The Bible: Has It Been Translated Correctly?

[b]The Bible: Has It Been Translated Correctly?[/b]
[i]by Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. Norman Geisler[/i]

[b]Dr. John [b]Ankerberg:[/b][/b] What evidence does the Bible offer that it comes from Almighty God? Dr. Norman Geisler presents the evidence that shows that fact. The question we want to address today is this: "How Do We Know That the Bible Has Been Translated Correctly?" What about all the modern translations? As you will hear, we think some of the new translations are very bad; some of them are good; and some of them are better. Which are which? I thought you might be interested. Listen:

[b]Dr. Norman [b]Geisler:[/b][/b] The Bible: Is it translated correctly? What about modern translations? Is it translated correctly? Well, basically, the answer to that is, there are many, many translations of the Bible. Some of them are bad; some of them are good; and some of them are better.

First of all, let’s take a look at some of the translations. The translations of the Bible actually go back hundreds and hundreds of years in English–back to the 700s. We’ve listed over 1200 translations of the Bible into English alone since 700 in our book, General Introduction to the Bible. So we have a lot of translations. But some of the main ones are the King James, and the American Standard Version, and the Revised Standard Version, and the New International Version, and the New King James. I think what we’re all asking ourselves is, of all of the numerous Bibles out there, numerous translations, are any of them really bad, really dangerous? Are any of them really good? And what about the ones in between?

First of all, let’s talk about the bad ones. I’ll mention just one here. Some of the cults have made their own translations of the Bible. The New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witness cult is a bad translation. Take, for example, John 1:1. They translate it: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was a god." That’s a bad translation. As any good Greek scholar can tell you that when the definite article is not used, it’s referring to the nature rather than the individuality of it and it should be translated: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was of the very nature of God." In fact, Jesus is called God many times in the New Testament. Hebrews 1:8 uses the definite article, saying to the Son, "You are God."

So that’s a bad translation. They tend to distort the verses on the immortality of the soul, the Deity of Christ, and a number of others. So stay away from translations like that.

On the other hand, I would say most translations of the Bible are good. And by "good" I mean, all the essential doctrines, all the fundamental doctrines, all major and minor doctrines come through correctly in the translation. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s the King James, which I’ll say more about in a moment, which is archaic and the language is outdated, right on up to the NIV, the New International Version–none of them deny the Deity of Christ. None of them deny the substitutionary atonement or the bodily resurrection, or any of the fundamentals of the faith.

So they’re all good in that sense. Now, some of them are better than others. For example, I personally believe that the King James is archaic–it’s out of date. The words don’t even have those meanings anymore. For example, anyone who thinks the King James was let down on a string from heaven–it was good enough for Paul and it’s good enough for them–I’d like to give a quiz to. What does, "He that letteth will now let" mean (2 Thess. 2:7)? It means "hinder." See, the word "let" which means "permit" today meant just the opposite in 1611. So if you’re reading the original King James, you’re getting the wrong meaning because you’re getting a meaning that is just the reverse of what it meant in 1611.

Or try this one: "The superfluity of naughtiness" in James 1:21. What does that mean? You don’t have the foggiest idea. It means, "The overflowing of wickedness."

Or what does this mean: "We do you to wit of the grace of God" (2 Cor. 8:1). We do you to wit? We just don’t talk that way anymore. It means "We want you to know of the grace of God."

Or, "Quit ye like men." What are they quitting about? Actually it means, "Be strong like men" (2 Cor. 16:13).

So here we have verses that people don’t even know what they mean and they say this is the Bible to be used. It’s a good Bible; it was very good in its day. It lasted for a long time–hundreds of years. It was beautifully translated, has beautiful poetry and rhythm to it. But it’s archaic and needs to be retranslated. So we move to what I would call the better translations of the Bible. The better translations of the Bible in my opinion fall into two classes: those that are more literal and those that are more literary.

Those that are more literal would be like the New American Standard Bible. I personally believe that is probably the best literal translation of the Bible. It was done by conservative scholars. It was done by a group of scholars, not just one person. It gives you the literal meaning of the original language. I believe it is the best study Bible. If you want to know accurately what the original said, get yourself a New American Standard Study Bible, and start studying it.

On the other end of the spectrum, those Bibles that are translated by conservative scholars and a group of scholars that are more literary. Anyone who studies the NASB knows that it’s literal but it’s kind of wooden. It doesn’t flow well. It’s not very memorizable; whereas, the New International Version is much more literary and done by all good scholars, all basic doctrines are the same. And by the way, those who say that the NIV left out certain verses on the blood, you know, this simply isn’t true. What they’re doing is, they’re going by the earlier and better manuscripts. In the same chapter that they supposedly left out a verse on the blood, there’s another verse on the blood in that same chapter. And if they were trying to get the verses on the blood out, they would have taken them all out. That’s not the point. The point is, after 1840–from 1840 and following–we discovered a lot of earlier manuscripts. When the King James Bible was translated in 1611, we had no manuscripts of the Bible that went back into the second, third, fourth, or fifth, even the sixth century. All of the manuscripts were very late. Just Beza, around 550, was used a little bit in the King James and that was the earliest manuscript that was even used. From 1840 and following we found Vaticanus manuscript around 325 A.D., Sinaiticus 350; Chester Beatty Papyri 250 B.C.; Bodmer papyri 200; John Ryland fragment from the first quarter of the second century–maybe as early as 114 A.D.

And so what they did, these earlier manuscripts had a little different wording and different verses in certain places than others. Classic example. 1 John 5:7 says, "There are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are One."

The reason it’s important to take a look at these earlier manuscripts is because they were closer to the original. If your manuscript comes from 1000 A.D. and the book was written on the time of Christ, then you’ve got a thousand-year gap between it and you can’t be sure how accurately it was copied. But if you have a manuscript from 200 A.D. and 300 and 400, then you’re closer to the original. And these earlier manuscripts give us some different readings on certain verses. For example, 1 John 5:7: "There are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are One." You say, "That’s a great verse on the Trinity. It’s right in the King James." But if you look in the NIV, you won’t find the verse there at all. They take part of one verse and make another verse, but you won’t find what I just quoted there.

You say, "Why did they cut that verse on the Trinity out of the Bible?!"

Because, when Erasmus did his Greek Testament in the 16th century, there was not a single Greek manuscript that had that verse in. In fact, he challenged anyone of his day because they said, "You’re taking the Trinity out of the Bible."

He said, "I’m not taking the Trinity out of the Bible!" Matthew 28:20 is still there: "Baptize in the name"–singular–"of Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Matthew 3:16 is still there, Father speaking from Heaven. Holy Spirit’s descending. Christ is being baptized. We’ve got all kinds of verses on the Trinity.

"Well, why did you not put that verse in your Bible, then, Erasmus?"

He said, "Because I can’t find a single Greek manuscript with it in. And if you can find one, I’ll put it in."

So a few days later they came back and said, "Here’s one." The ink was still wet on it, and Erasmus was forced to put it in his Greek Testament. That became the basis ultimately, the Textus Receptus, the Received Text, from which the King James was based and it got in the Bible.

Then from 1840 and following, when scholars discovered that we don’t have that in any Bible in the second century, third century, fourth century, fifth century–that it was not in any of the early Bibles at all, they said, "Look, we’ve got to be honest and say that was a little gloss, a little note written in the margin of some Bible that some later scribe incorporated into the text and it really wasn’t in the original. We’ve got to be faithful to the original." And it was taken out.

Another point that’s very important is, when they were making up the Creeds and debating the Deity of Christ and the Trinity, this verse, 1 John 5:7, was never quoted. If it had been there in the original Bible and had been in the manuscripts of their day, they surely would have quoted an important verse like this.

[b]Ankerberg:[/b] All right, we’ve seen that one example of a bad translation of the Bible is the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s bad because the translators were not honest in translating the words. They inserted their own ideas into the text rather than allowing the text to accurately convey the meaning of the biblical writers. Second, we have talked about the good translations. These translations convey all major and minor doctrines of the Bible correctly. Next, what should you keep in mind when you are looking to purchase a translation of the Bible?

[b]Geisler:[/b] We’ve got really three kinds of translations–the bad ones like the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ that are distorting the essential truths; good ones where all the essential truths are there, but better ones. And I would think that "better ones" would include the New American Standard Bible, but it’s very literal; the New International Version, which is more literary; and then there’s some that are kind of halfway in between, that improve on the King James and are literary but still literal–that would be the New King James Version of the Bible. It still has the rhythm and cadence of the old King James but it got rid of the archaisms like "He that letteth will now let" and "Quit ye like men" and so forth and then updated it in modern language, but it’s not very much of a paraphrase or interpretive.

Here’s what you have to keep in mind when you’re looking at translations of the Bible. Who are the people that translated it? Were they biased? Now, obviously the people who translated the Revised Standard Version were biased. These were liberal scholars and when they came to Isaiah 7:14, they said, "Young maiden" instead of "virgin." Well, it had to refer to virgin because the verse is quoted in Matthew 1:21ff. It says, "A virgin shall conceive." So it’s a bad translation and it comes out of the bias of the particular translators. Whereas, the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version are not done by biased liberal scholars. And another important thing about these translations is they’re done by a committee of several scholars, not just one person ultimately like say, for example, the Living Bible that was done by Ken Taylor. Fine Christian, fine believer, doing it for his children, paraphrased it. But it’s not a literal translation, it’s a paraphrase and often it’s a devotional paraphrase and people get blessed by it. But it’s one person and it’s a paraphrase.

If you want a more accurate Bible, you need to get a Bible where a committee of people [translated it] and it’s not really a paraphrase but is a translation, and that would be Bibles like the New International Version and the New King James Version of the Bible. But again, let me emphasize, all of the translations are good. We’re not talking about bad versus good, we’re talking about good versus better. Because all the essential truths are there. They haven’t been distorted. And you can pick up any of these translations apart from the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ and a few other cultic translations and all of the essential truths of the Gospel are present.

[b]Ankerberg:[/b] Now, I asked Dr. Geisler to quickly summarize the evidence that proves the Bible came from God.

[b]Geisler:[/b] Let me put this thing in focus. We’ve been talking in this whole series about the Bible from God to us, a chain reaching from God right down to the Bible in our hands. The first link in the chain is, who wrote it? Inspiration.

The second link in the chain is really transmission. Has it been transmitted down the centuries correctly. And we saw that the original was written by men of God, inspired by God. We show that it has been copied accurately down through the years.

The third link is canonization. Which books belong in it? How did we get these 66 books? Now, once you get it inspired, transmitted accurately, collected correctly, then the next and final link is translations into modern language. And we must remember that all these translations are based on the same Bible, the same Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament. The question is, if you put it French, if you put it in German, if you put it in English, you put it literally in English, you put it in a paraphrase in English–that’s the same Bible. It’s just different renderings of the same Bible–some more literary, some more literal. But we’re not talking about different Bibles. We’re talking about the same Bible based on the same Hebrew and Greek that brings the same truths across to us in different ways of stating it.

[b]Ankerberg:[/b] Now, what about the so-called errors in the Bible? Well, there is an illustration that Dr. Geisler gave to us which I asked him to repeat that will help you understand copyists’ errors. We do not believe there are any errors in the original manuscripts. Today, we believe we have accurate copies that have come down to us conveying what the biblical writers wrote. Now, in some of those copies we notice mistakes were made by the copyists. But because we have so many thousands of manuscripts that have come down to us, we know where the mistakes were made and what should have been written. Dr. Geisler presents the evidence for this fact. Listen:

[b]Geisler:[/b] Let me return to an illustration we used several programs ago to get the point across here. Let’s take a look at the visual:

#OU HAVE WON $10 MILLION

Y#U HAVE WON $10 MILLION

YO# HAVE WON $10 MILLION

YOU #AVE WON $10 MILLION

Now, notice the first one. It’s pretty clear it means you have won $10 million, even though there’s an error in the first letter. And the second line, there’s an error in the second letter. But they all say the same thing, even though each one has an error in a different point.

Now, a lot of people are concerned about the so-called errors in the translations–why does this one put it that way and the other one put it another way? Because you can get the same meaning across even though there are minor errors in translation. There is no one that wouldn’t pick up their $10 million if they got that telegram or got that message saying that they’ve won 10 million dollars. And you shouldn’t put your Bible away because you’re afraid that there are little errors in the translation. One hundred percent of the message comes through even though there are minor errors in the translation. Just like 100 percent of the message in this visual comes through. You look at that and 100 percent of that message—You have won $10 million—and that’s a big message that came through even though there’s an error there. Likewise, the minor errors in translation don’t obscure getting 100 percent of the message that God loves you, Christ died for you, rose from the dead, and you can be saved just by believing in Him and trusting in Him. That’s the message of the Bible. It comes through clearly in almost all of the major translations of the Bible.

Another point we should keep in mind is that we have 5,686 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and maybe 10,000 of the Hebrew Old Testament in fragments and complete manuscripts. That’s a neat thing, you know. We don’t have the originals but the fact that we don’t have the originals doesn’t really hurt anything. Number one, if we had the originals, somebody probably would be worshipping it. Remember the snake in the wilderness that was put on the pole. They were later worshipping it.

Number two, if we had the original, somebody has to be custodian, right? They could tamper with it. But if you don’t have any one original in the custodianship of any one group, and that group would claim to be the true Church, of course because they have the original, then you have it spread all over the world. Some of it in Russia, some in England, some in the United States. There’s no way that anyone can tamper with all the copies. God has actually preserved His originals in the copies and He has preserved it from the possibility of worship and He has preserved it from the possibility of distortion.

[b]Ankerberg:[/b] Now, after hearing all of this evidence proving the accuracy of the Bible, how should this impact you? How should you read and live your life in relationship to the Bible’s teachings? Dr. Geisler explains.

[b]Geisler:[/b] Let me kind of summarize this whole thing. This book in our hand can be trusted because originally God inspired the writings that were given through Apostles and the Prophets who were given miracles to prove that they were men of God who made supernatural predictions. Jesus confirmed it to be the Word of God. Archaeology has confirmed it. The unity of the Bible. And furthermore, it has been so accurately transmitted down through the ages that whereas Homer’s Iliad is only 95 percent accurate and the Mahabharata 90 percent accurate, this has been 99.9 percent accurately copied. And the .1 doesn’t affect any doctrine, any major teaching of the Bible. The translations of the Bible are good, so when you pick up this Bible, you’ve got the Word of God, confirmed by acts of God, confirmed by the Son of God, accurately transmitted, and you have the very voice of God in your language speaking to you and to me.

Now, that puts the burden on us. If this is the Word of God and we can pick it up and read it, then we are obligated to obey its message. We are obligated to live by this book. The Bible, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. If you need something that you can count on, remember the words of Peter when he said to Jesus, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

Thanks Nile for sharing that. I agree with Dr. Norman Geisler.

I'm still doing research on this issue...I keep finding things that seem to disprove the last thing I learned.

[url=http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:QoB8sz0M4OoJ:www.watch.pair.com/erasmus.html+defense+of+textus+receptus&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a]In Defense of Erasmus[/url]:

Question #4

Wasn't Erasmus' Greek text "hastily prepared" and "fraught with errors?"

The main complaint against Erasmus' Greek text is that it was prepared "hastily" and that he had only a few late manuscripts to work with. Again, these statements need to be clarified. His first edition was done hastily, but not because Erasmus was careless in his work, but because he had to meet the deadline established by his publisher. (1) He finished the work in about a year, which is a testament to his vast scholarship in that he was able to complete such a project in so short a time.

If Erasmus' first Greek edition was done in haste, the four later editions were not! Erasmus spent the rest of his life (20 years) editing, revising and correcting that "hastily done" first edition. Besides, most first editions have printer's errors and mistakes in them that are corrected in later editions. The errors in Erasmus' first edition were of a minor nature anyway. (2)

Yet on his "errors," Erasmus wrote "I did my best with the New Testament, but it provoked endless quarrels. Edward Lee (Archbishop of York) pretended to have discovered 300 errors. They appointed a commission, which professed to have found bushels of them. Every dinner table rang with the blunders of Erasmus. I required particulars and could not have them." (3)

The point is the first edition may have been somewhat careless, but so what? Nobody used that first edition for any translation purposes and nothing was translated from that first edition. Luther used a corrected and improved second edition to translate his German New Testament, not the first. Let the enemies of the AV name one translation of any importance that was based solely on the first edition of Erasmus.

The Stephanus text, translated by Robert Estienne (Stephanus), third edition, which is part of the TR/AV stream, was translated from Erasmus' 4th and 5h editions, not the first.

Theodore Beza produced 9 editions of the Greek New Testament between 1565 and 1604. The most important are the 1565, 1582, 1588-9 and 1598 editions. Beza's texts differ little from Stephanus' 4th edition of 1551. The AV translators made large use of Beza's editions 1588-9 and 1598. In 1624, the Elzevir brothers published a text based on Beza's 1565 edition. (4)

We thus agree with Dean Burgon, who says, "to describe the haste with which Erasmus produced the first published edition of the NT, to make sport about the copies which he employed, all this kind of thing is the preceding of one who seeks to mislead his readers to throw dust in their eyes, to divert their attention from the problems actually before them." (5) The AV is not affected by that first edition at all. To whine about the first edition and then try to somehow tie the AV in with it is dishonest scholarship and a smokescreen in an attempt to obscure the facts.

(I know this is a lot to read, but I find it very valuable.)

Question #14

Why did Erasmus insert I John 5:7,8 into his text? Is there sufficient manuscript evidence to support it?

Yes, there is overwhelming evidence for it. We may say indeed that if anyone doubts whether I John 5:7,8 belongs in Scripture, thy are wholly ignorant of the textual support in favor of it. First John 5:7,8 is an integral part of Scripture.

The earliest references to it would be Tertullian (160-230), Cyprian (200-258), Priscillian (d. 385), Cassiodorus (480-570), Augustine (5th century), Athanasius (4th century) and Jerome (4th century). (1) It appears in the Vulgate. (2) It also appears in Manuscript 61 and Codex Ravianus. Stephanus found it in 9 of his 16 manuscripts. (3)

Its attack and deletion from some manuscripts no doubt arises from the heresies in the early church, especially Arians. Those who oppose the inclusion of I John 5:7 are supporting the Unitarians and Jehovah Witnesses while ignoring the overwhelming mass of manuscript evidence.

Erasmus' role in the debate over these verses had been distorted by enemies of the AV. The standard position that liberals assume reads something as follows, given by AV-critic James White:

"When the first edition of Erasmus' work came out in 1516 . . . (I John 5:7,8) was not in the text for a very simple reason: it was not found in any Greek manuscript of I John that Erasmus had examined. Instead, the phrase was found only in the Latin Vulgate. Erasmus rightly did not include it in the first or second editions. The note in the Annotations simply said, 'In the Greek codex I find only this about the threefold testimony: 'because there are three witnesses, spirit, water and blood.' ' His reliance upon the Greek manuscripts caused quite a stir . . . Since Erasmus had promised, in his response to Edward Lee, to include the passage should a Greek manuscript be found that contained it, he was constrained to insert the phrase in the third edition when presented with an Irish manuscript that contained the disputed phrase." (4)

This is furthered by Stewart Custer of Bob Jones University:

"Now Erasmus made a rash promise. He said, 'If you can show me a Greek manuscript that has the text in it, I will print it there' . . . They went back and summoned their scribes and got them to translate the Latin Vulgate into Greek and put that verse in. (It) came right back to him. The ink was hardly dry on the manuscript . . . those two manuscripts are 61 . . . the date is 16th century, the time of Erasmus. The other one is 629 . . . Those are the only two manuscripts out of those 5000 that have verse 7 in it . . . Told him frankly that if he didn't put that verse in, they'd excommunicate him. He, being a good Roman Catholic, put it in." (5)

Both White and Custer are in error! Now for the facts:

1. On the "fact" that Erasmus made a rash promise, this was demonstrated to be false. This remark is one of the cherished legends about the history of New Testament scholarship. It is no more than a legend. Erasmus did not put the verses in his third edition on the basis of any supposed promise to Edward Lee. (6) Even Bruce Metzger admitted that Erasmus' "promise" needs to be corrected in the light of the research of H.J. de Jonge, a specialist in Erasmian studies, who finds no explicit evidence that supports this frequently made assertion. (7)
2. Was the ink hardly dry on 61, as Custer claimed? Erasmus didn't see it until a year after it was produced. Custer simply exaggerated. (8)
3. What of Custer's claim that there were only 2 manuscripts that contained the verse? R.E. Brown said a year earlier than Custer (1982) that there were 8 manuscripts. And it wasn't "5000" manuscripts as Custer claimed for, as of 1982, only 498 Greek manuscripts had been examined and in eight of them, the verses are found. (9) How could Custer assume the other 4500 manuscripts did not have the verses?
4. Was Erasmus threatened with excommunication? No evidence exists of it (10) because by the time of the third edition, he had found sufficient evidence to include it. Erasmus initially defended his omission of the verses as late as October, 1524. He had changed his views sometime between 1522-1527. (11)

thanks for posting