Textual Criticism and original texts

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BH_Manners

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Hello,

How do we know for certain that textual critics can in fact look at various variant texts and passages found in different biblical manuscripts and decide for certain which one was original?
 
BH_Manners said:
Hello,

How do we know for certain that textual critics can in fact look at various variant texts and passages found in different biblical manuscripts and decide for certain which one was original?
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No one knows “for certain” and it is quite possible that none are the original (we certainly don’t have original copies of any of the gospels).

It is also impossible to know that the translation from Aramaic to Greek to English is perfectly correct (translation is always an inexact process). As in most things, the scholars do their best and the reader must have faith that the overall result accurately captures the spirit of the stories. Fortunately, the Catholic Church is not a “literalist” reader of scripture as some fundamentalist churches are and thus the overall themes are what is important.
 
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