Is God’s Word Verbally Preserved?
March 28, 2007
The book that I have been reading, One Bible Only , has brought some interesting points regarding verbal preservation. That is, every word of Scripture being preserved.
I wanted to throw some of those issues onto my blog and see what kind of comments might pop up.
They posit that the OT text was not verbally preserved by pointing to the following…
1 Sam 13:1 - Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel
(at least one of the numbers has been lost)
2 Sam 8:4 - David took from him one thousand chariots, seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand foot soldiers. Also David hamstrung all the chariot horses, except that he spared enough of them for one hundred chariots.
(contrasts to its parallel…)
1 Chr 18:4 - David took from him one thousand chariots, seven thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand foot soldiers. Also David hamstrung all the chariot horses, except that he spared enough of them for one hundred chariots.
2 Ki 8:26 - Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the granddaughter of Omri, king of Israel.
(contrasts to its parallel…)
2 Chr 22:2 - Ahaziah was forty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Athaliah the granddaughter of Omri.
2 Ki 24:8 - Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. His mother’s name was Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.
(contrasts to its parallel…)
2 Chr 36:9 - Jehoiachin was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months and ten days. And he did evil in the sight of the LORD.
They also bring up some interesting points regarding NT quotes of the OT not being word for word in many places.
Thoughts??
7 Responses to “Is God’s Word Verbally Preserved?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
March 28, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I would suggest that the right reading has been preserved somewhere (translations, other Hebrew manuscripts etc) but not exclusively in the Masoretic Text.
March 28, 2007 at 3:56 pm
That is the way that i am starting to see it.
The WCOF speaks of the Hebrew and Greek…it seems they left out the Aramaic. And now i am thinking that we may also need other translations, manuscripts, etc. to get to the preserved word of God.
March 28, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I would understand that the original Hebrew and Greek (and of course Aramaic) has been kept ‘pure in all ages’ through a variety of texts and translations - none of which are perfect.
March 28, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Daniel,
Aren’t the original Hebrew/Greek and “translations” mutually exclusive? If it’s a translation doesn’t that imply that it’s not in Hebrew or Greek?
March 28, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Due to the fact that the NT quotes a translation (the LXX) as authoritative, this would imply that the original Hebrew can be accurately preserved in a translation. If this is the case with the Septuagint why not with other translations?
March 28, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I tend to agree that the text at points are preserved in translations. But that is saying something different from being preserved in the original Hebrew/Greek.
And how far should we take this? Some KJVO proponents use this to defend their idea that the Scripture could be preserved in the KJV.
I am thinking that we should only go as far as necessary with it. In other words, we follow the original languages as much as possible. But when there is a corruption we move on to translations. That way we can ensure that we don’t have a translation correcting the original language, but supplementing where it is lacking.
How does that sound?
March 28, 2007 at 7:50 pm
That makes a lot of sense to me. The way I see it is the text is best preserved in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic manuscripts, but secondarly through translations.