Are we misquoting Jesus?

[jeckert79]

I’ve just started reading “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart D. Ehrman, and I am a little lost on where Catholics stand on why we believe the Bible is the “inerrant-inspired” word of God. I tried reading this newadvent.org/cathen/09627a.htm it was confusing (maybe you can help simplify it?).

My question:

1.) If we don’t have the original manuscripts, nor we do have the direct copies of the manuscripts, but all we possess are bits and pieces of the copies of the writings contained in the Bible (with missing words, sentences, or paragraphs) so outside of the general Gospel message, then how do we know that our Bible is exactly what Paul, Christ, etc… said?

Even with what was written down that was passed on by word of mouth for many years (in most cases) before it was ever written down, how could the evangelists like Matt, Mark, Luke, and John have ever quoted Jesus, the apostles, etc…word for word?

2.) The council that compiled the Bible in the 300’s did not have the manuscripts in their entirety, so did they fill in the blanks (the missing words, sentences, and paragraphs) and then are we all to believe that this was inerrant and inspired from God?

Are their any simple answers to this one?

Thanks,
Joe

• I will be explaining my answer to an agnostic when I’m done reading his book…SO THANKS IN ADVANCE!

 

[cazayoux]

Howdy !

The paper that the originals (and those first copies) were written on was not lasting. This papyrus would not have lasted long at all.

Copies were made of the originals, not just the writing that made it into the canon, either. Copies were made of those copies so that the writings could be sent to several places so many could learn. These writings were all considered very important and great care was taken to ensure accuracy.

michel

 

[George_Craft]

Hi Jeckert79,

I don’t know if this is the right answer or not, but it’s the one I usually give to my Protestant KJV only friends.

St. Jerome was the first to translate the original texts into a modern language, which was Latin. When he did this in appx. 350 AD he had the originals, or as close to original as you could get. Jerome was considered by everyone to be the most learned linguist of his times, fully fluent in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew, which is why he was selected for the task. (Think God had anything to do with that? )

All later versions came out almost 1000 years later. The modern Catholic Bibles are translated from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which is still easily translated. There’s no mix up in language or sentence structure.

Hope this isn’t too far off base, I’m pretty sure it’s sorta close to historically correct. I’m at work right now and don’t have access to my reference materials. I’m sure others. more learned than I can correct any mistakes I made.

With love,
George

 

[didididi]

This is something I wanted to do some research on.

Does anyone have any book reccomendations or useful links?

 

[Maranatha]

If we don’t have the original manuscripts, nor we do have the direct copies of the manuscripts, but all we possess are bits and pieces of the copies of the writings contained in the Bible (with missing words, sentences, or paragraphs) . . .

This is a bit misleading characterization of the evidence that we have that supports the original writings. I think we need to split the Bible in to Old testament and New Testament because some of the books in the OT are much older.

As for the NT, we have thousands of ancient copies -approx 5,000. Most of the copied are withing 300 years of the originals and many are missing just a handful of letters and words. Since we have so many, we can cross-reference each copy. Even if we couldn’t cross-reference, the missing pieces are such that we could easily guess the word or letter that was missing without changing the meaning of the text. With these tools we can be more certain we have a good copy of the lost original then any other lost ancient work.

As for the OT, outside full copied of the Bible, before the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), we only as the Masoretic texts which date to the late 900s AD. Comparing the DSS to those texts, we can see remarkably little variation in the texts that was changed down through the ages. The DSS have a full copy of Isaiah dating to almost 150 BC - including the prophecy of the “Suffering Servant”

For further reading I suggest Where We Got the Bible which you can order from the CA Shop.