Can This Book Be Trusted?

Can this book-the Bible-be trusted? Does it refer to people who really lived, places that actually existed, and events that truly happened? If so, there should be evidence that it was written by careful, honest writers. Proof does exist. Much of it has been found buried in the earth, and even more is contained within the book itself.

Digging Up The Evidence

The discovery of ancient artifacts buried in Bible lands has supported the historical and geographical accuracy of the Bible. Consider just some of the evidence that archaeologists have dug up,

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A Book For All People, 1997

What The Book Contains

THE word "Bible" is derived from the Greek word bi-bli'a, which meant "papyrus rolls" or "books." The Bible is actually a collection-a library-of 66 individual books, the writing of which spanned some 1,600 years, from 1513 B.C.E. to about 98 C.E.

The first 39 books, about quarters of the Bible's contents, are known as the Hebrew Scriptures, since they were written mostly in that language. These books may generally be divided into three groups: (1)Historical, Genesis to Esther, 17 books; (2) Poetic, Job to the Song of Solomon, 5 books; and (3)Prophetic, Isaiah to Malachi, 17 books. The Hebrew Scriptures cover the early history of the earth and of mankind as well as the history of the ancient nation of Israel from its inception down to the fifth century B.C.E.

The remaining 27 books are known as the Christian Greek Scriptures, for they were written in Greek, the international language of the day. They are basically arranged according to the subject matter: (1)the 5 historical books-the Gospels and Acts, (2)the 21 letters, and ((3)the Revelation. The Christian Greek Scriptures focus on the teachings and activities of Jesus Christ and his disciples in the first century C.E.

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A Book For All People, 1997

Conclusion Of Learning The Languages Of Asia

When 25-year-old Robert Morrison arrived in China in 1807, he undertook the extremely difficult task of translating the Bible into Chinese, one of the most complex written languages. He had only a limited knowledge of Chinese, which he had started studying just two years earlier. Morrison also had to contend with Chinese law, which sought to maintain China's isolation. The Chinese people were prohibited, under penalty of death, to teach the language to foreigners. For a foreigner to translate the Bible into Chinese was a capital offense.

Undaunted but cautious, Morrison continued studying the language, learning it rapidly. Within two years he obtained a job as a translator for the East India Company. During the day, he worked for the company, but in secret and under constant threat of detection, he worked on translating the Bible. In 1814, seven years after he arrived in China, he had the Christian Greek Scriptures ready for printing. Five years later, with the help of William Milne, he completed the Hebrew Scriptures.

It was an enormous achievement -the Bible could now, "speak" in the language used by more people than any other in the world. Thanks to capable translators, translations into other Asian languages followed. Today portions of the Bible are available in over 500 of the languages of Asia.

Why did men such as Tyndale, Moffat, Judson and Morrison labor for years-some even risking their lives-to translate a book for people they did not know and, in some cases, for people who did not have a written language? Certainly not for glory or financial gain. They believed that the Bible is God's Word and that it should "speak" to people-all people-in their own language.

Whether you feel that the Bible is the Word of God or not, perhaps you would agree that the kind of self-sacrificing spirit displayed by those devoted translators is all too rare in today's world. Is not a book that inspires such unselfishness worth investigating?

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A Book For All People, 1997

Note: To all my readers, I am sorry that I have not been able to blog everyday. There are very good reasons for me not being able to do this everyday, as I would like. This computer is in a clubhouse/also connected to the office of our small transit buses for the elderly and low income people. The manager of this place sometimes has to go to pick someone up or what-have-you, and no one is allowed to stay in the building while they are gone. Also, they are closed on training days, weekends and holidays, and whenever they deem best to be closed. Here in this city,that is pretty much how some businesses are. So, you see, I h do not have much control as to when I can do a blog. So, until I can either save enough money (which is hard on my very limited income), or move back to Colorado from whence I came from, which I plan to do as soon as I can save up some money to do so. I will) So, please be patient with me. I am indeed very, very sorry. Also the rest of the senior housing units use this computer as well. As it is only one computer for everyone. Thank you.

Learning The Languages Of Asia

While translators in Africa struggled to develop written forms for spoken languages, on the other side of the world, other translators encounter a much different obstacle-translating into languages that already had complex written scripts. Such was the challenge facing those who translated the Bible into the language of Asia.

At the beginning of the 19th century, William Carey and Joshua Marshman went to India and mastered many of its written languages. With the help of William Ward, a printer, they produced translations of at least portions of the Bible in nearly 40 languages. Regarding William Carey, author J. Herbert Kane explains: "He invented a beautiful free-flowing colloquial style [of the Bengali language] that replaced the old classical form, thereby making it more intelligible and attractive to modern readers."

Adoniram Judson, born and raised in the United States, traveled to Burma, and in 1817 he began to translate the Bible into Burmese. Describing the difficulty of mastering an Oriental language to the degree necessary to translate the Bible, he wrote: 'When we take up a language spoken by a people on the other side of the earth, whose thoughts run in channels diverse from ours, and whose codes of expression are consequently all new, and he letters and words all totally destitute of the least resemblance to any language we have ever met with; when we have no dictionary or interpreter and must get something of the language before we can avail ourselves of the assistance of a native teacher-that means work!'

In Judson's case, it meant some 18 years of painstaking work. the final portion of the Burmese Bible was printed in 1835. His stay in Burma,however. cost him dearly. While he was working on the translation, he was accused of spying and hence spent nearly two years in a mosquito- invested jail. Not long after his release, his wife and young daughter died of fever.

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A Book For All People, 1997

Learning The Languages Of Africa

In 1800, there were only about a dozen written languages in Africa. Hundreds of other spoken languages had to wait until someone invented a writing system. Missionaries came and learned the languages, without the aid of primers or dictionaries. Then they labored to develop a written form and after that they taught the people how to read the script. This they did so that someday people could read the Bible in their own tongue.

One such missionary was a Scotsman named Robert Moffat. In 1821, at the age of 25, Moffat set up a mission among the Tswana-speaking people of southern Africa. To learn their unwritten language, he mixed with the people, at times journeying into the interior to live among them. "The people were kind," later he wrote, "and my blundering in the language gave rise to many bursts of laughter. Never, in one instance, would an individual correct a word or sentence, till he or she had mimicked the original so effectually, as to give great merriment to others. Moffat persevered and eventually mastered the language, developing a written form for it.

In 1829, after working among the Tswana for eight years, Moffat finished translating the Gospel of Luke. To get it printed he traveled about 600 miles by ox wagon to the coast and then to a ship to Cape Town. There the governor gave him permission to use a government press, but Moffat had to set the type and do the printing himself, finally publishing the Gospel in 1830. For the first time, the Tswana could read a portion of the Bible in their own language. In 1857, Moffat completed a translation of the entire Bible into Tswana.

Moffat later described the reaction of the Tswana when the Gospel of Luke was first made available to them. He noted: "I have known individuals to come hundreds of miles to obtain copies of St. Luke. . . .I have seen them receive portions of St. Luke, and weep over them, and grasp them to their bosoms, and shed tears of thankfulness, till I have said to more than one, 'You will spoil your books with your tears.' "

Devoted translators like Moffat thus gave many Africans-some of whom initially saw no need for a written language-the first opportunity to communicate in writing. The translators, though, believed that they were giving the people of Africa an even more valuable gift-the Bible in their own tongue. Today the Bible, in whole or in part, "speaks" in over 600 African languages.

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A Book For All People, 1997

Learning The Languages Of Africa

The Challenges Facing The Translators

How do you translate a bok into a language that has no written script? Numerous Bible translators faced just such a challenge. For example, Ulfilas, of the fourth century C.E., set out to translate the Bible into what was then a modern but not a written language-Gothic. Ulfilas overcame the challenge by inventing the Gothic alphabet of 27 characters, which he based primarily on the Greek and the Latin alphabets. His translation of nearly the entire Bible into Gothic was completed before 381 C.E.

In the ninth century, two Greek-speaking brothers, Cyril (originally named Constantine) and Methodius, both outstanding scholars and linguists, wanted to translate the Bible for Slavic-speaking people. But Slavonic-the forerunner of today's Slavic languages-had no written script. So two brothers invented an alphabet in order to produce a translation of the Bible. Thus the Bible could now "speak" to many more people, those in the Slavic world.

In the 16th century, William Tyndale set out to translate the Bible from the original languages into English, but he encounter stiff opposition from both Church and State. Tyndale, who was educated at Oxford, wanted to produce a translation that even "a boy that driveth the plough" could understand. But to accomplish this, he had to flee to Germany, where his English "New Testament" was printed in 1526. When copies were smuggled into England, the authorities were so enraged that they began burning them publicly. Tyndale was later betrayed. Just before he was strangled and his body burned, he uttered these words with a loud voice: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!"

Bible translation continued: the translators would not be stopped. By 1800, at least portions of the Bible had "learned to speak" 68 languages. then, with the formation of Bible Societies-in particular the British and Foreign Bible Society, founded in 1804-the Bible quickly "learned "even more new languages. Young men by the hundreds volunteered to got o foreign lands as missionaries, many with the prime purpose of translating the Bible.

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A Book For All People, 1997

A Book That "Speaks" Living Languages

Translating the Bible-with its more than 1,100 chapters and 31,000 verses-is an imposing task. However, over the centuries, devoted translators gladly too on the challenge. Many of them were willing to suffer hardships and even to die for their work. The history of how the Bible came to be translated into the languages of mankind is a remarkable account of perseverance and ingenuity. Consider just a small part of that compelling record.

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A Book For All People, 1997

Correcting Copyists' Errors

Suppose 100 persons were asked to make a handwritten copy of a lengthy document. Undoubtedly at least some of the copyists would make mistakes. However, they would not all make the same mistakes. If you were to take all 100 copies and compare them very carefully, you would be able to isolate the errors and determine the exact text of the original document, even if you never saw it. Similarly, the Bible copyists did not all make the same mistakes. With literally thousands of Bible manuscripts now available for comparative analysis, textual scholars have been able to isolate mistakes, determine the original reading, and make note of needed corrections. As a result of such careful study, textual scholars have produced master texts in the original languages. These refined editions of the Hebrew and of the Greek texts adopt the words most generally agreed upon as being the original, often listing in footnotes variations or alternative readings that may exists in certain manuscripts. The refined editions by the textual scholars are what Bible translators use to translate the Bible into modern languages.

So when you pick up a modern translation of the Bible, there is every reason for confidence that the Hebrew and the Greek texts on which it is based represent with remarkable fidelity the words of the original Bible writers. The record of how the Bible survived thousands of years of recopying by hand is truly extraordinary. Sir Frederic Kenyon, longtime curator of the British Museum, could therefore state: " It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain . . . This can be said of n o other ancient book in the world."

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A Book For All People, 1997

Conclusion Of A Solid Basis For Confidence

In one study, scholars compared the 53rd chapter of Isaiah in the Dead Sea Scroll with the Masoretic text produced a thousand years later. The book A General Introduction to the Bible, explains the results of the study: " Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not effect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word 'light,' which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly . . . Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission-and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage."

Professor Millar Burrows, who worked with the scrolls for years, analyzing their contents, came to a similar conclusion: "Many of the differences between the . . .Isaiah scroll and the Masoretic text can be explained as mistakes in copying. Apart from these, there is a remarkable agreement, on the whole, with the text found in the midieval manuscripts. Such agreement in a manuscript so much older gives reassuring testimony to the general accuracy of the traditional text. "Reassuring testimony" can also be given about the copying of the Christian Greek Scriptures. For example, the 19th -century discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus,, a vellum manuscript dated to the fourth century C.E., helped confirm the accuracy of manuscripts produced centuries later. A papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John, discovered in the district of Egypt, is dated to the first half of the second century C.E., less than 50 years after the original was written. It had been preserved for centuries in the dry sand. The text agrees with that found in much later manuscripts.

The evidence thus confirms that the copyists were, in fact, very accurate. Nevertheless, they did make mistakes. No individual manuscript is flawless-the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah notwithstanding. Even so, scholars have been able to detect and correct such departures from the original.

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A Book For All People, 1997

A Solid Basis For Confidence

There is good reason to believe that the Bible has been accurately transmitted down to our day. The evidence consists of existing handwritten manuscripts-an estimated 6,000 of all or portions of the Hebrew Scriptures in Greek. Among these is a Hebrew Scripture manuscript discovered in 947 that exemplifies just how accurate the copying of the Scripture was. It has since been termed "the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times."

While attending his flocks early that year, a young Bedouin shepherd discovered a cave near the Dead Sea. In it he found a number of earthenware jars, most of them empty. However, in one of the jars, which was sealed tight, he found a leather scroll that was carefully wrapped in linen and contained the complete Bible book of Isaiah. This well-preserved but worn scroll showed signs of having been repaired. Little did the young shepherd realize that the ancient scroll he held in his hands would eventually be given worldwide attention.

What was so significant about his particular manuscript? In 1947 the oldest available complete Hebrew manuscripts dated from about the tenth century C.E. But this scroll was dated to the second century B.C.E. -more than a thousand years earlier. Scholars were very interested to find out how this scroll compared with manuscripts produced much later.

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A Book For All People, 1997