Reliability of English Bible Translations

Reliability of English Bible Translations

I was recently made aware of an article questioning the reliability and accuracy of the King James Bible.  I want to point out some errors in the article itself.

"The King James version of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church of England".
Actually, 54 men were appointed to work on the Bible and 47 participated in the process.

"There were and (and still are) no original texts to translate." This is true.

"The oldest manuscripts we have were written down hundreds of years after the last Apostle died."
While this is technically true, it is an exaggeration. The apostle John died around 98 AD. The oldest manuscript fragment of the New Testament that we have today is from about 125 AD. That is less than 30 years. Now, this is a small fragment of one page and only contains about seven verses, but it demonstrates that a copy of the Gospel of John was in existence just 30 or so years after he wrote it. We have complete copies of the New Testament from  about 300 AD - Just 200 years after the death of John.
Lets compare the manuscript evidence for the New Testament with manuscript evidence for some other classical writers:

• Plato was written between 427-327 BC and the oldest copy we have is from about 900 AD - that is about 1200 years and we only have 7 copies.
• Aristotle was written between 384-322 BC and the oldest copy is from 1100 AD - that is 1400 years and we only have 49 copies.
• Pliny was written between 61-113 AD and the oldest copy is from 850 AD - that is 750 years and we only have 7 copies.

No one disputes the accuracy or validity of these translations - why should we dispute the accuracy of the New Testament translations with so much more manuscript evidence, and with much less time separation between originals and copies.

"There are over 8,000 of these old manuscripts, with no two alike".
One place I checked put the number of New Testament manuscripts at about 5,600. The comment, "with no two alike" is exaggerated and misleading. Because there was no printing press before the 1500's, all manuscripts had to be copied by hand. Since the manuscripts were copied by hand by fallible human beings, one would expect that mistakes, or even intentional changes, would occur. What is amazing, on the contrary, is the overwhelming agreement and consistency among all those thousands of manuscripts. The differences are very minor. Furthermore, no central Christian doctrine is in dispute because of textual differences among manuscripts.

"The King James translators used none of these, anyway. Instead, they edited previous translations to create a version their King and Parliament would approve."
While it is true that the King James version was considered a "revision" of earlier English translations, but the 47 scholars did, in fact, translate from the original Greek language. As with other more modern "revisions" such as the New King James Bible, the original King James was actually a "translation and revision". In fact, the original title of the first edition was, "THE HOLY BIBLE, Containing the Old Testament, AND THE NEW: Newly Translated out of the Original tongues: & with the former Translations diligently compared and revised, by his Majesties special Commandment".

So,  21st Century Christians believe that the "Word of God" is a book translated from many early  copies of original Greek manuscripts that, despite a few flaws, are overwhelmingly in agreement with each other; and translated in the 17th century, and again in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries by scholars using the latest scientific tools.

That IS faith, based on strong scientific and historical evidence.

See also:

Wikipedia article

Manuscript Evidence

New Testament Manuscripts

Jesus' Sudden Fame

I began reading the gospel of Mark today, and I was struck by the idea that this gospel portrays Jesus as the common people of the day would have experienced him. The gospel starts abruptly with a description of John the Baptist and then Jesus is suddenly introduced without any historical background or context. This is exactly how most people of that time would have come to know about him. They would not have known anything about him except that he suddenly appeared on the scene as a traveling teacher. 

The account advances quickly with brief descriptions of several events in the early period of Jesus' work, just as the common person of the day would have heard about him. Most people did not follow him constantly, hanging on every word and every event. Most would have heard little snippets of information as news about him spread person to person. 

I was also struck by the fact that two almost opposite aspects of Jesus' personality are described immediately - power and compassion. The people noticed that Jesus seemed to speak with more authority than the other teachers of the time, and that his words were accompanied with miraculous signs. On the other hand, Jesus showed great compassion to Peter's mother-in-law, who had fallen ill, as well as to the the leper who came to him for help. It is difficult for a human being to successfully combine these two traits in a balanced life, but the combination is part of the nature of God. 

Finally, right from the start the gospel records the desire of Jesus to get away privately by himself to commune with and pray to God. Just as in our busy lives, however, Jesus soon found it difficult to accomplish this because others were constantly seeking him out. 

It is my prayer that we will be able to find, with the help of the Holy Spirit,  the right balance in our lives of power, compassion, and reflection.