What Could God do About Bible Errors?

[Purple Knight]

Hypothetically. I'm not saying the Bible has errors. I'm saying, what if people want to put lies in?

If I'm an unscrupulous monk, wanting to foist my own ideas on what I'm copying, and I just decide to lie like a dog and put down what I want to put down, what can God do about it? Can he act against me without violating my free will, which he has known compunctions against doing?

If I decide to burn originals and say I lost them, am I going to immediately suffer a heart attack or get struck by lightning before I destroy the precious scripture and corrupt it? Is my plan going to miraculously fail in some other way? Arguably the wind can blow everything away every time I try. Is that violating my free will? I mean, it's a bit like stopping the bullet every time somebody tries to shoot somebody else and it easily crosses into not allowing people the freedom to be bad, which may invalidate the choice to be good, to some degree.

Ultimately if I lie to gullible people, the only way to stop them being taken in, is by the use of force against me, right? And that's rather tactless and ham-handed; not something God would do.

But what if there's another way to stop people being taken in?

I could argue that just giving people Reason and permission to use it, is enough to defend against all possible lies. Now this is a really, really good argument, because all you people who have Reason are supposed to use it, and then you might see something wrong with people telling you to take things on faith. And you don't have to conclude that this means God doesn't exist. You are fully empowered to say it means God does exist: It means God does exist and he doesn't strike people dead who decide to lie to you, rather, he implores you to use this gift of Reason to see through it. So then, there's this one piece that doesn't fit and it's the necessity of faith.

So if you follow, then maybe anyone who has said not to use your Reason and just trust, is exactly such an unpunished liar and blasphemer God has allowed to do evil because he prefers not to interfere directly. And it's okay, because God gave you what you needed to see which puzzle piece doesn't fit.

God, yes. Faith, no.

[Difflugia]

It's not exactly an answer to the question, but one thing I found interesting is that the Dead Sea Scrolls seem to indicate that the Qumran community seems to have been just fine with competing versions of the same Scripture, apparently treating them all as equally sacred.

According to Timothy Michael Law in When God Spoke Greek,

Manuscripts of the Torah reflect the Masoretic Text only 48 percent of the time, while the remaining books outside the Torah reflect the Masoretic Text only 44 percent of the time. This is hardly the picture of textual uniformity to which we had been accustomed. What is more, some of these were found stored together in the same cave. That different editions of the same biblical books could coexist in the same community seems not to have caused any concern for ancient readers of scripture. We shall soon see that the New Testament authors are likewise unperturbed by the existence of multiple versions of the same biblical book. Again, these are not different versions in the way one might compare modern English translations of the Bible, where differences can be slight and are often related simply to the style of the English. Between the third century BCE and the second CE there was no real preoccupation with a fixed text and authoritative status was shared by different versions of the same books.

Maybe God had in mind that the religious communities themselves were to be keepers of Scripture. The collective judgement and free will are responsible for both adding good and rejecting bad Scripture. Revelation is fluid in a way that nobody can directly point to divine action independent of human beings, but manifests in the form of a living corpus of Scripture.

[1213]

...Is my plan going to miraculously fail in some other way? Arguably the wind can blow everything away every time I try. Is that violating my free will?...

If free will means you can want what ever you want, it doesn't violate your free will. Free will doesn't mean everything also goes as you want.

But, I believe God can miraculously protect his word. And that we still have the Bible, is a proof for that in my opinion.

[bjs1]

If I'm an unscrupulous monk, wanting to foist my own ideas on what I'm copying, and I just decide to lie like a dog and put down what I want to put down, what can God do about it? Can he act against me without violating my free will, which he has known compunctions against doing?

Assuming free will is real, God does seem hesitant to violate it completely.

I suppose that a different solution would be to provide thousands of manuscript copies and fragments spread across a wide geographical area. God could also allow many authors quote early copies of the Bible in their own writings. That way if one monk decide to put down whatever he wanted (a bigger change than spelling errors or slightly different grammar), then we could compare the various manuscripts to deduce that the outlier is probably not a reliable copy.

I could argue that just giving people Reason and permission to use it, is enough to defend against all possible lies. Now this is a really, really good argument, because all you people who have Reason are supposed to use it, and then you might see something wrong with people telling you to take things on faith. And you don't have to conclude that this means God doesn't exist. You are fully empowered to say it means God does exist: It means God does exist and he doesn't strike people dead who decide to lie to you, rather, he implores you to use this gift of Reason to see through it. So then, there's this one piece that doesn't fit and it's the necessity of faith.

So if you follow, then maybe anyone who has said not to use your Reason and just trust, is exactly such an unpunished liar and blasphemer God has allowed to do evil because he prefers not to interfere directly. And it's okay, because God gave you what you needed to see which puzzle piece doesn't fit.

God, yes. Faith, no.

Reasons is one of the 4 ways that Christians say that we can know God. (The other three are scripture, experience, and tradition.)

However, faith in God is not faith that God exists. It is faith that God is who He says He is and will do what He says He will do. Think of it more like faith in another person. You aren’t using faith to know that the person exists. Your faith is that the person is trustworthy (is who he says is he; not lying to you) and capable (able to do what he says he will do; someone you can trust to complete a certain goal).

[Purple Knight]

If I'm an unscrupulous monk, wanting to foist my own ideas on what I'm copying, and I just decide to lie like a dog and put down what I want to put down, what can God do about it? Can he act against me without violating my free will, which he has known compunctions against doing?

Assuming free will is real, God does seem hesitant to violate it completely.

I suppose that a different solution would be to provide thousands of manuscript copies and fragments spread across a wide geographical area. God could also allow many authors quote early copies of the Bible in their own writings. That way if one monk decide to put down whatever he wanted (a bigger change than spelling errors or slightly different grammar), then we could compare the various manuscripts to deduce that the outlier is probably not a reliable copy.

Correct, but he doesn't poof up the good copies and spread them up, does he? He needs a world where there are more honest people than unscrupulous ones, for this to work. Scripturally this is why he had to drown the world. I actually admit that when you think about it, a lot of this works. It makes more logical sense than it should if prehistoric nincompoops were writing it. The order God created everything in, for example. Fish came first, and only birds are wrong, the Bible pacing them just after fish. Everything else is right.

But fast-forward to more modern times and it stops making more sense than it should. It now makes less. There's this deeper-than-deep magic, the law of blood, yet all sins are against God? And even then, we just have to forgive people? Forgive them what? Nothing was done to us.

No. This doesn't fit. Some sins are against me and you, and they owe recompense. If you cut off my leg, I can't just forgive it gratis. It's the New Testament that doesn't fit, specifically the new morality.

See, if somebody nasty was going to act early enough, there might not be a lot God could do about it, the same way there's not a lot people in tropical places can do about roach infestations. They can burn their house down, it is within human capability, but it defeats the purpose. So this is where my being able to see all things as true, at once, is leading me to believe the Old Testament might be true, and if so, this beat-me-I'm-a-dog business was somebody hijacking something, in order to control people.

Reasons is one of the 4 ways that Christians say that we can know God. (The other three are scripture, experience, and tradition.)

However, faith in God is not faith that God exists. It is faith that God is who He says He is and will do what He says He will do. Think of it more like faith in another person. You aren’t using faith to know that the person exists. Your faith is that the person is trustworthy (is who he says is he; not lying to you) and capable (able to do what he says he will do; someone you can trust to complete a certain goal).

Exactly. It's faith he's a good person. If he is, well, some other people aren't, and because he's such a good person, he doesn't mess with them. So if some pieces don't fit, it's within Reason (which God gave us) to expect that a large portion of the Bible might have been hijacked.

Of those four things... the big truth is... we only actually need one.

[bjs1]

Of those four things... the big truth is... we only actually need one.

No, if God exists then reason itself will not be sufficient to know Him. A real God would be different from humanity on a fundamental level. (Plato wrote a lot about that.)

If I could understand God by reason alone without God reveling Himself directly in some way then, I can be certain that I have I have not understood God at all. A genuine God would be different enough from humanity that He would have to reveal himself to some degree for us to understand Him.

A God I can understand through reason alone is no God at all. That would just be an image of myself made more powerful.

[Purple Knight]

Of those four things... the big truth is... we only actually need one.

No, if God exists then reason itself will not be sufficient to know Him. A real God would be different from humanity on a fundamental level. (Plato wrote a lot about that.)

If I could understand God by reason alone without God reveling Himself directly in some way then, I can be certain that I have I have not understood God at all. A genuine God would be different enough from humanity that He would have to reveal himself to some degree for us to understand Him.

A God I can understand through reason alone is no God at all. That would just be an image of myself made more powerful.

That's dangerous because he could be an evil god, and you'd have no way of knowing. If we can't use reason to at least figure out we're dealing with a benevolent entity, I don't know if doing its bidding can be morally justified.

I mean, people do this. People do this to other people who are not as smart as they are. Just trust me. You can't understand, so do what I say. It's best for you anyway.

We know through experience that when people say this, they're not always worthy of the trust they want.

(I deleted almost never and just put not always. This is probably more true but it took 10 years off my life to be 10% less cynical.)

[bjs1]

Of those four things... the big truth is... we only actually need one.

No, if God exists then reason itself will not be sufficient to know Him. A real God would be different from humanity on a fundamental level. (Plato wrote a lot about that.)

If I could understand God by reason alone without God reveling Himself directly in some way then, I can be certain that I have I have not understood God at all. A genuine God would be different enough from humanity that He would have to reveal himself to some degree for us to understand Him.

A God I can understand through reason alone is no God at all. That would just be an image of myself made more powerful.

That's dangerous because he could be an evil god, and you'd have no way of knowing. If we can't use reason to at least figure out we're dealing with a benevolent entity, I don't know if doing its bidding can be morally justified.

That's not really what I said. I did not say that we cannot use reason to understand God. I said that we cannot only use reason to understand God. Reason is important, but reason alone is not sufficient.

We still need to use reason. But if we rely completely on reason then the only saying would become true: God created man in His image, and man returned the favor.

[Purple Knight]

Of those four things... the big truth is... we only actually need one.

No, if God exists then reason itself will not be sufficient to know Him. A real God would be different from humanity on a fundamental level. (Plato wrote a lot about that.)

If I could understand God by reason alone without God reveling Himself directly in some way then, I can be certain that I have I have not understood God at all. A genuine God would be different enough from humanity that He would have to reveal himself to some degree for us to understand Him.

A God I can understand through reason alone is no God at all. That would just be an image of myself made more powerful.

That's dangerous because he could be an evil god, and you'd have no way of knowing. If we can't use reason to at least figure out we're dealing with a benevolent entity, I don't know if doing its bidding can be morally justified.

That's not really what I said. I did not say that we cannot use reason to understand God. I said that we cannot only use reason to understand God. Reason is important, but reason alone is not sufficient.

We still need to use reason. But if we rely completely on reason then the only saying would become true: God created man in His image, and man returned the favor.

You're saying tradition and scripture amount to legitimately earned trust, then?

[JehovahsWitness]

Re: What Could God do About Bible Errors?

Ensure that there are enough surviving bible manuscripts that that any major errors or interpolations can eventually be identified and corrected.

To read more please go to other posts related to...

BIBLICAL INERRANCY , COMPILATION and ... AUTHORSHIP & TRANSMISSION