Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. As I said, the word “inspired” means literally “God breathed”. The idea is that the Holy Spirit breathed truth into the words. We don’t know how this was done but we believe God was the guiding hand. Those who say this are usually referring to the original writings, called autographs. To be honest, we do not have any of the autographs today. What we have are copies of copies of copies.... One of the reasons we have different translations of the Bible today is because scholars disagree on how to get to the most accurate understanding of what the originals said. More on that in the next post.
As you would expect of a document being copied by hand over centuries, the manuscripts we have today have thousands of differences. Most of them are minor things like misspelling or using the wrong word. (As an example I just saw that I had “our” instead of “or” and this is possibly the fourth time I have gone over this.) Misspellings are easy to see if you know how to spell. I find that even with built-in spell check they get past me after several edits. As for the wrong word, think in terms of their, there and they’re. In context this kind of error is easy to spot. As I understand it there are no differences that call into question any historic doctrine. Honest scholarship presents no problems but when you have someone who rejects the idea that the Bible is inspired, then the field is wide open for nonsense. It is like arguing with a cat about how wonderful dogs are.
The problem with the differences is not the differences. It isn’t the existence of people of other religions writing about the Bible. If a Hindu is trying to explain what the Bible means then I will listen and keep in mind where he is coming from. He is probably being honest. I am not afraid of that because I am not afraid of truth and seeking it. When the scholar rejects all the major teachings of the Bible yet is trying to act like he is seeking truth as a Christian, we have a problem.
Christians believe that the Bible is the word of God. If you don’t believe that then where would you get any idea of what a Christian is?
To be continued...
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.