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Glenna Rose

writes:

You're right Charlie. Or, you would be if that is how things happened.
There are roughly a million copies of the Bible distributed -each week-
and it is available in roughly 2,300 languages. "Oral histories" came to
an end with Moses.

This isn't the parlor game of 'pass it on' played by a bunch of giggly
kids ... this is "pass it on" played for keeps by serious-minded adults
with their eye on the ball

It is one thing to declare that the scriptures were adulterated. Knowing
humans, it seems almost certain that they were. It is quite another to
prove it.

Bill

Actually, Bill, on a recent broadcast on NPR (actually perhaps as long as
a year ago), they talked about just that. Each time the Bible was
re-copied, the person copying might put notes in the margin. Often when
it was copied the next time, the person making that copy incorporated the
notes into the text. Therefore, the Bible that was translated into
multiple languages might actually be not exactly the same as (or quite far
from) the original text. They gave a specific example of a well-known
story from the New Testament where they actually had copies of the text in
its original forms (the ones copied by each scribe) that showed the
various steps of this well-known story and how the one commonly accepted
is not at all the original. The oldest text they found only reported the
deed, the "modern" version has punishment included, a quite severe one at
that. That being from the New Testament; one can only imagine how the
years from Moses forward were altered (not to even address the "blips" in
the oral recounts prior to writing). When they have the in-between copies
in the ancient form, that pretty much indicates the Bible used today is
not as each part was written originally, not even allowing for the
translation and culture errors. Heavens, even the Apostles who were there
wrote different things about the same events as presented in our "modern"
books.

I suspect that any ancient book recopied thousands of years by mortals
would have very similar outcomes. Human beings are not always prone to
pass on the facts but to alter them to suit their own purposes or even
memories (true of altered memories) and are certainly not photo-copy
machines. Like you said, "Pass-it-on" but accepted as true. Of course,
I've always liked the quote by a person who was offered the New Standard
Bible and responded with, "The King James version was good enough for
Christ and it's good enough for me."

My oldest son says, "I can help you if you are poor, I can help you if you
are hungry, but I can't help you if you are stupid." Note an ignorant
person can be taught, a stupid person won't be taught.

Glenna
(who enjoyed reading this off-topic but interesting thread)