious embarrassment caused by this document bearing witness to a text some two centuries older than either X [Codex Sinaiticus]or B [Codex Vaticanus] , modern Nicolaitane scholarship has conveniently assigned the Pe****ta's origin to A.D. 415. The first translation into a purely European tongue is known as the Gothic version. This work was prepared in 330 A.D. by the soul-winning missionary Ulfilas...Once again, the strength of this version is found in its age and agreement with the Textus Receptus. Edward Hills cites F.G. Kenyon's 1912 edition on New Testament criticism that, ‘The type of text represented in it is for the most part that which is found in the majority of Greek manuscripts. Thus, Ulfilas had access to King James Version readings a full two decades before Sinaiticus or Vaticanus were copied. An excellent example of his superior manuscripts is reflected by the Gothic inclusion of the traditional ending to ‘The Lord's Prayer’ of Matthew 6:13. The familiar words, ‘for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen’, are conspicuously absent from both of the ‘two most ancient authorities.’ There are only eight surviving manuscripts of the Gothic version."

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

This first book, St. Matthew's Gospel, was not written until about ten years after Our Lord's Ascension.

Rubbish.

 

[linwood]

Then he held up a Tanakh, a Catholic Bible, and a Protestant Bible and said, "Now which one do you want to read? The original? Or the one changed by man?"

I hope you`re not paying a lot for these courses.

You`re being misinformed.

There is no "original".

Many changes have been made over the course of thousands of years for numerous different reasons.
None of these numerous different reasons are as black and white as the misinformed reasons you cite.

 

[linwood]

...and your sources are thoroughly reliable....how fitting!!!!

He`s right, it is rubbish.

I have a reliable translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls here and many versions of the modern Bible.

Not one of these Bibles matches well with the Scrolls.

While the Scrolls aren`t an original (if there can be such a thing)they`re pretty early.

 

[Oberon]

, "For the Syrian people dwelling northeast of Palestine, there were at least four major versions: the Pe****ta (A.D. 145); the Old Syriac (AD. 400); the Palestinian Syriac (A.D. 450); and the Philoxenian (A.D. 508), which was revised by Thomas of Harkel in A.D. 616 and henceforth known as the Harclean Syriac. True to the meaning of its name (straight or rule), the Pe****ta set the standard because of its early composition and strong agreement with the Greek text underlying the King James Bible. Because of the obvious embarrassment caused by this document bearing witness to a text some two centuries older than either X [Codex Sinaiticus]or B [Codex Vaticanus] , modern Nicolaitane scholarship has conveniently assigned the Pe****ta's origin to A.D. 415. The first translation into a purely European tongue is known as the Gothic version. This work was prepared in 330 A.D. by the soul-winning missionary Ulfilas...Once again, the strength of this version is found in its age and agreement with the Textus Receptus. Edward Hills cites F.G. Kenyon's 1912 edition on New Testament criticism that, ‘The type of text represented in it is for the most part that which is found in the majority of Greek manuscripts. Thus, Ulfilas had access to King James Version readings a full two decades before Sinaiticus or Vaticanus were copied. An excellent example of his superior manuscripts is reflected by the Gothic inclusion of the traditional ending to ‘The Lord's Prayer’ of Matthew 6:13. The familiar words, ‘for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen’, are conspicuously absent from both of the ‘two most ancient authorities.’ There are only eight surviving manuscripts of the Gothic version."

A problem that runs throughout the above is the failure to realize that even though the original "gothic" translation of various biblical books is preserved and the original is possibly older than some of our most used Greek texts (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), we don't have the original gothic manuscript. What we have is older than the Sinaiticus or Vaticanus. Our fragments from the gothic text date from the fifth or sixth centuries. They are definitely older than vaticanus and probably older thant the sinaiticus. The Pe****ta fragments likewise are late 5th early 6th century.

 

[Muffled]

He`s right, it is rubbish.

I have a reliable translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls here and many versions of the modern Bible.

Not one of these Bibles matches well with the Scrolls.

While the Scrolls aren`t an original (if there can be such a thing)they`re pretty early.

Onthe other hand there is no way to know whether the dead sea scolars who wrote the dead sea scrolls are sticking to a standard text in their copying or revising to agree with cultic thinking. IMO older does not necessarily mean more reliable.

 

[maklelan]

Onthe other hand there is no way to know whether the dead sea scolars who wrote the dead sea scrolls are sticking to a standard text in their copying or revising to agree with cultic thinking. IMO older does not necessarily mean more reliable.

Textual revision is difficult to assert in most of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts. This is most manifest in the fact that there are a number of variant manuscripts preserved for many of the more prominent texts of the Hebrew Bible. There are fifteen or so manuscripts of Exodus there, and several of them have significant differences. The same can be said for most of the books of the Pentateuch, and even the Isaiah scrolls have variants. We have no indication the Qumran community revised their texts, nor do their cult practices have any bearing on their transmission of it.

Having said that, the Dead Sea Scrolls (Q) are not necessarily the most reliable. LXX and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) share many similarities against MT and Q that are probably more original. They also share secondary characteristics against MT and Q. They also share primary and secondary similarities with Q against MT and with MT against Q (and against each other). It's a very convoluted history, and one cannot speak in generalities about the textual priority of any of these manuscript traditions.

 

[idea]

I believe that all sriptures have been changed, translated, mistranslated. the only way to get the information is to get research.

I also believe that the scriptures have been changed.

I believe that the only way to get info is to go straight to the source though. The Holy Spirit is real, you can pray and actually get answers...

the word spoken to Noah was not sufficient for Abraham, or it was not required of Abraham to leave the land of his nativity and seek an inheritance in a strange country upon the word spoken to Noah, but for himself he obtained promises at the hand of the Lord and walked in that perfection that he was called the friend of God. Isaac, the promised seed, was not required to rest his hope upon the promises made to his father, Abraham, but was privileged with the assurance of his approbation in the sight of heaven by the direct voice of the Lord to him.
“If one man can live upon the revelations given to another, might not I with propriety ask, why the necessity, then, of the Lord speaking to Isaac as he did, as is recorded in the 26th chapter of Genesis? For the Lord there repeats, or rather promises again, to perform the oath which he had previously sworn unto Abraham. And why this repetition to Isaac? Why was not the first promise as sure for Isaac as it was for Abraham? Was not Isaac Abraham’s son? And could he not place implicit confidence in the word of his father as being a man of God? Perhaps you may say that he was a very peculiar man and different from men in these last days; consequently, the Lord favored him with blessings peculiar and different, as he was different from men in this age. I admit that he was a peculiar man and was not only peculiarly blessed, but greatly blessed. But all the peculiarity that I can discover in the man, or all the difference between him and men in this age, is that he was more holy and more perfect before God and came to him with a purer heart and more faith than men in this day.
“The same might be said on the subject of Jacob’s history. Why was it that the Lord spake to him concerning the same promise after he had made it once to Abraham and renewed it to Isaac? Why could not Jacob rest contented upon the word spoken to his fathers?
“When the time of the promise drew nigh for the deliverance of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, why was it necessary that the Lord should begin to speak to them? The promise or word to Abraham was that his seed should serve in bondage and be afflicted four hundred years, and after that they should come out with great substance. Why did they not rely upon this promise and, when they had remained in Egypt in bondage four hundred years, come out without waiting for further revelation, but act entirely upon the promise given to Abraham that they should come out? …
“… I may believe that Enoch walked with God. I may believe that Abraham communed with God and conversed with angels. I may believe that Isaac obtained a renewal of the covenant made to Abraham by the direct voice of the Lord. I may believe that Jacob conversed with holy angels and heard the word of his Maker, that he wrestled with the angel until he prevailed and obtained a blessing. I may believe that Elijah was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire with fiery horses. I may believe that the saints saw the Lord and conversed with him face to face after his resurrection. I may believe that the Hebrew church came to Mount Zion and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels. I may believe that they looked into eternity and saw the Judge of all, and Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant.
“But will all this purchase an assurance for me, or waft me to the regions of eternal day with my garments spotless, pure, and white? Or, must I not rather obtain for myself, by my own faith and diligence in keeping the commandments of the Lord, an assurance of salvation for myself? And have I not an equal privilege with the ancient saints? And will not the Lord hear my prayers and listen to my cries as soon as he ever did to theirs if I come to him in the manner they did?”5

LDS.org - Support Materials Chapter - Prayer and Personal Revelation

Perhaps God purposefully allows for the confusion among the writings passed down by men so that we might search using something other than books.

 

[mippop]

Hi all! I am taking a World Religions class at my community college (awesome, everyone should take one btw), and right now we are on the Judaism unit. Our teacher said that Moses led the people to the promised land, and blah blah all the events happened and eventually the full Tanakh was written (That's Torah, Nevim, and Ketuvim). He then said that during the time, there were Jewish people in Greece who could not understand Hebrew, so 72 Greek men translated the Tanakh into Greek. But by doing so they also added some stuff to it and changed the order of it to make it so it leads to the coming of the Messiah (how the Christian Old Testaments are). Then he said that the Protestants at the time thought The Catholics (the ones that changed the Tanakh) were wrong to add stuff to it, so their version doesn't have additions, but the order is still changed from the origianl.

Then he held up a Tanakh, a Catholic Bible, and a Protestant Bible and said, "Now which one do you want to read? The original? Or the one changed by man?"

So, I know the Bible is and has been changed by man, but is this really one of the ways it happend? Thanks all!

I think that the Septuagint was an honest attempt to translate the Hebrew Bible from Hebrew to Greek. However, as with all translations, there will be some distortion, partially from the limitations and compatibility of the languages, and partially from the personal biases of the translators... not that the translator had any intention of adding his own bias, but when there are ambiguities, as there always will be, the translators opinion does count. In a sense, translations are editorial commentaries from the translators perspective.

There is an additional problem with translations. A translation is like a 2D snapshot of a 3D object. When you try to gain additional perspectives, the translation cannot provide them as accurately as can be done with the original language.

As far as the stability of the Hebrew Scriptures go, they have been maintained from the earliest of times by scribes under very tight rules. Furthermore, there are parity codes where counting every so many letters will spell something known, much like parity checks performed by computers to check the integrity of data. Bible codes do actually exist, but not for the purposes indicated by some relatively recent popularize books.

 

[greentwiga]

I am willing to see that a few unimportant scribal could have crept in. If it was changed, the oldest story should have changed the most. I studied the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden. There is only one mountain it could have been on and be between the Tigris and Euphrates and be in the wild fig and wheat zone, be a volcanic Mountain on the plain of Adin near Haran, Mt Karacadag in Southern Turkey. The Bible says Adam was the world's first farmer, and scientists say the first farmer lived at Mt Karacadag. Even the order of domestication of animals and creation of inventions occurs in proper order. If written thousands of years later, how could they get these things right? If the oldest story is extremely correct, what about the rest?

 

[Muffled]

Hi all! I am taking a World Religions class at my community college (awesome, everyone should take one btw), and right now we are on the Judaism unit. Our teacher said that Moses led the people to the promised land, and blah blah all the events happened and eventually the full Tanakh was written (That's Torah, Nevim, and Ketuvim). He then said that during the time, there were Jewish people in Greece who could not understand Hebrew, so 72 Greek men translated the Tanakh into Greek. But by doing so they also added some stuff to it and changed the order of it to make it so it leads to the coming of the Messiah (how the Christian Old Testaments are). Then he said that the Protestants at the time thought The Catholics (the ones that changed the Tanakh) were wrong to add stuff to it, so their version doesn't have additions, but the order is still changed from the origianl.

Then he held up a Tanakh, a Catholic Bible, and a Protestant Bible and said, "Now which one do you want to read? The original? Or the one changed by man?"

So, I know the Bible is and has been changed by man, but is this really one of the ways it happend? Thanks all!

Ordering books serves a pupose and perhaps even sometimes that purpose is God approved. There is one version that orders books Chronologically to help the reader get a better historical perspective.

 

[ragordon168]

IMO unless you go back in time to when the original for each story was written we will NEVER know what was truly said.

even then if the story had existed for generations before as a spoken word story (similar to the norse sagas) the original scripts could be different/exagerated versions of the first ever telling.