Christian Scholars Admit Problems
 Read what Bible experts say about contradictions, errors and mistakes. |
This is from a Christian apologist website (not Muslim).
Keep in mind, this is coming from the perspective of Christian priests.
Scholars cite Bible contradictions and difficulties while comparing verses to others that disagree with each other. These are referenced as being contradictory and problematic.
One example given:
"How many animals with Noah?
One pair of each, or 7 pairs?"
(Gen. 6:19-20)
We list them in verse-by-verse fashion in other to make it simple to make comparisons.
Examples:
"How many animals did Noah actually bring into the ark?
Was it a "pair of each"? (Gen. 6:19-20)
Or was it seven (Gen. 7:2,3.
Therefore, both verses are listed for easy comparison.
Surprising to many people, including Christians themselves who do not understand the concept of "autographs" (original revelations written by the prophets who received the revelation), the Quran from Allah actually confirms the scriptures were all inspired by Almighty God, not the copies.This statement is from the Christian apologists as well as Muslim scholars.
The autographs are the original writings, the original documents penned by the biblical writers. The copies are copies of inspired documents. The copies are not themselves "inspired"; that is, they have no guarantee of being 100% textually pure. But don't worry, the Bible manuscripts are more than 50% textually pure and only some information is in question because we have repetitive facts, instructions, and information found elsewhere in the Bible. Nevertheless, through the copying method over the years, various textual problems have arisen. Following is a list of the types of errors that have occurred in copying the manuscripts. We use English as examples instead of going into the original languages for examples.
Dittography - Writing twice what should have been written once.
A good example would be writing "latter" instead of "later." "Latter" means nearest the end. "Later" means after something else.
Fission - Improperly dividing one word into two words.
Example: "nowhere" into "now here."
Fusion - Combining the last letter of one word with the first letter of the next word.
"Look it is there in the cabinet... or Look it is therein the cabinet."
Haplography - Writing once what should have been written twice.
A good example would be "later" instead of "latter." "Later" means after something else. "Latter" means nearest the end.
Homophony - Writing a word with a different meaning for another word when both words have the exact same pronunciation.
Meat and meet have the exact same sound but different meanings. Also, there and their and they're are another example.
Metathesis - An improper exchange in the order of letters.
Instead of writing "mast," someone writes "mats," or "cast" and cats."
Does this mean we cannot trust the Bible?
Does this mean that the Bible we hold in our hand is not inspired? Yes, of course. Inspiration only comes from God and when He inspired the Bible, it was perfect. Our copies of the original documents are not perfect. We point out that God never said the copies would be perfect, they then ask how can the Bible be trusted at all?
Quite simply, it is redundant in its facts and information and the amount of material that has any contradiction compared to the whole Bible proves the Bible in English cannot really be seriously considered as relevant to a serious textual discussion.
Still, some will say that since there are, for example, copyist errors then we must throw out the entire Bible. But this argument is very week. Are we to throw out a book science text book because there is a misspelled word or two in it? Does this mean that the whole book cannot be trusted? Of course not. Furthermore, compared to other ancient documents, the New Testament, for example, has far more textual evidence in its favor than any other ancient writing. Please consider the chart below.
Author When Written Earliest Copy Time Span No. of Copies
Homer (Iliad) 900 BC 400 BC 500 years 643
Ceasar (The Gallic Wars) 100 - 44 BC 900 AD 1,000 years 10
Plato (Tetralogies) 427 - 347 BC 900 AD 1,200 years 7
Aristotle 384 - 322 BC 1,100 AD 1,400 years 49
Herodotus (History) 480 - 425 BC 900 AD 1,300 years 8
Euripedes 480 - 406 BC 1,100 AD 1,500 years 9
New Testament 50 - 90 A.D. 130 AD
30 years 24,000
This chart was adapted from charts in Evidence that Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell, 1979, pages 42 and 43.
Bible copies and translations cannot be trusted as being reliable because it does contain so many copyist errors. Likewise we cannot really accept other ancient works as totally authentic if someone shows us fresh copies in a nice new notebook from Kinkos.
We can see that the Bible is an ancient document that has withstood thousands of years of transmission with inaccuracy and mistakes, just as many other works of old listed in the chart above.
Although it doesn't say so in the Bible anywhere, we can still imagine it to be the word of God.
What appears above clearly indicates a few of the problems with the Bible translations. Muslims should keep in mind, as the Quran states, the originals were from Allah, the changes are from humans.
More? www.911Bible.com <Also> www.BibleIslam.com
