Many moons ago, there was a retranslation and reprinting of the Bible. This is all well and good, but when the copies were being printed, the editor missed one little thing. One very small thing. The word "not" was missing in the commandment "thou shalt not commit adultery"... One word was forgotten...
And how can anyone tell me there weren't mistakes made in the Bible hundreds of years ago that didn't get caught and changed doctrine? How can anyone tell me that Christianity, or Jeudaism or Islam for that matter, are pure and that their scriptures are pure? Mistakes were made in all religions. None of them are perfect, so don't expect them to be. With translations come mistakes. With time come deviations. Maybe they started out alright, started out perfect. But they have strayed, all religions have strayed. Is it anyone's fault? I say no, unless you want to blame human nature. Should we all abandon religion? I say no, religion provides us with a community to live in. Religion provides interaction and mental growth (as long as we question and debate and think about what authority is telling us and don't just sit in communion and accept everything told to us as if we were drones). Religion provides a very strong and stable base of morals and standards which can and should be bent throughout our lives as different needs and desires arise. No religion is perfect or the "true path" but we all need a bit of it. Why else would atheists give themselves a name? It's a classification. It's a community. It's a unification of beliefs.
I agree. I personally believe in the Bible, as far as it is translated correctly. And since there isn't a perfect translation, I just deal with what I have. And really, you're right; mistakes happen, especially over the passage of time...(though I do suspect that corrupt rulers may have changed some of the text for political gain...but that's a whole other issue)
I find it interesting that some people demand to only take the Bible at face value, no interpretations, just literally. Word for word, that's what it means, plain and simple. Or the people who allow their faith to be shaken by discrepancies between the text. Everyone benefits from discussion, plus new ideas and opinions keep our minds fresh.
So thumbs up to you!
Actually, due to the sheer number of copies of the Bible that we have from as early as circa 130 AD for the New Testament, and the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Old Testament from even earlier, the Bible that we have now is more than 99% textually pure.
Question: Have you read a Bible with footnotes? The footnotes show textual variations. If you look, there really aren't that many of them.
By the way, if you're worried about the translation, learn Greek and Hebrew and read it yourself. Too hard? Well, it's the Word of God. Either learn Greek and Hebrew or learn to trust the English translations.
Have you ever seen the Dead Sea Scrolls? They share a very small section of the Bible. Mostly, sections from Psalms and Solomons, not much else. Also, there was a period of time, around 600 ce that there was only one copy of the Bible available to scholars and church members. This one copy was then recopied over and over and provided almost all the theological doctrine to Christians for almost 500 years... Yes, others existed, but no one could find them so they did no good. It was due to the fall of the Roman Empire that almost all copies of the Bible were destroyed. So no, the Bible is not 99% textually pure. And about learning Hebrew and Greek, you are asking me to do a scientific experiment where I know what the outcome should be. If you wanted a honest-to-goodness translation. You should find someone who has never read the Bible, who knows Greek, teach him/her English, and then have them translate one of the "original" copies that have been found. I assure you, it would be different. Because if you or I learned Greek and made a translation, we know what the Bible is supposed to say, so we would make our translation fit that. We aren't blind to the Bible's teachings, so we pollute a blind-experiment.
Also, you're right, we have found a lot of copies of the Bible that are extremely old. But they do disagree every once in a while. So which Bible is correct? The one that has the most old Bibles that agree with it? You ever hear of the Council of Nicaea? It's when Christian leaders DECIDED what would cumulate the Bible and what wouldn't... They decided. It wasn't divine inspiration. It wasn't based on prayer. It was a voting system. Do you honestly believe our Bible is 99% correct when a bunch of men decided what should be in it or not? There are over 30 books which were edited from the Bible. There are massive chunks which were taken out of the Gospels because certain men didn't want them. Men, not God, decided what should be in it and what shouldn't. Yeah...that's a real accurate Bible.
"Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth 'you owe me!' Look what happens with a love like that, it lights up the whole sky."
-Hafiz