Over the years, many Christians have enjoyed the benefits of "modern" translations, but now many questions have arisen .....
Does
any of this matter? Cannot I just live by faith? Well, if God's Word is the source of my faith, how much effort should I make to have the "perfect" Word of God? Do the actual words matter, or just the concepts? But concepts are derived from the actual words. So what are the actual words? Indeed, the average believer does not have the time or the skills to investigate the history of the Bible in detail, explore Greek, Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew, or even study the background of all the translators from the United Bible Society, Tyndale House, Nestle-Aland, American Bible Society, Trinity Bible Society and others. So ....................................... |
| THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY IS TO PROVIDE YOU SOME OF THOSE LONG SOUGHT AFTER ANSWERS, BASED ON OUR RESEARCH. |
From
the very beginning, the Word of God has been under attack.
Indeed, even Satan put it into the mind of Adam and Eve that
God's Word was not to be believed, where we read:
Genesis 3:1 ... Yea, hath God really said ... ? And then, not believing the Word of God, Adam and Even went on to sin against God. (Did their "translation" of what God said suffer from copying mistakes?) Throughout the Old Testament, we read about generation after generation of Jews who believed and obeyed the Word of God, but about every other generation rejected the Word of God and worshiped other gods, despite having the Word of God before them. Moving forward in time, we then hear the Apostle Paul complaining about "another gospel" being preached after Christ died on the cross for our sins: 2 Corinthians 11:4 For if he that come [to you all] preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you all receive another spirit, which you all have not received [in the beginning], or another gospel, which you all have not accepted [in the beginning], you all might have tolerated it. (Implication: The Corinthian Christians knew better, because they knew who preached the true Word of God to them, though they showed signs of weakness in this area, like us today.) Galatians 1:6 I marvel that everyone who is led by the one who has called each of you into the grace of Christ, are so soon led unto another gospel: [another kind of salvation] Then we have the long history of the New Testament with a
huge
number of attacks trying to change the Word of God throughout the
entire history, and today we now have about 41,000 denominations in the
world (1),
many in agreement, and many more not. Then
there is contemporary "neutral, naturalistic textual criticism" which
through "scholarship" alone tries to prove which texts are the "faithful" Word of
God. The problem is that even these scholars disagree with one
another over which texts are the Word of God. Among many bible
institutions that are not
in full agreement is the Nestle-Aland, United
Bible Society, Tyndale, and the American Bible Society, with respect to
the critical Minority texts, and what gets used in their translations from the Greek. The Trinity Bible Society, on the other hand, supports the traditional, preserved, Majority Greek texts, and its scholars do not engage in "naturalistic textual criticism" and it appears they rely on forensic evidence that continues to support the Majority Greek texts, often referred to as the traditional "Received Text".
So
there you have it. If you are a young babe in Christ, an
intermediate
Christian, or even a mature one, and you likely have found yourself
persuaded by one
scholarship group or another as to which text is the "faithful" Word of
God,
or worse yet, you are told God did not preserve His Word and this has
left you guessing, then the words of Genesis 3:1 ring out: ... Yea, hath God really said ... ? Hopefully,
this study will help you to find the answers to what God really
said in the sense of looking at the evidence pertaining to the
process that brought about our versions of scripture that we have
today, so that you can possess God's Word! JUDGING OTHERS OR BIBLICAL DISCERNMENT? Some will say to discern which sources of scripture are faithful and which are not is to judge the scholars who created the compilations. To this we reply: JOHN 7:24 "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment." It may appear to be God's Word, but is it? We must know the answer to this question, or we might be in danger of using unfaithful scriptures. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21 "Prove {testing} all things; hold fast that which is good." The Greek verb prove/testing is in the imperative, so it is imperative that we test all things, and as implied in this verse, toss out that which fails when tested, and keep that which is good. The verb is in the present tense, implying this is something we should do at any present time it is necessary. Of course the words "all things" includes testing if scripture is faithful, and if not, tossing it out and only "hold fast to that which is good." 1
JOHN 4:1 "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits
whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into
the world." We must discern what the spirit was of those that created the Old and New Testament texts, when they differ. There is the Latin Vulgate, the Received Text NT (such as Stephanus GNT of 1550), the Hort and Westcott of 1880, which all differ in thousands of verses. So this is not a trivial issue. If we did not use discernment with respect to the above, we might be told then we should read the Book of Mormon or the Quran or Buddha, and that we should not judge. Is that OK with you, brother or sister? Or is really not judging others but using discernment, to determine which compilation of scripture is faithful to God's inspiration given to the authors of the texts? In fact, saying we should not judge scholars that created scripture compilations is to say we do not respect what God wants us to do, per the above scriptures. We might be guilty of Adam and Eve's sin of ignoring what God said, and substituting what the devil said. Think! |