Different Copies of the Same Version Differ.
Different copies of the same version contain different readings. St. Jerome’s version was declared a forgery, because it differed so much from the Italic version then in use. Jerome anticipated the charge and met the objection in his preface addressed to Pope Damasus:
“Two things are my comfort under such a reproach: First, that ’tis you, the Supreme Pontiff, that have put me upon the task; and secondly, that by the confession even of the most envious, there needs be some falsity where there is so much variety. If they say that the Latin copies are to be credited, let them tell me which. For there are almost as many different copies as there are manuscripts.”
Prof. Wilbur F. Steele, a noted Christian scholar, relates the following relative to our own version: “In 1848 there was such confusion in the office of the American Bible Society, and such impossibility of telling what should be the reading in many places, that a man was set to work to bring order out of chaos. He took four Bibles from as many leading Bible houses of England, a copy of the American Bible Society, and a copy of the original edition of 1611, all claiming to be the same. These were carefully compared throughout; every variation, no matter how minute, was noted. The number of these variations was about 24,000” (Central Christian Advocate). Twenty-four thousand variations found in six copies of the same version!
Thus we see that different versions of the Bible do not contain the same books; different versions of the same book do not contain the same readings, while even different copies of the same versions disagree. Which is the word of God?
If the Bible had originally consisted of authentic and credible documents its credibility would have been greatly impaired by these wholesale corruptions of the transcribers and translators. But if we had the originals, it is doubtful whether their credibility would be much greater than these distorted copies. Enough remains to show the general character of them, and this is bad. They consist mostly of historical and biographical narratives, interwoven with legends, myths, and fables; crude poetical compositions; the ravings of diseased religious minds, called prophecies and revelations; and theological dissertations, no two of which agree in their doctrines. A few of the books possess genuine merit and deserve a place among the literary treasures of the world, but all of them are fallible.
Remarkable, as coming from a theological professor, but fraught with truth and confirmatory of the statements made in this chapter, are these words of Professor Steele:
“Evidently every letter of the English Bible has not been miraculously watched over. He who has neither eyes nor conscience may affirm it, but persons provided with these can not. If the affirmer hedges by saying he did not refer to translations but to the ‘original,’ we note that (1) translations are the only thing most people have to go to heaven on; and (2) that scholars of truth and conscience find equally as much fault with the ‘original.’”
“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of places in which the scholar finds conflicting testimony.”
In discussing the credibility of the Bible the question of authenticity will, for the most part, be waived. With Christians all of its books are genuine—the writings of those to whom they are ascribed—and for the sake of argument, as well as convenience, these ascribed authors will be recognized.