Praise God Pastor, Why are these verses: Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46; Luke 17:36, 23:17; John 5:4; and Acts 8:37 missing in some versions of the Bible? Thanks, Maria.
If you attend a church service where the preacher uses English, and a translator channels the message into another language, would you (the audience) know the translator has added or subtracted from the original content?
The obvious answer is: you can only know if you are well conversant with both languages. Let me ask again. Can someone who doesn’t know an authentic Dollar Bill tell its counterfeit? (Atamanyi sente nnamu, ayinza okumanya enfu?) I have always answered this question with a NO! How can you tell it is a counterfeit if you have no clue of the original bill?
Before we conclude that there are missing words, verses and passages, do we know the language in which the Bible was written?
The Bible?
It is important we begin by briefly answering the question: What is the Bible? The term Bible comes from a Greek word Biblos, which means Library. The Bible, therefore, is a library of 66 books with different genres (narrative, wisdom, poetry, prophecy, biographies, epistles and apocalypse) – all hanging on the same storyline.
This means the Bible is a literature piece comprising different books. This library, however, is not like the community or school library in which specific literature addresses specific issues. In the Bible (library), all sections have independent approaches to the same problem, and advocate the same solution.
How we got our Bible
The Bible, unlike the Quran, did not “fall from Heaven”. The former is a product of a team composed of God and man. God delivered the content and man documented what He said. Thus, the Bible is God’s Word in man’s fashion
and style. For that matter, what is inerrant (without mistake) about the Bible is not the words but the message. That is what is called ‘Scripture’. God is the author of His Word; man is the secretary and transmitter of God’s Word (2Peter 1:21; 1Corinthians 12:3, 2Timothy 3:16).
Jeremiah 36:4 (KJV) further confirms this. “Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah: and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord, which He had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book.” We have God as the origin of the Word; Jeremiah and Baruch as transmitters and recorders of the Word of God. We first got our Bible through oral transmission. God spoke to men and men recorded the message on rocks, doorposts, sheepskins, papyruses and eventually to scrolls – known today as ‘manuscripts’ that formulate the Old and New Testaments
In the New Testament, the disciples recorded all they could remember about their experience with Jesus Christ (1John 1:1-3, Luke 1:1-3). That is what we have as the Gospels (actually Biographies in my view). Whenever a Church in the New Testament received a letter from Apostle Paul in the mid-first century, the believers would read it aloud in their gatherings.
Meanwhile, devoted followers who recognised the value of Paul’s words would produce handwritten copies and pass the message to a broader audience. By the end of the first century, Paul’s letters were being copied as a collection. That is what we know as the Epistles today.
Source language of the Bible
God used the native language of those He spoke to and through. Since He spoke largely to the Habirus in the Old Testament, He spoke Hebrew – the Language of Judah (Nehemiah 13:24). When it came to the GrecoRoman world of the New Testament, He spoke in Greek.
The Bible you are holding now – hard and soft copy – has its original text in Hebrew, Aramaic (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament). The Aramaic sections of the Old Testament are found in Daniel 2:4-7:28, Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; and one verse in (Jeremiah 10:11). These are what the experts call the ‘Source Languages’ (SL).
All other languages in which the Bible is translated (English inclusive) are vernaculars, and these are known as Receptor Languages (RL), or as the English Professor Peter Sserubidde terms it ‘Target Language’ (TL). The English versions (and all other versions) are mere translations doing a job equivalent to that of the Sunday service translator.
Answered by Pr Isaiah White Send your questions to: editor@goodnewskla.com
