R
Ron_Conte
Guest
The Bible has not remained the same since the writing of each of the original manuscripts.
Some books might not have an original manuscript, since some books (e.g. Genesis) are the product of many years of editing: adding, subtracting, and changing material. By the time that the book reaches a version analogous to a ‘first edition,’ it may have existed in numerous copies that were not identical to one another.
In any case, the books of the Bible that we have today are not the same as the original manuscripts or the earliest sets of manuscripts of any book. Have they degraded as time passed? Must we recover the originals in order to save truth from extinction? Have the truths of Scripture been distorted and obscured with the passage of time? No, no, and no.
Instead, God’s Providence and Grace is with Sacred Scripture as it is passed from generation to generation, just as God guides the transmission of Tradition and the teachings of the Magisterium. Just as the truths of Tradition and the Magisterium become clearer as time passes, so also do the truths of Scripture become clearer – and they become more clearly expressed through the process of editing and translation and comparing different versions in different languages.
In fact, just as the understanding and clear expression of the truths of Tradition and Magisterium continually improves in a process analogous to evolution, so also does the understanding and clear expression of the truths of Scripture continually improve. The truths themselves do not change or evolve. It is their expression in human language which evolves as Scripture is transmitted from one version to another.
This process occurs in three ways:
Similarly, the words and phrases used to express the truths of Scripture have been subject to many generations of copyist ‘typographical’ errors. Letters are dropped or added, accidentally. One word is substituted for a similar word because the text was misread. The order or words might be changed accidentally by the copyist. Such errors are more likely to occur if the result is a phrasing that more clearly expresses the truths of Scripture than the original text. And they are more likely to be adopted by subsequent copyists/editors. Most such errors are not improvements and are corrected in subsequent copies. But some small percentage of these ‘errors’ accidentally result in a better expression of truth. So God’s Providence and Grace guides the expression of the unchanging truths of Scripture into greater clarity.
In summary:
The truths of Scripture do not evolve, they are unchanging.
The expression of the truths of Scripture in human language is what evolves and changes, under God’s Providence and Grace. Such is also the case with Tradition and Magisterium.
The later versions of the Bible, especially taken as a set (not so much in individual versions by themsleves), contain a clearer and more comprehensive expression of the truths of Scripture than the original manuscripts did.
The truths of Sacred Scripture are not completely located in any one version or edition of the Bible. They are mostly located in any one version. But, in their entirety, they are located across all the versions and editions of the Bible that exist in their various languages.
Some books might not have an original manuscript, since some books (e.g. Genesis) are the product of many years of editing: adding, subtracting, and changing material. By the time that the book reaches a version analogous to a ‘first edition,’ it may have existed in numerous copies that were not identical to one another.
In any case, the books of the Bible that we have today are not the same as the original manuscripts or the earliest sets of manuscripts of any book. Have they degraded as time passed? Must we recover the originals in order to save truth from extinction? Have the truths of Scripture been distorted and obscured with the passage of time? No, no, and no.
Instead, God’s Providence and Grace is with Sacred Scripture as it is passed from generation to generation, just as God guides the transmission of Tradition and the teachings of the Magisterium. Just as the truths of Tradition and the Magisterium become clearer as time passes, so also do the truths of Scripture become clearer – and they become more clearly expressed through the process of editing and translation and comparing different versions in different languages.
In fact, just as the understanding and clear expression of the truths of Tradition and Magisterium continually improves in a process analogous to evolution, so also does the understanding and clear expression of the truths of Scripture continually improve. The truths themselves do not change or evolve. It is their expression in human language which evolves as Scripture is transmitted from one version to another.
This process occurs in three ways:
- As the faithful, through the centuries, prayerfully read, understand, and live Scripture, the understanding of the text increases and results in translations and editions that more clearly express the truths of Scripture than prior editions and translations. Each successive version of Scripture is influenced by other versions, in the same and other languages. Later versions of Scripture more clearly express truths of Scripture, which may have been obscured in prior editions. These later versions have the advantage of being influenced by more versions of Scripture and by the continuing process of the entire Church on earth praying and living Scripture through the centuries.
- In any particular language, even in the language in which the book was originally written (a matter of some dispute, in my view), as the text is copied again and again, the copyists sometimes functioned like an editor, not merely a copyist. Sometimes they may have done this deliberately, making a change to the wording of the text to make the meaning clearer. They had to do this because they generally worked from only one (maybe two?) copies in order to make their copy. And old manuscripts of the Bible have frequent copyist errors. So a copyist would intelligently decide if a spelling or wording was the error of a previous copyist and correct that error. Sometimes the correction resulted in a phrasing of a truth which expressed that truth more clearly than the original phrasing. Sometimes a copyist/editor would be correcting a real copyist error. Sometimes the assumed error was not a copyist error, but an awkward phrasing that could be improved. Over centuries of such corrections, and, in later years, similar types of corrections made by editors for printed versions, the truths of Scripture, by Providence and Grace, have become more clearly expressed in their various languages.
- Some improvements to the wording and phrasing of the truths of Scripture may have been non-deliberate random errors, a few of which happen to improve the text and so were more likely to be maintained in subsequent editions. This third way that the expression of the truths of Scripture has changed is analogous to evolution.
Similarly, the words and phrases used to express the truths of Scripture have been subject to many generations of copyist ‘typographical’ errors. Letters are dropped or added, accidentally. One word is substituted for a similar word because the text was misread. The order or words might be changed accidentally by the copyist. Such errors are more likely to occur if the result is a phrasing that more clearly expresses the truths of Scripture than the original text. And they are more likely to be adopted by subsequent copyists/editors. Most such errors are not improvements and are corrected in subsequent copies. But some small percentage of these ‘errors’ accidentally result in a better expression of truth. So God’s Providence and Grace guides the expression of the unchanging truths of Scripture into greater clarity.
In summary:
The truths of Scripture do not evolve, they are unchanging.
The expression of the truths of Scripture in human language is what evolves and changes, under God’s Providence and Grace. Such is also the case with Tradition and Magisterium.
The later versions of the Bible, especially taken as a set (not so much in individual versions by themsleves), contain a clearer and more comprehensive expression of the truths of Scripture than the original manuscripts did.
The truths of Sacred Scripture are not completely located in any one version or edition of the Bible. They are mostly located in any one version. But, in their entirety, they are located across all the versions and editions of the Bible that exist in their various languages.