My Belief's

I want to explain somethings about why I believe the Bible I use today is 99.5% accurate with what God originally said.

 

The Bible is use is actually a collection of books and/or letters from two distinct periods of history.

The are usually named as Old Testament and New Testament.

 

The Old Testament is the first section of the Christian Bible, based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, a collection of religious writings by ancient Israelites. The Old Testament canon varies between Christian Churches; Protestants accept only the books found in the canon of the Hebrew Bible, dividing them into 39 books, while the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches accept somewhat larger collections of writings. The Old Testament consists of many distinct books written, compiled, and edited by various authors over a period of centuries. It is not entirely clear at what point the parameters of the Hebrew Bible, the basis for the Christian Old Testament, were fixed. Some scholars have opined that the canon of the Hebrew Bible was established already by about the 3rd century BC. The development of the various forms of the Christian Old Testament, at any rate, continued for centuries.

 

The Old Testament is call the Tanakh by Jews and was originally written in Hebrew but was later translated into Greek by 70 Jewish scholars into what is known as the Septuagint (LXX). The Old Testament has undergone many tranlations into Latin, and many other languages, eventually into English.

 

There are NO ORIGINALS of any of these books but there are early manuscripts(Dead Sea Scrolls and others) that date hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus(BC) or (BCE).

 

There are thousands of Old Testament manuscript fragments and many complete Old Testament manuscripts.

 

There are dozens of internet sites that can give greater detail, if interested.

 

The New Testament is the second section of the Christian Bible. The "Transmission" in relation to the Bible has to do with how the contents of the Bible were transmitted through history. If the record of transmission is poor, then the record we have is highly suspect. But if the record of transmission is rich, having a variety of manuscript copies for instance, then we have cause for trusting the reliability of the record.

 

In the case of the New Testament, the transmission of the documents through history is astounding. Not only do we have thousands of manuscript copies, as well as thousands more fragments or portions of the New Testament, but in comparing the New Testament copies we have today in various languages with those available centuries ago we can see the message remains intact. Errors or changes are slight, known as variants, and do not change any central belief of Christianity. When it comes to transmission and translation, then, we can indeed trust the documents.

 

The New Testament was originally written in Koine(common) Greek mostly by disciples of Jesus who were "eyewitnesses" to the events of Jesus ministry, death and resurrection from dead and a later convert of Jesus, Paul, who was instructed personally by Jesus for three years.

 

Most scholars say that all the New Testament writings were made by 80-90 AD. It is believed that the apostle John was the last writer of sacred scriptures. Because they are so numerous, they can be cross checked for accuracy . . . and they are very consistent. There are presently 5,686 Greek manuscripts in existence today for the New Testament.  There are also over 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in other languages.

 

If we were to compare the number of New Testament manuscripts to other ancient writings, we find that the New Testament manuscripts far outweigh the others in quantity.