INSIDE SCHOLARLY CIRCLES, it is well known that the Greek New Testament of the Holy Bible has been corrupted to a greater or lesser
degree, depending on the person doing the evaluation. Regardless of the argumentation, some amount of biblical corruption is
certain. Any person who would argue against this reality is simply uninformed and very badly mistaken. Nevertheless, many
theologians and Christian apologists maintain that even if the Bible (or the New Testament) has been corrupted, the amount of corruption
is so slight as to not disturb any (orthodox) church doctrinal position. That is silly. Others attest to the inerrancy
of the Bible in its original languages while others make the same claim for the Bible in its present form, generally English. I only wish that the original New Testament writers would have used English!
Still, be aware that I have no intention in this paper to declare that the New Testament is unreliable or that is ought to be set aside. Far from it! I believe considerable accuracy resides in the New Testament (NT). The problem is in removing the wheat from the chaff. What I am saying is that the NT needs to be approached with a certain amount of respectful caution in the same way you might approach other dominant historical documents that have passed through the influencing hands of thousands of men—some of them decidedly unscrupulous. Testimony found in any New Testament text does not automatically make that testimony true. What I am saying with absolute certainty is that men are unreliable, and many of these men attend(ed) Christian churches and profess to be believers. Some are not.
What
I am saying is that we cannot just blindly accept what any given New Testament Bible version says on blind faith, especially in serious
areas, without at least doing a little homework and comparing the text to a few other versions. Naturally, that means reading
the Bible and it means getting familiar with it, something that the vast bulk of professing Christians have yet to do. If you
plan on living your life according to what the Holy Bible says, do you have a problem with verifying that what it says is accurate? Why would you have such a problem? Perhaps you are afraid to face the truth or afraid to stand upon your beliefs before a challenge.
(Continued)
