Not a Telephone Game

Psalm 12:6
“The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.”

Have you heard people say things like this: “The Bible has been copied, and copied, and translated, and copied. There must have been errors made at every stage in the process. Today’s Bible is like the result of a telephone game and must have been changed beyond recognition from its original meaning.”

They obviously cannot remember how the telephone game was played. I don’t know about you, but when my friends and I played the telephone game, the end phrase was always much shorter than the initial phrase, and most of it was complete nonsense. In short, even when we start with a sensible, coherent message, we do not end with one. So how could a telephone game of translations produce the coherent narrative of the Bible today?

Also, these Bible critics do not understand how biblical copyists worked. Their checking of every page of copied text was meticulous. Manuscripts with damaged sections were destroyed after copying to prevent copyists errors. While these copyists were not perfect, their perfectionist methodology prevented major errors.

The Dead Sea Scrolls’ text of Isaiah was 900 years earlier than the Masoretic Hebrew text usually used in translations. But only nine differences can be found – and all nine of these are tiny, tiny differences that make no difference to the meaning. That’s one inconsequential difference every 100 years, and no difference resulting in a change of meaning in 900! Truly, you can trust that the Bible in your hands is the word of God.

Prayer: Thank You for Your wonderful Bible, Lord God. Thank You for giving us Your word. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: Edwards, B.H. (2018), Trusting the Text, < https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/trusting-text/ >, accessed 12/31/2018. Image: Caves at Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered; CC BY-SA 2.5 Generic.

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