Common_Cents

Let's assume that the bible of today is edited/altered/changed:

A) Who altered it?
B) Why did they alter it?
C) What did they alter?
D) When was the last time that you believe that it was changed?


I know that your answer will be in large part conjecture but feel free to give your full opinion. I would just like to know where you are coming from.

Pyrrho

First of all, whenever a new translation comes out, it is "altered", as the words invariably contain a slightly different meaning (in some passages) from other translations. Usually, there is a good deal of bias entering into these things. A good example of this is the word "servant" used in place of "slave" in the King James Bible (you can know it is really a slave when you get to passages about buying and selling "servants"). I do NOT mean to suggest that the King James Version is particularly bad in this regard, but I only mean to point out an obvious example of translators altering the text.

Even when a scholar attempts to find "original" texts, there are slightly different "originals" from which to make one's selection. (Of course, there are probably no real "original" texts of the Bible in existence today.)

The second thing to observe is that the original (1611) edition of the King James Bible contained the Apocrypha, which has been removed from most "King James Bibles" that are printed today. (There have been other alterations as well, but that is the most glaring.)

Third, the selection of what was to be called the Bible was made some time around the 4th century CE by a group of Catholics (who did not all agree, by the way). They selected some texts to be included, and rejected others (generally trying to burn all the copies of the rejected books).

Fourth (and this may be what you are wanting to know, though the above should give you plenty to think about), the texts that were selected by the above mentioned group of Catholics were copies of copies of copies... at least in many cases, and we do not know with any certainty what their origins are, but there are some interesting clues contained in the texts themselves that suggest that some of them are compilations of other books rather than original works themselves. To get started on this issue, I recommend Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman.

Gullwind

A) Who altered it?

No way to know for sure, but everytime it is copied there is a good chance for some errors to creep in. It doesn't necessarily have to be an intentional change.

B) Why did they alter it?

Assuming that it was intentional, probably to make it say what they wanted it to say. Different authors at different times often had different opinions about things. Compare II Kings 9-10 (Jehu killing the House of Ahab at God's direction, and God being pleased with the result) with Hosea 1 (God declaring vengeance against Jehu for the slaughter of the House of Ahab). Different times, different politics.

C) What did they alter?

Pretty hard to say without having the originals to campare with, but Matthew's account of Jesus entering Jerusalem on two animals seems to be a good example of altering the original text.

D) When was the last time you believe it was changed?

The last time a new version of the bible was developed.

TySixtus

I think your premise is faulty, in that "The Bible" wasn't altered- the scriptures that went into it were altered by simple translation.

Subsequent alterations of the bible as a whole, however, have happened, though I would argue that the real problem isn't the alteration involoved, it's the lack of variety. There are other gospels out there- why aren't they in the bible? Stories of Jesus mass murdering his playmates, then ressurecting them, stuff like that. Obviously, your average Christian knows nothing of these texts. There is a passage in the gospel of Phillip (I'm paraphrasing here, I can't get Biblegateway to work) that says: "Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. They must receive the ressurection while they live."

Obviously, this jars with the four other gospels. In them, death comes first, then ressurection. Again I ask, why aren't these included?

Added to this is a fact that I always bring up- one OT prophecy claiming that Jesus shall be called a 'Nazorean'. The New Testament goes on to claim that he was from Nazareth- a city that didn't exist at the time of his birth. So the authors of the gospels were 'creative' with matching the prophecy to real events. They took a city that existed when they lived, and voila! You've got a fulfilled prophecy.

So alteration of scripture is easy to see, at least to me. Not to mention that these guys got copies of copies of copies. That alone is enough to pull out the ol' "Telephone Game" analogy we all know and love. But alterations of the bible happen every time a new "Translation" occurs, which is rougly one a year. *


Ty


*Okay, maybe not once a year. But often.

Amaleq13

I don't think the Bible Gateway includes non-canonical books but Peter Kirby's website does:

"Those who say that the Lord died first and (then) rose up are in error, for he rose up first and (then) died. If one does not first attain the resurrection, he will not die. As God lives, he would [...]." (Isenberg translation)

"Those who say to themselves that the Lord first died and then arose, are confused. For first he arose and (then) he died. If someone does not first acquire the resurrection, he will die; (for) he is not (really) alive (before) God was transforming him." (Brown translation)

TySixtus

TySixtus

Hey I did pretty good, considering I read the Gospel of Phillip two years ago! Thanks, Amaleq. I appreciate the speedy help. :thumbs: :thumbs:

Ty

Asha'man

Personally, I suspect everyone who ever had control over the text altered it. I imagine that, until the invention of the printing press, every single copy had some form of alteration from the previous form.

Some of those alterations were simply innocent copyist errors, and can mostly be dismissed. Many of those alterations were significant. They were additions, deletions, or rewording of passages to give it a new meaning.

To pick a more specific example, let’s look at the synoptic gospels. I would argue that Matthew and Luke are simply alterations of Mark. An editor took the original written form and deliberately altered it. As the new versions and the old versions were circulating at the same time, they eventually became accepted as parallel stories, rather than simply recognizing an early and later (altered) versions.

Even within the gospels of Matthew and Luke, it’s pretty clear that deliberate editing was going on during their formation. For example, the original story (Mark) contained no mention of the birth or lineage of Jesus. As the original was preached to a Jewish crowd, they objected that the Messiah must be of the line of David. To fix this glaring oversight, a genealogy was fabricated and inserted into each text.

Later, due to other objections or theological development, the birth story of Jesus was also added to the base material. However, this birth story identified Jesus as having no mortal father, so the genealogies became invalid. Rather than remove the offending text entirely, a few words at the end were changed, so that the genealogies became that of Joseph, not Jesus himself.



Rather than try to identify who and where and when the text was altered, I think it’s more productive to simply recognize that no portion of the text is immune to such alterations, and therefore no portion of the text has any reliability whatsoever. If a statement made within the bible cannot be verified externally, I consider it pure fiction.

chapka

Not to nitpick, but you need to specify: changed from what? There was no "original" bible. The bible is a collection of works some of which probably circulated in oral tradition before they were first written down. So are you asking about when the Gospel of Timothy got booted, or when a word or phrase was altered in one of the now-canonical letters? It's a very different question.

Eventually the order of the books were pretty well standardized, and a few fairly consistent standard versions have been passed down by scholarship--the standard Torahs, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the King James. These versions don't always agree with each other, of course, which causes its own problems. Each of them probably originated as a separate tradition some time ago. And whenever you translate one of these into modern English, you're interpreting it.

As for the last really large-scale change, it was probably when the early Protestants went through and took out all the bits of the Catholic bibles they thought were too Popish.

Common_Cents

Well here is the thing for me...and i am just throwing this out there if the catholics changed the bible to help their cause they did a horrible job....nowhere in the bible is their any basis for a pope or confession to a priest. Nowhere in the bible is Mary given the power to heal nor does the bible say you should pray to her. Nowhere in the bible does it say that you can pay money to the church to atone for sins and escape hell(which was something the catholic church used to espouse). Now the question is why didn't the catholics put those things in? Why didn't they add a christmas and easter celebration commandment? I mean they basically owned the entire text for a long time and yet they never changed things in the bible that contradicted their tenets. I mean if they had altered the text to make it comply with their tenets Martin Luther and the Reformation never would have happened for Luther just used the Bible to prove catholicism wrong.


I mean it seems to me that if this vast conspiracy to invent a religion and a text to back up those claims i would say that they failed miserably at their task.