Which Version of the Bible is the Word of God?

im sure you are aware that the way genesis, or any other bible 'book' was written, was not in the form of a novel such as what we have todayit is made up of many hundreds of manuscripts. Chapter 1 and Chapter 5 of genesis for instance would be contained in two separate scrolls. therefore it is not a chronological novel as many seem to think.it is a collection of many different scrolls. When the early collators put them together, they made them into book form. they decided where a verse and chapter begins and ends.

not according to josephus who argued the superior reliability of the written history of the jews over the histories of the Greeks of his day. He was a pharisee, a scholar, a diplomat and historian. According to him, the holy books were not in question by the jews of his day.

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Those Antiquities contain the history of five thousand years, and are taken out of our sacred books, but are translated by me into the Greek tongue. But what is the strongest argument of our exact management in this matter is what I am now going to say, that we have the names of our high priests from father to son set down in our records for the interval of two thousand years.

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8. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life... and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add any thing to them, to take any thing from them, or to make any change in them; but it is become natural to all Jews immediately, and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain Divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be willingly to die for them...Let us now put the case, therefore, that we made use of this argument concerning the Grecians, in order to prove that their nation was not ancient, because nothing is said of them in our records: would not they laugh at us all, and probably give the same reasons for our silence that I have now alleged, and would produce their neighbor nations as witnesses to their own antiquity? Now the very same thing will I endeavor to do; for I will bring the Egyptians and the Phoenicians as my principal witnesses, because nobody can complain Of their testimony as false

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Hi nighttrain,i do mean codex...the christian copiest were at the forefront of this technology i would suspect that the torah was written on a number of scrolls, not just one. so perhaps they had one of them and not the others??

how do i know that the bible was written on many scrolls???just look at the dead sea scrolls if you need to know how the bible was originally transmitted.Many of these scrolls and fragments are over 2,000 years old, they contain several lengthy manuscripts, other scrolls and thousands of scroll fragments were found.When all the scrolls and fragments were sorted out, they amounted to around 800 manuscripts. And 200 of them are copies of portions of the Hebrew Bible text.I dont need to make it up brian, perhaps you need to take a chill pill.Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

nor does it start at the mouths of modern scholars

im not sure what 'strand' ...not that it matters because as Josephus testified the many sacred texts they had were all copied exactly and had no variations among them.

i believe these are the Apocryphal writings that were looked at and the council of Jamin left them out of the cannon because they were not considered inspired. They were added by the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria who inserted such Apocryphal writings into the Greek Septuagint version and apparently viewed them as part of an enlarged canon of sacred writingsBut according to Josephus, those Apocryphal books were not part of the hebrew cannon in his day as is clearly seen by his words

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"we have but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death.

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This is likely the same reason why the Jewish Council of Jamnia specifically excluded all such writings from the Hebrew canon.I know of additional christian books that have also been found, but are not considered to be authentic such as The Gospel of St Thomas. Its due to the work of the ancient scholars who made a study of such materials and came to the conclusions they did about them.
Because of this I believe that what we have today is the inspired word of God and not a heap of bogus writings which could have easily had crept in had it not been for the work of these men. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

we can 'thank' the Roman Catholic Church for that. They added these books to the cannon at the Council of Trent in 1546. Catholic writers refer to these books as deuterocanonical, meaning “of the second (or later) canon,” as distinguished from protocanonical.its not hard to identify area's where the RC church have things wrong, and this is one of them. But most scholars and translators are aware of this and so dont include the books in their translations... i have never seen a modern bible with an apocryphal book as part of the cannon. We could probably ask ICANT to clarify this, as he uses over 40 modern translations.My guess is that if any do have these apocryphal books in their bible, they would be set apart from the canonized scriptures and titled as non cannon books. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

i would go so far as to say that if any christian believed the apocryphal books were inspired, they would be wrong

The evidence is in that the Hebrew canon was complete by the fifth centuryB.C.E.
the Jews didnt include the books in the cannon as can be seen in the words of Josephus and so rightly do not form part of it today.Also, none of the Christian Bible writers quoted from these books.Origen made a distinction between these writings and those of the true canon. A number of catalogs were made by scholars such as Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Amphilocius in the 4th century CE and either ignored these additional writings or placed them in a secondary classJerome is another one who took a stand against such Apocryphal books and he is considered to be the foremost of the ancient scholarsUnlike the OT and NT they dont contain prophecies. They often contradict the canonical books and they even contradict themselves. They have a distinct pagan Greek influence. Two of the writers even imply that they were not inspired.

who mentions them?

i've done a little more research on that and its reasonable to accept that the Isrealites, like other nations, had many writings by many people But they did not all write with the same purpose. Inspired books which were cannonized, were books where the writer was directed to write...prophets for example were giving the people messages from God as were other writers. But some isrealites wrote simple accounts of an event for reportings sake. They were not all inspired writings though, God did not direct them or give them special directives to do so the same way he did with his prophets.Obviously some of the uninspired writings were even source material for inspired writers. For example Genesis 5:1 says, 'This is the book of Adams history' Its very likely that this book was written by Adam himself and Moses may have used this book to collate some of the pre flood Genesis account including Adams geneology.Some appear to be journals compiled from state records. Some such as the Book of Jashar for instance, mentioned at 2Sam1:18, sets forth a poem called “The Bow,” It's believed that the book may have been a collection of poems, songs, and other writings. Not necessarily inspired, but still of historical value nonetheless.

there are a few lines of evidenceJosephus wrote “From Artaxerxes to our own time the complete history has been written..." Josephus writings names all the books and the orders of the OT.
He mentions that the complete history was written from Artaxerxes time to the present, this Persian King was ruling in 455 BCE. do you have some verse's so i can look into it???

hi GM where does the bible imply a flat earth???

it seems 'Jubilees' expresses a belief in astrology and angel worship. This clearly excludes it from being inspired by God because we know that Astrology is condemned (Isa. 47:12-15) Also, the apostle John spoke of falling down before the feet of an angel and he was told: “Be careful! Do not do that! ... Worship God.””Rev. 19:9, 10.like i said before...it seems reasonable that many jews wrote about their history and about certain events. It doesnt necesarrily mean they were writing under inspiration though, nor does it mean that any of the history they wrote was incorrect. It probably was correct and likely the writings were being read by many jews.i dont think there is any issue with why the bible writers might have referred to them