There is no such thing as The Bible

Sources which don't have a huge axe to grind. Apologetics are biased by definition - they exist to defend a predetermined conclusion. Many christian apologetics are also hopelessly shoddy - and of questionable honesty. (That is not to say that all are equally bad, but I'd never trust an apologetic source on science or history without checking it out. I've just seen too many falsehoods. The unreliability of apologetic works is a fact.).Mainstream secular works are generally more reliable, although they, too, may reflect the author's biases. However those biases are less likely to be directly relevant and can usually be controlled by checking other independant sources. Also the authors are frequently better qualified in their subject. Apologists often make claims outside their field of expertise.e

Well, with regard to the NT held in common by Protestants, Catholics (and Greek Orthodox? - I don't have one of their Bibles myself) alike, 99.5% of the text we have today is not in dispute, we have over 5,000 ancient manuscripts of whole or parts of the text of the NT, more than just about any other ancient document we know of. I really have a hard time imagining what kind of evidence would be necessary to silence critics. You would really have to question every ancient document's credentials if you are going to quarrel with the NT. However, there are many ancient documents that have far less manuscript evidence than the NT, that historians take to be reliable versions of the original. Needless to say, 0.5% of the text really doesn't change any of the major doctrines believed by Christians about God and Jesus. I just don't see why people make such a fuss.

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99.5% of the text we have today is not in dispute, we have over 5,000 ancient manuscripts ...
  —Steve8

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There are many more copies of the Wizard of Oz with far fewer variants. Your point?

really? i'm not so sure. for instance, there are many many variations of translations, and the order of the books (the matters). maybe those don't matter TOO much, but...the catholics include another dozen books the protestants don't have. the ethiopian church has another book. several other smaller churches have other extra books. yeah yeah we've heard this before, you say. but here's one maybe you haven't.there's two different versions of the book of jeremiah. they are only somewhat different, but different nonetheless. the seem to use the same source text, just arranged in different orders. one is substantially longer. it is also impossible to determine which is older -- BOTH were found among the dead sea scrolls. some churches used one, some used the other.

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אָרַח

I wouldn't call the Wizard of Oz an ancient document lol!! I believe copies of the Wizard of Oz were printed on a printing press, not handwritten, no?? I would expect more accuracy from a printing press (though as you point out, there are still mistakes!).

OK, first of all, the Apochryphal books (including additions to already existing canonical books) that you refer to that are in debate are pre-NT books.
They do not include any of the so called NT Apochrypha (Gospel of Thomas etc.)...so nothing about Jesus or the Gospel thereof are affected.
They are OT Apochrypha. Apparently, the Palestinian Jews only admitted writings which were originally in (or mostly in) Hebrew. The OT Apochrypha was written in Greek originally. Jesus and the apostles never alluded to them.
Re. translations, sure there are some tough verses where the Hebrew is old and not found outside the OT, hence some difficulty in determining exactly what was meant. However, whatever the few difficulties in translation in the OT, I don't think any would change the nature of the God we worship.
Of course, many differences in Bible translation boil down to how literally you translate the text. If you are translating word for word (e.g. NASB), you can get a better feel for how folk spoke back then, though it may be more of a 'wooden' read, on the other hand, if you are translating thought for thought (which is more akin to a paraphrase, e.g The Message), it may read easier for you and so you might better understand the passage, even thouh there may be words used that wouldn't have been used by the authors. Most translations are somewhere in the middle between these two extremes.
Of course, then there are those translations like The New World translation by the JW's that was put together by a few guys who really have to mistranslate in order to get the text to fit what they say. You can tell they mistranslate because 1) no linguistic scholars support their translation, and they decline to be interviewed themselves, 2) though they try to change scripture portions that don't accord with their own doctrines, you will always find verses they missed. When I say mistranslate, I actually mean adding or omitting words from the text in many cases. That's when you know you are dealing with a cult.By the way, as an aside, anyone know what to do with a cursor that omits your words when you try to edit what you've written instead of adding them without omission??

The Book of Enoch was referenced in Hebrews and Jude and by Jesus. Most of the concept that there was a War with Satan being thrown down comes from First Adam and Eve, also written a hundred or so years before Jesus lived.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

not the goal. you said 99.5% of the text is undisputed. not the goal either. we're talking about textual dispute.an i mean beyond translation. i'm talking about whole books in and out, different wordings, different structures, different orders -- and which jeremiah. and it these are real disputes. in my experience, no translation is EVER word for word, literally true to what the hebrew ways. word for word, btw, does not given it a "wooden" read. the wooden-ness comes from the time it was translated. what comes off as boring structure and repititious wording in english is more like refrains in a song in hebrew. it's lyrical, not wooden.i've seen this a few places, but if you ever watched that passion movie (mel gibson) there's a flash back to the sermon on the mount. now, we know how it sounds in english. it's repititive. blessed are these, blessed are those. love your enemy, etc. but the neat thing about that movie was that it was in the original languages.and the sermon on the mount happens to rhyme in aramaic -- the words start to play off each other too, and it builds. there's no sense of this in english. it's totally lost in translation.there's a lot of literal stuff that just doesn't translate, too. words are not analogous -- it's not coded english. grammar works differently; passive verbs aren't really used in the language. for example, we were discussing the flood and the creation of heaven and earth in another thread. if a translation literally translated genesis 6's flood, it would say that the entire country was flooded, not the earth. the word ארץ literally means "country" as in a specific country or even an undefined region, but not "earth." a person who read it in hebrew would understand that it does not literally describe a global flood, just implies it. this sense of the word is lost in english, because we have no appropriate word that applies directly to the same concept.anyways personally, i've found idiomatic translations to the be the best. they tend to represent a good balance of the literal and the meaning.

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אָרַח

OK, thanks for clarifying, you wanted to specifically address textual and canonical disputes. You seem to be focusing on pre-NT times...and on books that were rejected by the Jews but accepted by the Catholic Church, am I correct? You mentioned additions to Jeremiah..is that the Letter of Jeremiah, otherwise known as Baruch 6 in the RCC Bibles?? Or are you referring to other books/additions even the RCC doesn't accept??As far as Canon goes, I think folks who would like to change it have to bear some things in mind -
1) If you raise the standard under which books were accepted, that means you can subtract some books but you can't add any. You can make the canon smaller, not bigger.
2) If you lower the standard under which books were accepted, you can add books to the Canon but not subtract any. You can make the Canon bigger, but not smaller.
If you go with 1), that may mean fewer doctrines to believe in, depending on how much you subtracted, but no new ones.
If you go with 2), you would probably find an increase in the number of your doctrines, depending on what, and how many books you added.
Either way, what you can't really do, is change one whole set of doctrines in wholesale fashion, for another set of a similar number, by changing books in the Canon, without being totally inconsistent as to what basis you accept or reject books.Re. translation, I guess the Interlinear Bible would be about the only word for word translation as it prints the English directly above the original languages so it doesn't really respect English word order (not something you would use as a devotional lol), but although the NASB isn't entirely word for word, it is more literal than most and I find it very wooden indeed in English (though I'm sure the original languages sound better!!). The last update for the NASB that I'm aware of was 1995, so it's not the age of translation that causes the 'woodeness' in English. I prefer the NLT myself.To cut a long story short, as this is in other threads as you mentioned, re. 'earth' in Genesis 6, 2 Peter 3 in the NT, when he mentioned the Flood, used the Greek word for 'world' (Kosmos), not the Greek word for 'country'. They apparently read the Flood story as covering alot more than a country. Of course, alot more could be said about other terms in Genesis but as the Flood is dealt with in other threads, let's focus on your textual and canonical stuff.

OK, those books are not in the RCC Apochrypha, I should have noted my comment re. 'quoting/alluding by Jesus & the apostles' was referring to the RCC Apochrypha specifically.

But they are included in some Canon.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yes, I have heard this before, they are included in two or three nation-based Christian Orthodox church canons but no Protestant, Catholic or Jewish ones. I have yet to hear on what basis they are accepted by those few, as of yet, do you know? Ascertaining prophetic authorship was key for the Jews, I suspect that is why neither book is in the vast majority of the world's canons.

yes, but only because i know a little more about them. there is a nt apocrypha too. no, i'm refering to the actual accepted, canonical book of jeremiah. there are two versions of it, both accept as canon. one is longer, but they are obviously the same contents rearranged in a different order.

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The Septuagint version of this book is, in its arrangement and in other particulars, different from others. The septuagint omits 10:6-8; 27:19-22; 29:16-20; 33:14-26; 39:4-13; 52:2, 3, 15, 28-30, etc. About 2,700 words in all of the original are omitted.

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The Book of Jeremiah has also been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in cave 4 in Qumran. One text is the hebrew variant of the Septuagint version. This may shed some light on why the Septaugint version differs from the masoretic version. It was previously thought that the difference was due to poor translation, but it is now thought by many that the masoretic version has been reworked, or that there were two versions of this book.

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Book of Jeremiah - Wikipedia

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i would call that a major textual dispute. any church with a biblical translation of the septuagint has a different jeremiah. it's not just some lost gospel found in a cave -- it's actually accepted both ways, in the two major and equally weighted biblical source documents. i have an interlineal new testament. i'm gonna try to get one of the ot soon, or at least a dual-page kind, with hebrew on one side, english on the other. i prefer jps. i've found it to be very easy to read and understand in english. no confusion over "wooden" shakespearean wording, and it presents the ideas very faithfully to the text except in one instance (no translation is perfect). of course, it's also only the ot, since it's put out by the jewish publication society. yes, i do think they read the story as a global flood -- but keep in mind that peter lived 600 years after genesis was finalized. that's a long time for a story to change. however, my point is simply that you can't say you're for the most literal reading possibly, but infer that "country" really means "planet" in genesis 6. it's a bit of a double standard.

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אָרַח

OK, now I see what you mean re. Jeremiah...Bible.org | Where the World Comes to Study the BibleIf you scroll down on my link above to the last point (no. 7), it addresses your issue re. the Masoretic (Hebrew) vs. the Septuagint (Greek) versions of Jeremiah.Every book that has been accepted into the Jewish canon is written in (or at least, in part in) Hebrew, they simply did not accept manuscripts in any other language for inclusion in the OT Canon, the Protestants following their example.Assuming the authorship of Jeremiah is genuine, the Hebrew (from approx. 600 B.C.) would have been written centuries before the Septuagint version (around 250 B.C.), hence it's claim to legitimacy. However, as my link above points out, there are other good reasons to reject the Septuagint version as being the original version of the book.I think a key point here is, though, what doctrines are changed by these textual differences?? If none (I can't imagine any), then I'm not sure a church is going to suffer much doctrinally from having one or the other version of Jeremiah.Re. Genesis and your Hebrew word for 'earth', apparently it has a variety of meanings depending on the context. It is translated variously as land (i.e. it's inhabitants, Lev. 19:29), ground, soil, country, territory, but also in the sense of the physical planet (Gen. 18:18, Jer. 25:26), the earth as opposed to heaven (Gen. 1:2, Psa. 146:6), the earth (i.e. it's inhabitants, Gen. 6:11) and in many phrases like 'the end of the earth' (Isa. 42:10) and 'the land of the living' (Ps. 27:13), according to the Complete Word Study OT by AMG Publishers (1994).

in part, maybe. daniel and ezra were partly written aramaic. but if greek should be excluded, then that would include the nt. certainly, the people who wrote it were late hellenized jews and christians, writing in non semitic languages -- the qualifications that exclude the apocrypha and pseudepigraphica. actually, until recently, it was assumed that the septuagint was the accurate version and the masoretic had been modified. the masoretic is much newer. however, i seem to remember that both versions were found in qum'ran, given the masoretic about the same authenticity. not a key point. you just said the text is not in dispute, not that there is not dispute over theology. i can find you LOTS of theological differences between large sects. according to them, sure. they're looking at a concordance, and the concordance will tell you the same thing. it does change a little depending on context, and the question is what context makes it mean earth as a planet?i would suggest that being paired with heaven might.other usages are all basically "land"

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אָרַח