Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
Ezra was an inspired scribe/copyist/Bible author about 467-537 B.C.E But how were the inspired writings preserved down to Ezra’s day? There is no way of knowing with absolute certainty just how they were preserved, What we do know is that the 39 books that we accepted as inspired and authoritative in the Hebrew and Aramaic... Continue Reading →
We know that there are mistakes in the Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts because they all have some different readings in them. If there were no mistakes, all of the Hebrew Old Testament Manuscripts would have read exactly the same with absolutely no difference, which would have required that God repeat the miracles of inspiration, moving the copyists along with Holy Spirit like he had done with the authors every time they picked up a pen. Yet, this simply was not the case. Mistakes were made. In fact, the same sopherim in Jesus' day took liberties with the text. Were these so serious that our Bible was corrupted so that the meaning God wished to convey was lost?
The Sopherim The Sopherim (scribes) were copyist from the days of Ezra down to the time of Jesus. While they were very serious about their task as a copyist, they did take liberties in making textual changes at times. Whether this was what Jesus had in mind cannot be know for certain, but Jesus condemned... Continue Reading →
Versions are translations of the Bible from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into other languages (or Hebrew into Greek). Translation work has made the Word of God accessible to billions of persons, who are incapable of understanding the original Biblical languages. The early versions of the Scriptures were handwritten and were, therefore, in the form of... Continue Reading →
Hebrew is the language in which the thirty-nine inspired books of the Old Testament were penned, apart from the Aramaic sections in Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26; Dan. 2:4b–7:28; Jer. 10:11, as well as a few other words and phrases from Aramaic and other languages. The language is not called “Hebrew” in the Old Testament. At Isaiah... Continue Reading →
In the days of Ezra and beyond, there would have been an increasing need for copying the Old Testament manuscripts. As you may recall from your personal Bible study, the Babylonians took the Jews into captivity for seventy years. Most of the Jews did not return upon their release in 537 B.C.E., and after that.... Continue Reading →
The Old Testament, the inspired Word of God, how was it copied, maintained as to the textual reliability, and handed down throughout the past three thousand years? It should be appreciated that what we possess today is nothing short of Word of God that the Old Testament writers penned throughout a 1,600-year period, from the... Continue Reading →
Writing Before the Flood It is impossible to definitely establish that some of the histories that are mentioned in the book of Genesis had been written prior to the Flood, as the Bible does not contain any reference to pre-Flood writing. However, we should note that there were cities being built, and there was the... Continue Reading →
The Necessity of Evaluating the Evidence. (See How to Count Textual Variants) Criticism from its very nature concerns itself entirely with the problems suggested by the errors of various kinds which it brings to light. In the writings of the New Testament the resources of textual evidence are so vast, exceeding, as we have seen, those of... Continue Reading →
1 Corinthians 3:16 Updated American Standard Version (UASV) 16 Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? Before delving into the phrase, “indwelling of the Holy Spirit, let us consider the mistaken view of New Testament scholars Simon J. Kistemaker and William Hendriksen, who wrote,... Continue Reading →