Bibles Galore

We have all heard of ‘The Bible’, but that’s really a misnomer. What you have heard about, or have in your home, is ‘a Bible’, not just one copy of many, but one copy of the many versions of the so-called ‘The Bible’. Now the questions to be asked are if there is but one God, therefore but one holy word of God, why are there dozens of different versions with differing texts? And if no one version is more correct than another, then perhaps no one version is correct. All Bibles in all languages are works of fiction!

In the La-La, Never-Never Land of all things Biblical, is there one Bible or are there multi-Bibles? How can the Bible (let's say the King James Version) be considered a unified whole when not only are there two Testaments that are radically different in tone, but all up the Bible has been cobbled together with various bits and pieces included and excluded in a totally ad hoc fashion. No two scholarly or Biblical experts will agree on exactly what texts should comprise THE Bible.

Let’s consider the excluded bits, the Apocrypha. There are over a dozen writings or ‘books’ whose status as bona-fide Old Testament Biblical canonical texts have been in and out of the ‘official’ Bible depending on who had the authority to decide these things. Since the 16^th Century the verdict has been ‘out at the plate’! Some of these excluded ‘books’ include Tobit, Judith, the two to four books of Maccabees (depending on who you talk to), and the two books of Esdras, etc. Further, there are additional but excluded chapters and verses to the established books of Esther, Daniel and Psalms.

There’s also a whole library of excluded New Testament Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Apocalypses. All up, it’s all like several chapters and paragraphs have been excluded from your favourite literary work, or even your common paperback novel.

Then you have the trilogy of books from Enoch, as well as Jubilees, which are even further outside of the fold. Depending on who you talk to, they form part of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. In fact the Pseudepigrapha all up is a collection of about 65 documents that have been excluded, though there is some overlap with the Apocrypha (like a few of those ‘books’ of Maccabees), again depending on who you talk to.    

Then too, some of the official canon was hotly disputed and only made it into the Bible by the proverbial skin of the teeth – like the Book of Revelation. 

Even taking just the ‘official’ Bible, depending on the version you consult, the ordering of the Books will be different. Try that with your paperback novel and see if it makes the same degree of sense!

Then too, there exists dozens of English language versions of the Bible, from the "Good News Translation" to the "New Living Translation" to the "American Standard Version" to the "New American Standard Bible" to the "Common English Bible" to the "English Standard Version" to the "English Standard Version Anglicised", and that's just for starters. Then there's the "King James Version", the "New King James Version", and the "21st Century King James Version", not to mention all those other languages the Bible is published in with those unavoidable mistakes, losses and uncertainties that must arise in translating from one language to another. It's like your favourite novel was amended or tweaked every couple of years. I’m sure if you read your favourite novel in English, then read it again but in a different language, say Italian or Japanese, there will be something lost, even strange to you in the translation.

I’m sure most viewers here read, write and speak modern English. Yet when it comes to the Bible, modern English is the foreign language. The pathway from the original cobbled together Biblical texts, to what you tend to find in your home, motel rooms, your church, local library and bookstore is so long and so tortuous it’s a wonder 100% of the Bible isn’t gibberish instead of just most of it.

In conclusion, the Bible as a one unified word-of-God text is an impossibility to accept at face value. It makes more logical sense to chuck it all out the window and accept that there just is no such animal in existence at all and never will be.