My take on Bible translations: God breathed on the writers of the ORIGINAL autographs–Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, etal. These originals were exactly God’s Word without interpretation using the abilities of the authors, making God the author–i.e. without error. The OT and the authors follow the same criteria.
Copies were made(probably not Xerox) and carried where ever the gospel was carried. Paul said to bring his coat, the books and parchments–especially the parchments–I reckon this means the Holy Writ. Sixty-six books bound? No, Jesus is in every book. One does not need them all to preach the Gospel. But the Bible is certainly a preponderance of evidence that God has spoken–we have no excuses.
The original autographs have not been discovered. There are hundreds of copies and copies of copies. These documents have been maintained in two streams so to speak: East and West. They can be found as such today, some fragmentary. All copies of scripture were not maintained in monastaries and abbeys. When one compares the East to the West, there are serious discrepancies. One stream is extremely polluted. Who has the best is still being debated in the hallowed halls of higher textual criticism. This disparity of source documents is why many of the translations into the English were burned along with the translators. This is an impasse which still exists, albeit somewhat covertly. Biases in the source documents show up as variations in the doctrine–which is the basic question: What does the Word of God teach? Not: What does the religion of man teach?
English translations: there is one called Geneva, based on the TR, Textus Receptus. It is translated from the Eastern Stream. The KJV of 1611 is probably an edited version of the Geneva at the behest of King James, an Anglican, who did not like some of the margin notes regarding monarchy. The KJV is also a TR based translation.
I am not KJVO. I have many translations–from both streams.
So-called modern English versions are from the Western stream.
Surf it. Cyberspace has removed the shroud. We have no excuse.
Now what?
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Peace,
James Least