Questions about the Bible

Reading Time: 5 minutes

autonerf from YouTube asks a number of good questions about the Bible (God’s Word).

Why are there so many versions of God’s word today, and which version do you believe to be the most accurate?

Why are there so many interpretations of the meaning of God’s word?

Does God allow His word to be changed, added to, or deleted from?

Could God have written His word on a large sheet of metal or rock, so that it would not crumble away like the ancient paper manuscripts did?

Why does the Bible need to be so long to tell the good news of salvation?

Answers

The Holy Bible is a world best seller and no other book has ever out sold it. It is the bloodiest book in all history with many of its writers’ death resulting from their work on it and forfeiting their lives for their trusts in it. The Holy Bible is also the most precious book on earth giving to us in its New Testament the good news of Jesus Christ who with His blood, freely paid the price for your and my sins so that if only we place our faith in Him, that we will be saved from our sins for ever and ever.

God gave to us His word and there’s over 5,000 copies of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are in existence and around 20,000 more translations in languages like Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Originally written in Greek, the earliest manuscript fragments can be traced back to within seventy years after Christ’s death and resurrection. With accumulation of fragments within two centuries of Christ’s death and resurrection, there are enough one can piece most of the New Testament together from them. In contrast, there are only seven manuscript copies of Plato’s Dialogues with a 1,300 year gap between the earliest 8th century A.D. copy and the original 5th century B.C. copy. Faring better than Plato but still far behind the New Testament, homer’s Iliad has only 650 copies with a 1,000 year gap between the earliest 2nd century A.D. copy and the 8th century B.C. original. The New Testament is by far the stronger supported manuscript of any classical literature.

God gave to us free will. With the free will God gave us comes free choice. Some people going against God’s command to not add to, take from, or change His word have done so, i.e., Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, and Catholics. God if He had wanted to could have made the original ancient manuscripts from whatever they were written on not decay at all so that they lasted forever; however God knew that people would worship these original ancient manuscripts instead of Him if that was what He did.

There are so many “versions’ of God’s word today because there are so many languages people read and speak and languages overtime change. Most “versions” are accurate however some are not. Take for example the New World Translation (NWT) made up by Jehovah Witnesses; NWT is an extremely poor translation because instead of translating manuscript documents; they added to, took away from, and changed original manuscripts to make the NWT fit the falsehoods of what their Watchtower cult teaches. The same goes for the Book of Mormon which is a cult teaching falsehoods not even based on the Bible.

It is best to use a number of different orthodox (conventional translations which are based upon the manuscripts we have) translations as each help one understand fuller God’s message to us. The various orthodox translations help understanding because they express the same message a bit differently, conveying to the reader to apprehend what was originally written. They express the same message a bit differently because they are written to for example more modern English such as the NIV as opposed to an older English in The King James Version. Each of these versions expresses the manuscript documents we have and due to their use of different versions of English, reading the same passage in both brings new insight into its message.

On the web I use biblemaster.com and biblegateway.com because they have a number of orthodox translations available also in various languages. At home, I have two primary Bibles I use; The King James Study Bible by Nelson and Life Application Study Bible, New International Version by Zondervan. I also have an American Standard Version of the Bible in print and a number of different versions on Kindle.

The Bible is so long (66 books, hundreds and hundreds of pages written by ~40 people over ~3000 years) because its length helps us understand the what, why, and how of salvation. It’s duration over time giving and revealing the same harmonizing message without contradiction helps make events in it believable. If the salvation events had just suddenly occurred one day without any prior notice of it coming, it would be less likely to have actually happened and by far harder to believe it happened. The Old Testament gives us the history of how everything became into being (Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.) and proceeds (Genesis 3) to tell us why we are sinful and about God’s plan of salvation for us. The rest of the Old Testament gives us examples of just how wicked we (mankind) are and it gives specific prophecy (detailed predictions) about world events to come and about the Savior who will come to earth and save us. The prophecy given in the Old Testament about the Savior coming was written hundreds of years before the Savior actually came and was written about in the New Testament. The New Testament details how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy about a Savior coming. The New Testament also gives us prophecy about world events to come (some of which we see happening in the news today) and about the Savior’s second coming.

As always, do not just take my word for answers to your questions. Do your own research as it is your life that you live and you are responsible for yourself. Don’t have apathy toward truth.

Thank you autonerf from YouTube for your questions. God bless you!



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