THE BIBLE ALTERS ITSELF!

The Bible claims to be breathed-out by God and that parts are actually dictated by God. The belief is that the Bible teaching on God and faith and morals comes from God and is what God would write.

This would suggest the meaning of the text is definitely the word of God. But we have cases of the Bible altering the wording and the meaning of its texts.

The Septuagint, LXX, is not the Bible.  The Hebrew Bible is the Bible.  The Septuagint is but a paraphrasing of it.  The New Testament is not fond of quoting the Hebrew Bible. Pathetically and tellingly, it does about 33 times according to G. Archer and G.C. Chirichigno. Yet in 340 places it cites the Septuagint.  It builds big doctrines on its turns of phrases and mistranslations.  The main trick is to make it look like the Old Testament is full of predictions that fit Jesus and authenticate him.

Hebrews 10:5,6. This quotes Psalm 40:6. In the original Hebrew the Psalm says that God has opened my ears. In the Septuagint, which is quoted in Hebrews, it says that God has got a body ready for me.

Haley in his book Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible suggests that it may have been an error in the Septuagint or the translators thought that the change would make the verse make sense to people who could not understand Hebrew so it was not roguish (152). This is absurd as saying that a translator should change cat in a book to dog for people who don’t know what cats are.

Haley then says that the Hebrew version means that, “You God have made me obedient through listening to you with my physical ears”, and that the Septuagint version means, “You have given me a body to obey you and hear you.” This is a transparent attempt to make it seem that though the words are different the meaning is the same and that the meaning is that a body was given to hear and obey.

If you have an all-powerful God he might give a spirit invisible ears only and no other material component.

Also the opening ears in the Hebrew is just a metaphor for listen and such usage is universal over the globe. A spirit can listen without physical ears.

Matthew 27:9, 10. A quotation of prophecy from Zechariah was wrongly attributed to Jeremiah by the gospeller.

Haley says that the prophecy belonged to the section of the Prophets which started off with the book of Jeremiah. Since Jeremiah was first, Matthew calls the whole collection Jeremiah. (153). This is unlikely for Matthew would have wanted you to look up the prophecy when he said it came from Jeremiah. Otherwise, he would have been more specific. What is the point of giving a reference if you can’t say exactly what book it came from? Nobody would do that. You don’t say a quotation from Exodus is to be found in Genesis just because Genesis is the first book in the section of the Bible where Exodus is, the Torah. Plus the arrangement Haley has in mind wasn’t standard and may not have existed.

Others say that the prophecy was made by Jeremiah and quoted by Zechariah. There is no evidence for this and it presupposes that Matthew miraculously knew who made the prophecy. This would be a silly miracle. God would not show him that when all he needed to do was quote Zechariah and say so and the theory is just a conjecture. Besides, what evidence is there that Matthew had supernatural clairvoyant powers? If they are right then Occam’s Razor is wrong.

Haley says that the names might have been abridged. Jeremiah would be Iriou and Zriou. Then he says that this could have led to a mistake in one letter. So, a mistranslation for which is there is no evidence is given as a last resort. Yet Haley says that steps were taken to ensure that the true text would not be lost. He said that the best manuscripts would soon have prevented any corrupting. So, if he is right, a mistake that made its way into most Bibles would be unlikely. Even if other mistakes crept in elsewhere, it is still more likely that this is not a mistake.

Matthew 2:23. Matthew says that Jesus lived in Nazareth in fulfilment of the prophet who said, “He shall be called a Nazarene” (AB). But, this prophecy does not exist.

It is thought that Nazarene means branch so Matthew’s quotation would have to be from Isaiah 11:1 which says that a branch will come out of the roots of Jesse and grow and be fruitful. But Jesus is the branch in the sense that he grows new people for God like leaves so the verse has nothing to do with Nazareth.

Matthew invented the prophecy. He had no right quoting it when it was not in any book that people could look up.

In Archer’s Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Archer gives a totally unconvincing explanation for why the New Testament writers preferred to use the inaccurate Septuagint, or Greek Old Testament. He says that since the Jews of the Diaspora brought this version into every part of the Roman Empire it was best to use it instead of the Hebrew Bible. This was to ensure that the readers would use their own Bible to check up on the New Testament. If the Hebrew accurate one had been quoted they would have been disillusioned at finding something different in their own Bible. What use is a corrupted and mistranslated Bible? The people with the Septuagint must have known that it was a loose translation at many places anyway.

Archer would be the last to admit it, but what he is really doing is accusing the New Testament writers of conscious attempted fraud. The Gentiles should have been told that the Septuagint was not always accurate. They probably mostly knew this anyway because the book was only a translation. Finding quotations in the gospels from a Bible that differed from the original would have upset them and put them off the Gospels. The real reason the Septuagint was used was because it fitted Christian understandings of the Old Testament better than the real Old Testament. It provided them with some fake proof texts. That was extremely fraudulent. They could have translated the Hebrew text themselves with the help of experts instead of using a corrupted version. If the authors could find no experts then it is plain that they were only ordinary men and not the leaders and theologians of the Church that tradition says they were.

The use of the Septuagint proves that the New Testament is not inspired by God or the work of honest people. Men who really care about God and what God has said would use the Hebrew Bible and translate that and get their dogma from it.

The Christians abused the Old Testament. “When Christians quoted those old prophecies, they used Greek translations which were untrue to the Hebrew originals: they ran separate bits of a text into one, they twisted the sense and reference of the nouns (Paul at Galatians 3:8, is a spectacular example); they mistook the speaks and the uses of personal pronouns (John 19:37 or Matthew 27:9), they thought that David or Isaiah had written what they never wrote (Acts 2 or Acts 8:26); they muddled Jeremiah with Zechariah (Matthew 27:9); they reread the literal sense and found a non-existent allegory (Paul, to the Galatians at 4:21-3). There are errors in the famous speech which the Acts author gives to Peter at Pentecost: Peter tortures bits of Psalms 16 and 132, mistakes their meaning and context, and quotes them in poor Greek translation, though Greek was not the historical Peter’s mother tongue and most of his supposed audience would not have understood a word of it” (page 339-340, The Unauthorized Version). Even worse, Psalm 16 which Peter used to prove that Jesus rose from the dead doesn’t mention a resurrection but only a recovery from illness!

The prologue of Luke's Gospel says that it is an orderly account of what happened - ie literally true. But the gospel is very disordered. This indicates that somebody had been tampering with it and upsetting the order after it was completed.

If the Bible alters the teachings of its own self it is a matter of time before bishops and whatever start doing it too. It is a sign that the Bible is vague and is not really the word of anything never mind God.