I am dumfounded that you would use the same eronious statement to discredit the KJV as athiest, and ultra liberals do.
Quote: "There are differences in manuscripts mostly because of copyists errors, as for thousands of years copies of the bible were made by hand"
My dear brother, I pray you not be dumbfounded. I am not making the argument of an atheist. Quite far from, I am as serious as they come when it comes to a jealousy for the gospel's sake and the glory of God. Reading over part of Acts and the Psalms today I was ready to burst into tears over lunch at work while I just felt so moved inside or a longing for the church to be as glorious as it once was.
The simple matter of fact is that for the New Testament there are over 5,000 different Greek manuscripts, ranging from as early as the second century up until shortly after the invention of the modern printing press. I am less familiar with the Old Testament texts, however, to my knowledge there are about 2,000 Hebrew/Aramaic manuscripts that make up the Old Testament. Of these manuscripts, there are not any two that ever agree exactly with another.
This is no atheistic argument. This is a simple matter of scholarly fact. Good, God-fearing, conservative, fundamental, evangelical, born-again, spirit-filled scholarship believes all this.
FACT one The bible as we know it has not been around for "thousands of years", only 2 thousand.
Well, this would make it "thousands" of years then. Not to mention the Old Testament, which starting with the books of the Law is roughly another thousand years old.
And then to follow that statement up with the bold faced lie.
Quote: "It's not so much that the modern versions leave parts of things out, but rather, the manuscripts they base their translations on are ever-so-slightly different than one used by the KJV."THERE IS NOTHING EVER-SO-SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TO THE "MAJOR" ALTERATIONS UNDERTAKEN IN MOST NEWER VERSIONS.
Brother, if I am mistaken, please state so. I am humble and willing to learn. You don't need to be so inflamatory. And even if you are right, being ugly for the sake of the truth makes you just as wrong as a false prophet.
If you ever get a chance to learn Greek, grab a critical edition of the Greek NT, such as NAS27 or USB4. These are Greek texts used by scholars across the world, conservative and liberal. In these Greek texts, ample footnotes are provided of most every variant from most Greek manuscripts, including quotes as they appear in the early church fathers. It will tell not only what the Greek variants are, but which manuscripts support which variants, and what the dates of those manuscripts are, and where those manuscripts were generally located.
This way, the translator is entirely FREE to choose if they want to go with the text as rendered by the NAS27/UBS4 scholars. Or if they want to, they can disagree with the scholars who compiled this Greek manuscript, and choose another variant that they believe is most likely closest to the original.
For the fact of the matter is, copyist errors did enter into the copying process. That is why we have thousands of manuscripts that are not in full agreement in every place. Some of these differences are bigger in some places than others. But overall, the copyist errors would be a small percentage of the actual NT text (save for the so-called 'Western' text, which was more of an early NT paraphrase, and has about an additional 10% more Greek words in the book of Acts).
Most variants can be explained simply as misspellings, or switching word order around, or sometimes copying the wrong part of a passage (e.g. looking at the wrong sentence.) An even smaller number of variants can be explained as an attempt by the copyist to "soften" a "hard" saying. Very few of the variants can be explained as many conspiracy theorists would attempt. These things, if you have a basic working knowledge of Greek, are easier to understand.
The fact of the matter is that the major modern translations (e.g. NASB, NIV, NKJV, NRSV) are not trying to leave things out as somehow to destroy the Christian faith or minimize whatever doctrine some conspiracy theorist might be proporting. It is simply that they have based their translations on slightly different Greek manuscripts than that of the KJV. For some of the ancient manuscripts that have been discovered and analyzed since the time of the KJV translation are deemed by most modern scholars, conservative and liberal alike, to be far more accurate. These manuscripts do not always contain all the exact same wording as the text that served as the basis of the KJV in all the same places.
In essence, one could argue that from the perspective of modern scholarship, conservative and liberal, that many of these "disputed" sections of scriptures were actually LATER additions by various copyists. So, instead of modern translations using a Greek text that is guilty of "taking away" what was originally there, it could be said the texts that were generally later and served the basis of the KJV, were guilty of "adding" something that was originally not there.
I would encourage the original poster to this thread to perhaps investigate this matter for yourself. I would suggest not leaning too heavily on what you find on the internet to form the basis of your conclusions though. Ultimately the only real way you will ever be able to know for yourself is to come to a basic working knowledge of NT Greek. For without it, you will never be able to analyze the original Greek manuscripts for yourself, and will always have to take somebody else's word for it.
I thought this book that I used in seminary was a pretty good introduction to the subject. It assumes some knowledge of Greek to be able to read all of it, but, for the most part, is understandable without:
New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide, by David Alan Black.
