Lesson 6
How The Bible Came To Us
Objective:
| Directions: Fill in the blanks and write as indicated throughout the lesson. |
Even if the Bible started out as a revelation from God, how can we know what we have is that same revelation?
In Lesson 5 we studied evidence that God guided the original writers of scripture. They had knowledge un-aided human beings could not have had and spoke prophecies only divine power could have known hundreds of years in advance. But even if the original writings were revealed from God, how do we know our Bibles today are accurate representations of what the scriptures originally said? To answer this question, we must first learn the method by which the original writers received their information and then how that was passed down to us.
Look at the chart below and try to guess what each step means. A completed chart will be given at the end of the lesson.
Note that this step occurs before the message was written. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Note the arrows and that some have arrows from two places. Why? |
|
What was the nature of revelation to Bible writers?
Did the Bible writers get off in the desert to meditate and then, feeling lonely, attribute what they said to God? Did God reveal some general ideas to them and let them express these ideas in their own words? Their writing styles do differ. Or did God dictate to each of them word for word what they were to say?
The writers of the Bible tell us about the manner in which they received their message. They did not think up what they would say on their own. This approach would not explain the Bible’s accurate prophecies and scientific foreknowledge.
The writers explain that revelations came in different ways. Moses says the hand of God first wrote the ten commandments (Exodus 32:6) and God dictated the law to Moses who wrote it down exactly as God spoke it. Daniel says he received much of his revelation by dreams and by visits of angels. Peter tells of a vision through which he once received a revelation from God (Acts 11:4-10). (WBK 2)
Three passages in the New Testament especially help us understand the process of revelation. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all scripture is "inspired by God" or is "God-breathed." The word "scripture" here means those writings that Jews and Christians considered to be their holy books. These scriptures, Paul writes, were "breathed-out" by God--that is, they originated with Him. (WBK 3a)
Peter gives a similar thought in 2 Peter 1:21 when he says, "For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Revelation, says Peter, originated in the mind of God who sent the Holy Spirit to men as the agent to carry them along so they would write exactly as God wanted. (WBK 3b)
A third passage about the nature of inspiration is 1 Corinthians 2:13: "this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words." Paul asserts that the very words used in scripture came from the Spirit. Is it reasonable that God would give humans a revelation they must have to be saved but give His agents only a general idea to record as they chose, thus leaving room for mistakes? Does it not seem more likely that if God is going to reveal He would protect the very words of the revelation so they would be precisely what He wanted them to be. This is exactly what Paul means--"spiritual truths in spiritual words." (WBK 3c)
So, the Holy Spirit guided the writers of the Bible. While using their own language and style of writing, and sometimes even using what they knew by their own observation and experience, He could weave all of this into a book of the Bible so that the final product was exactly as He wanted it to be. The writers often were led to write predictions of which they personally knew nothing or to provide new information God wanted revealed. The final product was "inspired," "God-breathed," in words the Spirit taught.
How, then, do we account for differences in the writing styles in Bible books?
It is true that John, a fisherman, uses simple words and sentences while Paul, a scholar, writes with more technical words and in very long sentences. Luke, a physician, uses medical terms. If the very words are of God, why such differences?
The answer is not difficult. Just as the Holy Spirit would naturally use the native language of the person to whom He is revealing a message, He is also quite capable of using that person’s own writing style. A speech-writer today can mimic the style of different persons for whom he prepares speeches. Is it so strange that the Holy Spirit can guide men in their writing and still allow them to use their own style and vocabulary?
Sometimes God dictated the message to the writer who simply recorded it. This was the case with Moses on Mt. Sinai and with John as Jesus dictated letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. On other occasions, the Holy Spirit let men use what they knew from their own knowledge or observation. Luke says he "investigated" to write the gospel of Luke (Luke 1:3) and Luke also was the travelling companion of Paul on many of his journeys and so knew first-hand of his shipwreck and other events.
Whichever method the Holy Spirit was using, however, whether dictation or using information a person had by natural means, He was guiding, directing, leading, "carrying along" so that the final product was precisely what God wanted--"spiritual truths in spiritual words." God allowed no place for mistake or error in the revelation process. So we can say that the scriptures, as originally written, are inerrant. (WBK 3d)
How does this relate to the chart?
What the writers of the scriptures inscribed on their papyrus or parchment is called the "autograph." This original was "God-breathed." On our chart, then, the first two steps are: (1) God Reveals and (2) Inspired Man Records. These two statements summarize what we have learned so far about how the scriptures have come to us.
| Directions: Complete the first two sentences in the blanks provided in the chart in your workbook. (WBK 1-1,2) |
What happened to the original manuscripts?
Today, we have none of the original manuscripts, autographs, actually written by Moses, Isaiah, Matthew, Paul or any of the other thirty-six authors of Bible books. But, if that is the case, how do we know what they wrote? These original manuscripts, in Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New, were frequently copied while they were still available. In fact, highly trained scribes made hundreds of copies. These scribes worked very hard to make their copies exact and, in the vast majority of cases, their copies was precisely the same as the original. In rare cases, however, they might switch two words, spell a word differently, skip a line, or write something like "King Herod" instead of "Herod the King." In a few cases, someone who possessed a manuscript wrote something in the margin for his own use and the person who used this copy as a basis for his copying would not know whether this note was extra or the correction of a mistake. He might, then, include in the text of his copy something that was only a note in the margin. (WBK 4)
These copies of the scriptures were treasured highly and guarded carefully. Since the materials on which these manuscripts were made, however, were subject to deterioration or loss, earlier ones would disappear from use to be replaced by later copies.
So Step 3 on the drawing is Man Copies. Not "inspired" man copies because these copies were the work of well-trained people but not of those "carried along by the Holy Spirit" as had been the original writers.
| Directions: Write this statement in the appropriate blank in the chart in your workbook. (WBK 1-3) |
How accurate were the copies?
Recent developments have shown just how carefully the copying was done. Prior to 1947, the earliest copy of the book of Isaiah, for example, was dated about 900 A.D., some sixteen hundred years after the original was written. How like the original were copies separated by so many years? With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was possible to give an answer. This find included a copy of most of the book of Isaiah from about 125 B.C., a thousand years closer to its original than the 900 A.D. manuscript. What would scholars find? The answer is that this manuscript had "no significant differences" from the one that was a thousand years later. The copyists were, indeed, very careful. (WBK 5)
During the centuries following the writing of the New Testament, copies were made by the thousands--copies of entire books, copies of shorter passages, quotations from scripture in commentaries and other books. Translations were even made into other languages. In fact, we now have more than 5,000 hand-copied portions of the Greek New Testament. Fragments go back as early as 130 A.D. and complete collections of both the Old and New Testaments date to as early as 350 A.D. In addition to these manuscripts in the original languages, there are nearly 20,000 portions from early translations into Latin, Ethiopic, Slavic, Armenian and other languages which can be used to study what the original language from which these were translated had said. (WBK 6)
Do all of these match exactly?
No, there are some variations. Since, however, there are a great number of copies, textual specialists compare the many texts and, by this process, reconstruct exactly what the original said. To over-simplify a bit, think of the process like this. If I were to dictate a paragraph to a class for them to write down and then tore up the text, could we reconstruct it from the student copies? A few errors would likely creep in. Some student would miss a word, another would misspell a word, and maybe another would add a word. If, however, there were thirty in the class and they compared what each had written, it would not be difficult to determine exactly how my copy was worded. On a given word or sentence, twenty-eight might have it in one way and two would differ. By this comparison, the original could be readily re-constructed.
Textual critics work in a similar fashion. They compare the copies and over the past century, many more manuscripts have become available. Thus, textual reconstruction has become very precise. Today, the best textual authorities testify that, for all practical purposes, there are no remaining textual variants of significance. While a few questions do remain on certain verses, these do not affect the essential message of scripture. Sir Frederic Kenyon, for example, one of the great authorities in New Testament textual criticism, says, "No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading." (WBK 7)
Actually, this process of textual criticism gives us more assurance that we have the original text than if we had only one manuscript purporting to be the original. If we had only one, someone might have put a change in it or have substituted a different manuscript for it. We would have no way to check. As it is, we have hundreds and, for some sections, thousands of copies from earlier years. Because of these, no one can make a change in only one or two manuscripts and pass it off as the original. God used a very effective means of preservation.
Step 4 on our diagram, then, is Man Compiles. Those who are language and textual specialists, take the many copies and compile them back into a text that is, for all practical purposes exactly the same as the original.
| Directions: Write "Man Compiles" in the proper blank in the chart in your workbook. (WBK 1-4) |
But what about translations? Aren’t these taking us farther and farther from the original manuscripts?
The great number of different translations and versions can, indeed, be confusing. While all the standard ones translate the original text in ways that are very similar, they do have some differences.
The first point to be made is that each translation is not made from the translation which just preceded it. All good translations and revisions of previous translations look back to the original text put together by the textual critics (compilers). Thus, the fortieth translation in a language is not necessarily further from the original than is the first or second one in that language. In your chart, all the translations have an arrow back to the original text, but some have arrows to other translations. This is to show that some translations use previous translations as well as the original text. (WBK 8)
Since some of the more recent translations, in fact, have had the advantage of a text put together with more discoveries of copies, they have the potential of being even closer to the original than were earlier ones.
There are really three tests for a translation: accuracy, readability, and acceptability. Obviously the most important criterion in judging a translation is its accuracy, its faithfulness to the original text. Some translators take as their first priority to produce the closest wording they can to what was expressed in the original. Yet, they must balance that with the second criterion: readability. A translation as nearly as possible "word for word" would be very difficult to read in the translated language because of differences between the two languages. So, the translators must balance these two against each other.
The American Standard Version, for example, is said to be a precise translation but the words do not flow as smoothly as in the NIV. But the NIV achieves its ease of reading by providing a somewhat "looser" translation.
Acceptance is also an important criterion. While lesser-known translations may sometimes be helpful in private study, they are usually not very good to use in teaching those who may not be familiar with that translation. (WBK 9)
Remember this, then, about translations. (1) Any standard English translation represents the original meaning well enough for us to learn what to do to be saved. (2) Those who study the translations carefully can help us know the strengths and weaknesses of a translation. (3) For careful study of a particular passage, it is very helpful to compare translations and to study specific words in detail. (4) With computer software, it is possible even for those who do not know the original languages to determine the word from which something is translated and gather information about that word. (5) The number of translations should not be thought of as something moving us farther from the original. (WBK 10a-e)
Step 5 on our chart, then, is Man Translates.
| Directions: Write "Man Translates" in the last blank in the chart in your workbook. (WBK 1-5) |
We should select the translation we will use carefully and consult with those who have studied their strengths and weaknesses. We should also be aware that the headings and notes in all translations are from uninspired writers and will sometimes lean toward that person’s particular theological bent. As to the text itself, however, we can have confidence that any of the widely accepted translations presents the essential message of the original.
Note that this step occurs before the message was written. |
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
Note the arrows and that some have arrows from two places. Do you remember why? |
|
|
| ©1999 Oklahoma Christian University |