Expert: LEBoyd - 1/17/2007

Question
Hello L.E.,    Let me begin by asserting my belief that God has used humans to author His Bible.Having said that,I'm confident enough in those beliefs that you won't offend me or start a chain-reaction of nasty letters if you criticize that viewpoint.My question is inspired by my non-believing father's claim that there were many re-writes of the Bible prior to the KJV.When I asked him to cite the sources of his tampering charges,he quickly retreated and stated that he hadn't meant to imply anything conspiratorial.
 Many people who know my dad quite well surmise that his personal tragedies have made him susceptible to any anti-Christian teachings,and he still hasn't e-mailed me with any evidential support for the "re-writes".My own studies,while not all-emcompassing,have shown me that the KJV is pretty darned faithful to the ancient texts,and that the overwhelming majority of the disputes are grammatical issues instead of doctrinal ones.I told my dad that when different groups--Catholics,Jehovah's Witnesses,etc.--HAVE altered doctrinal teachings,it's been obvious enough that everyone with open eyes has noticed it.Could you briefly summarize the most intelligent criticisms that the Bible's opponents have used?Some years ago,archaelogical atheists proudly proclaimed that the city of Jericho never existed(thereby "proving" that the Bible was a fraud),then--OOPS--they discovered the ol' town one day.In the same vein,if any of the popular arguments against the Bible have been refuted as factually incorrect,please specify.Your efforts will be sincerely appreciated.       --Bruce Zimmer  

Answer
Bruce,

First, sorry for the delay, as I did not see the e-mail with the request.

Second, I too believe that the Word is Inspired by God through the Spirit.  Likewise, you question is particularly timely, as I am in the middle of teaching a class on this very subject - how did we get the Bible?

Briefly, the O.T. is quite different than the N.T., as the Talmudist (what we might refer to as "scribes", although they were not the "scribes" of the N.T.) were responsible for creating the copies of the O.T.  Old, worn copies were not "holy" enough to be kept and were often burned.  However, even though are "ancient" copies of the O.T. are not very "ancient", when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1948 there were 40,000 documents, including multiple copies of the O.T. books.  When you compare these nearly match 100% with our "new" copies (roughly 95% were exact, and 4% were obvious misspelling).  Remember, when the O.T. was copied, it was a work of "holiness" and they were very careful.

For the N.T. there are more than 24,000 copies of all or part of our Bible.  These are things such as full books or chapters, to small pieces of single or a few scriptures.  The most commonly use copies are the Vatican and the Sinanic.

The history of how these were found are often amazing.  However, the bottom line is that you can feel confident that our standard Bible is what God spoke through his prophets and other writers.

If you are interested in more details, I could go into different aspects.  It's very exciting and comforting.

To specifically address the KJV, you are correct, it is a very excellent Bible, although are use of many of the words in English have changed.  My personal favorite is the New American Standard with the New King James Version a very close second.

I'm not very familiar with specific arguments against the Bible, as I'm more interested in arguments for the Bible.  However, probably the biggest argument against the Bible is the study of the books of Moses and the argument that it was written by at least 3 authors because of the language styles and word choices.  Yet, throughout the rest of the Bible these books are directly attributed to Moses, and these arguments do not refute a single author.  So, again, I'm confident in my Bible.

Thanks for the questions and, again, I apologize for the delay.

LE