01-15-2005, 05:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-15-2005, 05:26 PM by reepicheep.)
Dan wrote:
> The Bible went from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to the
> vernacular of the local people...
This is too big of a topic to cover within this thread (we are getting seriously off topic). But I will say:
- there are approximately 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, another 10,000 Latin Vulgates, and 9,300 other early copies, giving us more than 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today.
- it is true that, within these manuscripts, there are variant readings of some passages. I don't know of any variant readings which affect, in any significant way, Christian doctrine.
- biblical scholars must be very thorough and careful when they work with this wealth of information.
- there are many websites which cover this topic in far greater detail than I can. If you are interested in this topic, check out (for example) the following website:
The Bible
The following image, from the above website, illustrates the procedures biblical scholars follow when trying to recreate the lost "original" manuscripts of the books of the bible.