I think the KJV-only movement is largely an American insanity. Elsewhere I see the NIV or NASB being used more. And they’re translated from earliest Greek texts wherever they’re found. Earliest complete texts are about 325ad with fragments earlier
The “10s of thousands of variations” line is disingenuous. Manuscripts overwhelmingly only differ on grammatical and typos type differences. A bit like if everyone was asked to tell the story of Goldilocks. You’d get 1000 variations, but the essentials of the story would be apparent clear as day.
Maybe, but the essentials are still pretty nuts. The NIV doesn’t change things like Jesus saying anyone who doesn’t believe in him is condemned or Paul saying he doesn’t permit a woman to teach or, you know, the entirety of the Old Testament.
Yes. But the graphic is painting the idea that the text can’t have been transmitted accurately. Whereas it’s most likely we have good portions of what Paul actually taught, less so the historical Jesus but some parts more likely than others. The OT is different given it’s largely legendary. But, even so, it’s transmission from the post exile communities that first authored it is surprisingly accurate. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in the late 1940s pushed back the earliest OT texts we have a full thousand years from ~900ad to ~100bc. The level to which they were accurate copies was astonishing showing that textual transmission in the ancient world was more reliable than previously thought.
This isn’t a religious point of view, but rather one of secular scholarship.
I think the KJV-only movement is largely an American insanity. Elsewhere I see the NIV or NASB being used more. And they’re translated from earliest Greek texts wherever they’re found. Earliest complete texts are about 325ad with fragments earlier
The “10s of thousands of variations” line is disingenuous. Manuscripts overwhelmingly only differ on grammatical and typos type differences. A bit like if everyone was asked to tell the story of Goldilocks. You’d get 1000 variations, but the essentials of the story would be apparent clear as day.
Maybe, but the essentials are still pretty nuts. The NIV doesn’t change things like Jesus saying anyone who doesn’t believe in him is condemned or Paul saying he doesn’t permit a woman to teach or, you know, the entirety of the Old Testament.
Yes. But the graphic is painting the idea that the text can’t have been transmitted accurately. Whereas it’s most likely we have good portions of what Paul actually taught, less so the historical Jesus but some parts more likely than others. The OT is different given it’s largely legendary. But, even so, it’s transmission from the post exile communities that first authored it is surprisingly accurate. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in the late 1940s pushed back the earliest OT texts we have a full thousand years from ~900ad to ~100bc. The level to which they were accurate copies was astonishing showing that textual transmission in the ancient world was more reliable than previously thought.
This isn’t a religious point of view, but rather one of secular scholarship.