Bible Question:
It seems that I am being misrepresented here as trying to throw out all scholarly work throughout the centuries, and all of the wonderful things that have been discovered through knowledge of ancient languages and cultures. This is deffinately not the case. I think that this information can be very helpful for mature Christians to glean further insight into many Biblical passages. My point is quite simply that they are not necessary. In other words, they are like the dessert in the meal, they may taste sweet, but are not essential nutrients. I think that really the question becomes when did God stop inspiring His Word. If you believe that the translations that we have today are merely a "scholarly help", then I agree that regular folk can't truly read God's message to them, and that they would have to "go back to the original manuscripts". On the other hand, I believe that God loves the regular folk so much, that He has continued to inspire His message to them throughout the centuries. It just doesn't make sense that He would leave something as important as the truth and completness of the Bible to depend on the hands and minds of His fallible creation. Therefore, I believe that God has maintained ALL of the ESSENTIALS even in the current English translations of the Bible. |
Bible Answer: Greetings Sir! I understand where you are coming from and I agree with your overall thrust. I too believe that God has providentially provided oversight to the text of the Bible. However, the devil is in the details because inspiration itself seems to only apply to the original autographs. We know that there are copies which contain mistakes. We know that some translations err. Thus, my point throughout this discussion has simply been that the original autographs in their original language were the inspired Word of God. What we have are translations of them. Granted, God has protected His Word. Granted, the translations are for the most part excellent. But, they are still translations and thus one step removed from the original. Thus, I would not want to apply the same sort of "inspiration" to the translations and copies as I would apply to the originals. By the way, this is a great discussion for Christians. Most people never even consider how we get our Bibles. I can remember when people thought that the KJV was the version which Paul used! Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |