How can I prove that Scripture has NOT changed through the ages?

[yellowbicycle]

to my non-believing friends.
They say things like ‘Remember playing telephone? Remember how things got all jumbled up in the end? Things got added and subtracted? Same thing happened to Scripture’
Mind you, these are the VERY same people who tell me that there are ‘inconsistencies’ in Scripture.
Huh.
You’d think, if people were changing things, they would have gone back and fixed their mistakes, don’t you?

I remind them, by the way, that I do remember playing telephone. When I was eight.
Since then, I have gotten much better at transmitting information accurately. If the early Christians were in fact playing telephone while transmitting scripture to eachother, it would read more like ‘Ont he third day, purple monkey washing machine’
But it doesn’t.

 

[DL82]

Three things to bear in mind:

1. People used to be much much better at remembering and transcribing things. If you look at cultures today such as the Arabic bedouins, they can remember whole epic poems or the whole Koran off by heart. In an age before printed books were available, people had incredible skill at memorizing things. There would have been hundreds of people who heard every word Jesus spoke, within 2 generations there would be tens of thousands who had heard it 1st or 2nd hand. The earliest Biblical writings come from that period, 1 or 2 generations after our Lord’s earthly life.
2. There are more copies of more texts of Biblical books than there are of any other classical text of that time. We think we know what Plato or Cicero wrote based on 3 or 4 texts written hundreds of years after their lives. There are over 5000 Biblical texts or fragments dating back to the first 200 years of the Christian era.
3. Yes, the Bible has changed (a little bit) since the early period. If you look at the text of the Corpus Siniaiticus (I’ve seen it in the British Library, it’s really cool) you can see where someone has made corrections in red ink. Errors and heresies were slowly written out of the Bible over the first 3-4 centuries, under the direction of the Church.

 

[thistle]

to my non-believing friends.
They say things like ‘Remember playing telephone? Remember how things got all jumbled up in the end? Things got added and subtracted? Same thing happened to Scripture’
Mind you, these are the VERY same people who tell me that there are ‘inconsistencies’ in Scripture.
Huh.
You’d think, if people were changing things, they would have gone back and fixed their mistakes, don’t you?

I remind them, by the way, that I do remember playing telephone. When I was eight.
Since then, I have gotten much better at transmitting information accurately. If the early Christians were in fact playing telephone while transmitting scripture to eachother, it would read more like ‘Ont he third day, purple monkey washing machine’
But it doesn’t.

The Dead Sea Scrolls proved that Scripture has been accurately copied to the extent of 98%. There were only spelling errors and minor inconsistencies but nothing which changed any meaning.

 

[irishluck09]

You can pick up a critical version of the Greek New Testament or a version of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, look at the bottom of the page, and see pretty clearly that there are a good many variations between different versions of the text. Even if you can’t read the languages, it is not that hard to see that a lot of stuff is down there. I’ve studied this stuff more than I cared to and there is honestly nothing to worry about for Christians (especially Catholics!). As has been said, none of these variations carry any weight on Christian doctrine. It’s not like every verse that suggests Jesus’ divinity seems to have magically appeared in the Middle Ages or something. Often times, it’s small things like scribes adding “Lord” or “Christ” to Jesus’ name when it appears in a gospel. Some substantial portions of the Old Testament differ between the Masoretic and Septuagint versions of the text, but unless you have a whole lot of your faith invested in the prophet Jeremiah this shouldn’t be too much of a bother. Significantly (since somebody brought up the Dead Sea Scrolls) all the biblical critics used to think the Septuagint (Greek version of the OT) was a bunch of superstitious junk compared to the Masoretic version of the text (which we got from medeival Jews, called Masoretes). Then a shepherd boy found the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are older than the Masoretic version, and these Scrolls often match up incredibly well with the Septuagint. Now these scholars give the Septuagint a lot more respect. The point is that biblical critics are probably wrong about a whole host of things (as they were about the Septuagint) so don’t get too worked up over their latest “discovery” about the Bible. Are there changes? Sure. Are they of much theological significance in the big picture of things? Na.

 

[COPLAND_3]

Anybody who makes such claims knows very little about the ancient Bible manuscripts, Early Church Fathers, and the transmission of the Bible. But those who claim that the KJV is an infallible version of the Bible does not do any justice for our arguements against the skeptics. There are so many people giving too many misguided messages about the Bible that the skeptics only see a “holy” mess. No wonder some people have a hard time with it all.

But I love having the opportunities to explain to people about the transmission of the Bible, especially one on one with no interruptions or distractions, just me with the 2000 years of Catholic tradition vs. the knee jerk one-liners based upon some PBS or BBC program.