Was The Bible Mistranslated?
Was the bible mistranslated like a game of telephone? Can we trust the version we have today is accurate to the original?
It seems to be a very wide spread idea that we cannot trust the bible because whether by accident or for political purposes, it has been mistranslated by men.
While I recognize the fallibility of people, after digging deeper into this topic, I do not believe this to be the case.
There are many ways we can test the reliability and authenticity of a document. For reliability (is the text in front of us the same as what was in the original document?), we use textual criticism which we will look at below.
For authenticity (did the historical events referenced actually occur and can we trust that what the writers said was true?) we can use a different set of tests that I will address in my next blog. Before we jump into textual criticism, I want to clear up a common misunderstanding about how the bible was put together.
Misunderstanding #1
Is the bible a translation of a translation of a translation?
The first big misconception is that the bible is a translation of a translation of a translation.
Just because the bible has been translated into many languages, it does not mean that there have been multiple language translations between the original and the version you are reading now.
When translations are made, they go directly from the original language to the version you are reading.
Some people seem to think it was translated from language 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 but in reality it is translated 1 to 2, 1 to 3, or original to lang 4.
So the bible has not gone through multiple languages and translations before getting to your desk. It only went through one.
TEXTUAL CRITICISM
When testing the accuracy of any historical document, historians use a process called textual criticism. They look at all the copies of a particular text and compare them. If there are 500 copies of a poem and 498 of them say “I am Sam” One says “I’m Sami” and One says “I am Ham” It is easy to tell that the original text said I am Sam, and the last two were mistranslated.
We still have in existence 24,970 copies of the new testament ancient text from different geographical locations to compare. Some of them date as early as 50-100 years after the original was written, meaning many of those 24k could be compared with the known original and were accepted as accurate by the early church while the original was a point of reference.
What we do is compare what the Slavic scribes claim the original said, with what the Ethiopians, Armenians, Arabic, Frankish etc. claim and examine where there are discrepancies to try to figure out the originals.
So, back to the “I am SAM” analogy. If the 2,000 Ethiopian copies of the original say “Do not steal” and so do the 4,000 Slavic ones, but one scribe in Persia put “Do not heal”, we can surmise that “heal” is the mistranslation.
Scribes did not take their job lightly. Many methods, such as word counting were put in place to ensure accuracy. As a result, the only textual variants in the ancient manuscripts come in the form of spelling, word order and a few passages like John. 7:53~8:11, which for some reason, are missing in some of the earliest manuscripts. All in all, these discrepancies do not change the meaning or message in any meaningful way.
Could there have been mistranslations and conspiracies that went on throughout the course of history among populations who’s lay people couldn't read the original language? Of course! But the point is irrelevant because all one has to do if they want to test the accuracy of the text sitting before them is to take an online course in Greek, take a trip over to the Smithsonian museum, and see if they match up.
I am not implying you have the time to do this-- I am just pointing out the fact that many people today do take this language in fact it is usually a prerequisite class to graduating from a bible college. So there are a lot of people alive today who are capable of reading the original texts.
The bible is coherent and consistent
The bible is coherent and consistent.
If the mistranslations were an accident, we would have more incoherent sentences and if it were purposeful, we would expect to see more contradicting narratives.
Mistranslated on accident
If there were words accidentally translated or transcribed wrong, we would expect to see more incoherent sentences. You would have sentences that don’t make sense. In the scriptures however the words make coherent sentences that are compatible with the larger context of the story and the stories are compatible with each other and with the larger context of the overarching themes.
If the mistranslation was purposeful and changed the message in a meaningful way, we would expect to see some inconsistencies with the manuscripts written in other geographical locations or time periods.
The bible was written by different authors over different time periods
and their story about God has remained consistent throughout. If someone wanted to change a meaningful part of the story they could have maybe succeeded at messing with a single prophet’s message in a single time period. But they couldn't have kept the conspiracy going to the scale necessary to change documents in different time periods. If they just changed one story in a meaningful way, it wouldn't be consistent with the others.
Our access to the first generation manuscripts eliminates the need for this fear because if someone did this in history, we would see the alterations in those copies when comparing them with the first generation manuscripts.
I believe the documents we have in our hands are an accurate representation of the originals. In my next blog, we will address the follow-up question which is: Can those originals be trusted?
Q&A
Myth #1
Are there thousands of inconsistencies among the early manuscripts?
I know it is confusing because people claim there are all of these discrepancies. People claim there are thousands of them however
1. Most of the time they are using a single punctuation like a missing period that is in all 5k of the copies from one geographical location to count as hundreds of mistakes when it is really the same mistake (just one) being counted for each manuscript that includes it so they say thousands.
2. So many contradictions don't hold up under evaluation. In fact, I have yet to find one. I hear so many authors say this and that but then I go look it up for myself and the discrepancy they claim simply isn't there.
Myth #2
Was the bible changed for political reasons when Constantine made it the official religion of Rome?
The early manuscripts we have in our possession predate Constantine, so the notion that the message was changed for political reasons when christianity became the official religion of Rome is inaccurate.
Again I am not saying that these political figures did not manipulate scripture to meet their political agenda because they absolutely did. I am simply saying we still have access to the texts that pre-date them so we can study and see what they pulled out of context.
Myth # 3
Did the church change The Bible or pick and choose what to put in it at the council of Nicea?
I often hear people say, “it’s a fact that the Catholic church changed everything at a meeting in the 3rd century” (in reference to the council of Nicea). The council was called to distinguish between the books they knew were written by the apostles and had been accepted in the churches for 300 years and the new books that a cult called the Gnostics were writing 300 years later (their present time) claiming to have been written by the apostles (which obviously couldn’t be true because they were dead).
They did not remove or add anything. They simply bound together the books everyone had accepted as authentic from the beginning. The only reason there are a different number of books in the Catholic bible and the Protestant bible is because there were a group of writings called the apocrypha that were simply historical books about the time period in between the Old and New Testament. Both groups agree they were historically accurate and both groups agree they were not written by the apostles or prophets. They simply disagree whether they belong in the bible or a history book.