Last updated: 18th June 2020
By: Mustafa Sahin
Christian Apologist suggest that, the Bible can get corrected through Textural criticism. And in doing so affirming the original Bible. However is this true? We will show a number of points why this is not true. And the Bible can no longer get fixed to prove that it’s error free, affirming the correct version.
Let’s begin;
Christian Wrote in Response to (John 8:1-11)
You miss the point the fact that we know what has been added. That is how we know that that story was added. Note, that we do not know whether the event actually happened. We simply know that it wasn’t originally in the biblical text. Biblical criticism is a nature discipline. The old biblical manuscripts that still exist (and we have thousands) have been analysed to death. We know where things have been changed or added over time. Most modern bibles contain footnotes that clearly point out bits in the text where the text has been altered or we are not sure what the original said. As a consequence we can reconstruct with confidence about 98% of the original text. And in the 2% where we are uncertain there is no doctrinal information that is not also established elsewhere in the new testament
Muslim – Response:
Interesting I Wonder now that you agree, John 8:1-11, has been added, suppose the women was guilty, would Jesus have applied the Jewdaic law, and stonned her for commiting Adultery! Since there is no other record of Jesus specifically condeming the Judaic law.
As for reconstruct with confidence 98% of the Original?
Watch Ehrman Vs Wallace.
Also see the Lie, how Textural veriences don’t include, the Essential Doctrine or Message or the Tenants of Christianity being effected by Textural veriences. This is not true, watch how Wallace gets exposed:
Also consider this, did you know what is so “bizzare” about the Deleted verses in the bible? Why did it take the Christians biblical scholars more than 1800 years to realise that more than 200 odd deleted verses are not really part of the Bible? Where was the “Holy Spirit” for more than 1800 years? In fact Christians had to rely on the Discovery of early Ancient manuscipts in our recent times to try and determin what verses are Authentic. In otherwords if Christians never found early ancient Manuscipts they would be still telling preaching that the 200 plus deleted verses are part of God inspired verses.
This proves Christians do not have a “Holy spirit” guiding them to All truth. If they did the Holy Spirit would have let the Christians know long ago on what is meant to be part of todays Bible. What happends if more earlier ancient manuscripts are discovered in the future and the verses we think is authentic today get dismissed into the future aswell?
Therefore biblical transmission “can not be trusted”.
This clearly demonstrates, Christians can’t rely on this mythical Holy Spirit that dwells inside them guiding them to the truth. It wasn’t the Holy Spirit that spoke to them, telling them there are false verses in the Bible. It was rather the accidental discovery of Ancient Manuscipts, along with “Carbon Dating Technology” that allowed Textural critics to date, manuscripts to compare and see what was added later.
Even more embarrassing, even after so much correction todays biblical “canon” is still yet to be agreed upon. If a book can not be trusted 100% because of Corruption. I fail to realise how we can trust the “essential Doctrine”. There are Christians who claim it has no impact at all. Is like saying we can prove the essential doctrine being historically sound.
I would argue, of course you can, however can you put your full trust in it? Because the very same verses of essential tenants are found in a polluted book. It is then possible that the essentials came from the same false scribes. We also showed New Testament Scholar, Bart Ehrman shows essentials them selves are polluted. For example ressurection story not found in Marks Gospel nor the Trinity (1 john 5:7) which is a Interpolation 3rd centuary text, this is also agreed by Christian New Testament Scholar Wallace, See here:
Therefore saying we can trust the “essential doctrine” Is no longer a arguement a Christian can make. Because even the Essential Doctrine was a late forgery. If i recieve a letter from a person. But in the letter you find many lies or even little lies. It then brings doubt to the rest of the essential informations.
It was a essential belief that the word “beggoten” gave Jesus extra authority of being unique son. Now that essential word has been removed from the RSV version. One Word can manipulate the Theology of Christianity concerning Jesus. So has their been Manipulation in the Essentials sure. Including (1 John 5-7) which comes as a 3rd Centuary text not found as it is worded in the KJV in the Earliest Manuscipts we have today.
In fact if Christians want to appeal to the Earliest Sources to have more Authenticity then our Christian friends have to start “Stoning Women Again”, because the Earliest Manuscripts do not have the Story” Those without Sin cast the first Stone. Will Christians now be consistent like Removing the last 9-12 verses of Marks Gospel also Remove the Story of Forgiving Adultery?? Additionally Since the Gospel of John is the last written Gospel of the 4 Synoptic Gospels therefore does that now make it least Authentic, since Christians appeal to the Earliest as Most Authentic?
Christians appealing to the Earliest Manuscripts have even more problems:
Scholar of N.T Bart Ehrman
Forward to (18 minutes 25 seconds)
Watch how James white gets owned by Ehrman. “The earlier we go in Biblical Manuscript the more Veriences we have”.
Therefore appealing to the Earliest brings more-Problems then to fixing them. Even amoung diffrent dinominations and Sects you have diffrent amount of books each group claimimg their Canon is divine while others are Apocryphal. And its been 2000 years. They are still trying to work out “whos canon” is correct and how many verses are really part of the original bible? There are differences even in the Canon, so Christians till this day are in dispute. How can God, take over 2000 years, to rectify the Bible? These are though the same Christians, who argue how can the Quran come 600 years after the Bible. Interesting Hey?
Also refering to the Earliest is not alwayse a good idea. Because it can still be early and Un-Authentic read ( Galatians 1:4-8) Where Paul admitted there were false books and scribes as early as (50 A.D) and Paul insisted his Desciples to turn away from those scribes. A Christian can try and be clever here by saying Paul didn’t consider those other books to be other bibles, therefore there wasn’t really any other bibles back then. However this is incorrect, when Paul dismissed it, it didn’t mean those other early scribes did not exist or that there documents did not exist as their own version of the Bible, if they didn’t exist then why would Paul say turn away from them? They clearly did exist, and Paul did not want them considered to be a bible because Paul disagreed with them, thus this does not mean other bibles did not exist, they were just false ones according to Paul, thus proving early documents even in Paul’s time can be wrong, so what makes you think if something is written early means it’s correct? It clearly isn’t according to the biblical premise!
In addition see the video bellow, where even when Textural critics refer to the earliest source material to weed out, errors in the Bible, they have veriences even more so between the earliest Manuscipts dateing to the same period, therefore refering to the earliest source material to correct the Bible fails since the earliest copies dating to the same period don’t agree with one another, in otherwords if there are TWO Manuscipts that differ, they can’t be fixed, because their is nothing earlier then that dated, to work out which one is true, so in otherwords TWO differing Manuscripts since they both are dated to the same period we can not work out which one was the earliest, since they date the same, and there is nothing earlier that can, show us the correct reading, see those examples here:
Part 1/2:
Part 2/2
In both these videos you will clearly see, that there are errors in the text that can not be “fixed” because the veriences between the verses are dated around the same year. In otherwords one text is not older then the other, thus Biblical Scholars can not work out which text came first.
Another major problem is, the different “Canons” of the bible.
Christians can not prove the correct “preserved Canon” of the Bible today. They don’t have a unanimous agreement on it between the Protestant, Catholics and Greek Orthodox and so on. If they had an Original agreed Canon, they would have all agreed.
Here is a link showing diffrent amount of Books accepted in one denomination compared to another Christian denomination:
So when the Christians say they can correct the Bible. They need to be able to show which Bible Canon is the agreed Canon. And even if a particular denomination claims to have a Preserved Canon Bible its still subjective as other Christians Denominations differ to what you believe is Preserved Canon agreed Books. A example from unveiling Christianity web site:
73 Catholic Canon Books
63 Protestant Canon Book
Both Can not be Right.
Interestingly enough, Catholics argue that the Protestant Canon is not correct because it removes books from its collection, while the Protestants argue, that the Catholics add to the Word of God.
So clearly “Textural Criticism” can not fix the issue on the “agreed Canon” uniting all Christians to the correct Totality of God’s inspired Books.
Rebuttal section:
When a Christian writes, defending against Textural Criticism.
They write:
You miss the point the fact that is that we know what has been added. That is how we know that that story was added.Note, that we do not know whether the event actually happened. We simply know that it wasn’t originally in the biblical text Biblical criticism is a nature discipline. The old biblical manuscripts that still exist (and we have thousands) have been analysed to death. We know where things have been changed or added over time. Most modern bibles contain footnotes that clearly point out bits in the text where the text has been altered or we are not sure what the original said. As a consequence we can reconstruct with confidence about 98% of the original text. And in the 2% where we are uncertain there is no doctrinal information that is not also established elsewhere in the new testament
Muslim-Response:
You know what is so bizzare about the Deleted verses in the bible?
Why oh Why did it take the Christians biblical scholars more then 1800 years to relize that more then 200 odd deleted verses are not really part of the bible?
Where was your Holy Spirit for more then 1800 years?
In fact Christians had to rely on the Discovery of early Ancient manuscipts in our recent times to try and determin what verses are Authentic. In otherwords if Christians never found early ancient Manuscipts they would be still telling us that the 200 plus deleted verses are part of God inspired verses.
This proves Christians do not have a Holy spirit guiding them to all truth. If they did the Holy Spirit would have let the Christians know long ago on what is meant to be part of todays bible.
What happends if more earlier ancient manuscripts are discovered in the future and the verses we think is authentic today get dismissed into the future?
Therefore biblical transmission can not be trusted.
And even after so much correction todays biblical canon is still yet to be agreed upon.
If a book can not be trusted 100% because of Corruption
I fail to relize how we can trust the essential message.
Claiming it has Zero impact. Is like saying we can prove the essential message being historically sound. No you cant. Because the very same verses of essentials are found in a polluted book. It is then possible that the essentials came from the same false scribes.
We also showed Bart erman shows essentials them selves are polluted.
For example ressurection story not found in Marks Gospel nor the Trinity 1 john 5:7 which is a Interpolation 3rd centuary text.
Is basically saying we can trust the essential message if the essential messeage is intact. But how do you trust wether the essential message is true when the book the essential messeage is in. Is in fact proven to have curruption within its text. Which then casts doubt to the rest of the book. Its very simple logic.
If i recieve a letter from a person. But in the letter you find many lies or even little lies. It then brings doubt to the rest of the essential informations.
It was a essential belief that the word beggoten gave Jesus extra authority of being unique son. Now that essential word has been removed from the RSV version. One Word can manipulate the Theology of Christianity concerning Jesus. So has their been Manipulation in the Essentials sure. Including 1 John 5-7 which comes as a 3rd Centuary text not found as it is worded in the KJV in the Earliest Manuscipts we have today.
In fact if Christians want to appeal to the Earliest Sources to have more Authenticity then our Christian friends have to start “Stoning Women Again”, because the Earliest Manuscripts do not have the Story” Those without Sin cast the first Stone. Will Christians now be consistent like Removing the last 9-12 verses of Marks Gospel also Remove the Story of Forgiving Adultery??
Additionally Since the Gospel of John is the last written Gospel of the 4 Synoptic Gospels therefore does that now make it least Authentic, since Christians appeal to the Earliest as Most Authentic?
Christians appealing to the Earliest Manuscripts have even more problems:
Scholar of N.T Bart Ehrman
Forward to (18 minutes 25 seconds)
Watch how James white gets owned by Erhman. “The earlier we go in Biblical Manuscript the more Veriences we have”.
Therefore appealing to the Earliest brings more-Problems then to fixing them.
Even amoung diffrent dinominations and Sects you have diffrent amount of books each group claimimg their Canon is divine while others are Apocryphal.
And its been 2000 years. They are still trying to work out whos canon is correct and how many verses are really part of the original bible? There are differences even in the Canon, so Christians till this day are in dispute, footnotes can not fix it.
Reconstruct with confidence 98% of the Original?
Watch Ehrman Vs Wallace: from (Minute: 1.30.21)
There is your answer, about the apparent 98% confidence.
Bart Erhman shows, the earlier we go into the Manuscripts, the worst the transmisson becomes: https://youtu.be/WRHjZCKRIu
Go then again to (minute 1.56.07) onwards, and Bart Ehrman, shows can we trust something 97%? Accurate?
Further readings to: Does refering to the earliest text fix the errors in the New Testament?
Consistent Calvinism and Textual Criticism
Graphic: NT Reliability Comparison to Ancient Documents
A Brief Insight into the New Testament’s Prototyping