Origin
of the Bible—Did the Catholics Give us the Bible?
by Ulrike
Unruh
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1.
Divine Inspiration Christians base their beliefs and
faith in the revelations God has given us, of Himself, in the divine and
verbal inspiration of the Bible. This Word tells us that the Holy Ghost
motivated the minds of the prophets and apostles of old to pen every word of
Scripture. Our faith in divine inspiration is based on Bible texts
such as: All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16) Christians also believe that God's
Word has been protected and preserved by the hand of God. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. (Matthew 24:35) As most believers know, the Bible
is often referred to as 'the Holy Scriptures.' It is made up of two
parts, the Old and the New Testaments. The Old Testament is a collection of
39 books which were originally penned mostly in the Hebrew language. The New
Testament is a collection of 27 books, written originally in Greek; though
some portions were probably written in Hebrew or Aramaic, a north Semitic
language. The original autographs (masters) were the hand-written scrolls
penned by the inspired prophets and apostles. They were written on vellum
(the skins of clean animals, such as calf, goat or antelope) or papyrus.
Vellum is more durable and costly than papyrus; but an entire antelope
skin would only furnish two or three pages of a manuscript. Because of this
fact the vast majority of manuscripts were written on papyrus. Papyrus is a
reed-like water plant with thick fibrous stems from which a kind of paper was
made in ancient times. The average papyrus scroll was about ten inches in
width and about thirty feet in length. After years of constant use, being
rolled and unrolled, the original autographs (master scrolls)
especially those of papyrus, became worn and began to fall apart. Before the original masters completely
disintegrated they were carefully copied. The Almighty, who had initially inspired
their production, then moved His faithful followers, first the Aaronic Priests and
later the Masorites,
to make copies of the originals. Thus began the work of providential
preservation. After all, it would have been short-sighted of God to infallibly
inspire the Scriptures only to have them discarded
after a few decades. Jehovah must needs, as promised, preserve His
Word in accurate copies for the following statements to be true: Divine Preservation
The God of Israel anticipated
Satan's intended attack on the Scriptures: and how the enemy of souls would
seek to frustrate the divine work of preservation by causing unbelieving
scribes to add to, delete and distort the sacred writings. That is
why this solemn, yea frightening, warning appears at the end of the Bible. It
not only addresses copyists and translators who intentionally
corrupt Jehovah's Word, but also those who knowingly promote their
corrupted publications.
I repeat: to preserve His
word, JEHOVAH the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel must needs
ensure that accurate copies of the inspired masters be made; else His
promise that 'the Word of the Lord abideth forever' was
meaningless - if not false. Consequently the Almighty caused faithful
believers to copy His Word. This is how He organised that work. The Masorites were Jewish scholars who,
like their B.C. predecessors the Aaronic
Priests, had the sacred task of copying the Old Testament Hebrew
Scriptures. In his book Story of Our English Bible, W Scott wrote over
a hundred years ago concerning the reliability of the copies made by these faithful
priests and scribes.
In his book God Wrote Only One
Bible, Jasper James Ray confirms this fact about the faithfulness
displayed by these ancient scribes in copying the Scriptures.
It is a sad fact that the Gentiles
who copied the New Testament Scriptures were not as diligent as the ancient Aaronic scribes and Masorites. Therefore it is in
the New Testament texts where most errors are found. A 'manuscript' is a hand-written document, not one that is
typed or printed. The word 'manuscript'
is often abbreviated as MS or ms (singular) and MSS or mss (plural).
Currently there are between 5250 and 5309 extant (existing)
manuscripts of the Scriptures or parts of it. Manuscripts fall into two
categories:
Manuscripts
produced by the early Christians fall into three categories:
As
regards the format of ancient manuscripts, they are often described
as:
The Waldenses were among the first of the peoples of Europe to obtain a translation of the Holy Scriptures. Hundreds of years before the Reformation, they possessed the Bible in manuscript in their native tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the special objects of hatred and persecution. . . . Here for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient faith. . . . In a most wonderful manner it (the word of truth) was preserved uncorrupted through all the ages of darkness. We wish to quote from a book entitled Our Authorized Version Vindicated, copyright 1930, by Benjamin G. Wilkinson. Mr. Wilkinson wrote: . . . down through the centuries there were only two streams of manuscripts. The first stream which carried the Received Text in Hebrew and Greek, began with the Apostolic churches, and reappearing at intervals down the Christian Era among enlightened believers, was protected by the wisdom and scholarship of the pure church in her different phases; by such as the church at Pella in Palestine where the Christians fled, when in 70 A.D. the Romans destroyed Jerusalem; by the Syrian Church of Antioch which produced eminent scholarship; by the Italic Church in northern Italy; and also at the same time by the Gallic Church in southern France and by the Celtic Church in Great Britain; by the pre-Waldensian, the Waldensian, and the churches of the Reformation. This first stream appears, with very little change, in the Protestant Bibles of many languages, and in English, in that Bible known as the King James Version, the one which has been in use for three hundred years in the English speaking world. The second stream is a small one of a very few MSS. These last manuscripts are represented: (a) In Greek:--The Vatican MS., or Codex B, in the library at Rome; and the Sinaitic, or Codex Aleph, its brother (in the Russian Museum in Moscow). (b) In Latin:--The Vulgate or Latin Bible of Jerome. (c) In English:-- The Jesuit Bible of 1582, which later with vast changes is seen in the Douay, or Catholic Bible. (d) In English again:--In many modern Bibles which introduce practically all the Catholic readings of the Latin Vulgate which were rejected by the Protestants of the Reformation; among these, prominently, are the Revised Versions.--pp. 12, 13. But let us see what the Waldenses believed, according to their own historian, Jean Leger. Wilkinson, page 32, says: This noble scholar of Waldensian blood was the apostle of his people in the terrible massacres of 1655, and labored intelligently to preserve their ancient records. His book, the General History of the Evangelical Churches of the Piedmontese Valleys, published in French in 1669, and called "scarce" in 1825, is the prized object of scholarly searchers. It is my good fortune to have that very book before me. Leger, when he calls (Robert) Olivetan's French Bible of 1535 "entire and pure," says: "I say 'pure' because all the ancient exemplars, which formerly were found among the Papists, were full of falsifications, which caused Beza to say in his book on Illustrious Men, in the chapter on the Vaudois, that one must confess it was by means of the Vaudois of the Valleys that France today has the Bible in her own language. This godly man, Olivetan, in the preface of his Bible, recognizes with thanks to God, that since the time of the apostles, or their immediate successors, the torch of the gospel has been lit among the Vaudois (or the dwellers in the Valleys of the Alps, two terms which mean the same), and has never since been extinguished." --Leger, General History of the Vaudois Churches, p. 165. Wilkinson also shows (pp. 42-43) that Erasmus recognized two parallel streams of Bibles:
THE TWO PARALLEL STREAMS OF BIBLES
The OT Bible
books were already chosen long before the Catholic Church was known. History tells
an interesting story about the preservance
of the Bible that is little told. See The
two lines of Bible translations
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