Awake! article: 50,000 Errors in the Bible?

by Elsewhere 7 Replies latest jw friends

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  Elsewhere
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  RunningMan

  The question that comes to mind is: what constitutes an error in the Bible? Certainly, any contradictions, scienctific, or historical mistakes are considered errors. But, when it comes down to translation and transcription, it is very difficult to get a handle on it, since there is no original text. As Witnesses, we were always sold images of mideival monks painstakingly copying and counting every letter from the original manuscript. Although care was taken in the copying, the point is that the Bible has long been a work in progress, and changed over successive rewritings.
  
  I read in a Catholic encyclopedia once that they do not consider the Bible to have been the creator of the church. They consider the church to be the creator of the Bible. That seems to be a sensible and realistic view.
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  garybuss

  Thanks for the post. This is a good one!! Good job!!!
  
  A Rabbi told me that one third of the words in the Hebrew Bible are guessed at based on their understanding and the context. He said "hell" and "hello" are spelled the same. In that context, it seems to me that the definition of the word "error" is very subjective.
  
  
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  sir82

  The killer for me is the 100-300 year gap between the original autographs, and the oldest existing manuscripts. And that time period (100- 400 CE) is precisely when there weren't trained scribes painstakingly counting letters and double-checking everything. During that period of time, the vast majority of Christians were illiterate, and the ones who could write half-decently were the ones pressed into copying -- far from "trained scribes".

  Given the enormous number of variances in the manuscripts that we do have, from later periods when there were such trained monks, on what basis can we have confidence that the copyists from 100-400 CE (approx.) were any more accurate?
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  jwfacts

  Ironic, considering this was just after the NWT added the word Jehovah to the New Testament, saying that it should be there but for some reason there is an error that allowed it to be missing from every discovered manuscript. That is not minor, in fact that is probably the most major error imaginable.
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  Honesty

  Yeah, well I suppose God is so ineffectual and powerless that He can't make sure His word and message to humankind remains pure and intact.
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  Kenneson

  I see this article as an attempt by the Watchtower Society to laureate its own New World Translation.
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  kristyann

  Yeah, this article obviously just wants people to read the NWT... I actually had a JW told me that he looked into all versions of the Bible and has STUDIED ALL OF THEM GREATLY and he can "tell me for sure" that the NWT is the "most accurate." LOL!