zigzag

It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we don't have the originals---so saying they were inspire doesn't help much,unless one could reconstruct the originals.Moreover, the vast majority of christians for the entire history of the church have not had access to the originals,making their inspiration something of a moot point.Not only do we not have the originals, we don't have the first copies of the originals.We don't even have copies of the copies of the oringinals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals.What we have are copies made later---much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later.And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. These copies differ from one another in so many places that we don't even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the new testament.Even so, what is one to make of all these differences? If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture? we simply cannot be sure that we have reconstructed the original text accurately.It's a bit hard to know what the words of the Bible mean if we don't even know what the words are.This became a problem for my view of inspiration, for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place.If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them (and possibly even given them the words in a language they could understand, rather than Greek and Hebrew).The fact that we don't have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn't perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words....More to come.

sschlichter

Please clarify your view of inspiration. You appear to have contradictory expectations. I.e. You want the originals to be preserved and yet you want them to be translated in your language.

driver8

The Bible is brought to you by the "God of Israel." Don't expect it to be an equal-opportunity document. As for the durability of the word of god, while he could afford translucent sapphire for himself, he only provided stone for the minions, and apparently made of something transient like chalk or at best low-grade sandstone.

zigzag

What would be the contradiction in wanting the original "so called" inspired word of God preserved in a language that I could understand.I do not see the contradiction...My view of inspiration is just what it means"the act or power of moving the intellect or emotions...1 Corinthians 14:33, states that God is not the author of confusion. Yet never has a book produced more confusion than the bible!There are hundreds of denominations and sects, all using the so called "inspired scriptures" to prove their conflicting doctines. Someone tell me why do trained theologians differ? why do educated translators disagree over Greek and Hebrew meanings? Why all the confusion? shouldn't a document that was "divinely inspired" by a omniscient and omnipotent deity be as clear as possible?

Ron Webb

Are you a Muslim, zigzag? Is that the "more to come"?

zigzag

LOL...no I'm not a Muslim

sschlichter

preserved indicates the original. the contradiction is that the language you are currently writing in did not exists and the original preserved word of God cannot be in that language.

However, God has graciously accomodated your request by providing you (thru his people) a translation in your language and copies in the original language that you can verify them against if you dis-trust the translators.

Joan of Bark

As has already been pointed out, we don't have the originals, only contradictory copies of copies of originals. So we cannot verify our translations against originals, only against untrustworthy copies of copies. For more on this subject, see Misquoting Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk)by Bart Ehrman.

Doug Shaver

In your opinion, is any English version of the Bible a perfect translation of those original-language copies? For this discussion, I'm defining a perfect translation as one that accurately conveys the author's intended meaning.

bacht

The Inspired Word ?

In the case of the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures were already becoming unintelligible to laymen by the Persian period (before 330 bce) who were speaking the related language Aramaic. It's like the situation in medieval Europe when Latin died out as a spoken language, eventually vernacular translations were made (Tyndale et al)

A new translation into Greek was made for diaspora Jews in the 3rd C bce (Septuagint). Before the rabbis produced the official Hebrew canon in the 1st-2nd C there was variation in the text, and people like the Dead Sea Scroll writers felt free to "improve" the scriptures.

The New Testament books survive in manuscripts much closer to the original dates of composition, but there is no one master version of any book afaik, there are mss families with subtle differences (Alexandrian, Western etc)

The problem with any written text is that, even if it's considered authoritative, it's vulnerable to the passage of time, and changes in language. A glance at the KJV can prove this: the meaning seems to be there, but it's a challenge to get past the English archaisms.