Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
Some three hundred years after the apostle John completed the last books of the New Testament (c. 98 C.E.), a writer (c. 400 C.E.) seeking to strengthen the Trinitarian doctrine added the addition (interpolation) to 1 John 5:7: “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” This statement was not in the original.
The English Revised Version (1881-1895) and the American Standard Version (1901) both have “Do you believe in the Son of God?” These versions were a revision of the King James Version, which had Westcott and Hort 1881 and Tregelles 1857 as the basis for their New Testament. Tregelles 1857 has ...
Some Sopherim (scribes) of the Hebrew Old Testament altered the text if they felt it showed irreverence for God or the attention was focused on something else instead of God Himself. The NT scribes seem to have had the same motivation here…
Jesus did not fast as the Mosaic Law required, the record of the Gospels does not show him being known for fasting. However, neither Jesus nor the apostles commanded that the disciples had to fast. There are a few accounts of first-century Christians fasting. (Acts 13:2, 3; 14:23) However, early Christians were under no obligation to fast. Nevertheless, ...
What are the original words, what is the correct translation, and what is the correct meaning? Why is it somewhat more significant than might be thought? The original wording in Matthew 8:21 is ...
The meaning is changed when the fourth και (“and”) is included in this sentence or excluded from the sentence. This is not a significant change in meaning. Nevertheless, it is a change in translation and meaning. What are the original words, what is the correct translation, and what is the correct meaning?
One of the vital and until recently, more tedious, tasks in the work of textual criticism was that of collating every extant Greek manuscript or fragment of the New Testament. We may be overjoyed at the abundance of sources available to us, which include the papyri, the codices, and even citations in the fathers; without collation, however, we would have no practical way to access and use them.
It is no easy task here in deciding which reading was the original one. Both readings have early and weighty manuscript support and neither of the could be considered a difficult reading because they both make perfect sense. What tipped the scales ...
Explore the method behind verifying ancient texts and its impact on modern faith. Dive into the evidence that shapes belief.
What are the churchgoers, the Bible college students, and seminary students to do when one Bible scholar says one thing and another Bible scholar says something quite different, or worse still, as is the case with P52, several Bible scholars are saying different dates for the time when the Greek New Testament fragment P52 was written? P = Papyrus (a plant in Egypt), the material that was used to make sheets of papyrus paper that were written on by scribes to make copies of Bible books. 52 = the number assigned to that discovered manuscript. What makes it even more unnerving is when one is not an expert in the field of study, only having basic knowledge. How can they possibly know who is correct? Worse still, the Christian is put in the embarrassing position on social media of telling an atheist that P52 is dated to 100-150 C.E., and then the atheist responds to the Christian with, ‘no your evidence from 1935 is outdated, as recent research points to a date of 200 C.E. or later.’ What is the Christian to do?
