Saturday, September 12, 2009

Reliable #4

In a my reply to a comment at the first accusation, i said that this post will deal with accuracy with copying the biblical texts.

Accusation – The Bible has been deliberately changed.

Problem 1 – Evidence – There isn’t any. If there is... please show.

Problem 2 – Motives – They weren’t making copies of Dolly or Cleo. They believed that the job they were doing was of HUGE importance. They believed that they were copying the word of God. What motive would they have to change it, or how would one rouge scribe get away with it amongst others with such a high calling?

Problem 3 – Accuracy - Dealing with the above problem, they took great pains to make sure that they got it right.

Each manuscript was copied by hand, Hebrew/Greek letter for letter. No singular letter could be copied by memory and each page was meticulously checked. Each line of the copy was checked by the individual letter. If the middle, start and end letters of any particular line didn't match the original then the document was destroyed, wasting hours of work (another reason not to change it!).

With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we see the accuracy that was maintained through (at least) the first millennium. They were 99.7% accurate when compared to the other copies that were in existence.

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