Islam - The Summit of Religious Evolution — Page 28
28 A word must be said here about the origin of these books. In the days of Jesus Christ, the Jews had no precisely defined (in the sense of officially closed) Canon of the Scriptures. Besides the books of the Hebrew Canon as we now know it, there were others of more recent origin (mostly of the first and second centuries B. C. ) which were held in great esteem but whose exact status had not been finally determined. Though many of them had been written in Hebrew or Aramaic they seem to have circulated mainly outside Palestine, in a Greek translation or text, among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Dispersion, especially in Egypt. The books were less acceptable to the Jews of the Pharisaic tradition in Jerusalem, but many fragments of them in Hebrew and Aramaic have been found at Qumran where there was a religious community distinct from the Pharisees. The first Christians were Aramaic-speaking Jews of Palestine and they used the Hebrew Scriptures. Very soon the Greek-speaking Jewish and Gentile converts outnumbered those of Aramaic speech; and consequently the Bible they used, namely the Greek Septuagint translation which included the books referred to above, came into general use. The Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (Jehovah's witness) published in 1961 also affirm the above views (Appendix 3) but in different words: 17 An effort was put forth to bring about even greater consistency in the renderings of the related parts of the Holy Scriptures, such as in harmonizing with the original Hebrew readings the reading of quotations made in the Christian Greek Scriptures. Since the one-volume edition of the Holy Scriptures was to contain no footnotes, many footnote readings that had appeared in the earlier translation in six distinct volumes were lifted and put in the main text of the one-volume edition. This does not mean that the earlier rendering that was now replaced was rejected. Rather, the purpose was to attain to closer conformity to the literal reading in the original languages. All this process has resulted in revisions in the main text of the translation. It is obvious from the above that none of the Biblical texts available today can be considered as originals. It can only be considered as the best human effort to reconstruct the originals. The text have been agreed to by a ⅔ rd majority vote and is based on the best judgement of competent scholars who were humans. That "recreated original" has itself been revised several times for various reasons. Hence, the current Bible, by its own admission, cannot be considered as God's original word. This important point has to be remembered in any critical analysis of the scriptures. An objective analysis of the variations among the versions highlights gross differences with certain verses and even books missing among them. The use of different words in the various biblical texts is widespread. Contrary to the position taken by Christians, the choice of different words in the various versions and editions do significantly change the meaning, especially when critically analyzed. An excellent account of the oldest Biblical documents, on which the Bible is based is contained in a book titled "Gospel Parallels" published by Thomas Nelson & Sons. It classifies the origins and dates of all surviving Biblical manuscripts based on their texts or families. It states: