Which Bible is the true Bible?

[jmt356]

Which Bible is the true Bible?

I find it disheartening that there are so many versions of the Bible out there, all with different books in them, making it virtually impossible for a Christian to determine which is the true Bible and inspired word of God.

• Is it the Greek Orthodox Bible, with books such as 1 Esdras and Letter of Jeremiah, which are not in the Jewish, Catholic, Protestant or Anglican Bibles?
• Is it the Catholic Bible, with books such as Baruch, which are not in the Protestant Bibles?
• Is it the Protestant Bible, which does not have books such as Wisdom of Solomon that are in the Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican Bibles?
• Or is it the Anglican Bible, with books such as 3 Esdras, 4 Esdras, The Song of the Three Children, The Story of Susanna, Of Bel and the Dragon and The Prayer of Manasses that are not in the Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Bibles?

How can Christians claim that the Bible is divinely-inspired by God when we cannot agree on which Bible was divinely inspired by God?

 

[Hospes]

I see 95% overlap and you see the 5%. Odd how we work ourselves up over things...

In school, did you get perturbed over a test score of 95% ?

 

[Pipiripi]

The true Bible is the one that have only one true God and His Son Jesus Christ of NAZARETH.

 

[OzSpen]

Which Bible is the true Bible?

I find it disheartening that there are so many versions of the Bible out there, all with different books in them, making it virtually impossible for a Christian to determine which is the true Bible and inspired word of God.

• Is it the Greek Orthodox Bible, with books such as 1 Esdras and Letter of Jeremiah, which are not in the Jewish, Catholic, Protestant or Anglican Bibles?
• Is it the Catholic Bible, with books such as Baruch, which are not in the Protestant Bibles?
• Is it the Protestant Bible, which does not have books such as Wisdom of Solomon that are in the Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican Bibles?
• Or is it the Anglican Bible, with books such as 3 Esdras, 4 Esdras, The Song of the Three Children, The Story of Susanna, Of Bel and the Dragon and The Prayer of Manasses that are not in the Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Bibles?

How can Christians claim that the Bible is divinely-inspired by God when we cannot agree on which Bible was divinely inspired by God?

Jmt,

This is a great question. There was a Muratorian NT available in late 2nd century.

Formalizing canon was process among churches in late 4th century but each of these canons did not agree 100,%.

Take a read of early church historian, Eusebius, for his description of canonisation. His church history is avaiable on New Advent website.

 

[OzSpen]

I see 95% overlap and you see the 5%. Odd how we work ourselves up over things...

In school, did you get perturbed over a test score of 95% ?

Hopes,

We need to understand that only the original MSS are God inspired. The churches chose which books to include , hence the differences.

Take a read of Tobit vs Bel & the Dragon to see the uninspired nature of these books.

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

The true Bible is the one that have only one true God and His Son Jesus Christ of NAZARETH.

Is The Gospel of Thomas in The true Bible? If not, why not?

 

[Edward]

It seems to me that the Holy Spirit is to lead us into all truth, and when we read the word of God that we are to read it, and then meditate upon it, and it is also good practice to read it prayerfully and read it from your spirit and not just your carnal mind. In this way, it is the Holy Spirit which gives us revelation into His message so that we understand and learn. So I would think that how you read His word is more important than which translation.

I was weaned on a KJV Bible and I am used to it and te language. I understand it and actually like it's colorful language. But I do also read a NKJV Bible at times and that one has a testimony attached to it.

Years ago a friend, a Brother in Christ (Richard) bought me a nice new leather bound NIV Bible because that's what version he used at home and he wanted to be able to do telephone bible study with me and we both have the same translation to read from. Ok, so we did.
And then another friend and Brother in Christ (Dave) comes to visit me and he sees my NIV Bible and says, oh don't use that NIV translation, it's incomplete. They have many missing verses that are not in it but are in KJV Bible. And he proceeded to show me how a lot of verses were in my KJV bible but they were not in that NIV bble. Interesting!

So one day, here on this forum, someone had started a thread about Bible translations, which one is best? So I chimed in and said, hey the NIV Bibles have missing verses...and another Brother chimed in and said, hey Edward can you give us a couple examples of missing verses? So I said sure. and started trying to look a couple up. Well I thought I remembered a couple of the references that Dave showed me. Jeez we speant over 45 minutes or an hour looking some up. The problem was, when I looked up what I could remember, the verses were in that Bible. So my memory fails I guess. So I called up Dave at work and he said sure, and gave me about a dozen references off the top of his head. So I thanked him and we hung up.


One by one, I looked them up in scripture in both KJV and the NIV...and all of them were in both translations. I couldn't understand why? They weren't there before. I didn't want to bug Dave again at work so I googled it, missing verses in the NIV. I got a wagon load of references to missing verses. Way more than Dave had given me. And I had to look them up. I had to be able to substantiate to our board members what I had said! And I never felt so stipid in my life. I looked up every single reference that I had got from google and every single one of them was in there. I was exasperated and closed that NIV Bible and pushed it towards the other side of the table. And I prayed, I said, Lord what is going on here? Am I losing my mind? Me and Dave found plenty of missing verses and now I can't...None of them! And I looked at that NIV Bible sitting on the table and my eyes went across the backing, and there it was in big gold lettering...NKJV
I kid you not. I pulled that Bible back over to me and picked it up and began leafing through it. I don't (or didn't) own a NKJV Bible. And this is one. There is no possibility of confusion. The leather NIV Bible that Richard bought me is the biggest and newest Bible that I own. I am not confusing it with another similar Bible. No way. So the only other answer is that, the Lord supernaturally changed my NIV Bible into a NKJV Bible. AND! He left all of my underlining's & high lights in the new one, lol! I called both Richard and Dave and asked for confirmation. Did you buy me an NIV? Did we look up missing verses in an NIV Bible??? Yes Ed, have you lost your mind? So this is confirmed and by two others besides myself.

So the only response I could give board members here is, hey I think Jesus just gave me an endorsement for NKJV Bibles, and my testimony of what happened.
True story.

 

[Beau Jangles]

My first bible was given and lovingly signed with devotion from my mother at the age of five. It was written in old English text and I found attempting to understand many of the words nearly impossible. I was in the upper levels of reading and writing comprehension, but still, this type of spelling was just not working out. Starting at the book of Genesis was a fatal mistake!

I never got very far with it before reluctantly giving up and completely discouraged. My uncle bought a copy of what the Church of Christ was advocating at that time called, Good News For Modern Man. I was approximately nine years old then and it did give a lot of clarity for the confusion. Both parent's home churches were very strong on the KJV which is still quite common with many.

Mom was absolutely thrilled when I took an elective course my Junior (11th grade) in high school which was a supposed secular study of the bible as literature. She purchased The Living Bible and I did find this one quite easy to understand at that age, though it is an interpretation and not a translation. A lot of my friends also took the class thinking it an easy to get a grade A.

The teacher gave a confession of personal faith in Jesus but had to make an official disclaimer about the statements about biblical content and commentaries needed to remain in the secular and not an affirmative standpoint of Christianity. Many of us were on the verge of getting saved over the next few years and did so as time went by. The Jesus People Movement had just begun.

I continued to read on my own as my further dedication began transpiring. It was a very special time with the Saviour and I was desiring it with an ever longing anticipation. I sensed this was coming and felt a renewed excitement concerning my walk. Afterward, I began doctrinal teaching in dispensationalism. Our teacher had a doctorate in divinity from Oxford England, UK.

He had no problem with whatever version was the easiest to understand, but being from an Anglican background did recommend Scofield's KJV study reference bible 1967 edition. This had a synopsis of each book, the believed author and approximate time of its writing, sidebar chain-link references to prophecies, footnotes, and word clarifications. I had a nice concordance. I liked it.

What he did stress was the poetic way of the interpretation which was the reason he did find a particular admiring for this main purpose. He would be correct in this. Of course, there are many other versions available and far too many to list here. I think the emphasis is this. The importance is to be able to comprehend the Lord's word with the one you feel the most comfortable with.

 

[OzSpen]

It seems to me that the Holy Spirit is to lead us into all truth, and when we read the word of God that we are to read it, and then meditate upon it, and it is also good practice to read it prayerfully and read it from your spirit and not just your carnal mind. In this way, it is the Holy Spirit which gives us revelation into His message so that we understand and learn. So I would think that how you read His word is more important than which translation.

I was weaned on a KJV Bible and I am used to it and te language. I understand it and actually like it's colorful language. But I do also read a NKJV Bible at times and that one has a testimony attached to it.

Years ago a friend, a Brother in Christ (Richard) bought me a nice new leather bound NIV Bible because that's what version he used at home and he wanted to be able to do telephone bible study with me and we both have the same translation to read from. Ok, so we did.
And then another friend and Brother in Christ (Dave) comes to visit me and he sees my NIV Bible and says, oh don't use that NIV translation, it's incomplete. They have many missing verses that are not in it but are in KJV Bible. And he proceeded to show me how a lot of verses were in my KJV bible but they were not in that NIV bble. Interesting!

So one day, here on this forum, someone had started a thread about Bible translations, which one is best? So I chimed in and said, hey the NIV Bibles have missing

verses...and another Brother chimed in and said, hey Edward can you give us a couple examples of missing verses? So I said sure. and started trying to look a couple up. Well I thought I remembered a couple of the references that Dave showed me. Jeez we speant over 45 minutes or an hour looking some up. The problem was, when I looked up what I could remember, the verses were in that Bible. So my memory fails I guess. So I called up Dave at work and he said sure, and gave me about a dozen references off the top of his head. So I thanked him and we hung up.

One by one, I looked them up in scripture in both KJV and the NIV...and all of them were in both translations. I couldn't understand why? They weren't there before. I didn't want to bug Dave again at work so I googled it, missing verses in the NIV. I got a wagon load of references to missing verses. Way more than Dave had given me. And I had to look them up. I had to be able to substantiate to our board members what I had said! And I never felt so stipid in my life. I looked up every single reference that I had got from google and every single one of them was in there. I was exasperated and closed that NIV Bible and pushed it towards the other side of the table. And I prayed, I said, Lord what is going on here? Am I losing my mind? Me and Dave found plenty of missing verses and now I can't...None of them! And I looked at that NIV Bible sitting on the table and my eyes went across the backing, and there it was in big gold lettering...NKJV
I kid you not. I pulled that Bible back over to me and picked it up and began leafing through it. I don't (or didn't) own a NKJV Bible. And this is one. There is no possibility of confusion. The leather NIV Bible that Richard bought me is the biggest and newest Bible that I own. I am not confusing it with another similar Bible. No way. So the only other answer is that, the Lord supernaturally changed my NIV Bible into a NKJV Bible. AND! He left all of my underlining's & high lights in the new one, lol! I called both Richard and Dave and asked for confirmation. Did you buy me an NIV? Did we look up missing verses in an NIV Bible??? Yes Ed, have you lost your mind? So this is confirmed and by two others besides myself.

So the only response I could give board members here is, hey I think Jesus just gave me an endorsement for NKJV Bibles, and my testimony of what happened.
True story.

Why don't you Google,.which verses have been ADDED to KJV?

 

[evenifigoalone]

I thought this was going to be a KJV vs modern translations thread, haha. I should actually read up more on the reasons for the differences between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles, though. I've read plenty on the Protestant translations and their versions.

To give a basic rundown:
KJV and NKJV come from the Textus Receptus, which was the manuscripts they had available at the time the KJV was ordered and translated.
The modern translations are from the Majority Text, which are older manuscripts discovered at a later date.
The debate over the Protestant versions of the Bible, is basically whether or not the TR or MT are the "real thing". The debate is also over whether the verses missing in the MT, were truly taken away, or were they added?

But I digress, as that's not what this thread is about.
I remember another member on here saying that perhaps we don't have a perfectly preserved version of the Bible (the KJV has a few translation errors), so that we don't end up worshipping the Bible itself over God.

The wonder is that of what we do have, the versions match up 95%. Which is more than can be said for the manuscripts we have of the Illiad or The Oddesey.

 

[OzSpen]

I thought this was going to be a KJV vs modern translations thread, haha. I should actually read up more on the reasons for the differences between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles, though. I've read plenty on the Protestant translations and their versions.

To give a basic rundown:
KJV and NKJV come from the Textus Receptus, which was the manuscripts they had available at the time the KJV was ordered and translated.
The modern translations are from the Majority Text, which are older manuscripts discovered at a later date.
The debate over the Protestant versions of the Bible, is basically whether or not the TR or MT are the "real thing". The debate is also over whether the verses missing in the MT, were truly taken away, or were they added?

But I digress, as that's not what this thread is about.
I remember another member on here saying that perhaps we don't have a perfectly preserved version of the Bible (the KJV has a few translation errors), so that we don't end up worshipping the Bible itself over God.

The wonder is that of what we do have, the versions match up 95%. Which is more than can be said for the manuscripts we have of the Illiad or The Oddesey.

Even,

You have it the wrong way round. The Textus
Receptus is based on the Greek Byzantine Majority Text. Modern translations are based on the earlier Alexandrian text type.

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

The true Bible is the one that have only one true God and His Son Jesus Christ of NAZARETH.

Are they in 1 Esdras & should it be in all Bibles?

 

[Pipiripi]

Are they in 1 Esdras & should it be in all Bibles?

All old Bible in the world if you take by the first printings is the best Bible closer to the original. For me all the new translations is not trusted, there are some words out of context. Take a look on YouTube because there I saw some people that has study this new problem.

 

[evenifigoalone]

The problem with the KJV is some of the language that is used is outdated from it's centuries old usage. Words change meaning over time.

 

[Edward]

The problem with the KJV is some of the language that is used is outdated from it's centuries old usage. Words change meaning over time.

The same words can even have different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. So when I have BibleGateway.com open and am reading it a lot of the time I will have the Blueletterbible.com window also open. Blue Letter Bible lets you type in a book & chapter of scripture, then you scroll down to whatever verse you are reading and click on the tools icon beside the verse and it opens up the Hebrew or Greek definitions window and gives you all info on each word in the verse, the definitions, grammar, usage history and everything you could learn about those words in their original language. It's free to use and a very useful tool in understanding scripture.

Many times I thought I knew exactly what a verse meant but reading the alternate definitions shined a light of a different color light on the passage. Kind of enlightening.

 

[Beau Jangles]

The problem with the KJV is some of the language that is used is outdated from it's centuries old usage. Words change meaning over time.

If your reading comprehension skills are average you shouldn't have a problem with the Scofield KJV study bible. All the antiquated words and terminologies in Old English are updated in brackets [ ] and side barred to reference the original text. Having owned it since 16 years of age with no struggles, most should be able to understand it more than adequately enough.

 

[Episcopius]

I use blueletterbible.com all the time.
I used to have an even better Bible software which was free but when I upgraded to Windows 10 - it no longer worked!
So I went back to blueletter...
KJV and NKJV have the Johannine Comma - 1 John 5:7 - clear support for THE TRINITY - and most other modern translations do not have it.
Does anyone here know much about the Common English Bible?

The Orthodox Study Bible is unique - it's Old Testament is based on the Septuagint, its New Testament is just NKJV. It has the deuterocanonical books we know as the Apocrypha. So does the Oxford Annotated Version, a NRSV with pretty liberal commentary notes.

 

[Episcopius]

I try to be open-minded about the deuterocanonical books.
There were parts of Daniel written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Those portions of Greek-only Daniel are in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. In the Greek-only part of Daniel, he is in the Lion's Den for a whole week, rather than the one night. Also in that account, the Prophet Habakkuk brings Daniel food. Really, Habakkuk was a century earlier than the event portrayed in Daniel. As open-minded as I WANT to be - I cannot buy into the week-long stay in the Lion's Den.

 

[OzSpen]

I use blueletterbible.com all the time.
I used to have an even better Bible software which was free but when I upgraded to Windows 10 - it no longer worked!
So I went back to blueletter...
KJV and NKJV have the Johannine Comma - 1 John 5:7 - clear support for THE TRINITY - and most other modern translations do not have it.
Does anyone here know much about the Common English Bible?

The Orthodox Study Bible is unique - it's Old Testament is based on the Septuagint, its New Testament is just NKJV. It has the deuterocanonical books we know as the Apocrypha. So does the Oxford Annotated Version, a NRSV with pretty liberal commentary notes.

There's a review of the Common English Bible at: Good Books

 

[Episcopius]

My Common English Bible is on the way - thanks, Oz !!