• Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!

The Doctrine of Preservation?

Harold Garvey

New Member
In 1707 John Mill's Novum testamentum græcum noted over 30,000 discrepancies (a lot of leaven) between some 100 extant manuscripts (most of those MSS were probably not complete New Testaments, nor even complete books). Yet, those 100 manuscripts were likely to represent over 100 believers' precious Bibles. Handwritten Bibles were a fairly scarce commodity. Do we forget that those manuscripts did not just come into existance for the sole purpose of becoming 17th, 19th, or 21st century textual 'evidence'? Did God fail to deliver on His promise for those 100 or more Christians?
A task of enormity for man to be sure he had it all right.

Perhaps you think that all 100 were not true believers;
Nonsense and makes way for suspicions to take advantage here.
but do you think God would provide the lost souls of the world with an inferior Bible?
Do you really want to go there? God has not provided anything inferior, unless you want to blame God for allowing inferior Bibles to remain inferior.
At about 300 variants on average per document, I doubt these MSS would comply with your qualifications for agreeing accurately with the originals.
Um, dont we still have the Canon?
Today we know of over 5,700 Greek manuscripts alone (each with discrepancies). So, in times past why didn't all those thousands of people (saved or unsaved) receive all the jots & tittles of the text?
Don't know, but since you seem to know, tell us.
 

franklinmonroe

Active Member
... Don't know, but since you seem to know, tell us.
As best I can tell, God did not promise a perfect jot-&-tittle preservation of the Scriptures on Earth.

Generations of common people since Moses wrote the first inspired words had limited access to Scripture, and the few handwritten documents they may have seen all had copiest flaws. Literate folks (but non-scholars) before the advent of printing (15th century AD) would not have recognized these errors since they would not likely ever had the opportunity to compare their Bible (probably in Latin) closely with another. They did not get a perfect Bible text, but it was what God provided them. God did not fail them. It was enough.

Despite great efforts to combine the best texts from ancient documents there are still a few small places where it seems the text is uncertain; at least, (lacking originals) we cannot objectively state that we now have a perfect Bible text. This is what God has provided the post-printing generation. God has not failed us. It is enough.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Harold Garvey

New Member
As best I can tell, God did not promise a perfect jot-&-tittle preservation of the Scriptures on Earth.

Generations of common people since Moses wrote the first inspired words had limited access to Scripture, and the few handwritten documents they may have seen all had copiest flaws. Literate folks (but non-scholars) before the advent of printing (15th century AD) would not have recognized these errors since they would not likely ever had the opportunity to compare their Bible (probably in Latin) closely with another. They did not get a perfect Bible text, but it was what God provided them. God did not fail them. It was enough.
We're not talking "text" when it comes to the Bible, well, you are, but I'm not.

Preservation of the intention deemed forth of the wordings and making sure the context is right is where we find the Lord has His word for us all. Misinformation comes from the altered manuscripts.

Many excerpts from the KJV are left out altogether due to the use of some of these altered ones.

Despite great efforts to combine the best texts from ancient documents there are still a few small places where it seems the text is uncertain; at least, (lacking originals) we cannot objectively state that we now have a perfect Bible text. This is what God has provided the post-printing generation. God has not failed us. It is enough.
What about the discrepencies?
 

Jim1999

<img src =/Jim1999.jpg>
The only "preserves" I know are sitting in sealed jars in the pantry. They do keep well, and serves us well in time.

Cheers,

Jim
 

franklinmonroe

Active Member
It would seem that (primarily) some single version exclusivists are attempting to hijack the historic meaning of the Doctrine of Preservation. They are compelled by their own presuppositions and convinced in their minds by their own reasoning. They ask: Would God inspire the text and not also 'perfectly' preserve it? (They are also saying that Inspiration is worthless without their particular concept of Preservation).

They have not presented a convincing Scriptural argument to support their claim that God "promised" to preserve the Scripture for us on Earth. I believe God has preserved the Scriptures, but I cannot find an obligation in Scripture for Him to do so.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Harold Garvey

New Member
It would seem that (primarily) some single version exclusivists are attempting to hijack the historic meaning of the Doctrine of Preservation. They are compelled by their own presuppositions and convinced in their minds by their own reasoning. They ask: Would God inspire the text and not also 'perfectly' preserve it? (They are also saying that Inspiration is worthless without their particular concept of Preservation).
If you're going to make that claim you'll need something to back it up other than your words above.

They have not presented a convincing Scriptural argument to support their claim that God "promised" to preserve the Scripture for us on Earth. I believe God has preserved the Scriptures, but I cannot find an obligation in Scripture for Him to do so.
God is never under any obligation, so you'll never find that one.:sleep:

A concept of "forever settled in heaven" is that the word of God is just above man's ability to rationalize it away.:thumbsup:
 
Top