Can you trust the Bible historically?

Psalms 12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Psalms 12:7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

To some extent but not perfectly. However, there is no other historical document that is accurate either. People play with the past all the time for different agendas. "History is written by the winners," said Napoleon. Scholars need to justify their usefulness by re-writing the past to make it look like a "discovery." All sorts of people re-write history for political or ideological reasons.

We really know very little with certainty about what happened long ago. Heck, even trying to figure out what happened last week is tough with all the spin-doctoring going on.

Yes, but the New Testament was copied 5600 times with a 99.5& accuracy. If the book was molested, there is no way the person/people making the changes could have gotten to all 5600 copies (which were spread all over Asia, Europe, and Africa)

Hmmm. That's a pretty good point.

Now the question is, if you take all the different translations into different languages from all these times and places and compare them, how much of a difference is there among these versions? There has to be some difference because I see people online always arguing about King James versus New International, etc etc.

1. What books from that era that mention Jesus do you know?

2. Horus was before Jesus, the are several similarities between the two of them. What makes a copycat version better than the original?

( [link to www.religioustolerance.org]

There were accounts written by people that knew Jesus in the flesh. The accounts were written by people that knew Jesus firsthand. They were written within the same generation. The gospels of Matthew and John were written by the apostles Matthew and John. The gospels of Mark and Luke were written by their associates, not long after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. They all mention Jesus.

I trust the written accounts of people who knew Jesus Christ rather than the modern day interpretations of 'scholars' interpreting ancient Egyptian carvings.

Is there a link to the # of copies avaible graph he showed in the video?

He has a theory that if someone tried to modified old copies of the bible people would notice. There is no way of knowing the old versions were not replaced PROGRESSIVELY by something or someone (Church, for example). It wouldn't be so hard to spread enough bibles to a specific region, it would become the known version accepted by a higher % of population, giving it higher chances of further reproduction compared to the 'odd' ones.

I don't have a link, but if there were updates that were added progressively, the written record would prove that. All copies were the same as the original (with a 99.5% accuracy). I think that alone disproves your theory.

If you post a credible source confirming those statistics, yes it would.

[link to carm.org]
^ from the video

[link to www.str.org]

Reconstructing Aunt Sally's Letter

Let me illustrate how such a test can be made. It will help you to see how scholars can confidently reconstruct the text from existing manuscript copies even though the copies themselves have differences and are much older than the autograph (i.e., the original).

Pretend your Aunt Sally has a dream in which she learns the recipe for an elixir that would continuously maintain her youth. When she wakes up, she scribbles the directions on a scrap of paper, then runs into the kitchen to make up her first glass. In a few days her appearance is transformed. Sally is a picture of radiant youth because of her daily dose of what comes to be known as "Aunt Sally's Secret Sauce."

Sally is so excited she sends hand-written instructions to her three bridge partners (Aunt Sally is still in the technological dark ages--no photocopier) giving detailed instructions on how to make the sauce. They, in turn, make copies which each sends to ten of her own friends.

All is going well until one day Aunt Sally's pet schnauzer eats the original copy of the recipe. Sally is beside herself. In a panic she contacts her three friends who have mysteriously suffered similar mishaps. Their copies are gone, too, so the alarm goes out to their friends in attempt to recover the original wording.

They finally round up all the surviving hand-written copies, twenty-six in all. When they spread them out on the kitchen table, they immediately notice some differences. Twenty-three of the copies are exactly the same. One has a misspelled word, though, one has two phrases inverted ("mix then chop" instead of "chop then mix") and one includes an ingredient that none of the others has on its list.

Here is the critical question: Do you think Aunt Sally can accurately reconstruct her original recipe? Of course she could. The misspelled words can easily be corrected, the single inverted phrase can be repaired, and the extra ingredient can be ignored.

From the 2nd link:



Basically, if Aunt Sally herself doesn't fix the error, people won't notice.

They will go with the 'popular one' and accept it as the original.

Even with more numerous or more diverse variations, the original can still be reconstructed with a high level of confidence given the right textual evidence. The misspellings would be obvious errors, the inversions would stand out and easily be restored, and the conclusion drawn that it's more plausible that one word or sentence be accidentally added to a single copy than omitted from many.

This, in simplified form, is how the science of textual criticism works. Textual critics are academics who reconstruct a missing original from existing manuscripts that are generations removed from the autograph. According to New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce, "Its object [is] to determine as exactly as possible from the available evidence the original words of the documents in question."[2]

The science of textual criticism is used to test all documents of antiquity--not just religious texts--including historical and literary writings. It's not a theological enterprise based on haphazard hopes and guesses; it's a linguistic exercise that follows a set of established rules. Textual criticism allows an alert critic to determine the extent of possible corruption of any work.

Psalms 12:6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Psalms 12:7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

The New Testament was written within the first generation of those who were witness to Jesus Christ and has a 99.5% accuracy between the original and the copies of it. This is the oldest, most historical book on record.

How could you know? Originals don't exist anymore.

Constantine took over the original scriptures, he could do anything with them, and I bet he adulterated it for his own good.

prove it.

prove it.

nope you can't its all bullshit

The New Testament was written within the first generation of those who were witness to Jesus Christ and has a 99.5% accuracy between the original and the copies of it. This is the oldest, most historical book on record.

prove it.

the one who makes the original claim is the one who has to provide proof. same with christianity having to prove god exists to atheists and every single other thing. such as: i can fly. it is up to him to prove he can fly not others to prove he can't fly.