Made me smile to see that used as an example of editing in the Bible!
As for the original topic:
–GJohn was redacted (it clearly as two endings).
–Matthew and Luke took a written text of Mark and made it their own in a variety of ways, sometimes not perfectly congruous with Markan theology. Look how different they appear from Mark. This shows us what can happen to a text within a decade or two of its own composition. How it can be adapted and changed and appear in a different community.
–Luke was probably written first without its infancy narrative. Then a later version by the same author added it.
One of Paul’s letters is clearly multiple letters combined into one.
–There are plenty of interpolations in the manuscript record and some identifable that occurred so early there isn’t even manuscript evidence for them.
–Manuscripts differ on many details, most of which are insignificant but there is certainly a great deal of diversity.
–We lack textual attestation for much of the Bible in the first few hundred years after each book was written. It may be comparatively better than other comparative works but this does not negate that statement in any way.
–Christians used the OT, which WAS FULLY SCRIPTURE fluidly and plastically at times. How much more these newer writings?
I also think the idea of autographs will eventually be a relic of bad theology. Authors may very well have composed their own works in stages and put out multiple editions of their own writings. The very idea of an autograph is too presumptive when we don’t really know the exact provenance, author, life setting, compositional history or copying trajectories for any of these works.
Like fallible human beings, God must work through, scripture that is not infallible or perfect, that was not transmitted perfectly, but is sufficient for establishing His salvific purposes. I have faith in God to work through the Bible. Not faith in some perfect Bible to work through me. If God can inspire perfectly inerrant originals He can inspire perfectly inerrant copies. He did not. Not even close. I look at the textual record and conclude that God just doesn’t care about inerrancy.
Yes but its rarely mentioned because it seems modern protestant evangelicals rule the textual discussions. I find the irony amusing. I agree they chopped off parts of the Bible for doctrinal reasons. But I don’t think the canon selection process was anymore inerrant than the copies or the “original” writings were . I’d say the textual copying was good enough as was the book selection process. Read through the Spirit, it serves God’s purposes. A book added or removed won’t matter much to me. You can keep Revelation with Jesus on the warhorse covered in blood. I’ll stick with the peace donkey in the Gospels. Many Christians existed before the canon and a printed New Testament and many were saved with just portions of it. It is God that saves, not a book.
Important things to be aware of when talking about the Qur’an.
The Qur’an is to Islam what Jesus of Nazareth is to Christianity. Any suggestion that the Qur’an and the Christian Bible are equivalent scriptures is naive and insulting to a true, devout Muslim.
From “The History of the Qur’anic Text from Revelation to Compilation” by Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami:
“Judeo-Christian scholars have long cast their eyes toward the Qur’an in search of variances, but so securely has Allah preserved His Book that their vast efforts and resources have yielded them little more than fatigue.”
The Study Qur’an edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
"The Quran is for Muslims the verbatim Word of God, revealed during the twenty-three-year period of the prophetic mission of the Prophet Muhammad through the agency of the Archangel Gabriel (Jibrīl or Jabraʾīl). The meaning, the language, and every word and letter in the Quran, its sound when recited, and its text written upon various physical surfaces are all considered sacred. The Quran was an oral revelation in Arabic first heard by the Prophet and later written
down in the Arabic alphabet in a book consisting of 114 sūrahs (chapters) and over 6,200 verses (āyāt), arranged according to an order that was also revealed. Considered the
Book (al-Kitāb) by all Muslims, it has many names, such as al-Furqān (“the Criterion”) and al-Hudā (“the Guide”), but its most commonly used name is al-Qurʾān, which means ‘the
Recitation.’ "
“Known in English as the Quran (also Koran), it is the central theophany of Islam and the basic source and root of all that is authentically Islamic, from metaphysics, angelology, and
cosmology to law and ethics, from the various arts and sciences to social structures, economics, and even political thought.”
Non-arabic versions of the Qur’an have no authority compared to that of an officialy-approved arabic Qur’an.
Does somebody want to translate it into any other language? Knock yourself out. You’re promoting the spread of Islam, if your translation is acknowledged to be good, but an official, authoritative, and widely-approved Qur’an demands compliance with the strictest oral and written standards befitting the ipissima verba dei".
Mishandle a translation to your heart’s content. Mishandle a physical Qur’an, and there are Muslims who will kill you.
It seems like this is a problem from more than one source – those on the most fundamentalist end will say the Bible is not “pure” enough if it’s edited while others will say it’s not “scientific” or “intellectual” enough unless it’s edited more. Either way, someone has an idea based on their own time and culture for how the validity of the Bible must be measured.
1 Cor. 15:17 & 19. "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. … 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
And if I were to give a list, anybody could flag me and a moderator would be on me “rat quick.”
Apparently, you haven’t seen the bumper-car threads in which YECs and anti-YECs bump their cars.
The problem with the Bible is that it is already a translation from the Hebrew and the New Testament Greek. The written Hebrew has no vowels or punctuation and one comma can change the whole meaning of a sentence. Each translation of the Bible claims to be an improvement or more accurate except the Good News which was deliberately lightened up for easy use. Technically the Good News is a transliteration. So the Koran has the advantae of being first written in Arabic and only the Arabic is valid so that there can be no error in translation.
Having said that, it only becomes a problem if you want/need the bible to be inerrant for it to be valid. Clearly there are going to be disagreements on what the source texts say. Added to that it is within the “rules” of Judaism for Scribes to redact the script they are copying to keep it in line with current theology, which is why there are differences in the Dead Sea Scroll versions.
It will come as no surprise that it does not bother me in the least that there may be variations within the texts of different translations. There are numerous commentaries and dictionaries and other references that can help where there appears to be a lack of clarity and besides the main content is clear enough for the common Christian. it is only the theologians and students who find the need to nit pick or “clarify”
The main problem is that we are so used to the artificial versing and numbering that people will just quote snippets without referencing them to the main text and, often, change the meaning in the process. So the bible gets corrupted, not by the translation but, by the use/abuse in reading random chunks.
Not at all. Transliteration is representing the sound of a word in a different alphabet. If used everywhere, it would make no sense unless you understood the source language. Bereshith bara elohim eth ha-shamayim w-eth ha-arets is a rough transliteration of the first verse of Genesis. It doesn’t use Hebrew characters, but it’s still Hebrew and not English.
Transliteration is mostly used for names and some titles and special terms. So Elohim, for instance, is a transliteration of a Hebrew term for God, while God is a translation. Christ and Messiah transliterate Greek and Hebrew words that could both be translated as Anointed One. The female judge of Israel is called Deborah if transliterated or Bee if translated. The first human is called Adam if transliterated or Humanity if translated. Even for names, transliteration can hide some meaning that the original language conveys. If taken well beyond names and titles, all the meaning would get hidden.
Your article doesn’t say that translations aren’t considered the Qur’an; only that translations can contain errors. I’ve worked with Muslims before in my various jobs. At one firm there was a very devout Muslim man from India. He faithfully attended Friday noontime prayer services, leaving work and coming back. And he tried to spread his faith. One day he brought in a Qur’an to give to another co-worker. When the recipient tried to take it in his left hand the Muslim guy made him take it in his right hand. (The left hand is for wiping your bum.) Therefore, I don’t think he considered it a fake Qur’an. (He was very nice, except when he was fasting for Ramadan, and then he became grouchy.)
Yes, Muslims do believe that. And they got the story from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a Christian work. They also borrowed other stories from that book.
I don’t think mishandling a Qur’an, whether or not in Arabic, would go over big with any Muslim.
Back in the day, it was a crime punishable by death to make an unauthorized translation of the Bible. Wycliffe ran like hell when the Church came after him for making his translation. He got away, and eventually died. But later, the Catholic authorities dug up his bones, burned them, and threw the ashes into a river.
Muslims are a diverse group and I’m sure many beliefs represent a subset not the entire spectrum. I know that when translations are published they are usually published in the margins of the Arabic text as if it is more like notes or commentary than the actual text. So you would need to treat any translation with the respect due the Quran because the book most likely contains the Arabic Quran as well as whatever translation. When minority language Bibles are published in Muslim dominant cultures, they often do the same thing, putting the Hebrew and Greek text in the middle and the translation in the margins because this is how the people think Scripture is supposed to look.
I’ve heard Jay Smith talk about this book that’s opening up a crisis for Muslim belief in the Quran. From what little I know about him, Jay Smith still comes across as someone with a huge heart for Muslims to come to Jesus.