This past week I was able to sit in on the Septuagint Conference that was held at Trinity Western. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Torah/Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible) and ,depending on your tradition, some other biblical texts. At the conference the topic of multiple manuscripts came up and the reality that we do not have any original manuscripts of the Septuagint or any other books in the Bible. Furthermore, when we trace back as far as we can the manuscripts we do have contain variants (differences in the text). Discovering this can be a faith shaking experience or at the very least cause one to question their view of Scripture. This is likely more challenging if we think that the 66 books of the Protestant Bible were compiled by the Apostles and handed down from generation to generation (in the KJV, of course).
Realizing that we do not have the original manuscripts has actually increased my appreciation for Scripture because amidst the variants the message remains intact. The consistency of the message amidst the variants has done two things to me. One is it has made Scripture more "real" to me, as it is more believable to me that over centuries of coping copies that changes in the text would occur. Two is increased my awe of God, who has maintained his message to his creation through fallen humanity.
TSB VIII
9 months ago
2 comments:
This is likely more challenging if we think that the 66 books of the Protestant Bible were compiled by the Apostles and handed down from generation to generation (in the KJV, of course).
Haha! This makes me laugh, because at the school I teach at, all I can use is the KJV. I really don't like it, but it's "for uniformity's sake, since it's the most widely used Bible." BLAH!
On a more serious note, I totally agree, Dave. The one thing I try to maintain, when people bring up that point of view, or "the Bible was written by men, so there has to be hypocrisies in it...the fact is, if we believe in God, we have to believe that God is big enough to keep His word intact, the message pure, despite the language/translation being used. To not believe that is to say God's not big enough to keep the greatest weapon He's given His children sharp enough for them to use it effectively...
If the King James Version was good enough for Matthew, Mark,Luke and John it's good enough for me :)
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