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Hey Nick: God does not control us. We have free will to move and choose. The only thing the srciptures are trying to get across IMO is that whatever you sow from your heart into this earth realm consistantly will draw to you like circumstances in your life.You will reap what you sow. You create your own life by your meditations, contemplations and words.James said the tongue was like the rudder on a great ship. Though small it directs the course of your life. You have the mind of Christ! You are the son of God. Build the aura of light around you with your thoughts and intentions with good and you will create good in your life. If you build a negative and destructive spiritual body then that is what you will experience in this lifetime. Love does not control. Love allows you to experience anything you choose. Peace to you, TK
FromCA,
“WHERE ARE THE ORIGINAL SCRIPTURES?By HENRY G. GRAHAM
You may naturally enough ask: “Where has the Bible come from? Have you got the original writings that came from the hand of Moses, or Paul, or John?” No, none of it, not a scrap or a letter. But we know from history and tradition that these were the books they wrote, and they have been handed down to us in a most wonderful way. What we have now is the printed Bible; but before the invention of printing in 1450, the Bible existed only in handwriting—what we call manuscript—and we have in our possession now copies of the Bible in manuscript that were made as early as the fourth century. These copies, which you can see with your own eyes today, contain the books that the Catholic Bible contains today. That is how we know we are right in receiving these books as Scripture, as genuinely the work of the apostles and evangelists. Why is it that we have not the originals written by John and Paul and the rest? There are several reasons to account for the disappearance of the originals.
The persecutors of the Church for the first three hundred years of Christianity destroyed everything Christian they could lay their hands on. Over and over again, barbarous pagans burst in upon Christian cities, villages, and churches and burned all the sacred things they could find. And not only so, but they compelled Christians to deliver up their sacred books under pain of death and then consigned the books to flames. Among these, doubtless, some of the writings that came from the hand of the apostle and evangelist perished.
Again, we must remember, the physical material the inspired authors used for writing their Gospels and Epistles was very easily destroyed. It was called papyrus, very frail and brittle, and not made to last to any great age; and its delicate quality no doubt accounts for the loss of some of the choicest treasures of ancient literature, as well as of the original handwriting of the New Testament writers. We know of no manuscript of the New Testament existing now that is written on papyrus.
Furthermore, when in various churches throughout the first centuries copies were made of the inspired writings, there was not the same necessity for preserving the originals. The first Christians had no superstitious or idolatrous veneration for the sacred Scriptures, such as seems to prevail among some people today. They did not consider it necessary for salvation that the very handwriting of Paul or Matthew should be preserved, inspired by God though these men were. They had the living, infallible Church to teach and guide them by the mouth of her popes and bishops; and to teach them not only all that could be found in the sacred Scriptures, but the true meaning of it as well.
So we need not be surprised that they were content with mere copies of the original works of the inspired writers. As soon as a more beautiful or correct copy was made, an earlier and rougher one was simply allowed to perish. There is nothing unusual in this; it is the same in the secular world. We do not doubt the terms or provisions of the Magna Carta because we have not seen the original. A copy, if we are sure it is correct, is good enough for us.
So the originals, as they came from the hand of apostle and evangelist, have totally disappeared. This is what infidels and skeptics taunt us with and cast in our teeth: “You cannot produce,” they say, “the handwriting of those from whom you derive your religion, neither the founder nor his apostles; your Gospels and Epistles are a fraud; they were not written by these men at all, but are the invention of a later age; consequently we cannot depend upon the contents of them or believe what they tell us about Jesus Christ.”
These attacks fall harmlessly upon us Catholics because we do not profess to rest our religion upon the Bible alone and would be just as we are and what we are though there were no Bible at all. It is those who have staked their very existence upon that Book, and must stand or fall with it, who are called upon to defend themselves against the critics.
But I shall only remark here that the argument of skeptic would, if logically applied, discredit not only the Bible but many other books which they themselves accept and believe without hesitation. There is far more evidence for the Bible than there is for certain books of classical antiquity that no one dreams of disputing. There are, for example, only fifteen manuscripts of the works of Herodotus, and none earlier than the tenth century; yet he lived four hundred years before Christ. The oldest manuscript of the works of Thucydides is of the eleventh century; yet he flourished and wrote more than four hundred years before Christ. Shall we say then “I want to see the handwriting of Thucydides and Herodotus or else I shall not believe these are their genuine works. You have no copy of their writings near the time they lived; none, indeed, till 1400 years after them; they must be a fraud and a forgery”?
Scholars with no religion at all would say we were fit for an asylum if we took up that position. Yet it would be a far more reasonable attitude than the one they take toward the Bible. There are known to have been many thousands of copies of the Testament in existence by the third century—i.e., only a century or two after St John—and we know for certain there are three thousand existing today ranging from the fourth century downwards. The fact is, the wealth of evidence for the genuineness of the New Testament is simply stupendous, and in comparison with many ancient histories that are received without question on the authority of late and few and bad copies, the sacred volume is founded on a rock.
Now I wish to say something about the instruments used for the writing and transmission of holy Scriptures in the earliest days and make a brief review of the materials employed and the dangers of loss and of corruption that necessarily accompanied the work. It will convince us of the absolute need of some divinely protected authority like the Catholic Church to guard the Gospel from error and destruction and to preserve it from sharing the fate that is liable to overtake all things that are, as Paul says, contained in “earthen vessels.”
Various materials were used in ancient times for writing: stone, pottery, bark of trees, leather, and clay tablets among the Babylonians and Egyptians. But before Christianity, and for the first few ages of our era, papyrus was used, which has given its name to our “paper.” It was made from the bark of the reed, or bulrush, that once grew plentifully on the Nile banks. First split into layers, it was then glued by overlapping the edges and another layer glued to this at right angles to prevent splitting; after sizing and drying, it formed a suitable writing surface.
Thousands of rolls of papyrus have been found in Egyptian and Babylonian tombs and beneath the buried city of Herculaneum, owing their preservation probably to the fact of being buried. Though many copies of the Bible were probably written on this papyrus (and most likely the inspired writers used it themselves), none have survived the wreck of ages. It is this material St John is referring to when he says to his correspondent, “Having more things to write to you, I would not by paper and ink” (2 John 12).
When in the course of time papyrus fell into comparative disuse from its unsuitableness and fragility, the skins of animals came to be used. If it was made out of the skin of sheep or goats, it was called “parchment”; if made of the skin of delicate young calves, it was called “vellum.” Vellum was used in earlier days, but being hard to obtain, gave place to a large extent to the coarser parchment. (Paul speaks about this stuff when he tells Timothy to “bring the books, but especially the parchments” [2 Tim. 4:13]. Most of the New Testament manuscripts we possess today are written on this material.)
A curious consequence of the costliness of vellum was
that the same sheet was made to do duty twice over, and became what is termed a “palimpsest,” which means “rubbed again.” A scribe, say, of the tenth century, unable to purchase a new supply of vellum, would take a sheet containing, perhaps, a writing of the second century that had become worn out through age and difficult to decipher. He would wash or scrape out the old ink and use the surface over again for copying out some other work in which the living generation felt more interest.It goes without saying that in many cases the writing thus blotted out was of far greater value than that which replaced it. Indeed, some of the most precious monuments of sacred learning are of this description, and they were discovered in this way. The process of erasing or sponging out the ancient ink was seldom so perfectly done as to prevent all traces of it still remaining, and some strokes of the older hand might often be seen peeping out beneath the more modern writing. In 1834 some chemical mixture was discovered that was applied with much success and had the effect of restoring the faded lines and letters of those venerable records.
Cardinal Mai, a man of colossal scholarship and untiring industry and a member of the Sacred College in Rome under Pope Gregory XVI, was a perfect expert in this branch of research, and by his ceaseless labors and ferret-like hunts in the Vatican library brought to light some remarkable old manuscripts and some priceless works of antiquity. Among these, all students have to thank him for restoring a long lost work of Cicero (De Republica) that was known to have existed previously and that the Cardinal unearthed from beneath Augustine’s Commentary on the Psalms.
The most important New Testament manuscript of this description is called the Codex of Ephraem. About two hundred years ago it was noticed that this curious-looking vellum, all soiled and stained and hitherto thought to contain only the theological discourses of Ephraem, an old Syrian Father, was showing faint lines of some older writing beneath. The chemical mixture was applied, and what should appear but a most ancient and valuable copy of Holy Scriptures in handwriting not later than the fifth century! This had been coolly scrubbed out by some impecunious scribe of the twelfth century to make room for his favorite work, the discourses of Ephraem. Let us charitably hope that the good monk (as he probably was) did not know what he was scrubbing out. At all events, it was brought into France by Queen Catherine de Medici and is now safely preserved in the Royal Library at Paris containing on the same page two works—one written on top of the other with a period of seven hundred years between them.
I have told you about the sheets used by the earliest writers of the New Testament: what kind of pen and ink they had? For the brittle papyrus a reed was used, much the same as that still in use in the East; but of course for writing on hard parchment or vellum a metal pen, or stylus, was required. It is to this John refers when he says, ‘I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write by pen and ink” (3 John 13). The strokes of these pens may still be seen quite clearly impressed on the parchment, even though all trace of the ink has utterly vanished. Besides this, a bodkin or needle was employed, along with a ruler, to divide a blank leaf or sheet into columns and lines. On nearly all the manuscripts these lines and marks may still be seen, sometimes so firmly and deeply drawn that those on one side of the leaf have penetrated through to the other side without cutting the vellum.
The ink used was a composition of soot or lampblack or burnt shavings of ivory mixed with gum or winelees or alum. In most ancient manuscripts, unfortunately, the ink has for the most part turned red or brown or become very pale or peeled off or eaten through the vellum. In many cases later hands have ruthlessly retraced the ancient letters, making the original writing look much coarser. But we know that many colored inks were used, such as red, green, blue, or purple, and they are often quite brilliant to this day.
As to the shape of the manuscripts, the oldest form was that of a roll. They were generally fixed on two rollers, so that the part read (for example in public worship) could be wound out of sight and a new portion brought to view. This was the kind of thing that was handed to our Lord when he went into the synagogue at Nazareth on the Sabbath. “He unfolded the book” and read; then “when he had folded the book, he restored it to the minister” (Luke 4:17, 20).
When not in use these rolls were kept in round boxes or cylinders and sometimes in cases of silver or cloth of great value. The leaves of parchment were sometimes of considerable size such as folio; but generally the shape was what we know as quarto or small folio, and some were octavo. The skin of one animal, especially if an antelope, could furnish many sheets of parchment. But if the animal was a small calf, its skin could only furnish very few sheets. An instance of this is the manuscript called the Sinaitic (now in St. Petersburg) whose sheets are so large that the skin of a single animal (believed to have been the youngest and finest antelope) could only provide two sheets, or eight pages.
The page was divided into two or three or four columns (though the latter is very rare). The writing was of two distinct kinds. One was called uncial (meaning an inch), consisting entirely of capital letters with no connection between the letters and no space between words at all. The other style, which developed later, was cursive (that is, a running hand) like our ordinary handwriting, with capitals only at the beginning of sentences. In this case the letters are joined together and there is a space between words. The uncial style was prevalent for the first three centuries of our era. In the fourth century cursive began and continued until the invention of printing.
Originally, I need hardly say, there was no such thing in the manuscripts as divisions into chapters and verses, and no points or full stops or commas to let you know where one sentence began and the next finished. Hence the reading of one of these ancient records is a difficult for the unscholarly. The division into chapters so familiar to us in our modern Bible was the invention either of Cardinal Hugo, a Dominican, in 1248, or more probably of Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, (d. 1227); and it is no calumny upon the reputation of either of these great men to say that the division is not very satisfactory. He is not happy in his method of splitting up the page of Scripture. The chapters are of very unequal length and frequently interrupt a narrative or argument or an incident in an inconvenient way (as any one may see by looking up such passages as Acts 21:40; or Acts 4 and 5; or 1 Corinthians 7 and 8.
The division again into verses was the work of Robert Stephens; and the first English version in which it appeared was the Geneva Bible (1560). This gentleman seems to have completed his task on a journey between Paris and Lyons (inter equitandum, as the Latin biographer phrases it), probably while stopping overnights in inns and hostels. “I think,” an old commentator quaintly remarks, “it had been better done on his knees in the closet.” To this I would venture to add that his achievement must share the same criticism of inappropriateness as the arrangement into chapters.
The manuscripts of the Bible now known to be in existence, as I before remarked, number about three thousand. The vast majority are in running hand and hence are subsequent to the fourth century. There are none of course later than the sixteenth century for then the book began to be printed, and none have yet been found earlier than the fourth. Their age—that is, the precise century in which they were written—is not always easy to determine. About the tenth century the scribes who copied them began to notify the date in a corner of the page; but before that time we can only judge by various
characteristics that appear in the manuscripts.For example, the more upright and regular the letters are, the less ornamentation they have about them, the nearer equality there is between the height and breadth of the characters, the more ancient we may be sure is the manuscript. We can often tell the age of a manuscript, approximately at least, by the kind of pictures the scribe had painted in it and the ornamenting of the first letter of a sentence or on the top of a page; for we know in what century that particular style of illumination prevailed.
It would be impossible to give anyone who had never seen any specimens of these wonderful old manuscripts a proper idea of their appearance or make him realize their unique beauty. There they are today perfect marvels of human skill and workmanship; manuscripts of every kind; old parchments all stained and worn; books of faded purple lettered with silver and their pages beautifully designed and ornamented; bundles of finest vellum, yellow with age and bright even yet with the gold and vermilion laid on by pious hands a thousand years ago in many shapes, in many colors, in many languages. There they are, scattered throughout the libraries and museums of Europe, challenging the admiration of everyone who beholds them for the astonishing beauty, clearness, and regularity of their lettering and the incomparable illumination of their capitals and headings. Still today, after so many centuries of change and chance, they charm the eye of all with their soft yet brilliant colors and defy our modern scribes to produce anything even approaching them in loveliness.
There lie the sacred records, hoary with age, fragile, slender, time-worn, bearing upon their front clear proofs of their ancient birth, yet with the bloom of youth still clinging about them. We simply stand and wonder; and we also despair. We speak glibly of the “Dark Ages” and despise their monks and, but one thing at least is certain: Not in the wide world today could any of their critics find a craftsman to make a copy of Holy Scripture worthy to be compared—for beauty, clearness, and finish—with any one of the hundreds of copies produced in the convents and monasteries of medieval Europe.
Excerpted from Rev. Henry G. Graham’s Where We Got the Bible, first published in 1911. “
Indeed catholicism does not rest on the foundation recommended by Jesus in mt7 but has chosen another unsafe one-their tradition.
Yes Nick! the original must be perfect and that is in the King James. and that is what we follow!
Hi KAT,
The KJV is drawn from the most modern and common manuscripts.
Not everyone agrees that are the best choices.Question: “KJV Only movement? Is the King James Version the only Bible we should use?”
Answer: Many people have strong and serious objections to the translation methods and textual basis for the new translations and therefore take a strong stance in favor of the King James Version. Others are equally convinced that the newer translations are an improvement over the KJV in their textual basis and translation methodology. GotQuestions.org does not want to limit its ministry to those of the “KJV Only” persuasion. Nor do we want to limit ourselves to those who prefer the NIV, NAS, NKJV, etc.
The KJV Only movement claims its loyalty to be to the Textus Receptus, a Greek New Testament manuscript compilation completed in the 1500s. To varying degrees, KJV Only advocates argue that God guided Erasmus (the compiler of the Textus Receptus) to come up with a Greek text that is perfectly identical to what was originally written by the New Testament authors. However, upon further examination, it can be seen that KJV Only advocates are not loyal to the Textus Receptus, but rather only to the KJV itself. The New Testament of the New King James Version is based on the Textus Receptus, just at the KJV is. Yet, KJV Only advocates label the NKJV as heretical just as they do the NIV, NAS, etc. Attempts have been made to “modernize” the language in the KJV, using the exact same Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. An example of this is the KJV21 – http://www.kj21.com/. All the KJV21 does is update some of the archaic language of the KJV. Yet, it is rejected nearly as strongly as the NKJV and the other newer Bible translations. This proves that KJV Only advocates are loyal to the King James Version itself, not to the Textus Receptus.
Perhaps the ultimate proof of this fact is that KJV Only advocates have no desire or plan to update the KJV in any way. The KJV certainly does contain English that is outdated, archaic, and sometimes confusing to modern English speakers and readers. It would be fairly simple to publish an updated KJV with the archaic words and phrases updated into modern 21st century English. Other than the KJV21, this has not been done, and the KJV21 definitely has not been accepted. Any attempt to edit the KJV in any way results in accusations from KJV Only advocates of heresy and perversion of the Word of God. When the Bible is translated for the first time into a new language today, it is translated into the language that culture speaks and writes today, not the way they spoke and wrote 400 years ago. The same should be true of English speakers and readers. The Bible was written in the common, ordinary language of the people. Bible translations today should be the same. That is why Bible translations must be updated and revised as languages develop and change.
Our loyalties are to the original manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Only the original languages are the Word of God as He inspired it. A translation is only an attempt to take what is said in one language and communicate it in another. The modern translations are superb in taking the meaning of the original languages and communicating it in a way that we can understand in English. However, none of the modern translations are perfect. Every one contains verses that are at least somewhat mistranslated. By comparing and contrasting several different translations, it is often easier to get a good grasp on what the verse is saying than by only using one translation. Our loyalty should not be to any one English translation, but to the inspired, inerrant Word of God that is communicated by the Holy Spirit through the translations (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
Recommended Resource: The King James Only Controversy by James White.
Question: “Why are there so many Bible translations / versions, and which is the best?”
Answer: The fact that there are so many Bible versions is both a blessing and a problem. It is a blessing in that the Word of God is available to anyone who needs it in an easy-to-understand, accurate translation. It is a problem in that the different versions can create controversy and problems in Bible studies, teaching situations, etc. The differences between the translations can also be a subject of great division within the church body.
It is probably wise to have access to at least 2 or 3 of the major translations KJV (King James Version), NIV (New International Version), NAS (New American Standard), NKJV (New King James Version), ESV (English Standard Version), NLT (New Living Translation), for comparison's sake. If a verse or passage in one translation is a little confusing, it can be helpful to compare it side-by-side with another version. It is difficult to say which translation is the “best.” “Best” would be determined by a combination of the translation method personally considered best and your interpretation of the textual data underlying your translation. For example, the KJV and NAS attempted to take the underlying Hebrew and Greek words and translate them into the closest corresponding English words as possible (word for word), while the NIV and NLT attempted to take the original thought that was being presented in Greek and Hebrew and then express that thought in English (thought for thought). Many of the other translations attempt to “meet in the middle” between those two methods. Paraphrases such as The Message or The Living Bible can be used to gain a different perspective on the meaning of a verse, but they should not be used as a primary Bible translation.
There are many more Bible versions out there. It is wise to have a personal method for determining whether a particular Bible translation is accurate. A good technique is to have a set of Scripture verses you know well, and look those verses up in a translation you are unsure of. A good idea is to look at some of the most common verses which speak of the deity of Christ (John 1:1, 14; 8:58; 10:30; Titus 2:13) to make sure a Bible version is true to the Word of God. We can be confident that God's Word is truth, and that it will accomplish His purposes (Isaiah 55:11; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Hebrews 4:12).
Recommended Resource: How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding and Using Bible Versions by Gordon D. Fee & Mark L. Strauss
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls and why are they important?
Question: “What are the Dead Sea Scrolls and why are they important?”
Answer: The first of the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries occurred in 1947 in Qumran, a village situated about twenty miles east of Jerusalem on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. A young Bedouin shepherd, following a goat that had gone astray, tossed a rock into one of the caves along the seacliffs and heard a cracking sound: the rock had hit a ceramic pot containing leather and papyrus scrolls that were later determined to be nearly twenty centuries old. Ten years and many searches later, eleven caves around the Dead Sea were found to contain tens of thousands of scroll fragments dating from the third century B.C. to A.D. 68 and representing an estimated eight hundred separate works.
The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise a vast collection of Jewish documents written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and encompassing many subjects and literary styles. They include manuscripts or fragments of every book in the Hebrew Bible except the Book of Esther, all of them created nearly one thousand years earlier than any previously known biblical manuscripts. The scrolls also contain the earliest existing biblical commentary, on the Book of Habakkuk, and many other writings, among them religious works pertaining to Jewish sects of the time
The legends of what was contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls are far beyond what was actually there. There were no lost books of the Bible or other literature that there was not already other copies of. The vast majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls were simply copies of books of the Old Testament from 250-150 B.C. A copy or portion of nearly every Old Testament book was found in Qumran. There were extra-biblical and apocryphal books found as well, but again, the vast majority of the scrolls were copies of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls were such an amazing discovery in that the scrolls were in excellent condition and had remained hidden for so long (over 2000 years). The Dead Sea Scrolls can also give us confidence in the reliability of the Old Testament manuscripts since there were minimal differences between the manuscripts that had previously been discovered and those that were found in Qumran. Clearly this is a testament to the way God has preserved His Word down through the centuries, protecting it from extinction and guarding it against significant error.
Recommended Resource: What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Do They Matter? by David Noel Freedman & Pam Fox Kuhlken.
Hi KAT,
It is the most popular version used by cults.Compare other versions lest the bias of the trinitarian translators affects you.
Remember the story of the three thrown into the fire in Daniel and another is with them?
The kjv translates the other as being like THE SON OF MAN.
but A son of man is equally valid.It is a good version but has limitations too.
You are literally crazy if you think cults is who use the King James version!!!! and what version do you use? You wont seem to answer that. You cannot have the Holy spirit in you if you can talk and down grade Gods word like you do.!!
Hi KAT,
The NASB is my favourite but it does not discriminate between Hades and Gehenna calling them both HELL.
The NIV is a good translation too but it adds the word JESUS in Jn12.41 and the word MEN in Rev 11 speaking of the two witnesses.If there was not a man that had come and done the things that Yeshua Ben Joseph, Jesus the annointed one called Christ had done I would never have spent 30 years studying what he said and did. There were many great prophets throughout the ages. But none that I could find that ranked in supernatural powers that dominated the physical world the way he did.Also he told us that we can do the same as him if we believe. I chose to follow him as the Truth from source of all. Everything else in the old testament is done away and ineffective through the Truth of Jesus! The other writers of the New Testament are just like you and me. Jesus is Lord for me. Its a choice for any or all. Blessings to all, TK
Hey Nick: With all of my heart I do not wish to offer another gospel! The gospel per Jesus is Christ in you, the Kingdom of God in you. The gospel I see in Jesus is a perfected human being through faith (just believing the free gift of perfection from God)then walking with God in intimate communion like it was in the Garden originallly. If one cleanses all doubt from his mind, and washes away any and all negative, man made thoughts or doctrines then he is truly a believer of the Truth of God and passes back from death to life eternal. This is being born again in new light. This is the ressurrection from death through Jesus. This is the gospel I see in Jesus. God bless you, TK
DO YOU NOT REMEMBER THAT I TOLD YOU THE KING jAMES FITS SO CLOSE TO THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS WORD FOR WORD?
JESUS'S BLOOD SAVED MANKIND!
Niv- JOHN 12;41 Read the scriptures above this one Nick. 41 adds the word Jesus because its Jesus the scripture is talking about.
Quote (Nick Hassan @ Sep. 14 2009,22:04) Hi TK,
Seek first the kingdom as we must enter that kingdom.Jesus did not magically save mankind.
Hey Nick: We don't enter the Kingdom of God! According to Jesus, the Kingdom or ruling power of God dwells within each of us! (Luke 17:21) The Kingdom of God within is the good news (gospel) of Jesus. He fulfilled and completed the old covenant/temple way and established the Truth that the Kingdom is within all.(Luke 16:16) Jesus, the Truth, saved mankind from ignorance, lies and deception that the Kingdom of God was in some building or another place. Jesus saved us from lies and decptions(devils) that kept us separated in mind from God. Bless you, TK
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