Statements of Faith on the Preservation of the Word of God
January 7, 2007
Here are some interesting statements of faith regarding the preservation of the Word of God…
The original text has been preserved in the totality of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts.
God’s Words are preserved in the multiplicity of manuscripts which must be compared to determine the wording of the originals.
The Ben Chayyim Hebrew OT and Scrivener’s Received Text of the NT are identical to the original autographs.
One particular family of texts preserve the autographs (eg: Byzantine, Alexandrian).
What is your statement of faith on the preservation of the Word of God?
January 8, 2007 at 3:07 am
My statement of faith regarding the preservation of Scripture would be something like…
God’s words are perfectly preserved in the existing manuscripts. Through the proper application of current textual criticism we can determine the original text to a very high degree (97-99%).
Even though it is possible to extract the original text perfectly through proper textual criticism, since the methods of textual criticism have not been perfected this has not been attained yet.
January 8, 2007 at 5:50 am
Mine is that God has preserved His word, without dispute by dispersing it through thousands of copies in many languages. Therefore no one can claim it has been controlled or changed by a single group of owners.
By comparing the texts we can easily spot and remove copyist errors. Like a 0 that looks like a Q or a t that looks like an l.
Through comparison we also see that the oldest copies are not different than the newest ones even in different languages and time periods.
January 8, 2007 at 12:28 pm
My view is option number two: God’s Words are preserved in the multiplicity of manuscripts which must be compared to determine the wording of the originals.