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* Hi Could you till me please how many different versions are there of the Bible & what is the original version ? If there is any difference beside translation then why is that ? Is't that supposed to be god's words ?!!.. then how could you change god's words ? Am i missing something here !! Thank you
* Hi Could you till me please how many different versions are there of the Bible & what is the original version ? If there is any difference beside translation then why is that ? Is't that supposed to be god's words ?!!.. then how could you change god's words ? Am i missing something here !! Thank you
The idea that anything written and recorded by human beings is God's Word is absurd. The idea that some things written and recorded by human beings were INSPIRED by God and interpreted by human beings is a horse of another color.
The original version of the bible does not exist. Also, alduballaah, if u were to toss all the bibles into the ocean and try to "re-write" it, you would not be able to. There are over a dozen different bibles in so many languages that if you were to even try and recompile the bible people would disagree as to what the bible actually says because there's so many versions.not to mention the oldest bible in existence was written hundreds of years after the "death of christ".
I mean if you were to get a group of people today (christians) they would disagree on which bible is in fact the true word of god. Some would say the rsv some the kjv some the esv. They have the book in front of them yet verses in the bible change in every new translation. Also its known that christian scholars agree there are interpolation's. There's verses in the bible that are not in the original. People add, take away, change all the time. This is why some people call it a "blind faith". Because even when scholars realize these facts through their own research they just believe that you just have to have faith.
I'm not saying this to bash on christians or anything because I'm not the oe saying these things initially. I'm just reiterating what christian scholars have said. Known facts that are just brushed off. I used to be a christian myself but I could not be anymore due to the lack of proof. Mark who? Matthew who? Luke who? Not to mention over half of the new testament was written by a man who hunted down the christians like animals, torturing and killing hundreds, maybe even thousands. And then one day this man gets a revelation from god? To me personally its unbelievable. That's like hitler after the holocaust saying to the jews "I got a revelation from god so now follow me!". He also said that you do not need to follow the commandments and you just need faith, when jesus himself said to keep the commandments several times.
So I hope this answers your question. You can research all this for yourself and you'll find more and it won't be on anti-christian sites or written by an anti-christian, it will be said and recorded by several christian scholars. So again I'm sorry in advance if anyone takes offense to this but if you would like the proof as to how I came to any of my conclusions ill be glad to send you a direct message. I'm not here to bash anyone on the forum. Just trying to share knowledge.
No one is changing gods words, for the simple reason god has never uttered a single word, but it only reflects the fears, phobias, superstitions, delusions, ignorance and agenda of the authors with every edit, rewrite and translation. To view it as anything else is an absurdity.
William James (1842-1910) The father of modern Psychology "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."
Last edited by Asheville Native; 03-06-2011 at 12:37 PM..
No one is changing gods words, for the simple reason god has never uttered a single word, but it only reflects the fears, phobias, superstitions, delusions, ignorance and agenda of the authors with every edit, rewrite and translation. To view it as anything else is an absurdity.
William James (1842-1910) The father of modern Psychology "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."
* Hi Could you till me please how many different versions are there of the Bible & what is the original version ? If there is any difference beside translation then why is that ? Is't that supposed to be god's words ?!!.. then how could you change god's words ? Am i missing something here !! Thank you
I typically stay on the Christian forum, but, let me try to help.
There are many translations, made necessary by different times and languages. If you look on Biblegateway.com, you can pull-up any passage/s you might care to look at in most of the main translations and see the differences.
The notion that "men have changed the Bible" suggests, as you pointed-out, that people were able to 'rob God of His inspiration' ... which has not happened. For example, the 'Dead Sea Scrolls' pre-dated the previous earliest known Masoretic texts by over 1000 years, yet the differences were only nominal margin notes (not bad for ancients without printing presses).
There are a few exceptions to the 'translation' standard. One is the 'Living Bible', which is a paraphrase. Some of the newer 'translations' (eg; The Message and the Amplified Bibles) translate the Bible into a more modern, expanded vernacular. The one exception I can think of is the Catholic Bible which includes the Apocrphal; a group of 7-8 books added between the Old and New Testament.
Some of the cults have attempted to compile variants of the Bible (eg; the Watchtower 'green bible.'), but, these are "interpretations," not "translations." Along these lines, the Bible clearly states that all 'scripture' is inspired by God, but, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private 'interpretation.'
There is much more, such as the availability of ancient manuscripts, accurately fulfilled prophecy, the life-changing power and influence of the Bible over the generations, etc.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sukrill
The original version of the bible does not exist. Also, alduballaah, if u were to toss all the bibles into the ocean and try to "re-write" it, you would not be able to. There are over a dozen different bibles in so many languages that if you were to even try and recompile the bible people would disagree as to what the bible actually says because there's so many versions.not to mention the oldest bible in existence was written hundreds of years after the "death of christ".
I mean if you were to get a group of people today (christians) they would disagree on which bible is in fact the true word of god. Some would say the rsv some the kjv some the esv. They have the book in front of them yet verses in the bible change in every new translation. Also its known that christian scholars agree there are interpolation's. There's verses in the bible that are not in the original. People add, take away, change all the time. This is why some people call it a "blind faith". Because even when scholars realize these facts through their own research they just believe that you just have to have faith.
I'm not saying this to bash on christians or anything because I'm not the oe saying these things initially. I'm just reiterating what christian scholars have said. Known facts that are just brushed off. I used to be a christian myself but I could not be anymore due to the lack of proof. Mark who? Matthew who? Luke who? Not to mention over half of the new testament was written by a man who hunted down the christians like animals, torturing and killing hundreds, maybe even thousands. And then one day this man gets a revelation from god? To me personally its unbelievable. That's like hitler after the holocaust saying to the jews "I got a revelation from god so now follow me!". He also said that you do not need to follow the commandments and you just need faith, when jesus himself said to keep the commandments several times.
So I hope this answers your question. You can research all this for yourself and you'll find more and it won't be on anti-christian sites or written by an anti-christian, it will be said and recorded by several christian scholars. So again I'm sorry in advance if anyone takes offense to this but if you would like the proof as to how I came to any of my conclusions ill be glad to send you a direct message. I'm not here to bash anyone on the forum. Just trying to share knowledge.
if someone were to throw all the qurans into the ocean, and then the people were to rewrite them,>> it would be the same as you say in above post.. you know if i tell you a story and you tell it to your friend and he tells it to his friend and so on, by the time that story got passed down to a few thousand people it would not be even close to the original version..
There are people who believe--rather, insist--that words spoken over 3,000 years ago holds the same meaning then as it does today. Rather laughable, actually.
We only need to look back at our own particular language over the last 50 years. How words and language was used, one needs a dictionary to understand the meaning today. A dictionary of this sort must start from a cultural understanding of the decade in which the words and associated definitions were used.
"The Devil made me do it." Taken completely out of context, our descendents a thousand years from now will probably understand this statement as being indicative that we were an extremely superstitious society, despite our technological advancement, who actually believed in the existence of a Devil.
"That's bad!" This will blow our descendents away for sure. The lexicon / dictionary will state that "bad" is the opposite of "good." Why our society should have used it to mean "really good" will be enough to cause divisions in the linguistics side of archaeology.
"Good buddy." Once a term when "everyone" was using CBs, it became a term for my same-sex companion.
"gay." "Now we don our gay apparell . . . " This line in a classic Christmas carol / melody cracks me up. Now that "gay" refers to homosexuality, I, in my perverted sense of humor, cannot stop from coming up with a mental picture of people dressing up in "drag" (another word that has changed meaning) for the Christmas holidays.
Bottom line:
The number one mistake of translators is not understanding the context and culture of the time of the writing.
The second mistake is believing in the myth that the Biblical stories represented history, and the time tables of when and where the mythological heroes and villains of the Biblical stories are equally fabricated.
The third mistake is the idea that the Biblical stories are "unique" from all other literary forms, when the opposite is completely true. The Biblical stories are of the same nature that all other contemporary literary stories were written, told, and performed.
A recent example of this is the story of Moses and Aaron challenging the priests of Pharaoh. In all of the translations of this episode, the staffs turned into snakes. However, a snake has no real place in Egyptian theology and would have not "terrorized" the populace. The snake is a Hebrew symbol. Rather, the now correct translation for "snake" is crocodile, a creature that had great significance in Egyptian religion and theology. Aaron's crocodile was so powerful that it ate all the Egyptian crocodiles.
Yet, for how many hundreds of years have we been led to believe that the staffs turned into snakes? Is it so important that the staffs were actually crocodiles rather than snakes?
Theologically, no: the bottom line was to show that Moses' god was a bigger god than all the gods of Egypt.
Literarily, yes: if we are going to tell a story, especially one that has to be translated from a different culture and/or language, then it should be as true to the original as possible.
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As far as being God's word, we have to realize the purpose for all these people (some 40 at last count, by some) for writing these stories, poems, et al down. And the last reason was to pass on some kind of revelation by a God-who-lives-upstairs. The number 1 and 2 reasons (order dependent on the reasoner) are to provide a theological ethnicity and background as well as an identifier of being a follower of a particular god.
Think about it for a moment: Would God really inspire a tome of non-historical people and events as a definitive word on what It wanted?
The underlying themes throughout the Bible have one thing in common: "we all fell down, and now God is giving us a second chance."
But the writers of the OT stories had no more clear idea of their past than we do of them today. And the NT writers are as guilty as we moderns are in believing that the OT stories held a whole lot of historical value--except as the theological values of "We're bad; God love us; We can't save ourselves from ourselves; and yet God has not abandoned us."
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'Versions?' and Translations
