The third criticism that he makes of the Church is introduced with the following subheading:
“3. The Bible is God’s Word and it is Trustworthy”
That is another false accusation made against the restored Church of Jesus Christ, that we somehow believe the Bible to be “untrustworthy,” which is not true. That is something that I have already discussed at length in other blog posts, which can be seen here and here. But to continue with his criticisms, he says the following:
“Mormons ‘acknowledge that the original manuscripts penned by biblical authors were the Word of God,’ but they argue that ‘what passes as the Bible today is corrupt. It can only be trusted insofar as it is translated correctly.’ They also believe that ‘large portions of the Bible have been lost through the centuries.’”
Not true. We believe that the Bible is “trustworthy,” as explained in the above links; and there is plenty of internal evidence within the Bible for missing scripture in the Bible. That is indisputable. See the above links for a fuller discussion. He then continues:
“However, as I argued extensively in chapter 3 of this book, a study of the canon of Scripture shows that we do have the right books in the Bible today. And as far as the Bible being ‘translated correctly,’ there are hundreds of highly trained Bible translation teams throughout the world translating the Bible into hundreds of languages, and there are many English translations produced by experts in Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the biblical manuscripts. All the major doctrines of the Christian faith could be taught from any of those translations today.”
Those are not what is in dispute; and there is plenty of internal evidence for missing scripture in the Bible, as explained above. And “translated” correctly is more an expression of “transmitted” correctly, as well as “translated”. Joseph Smith was a great prophet, and his “translations” were done by revelation; and there is no “translation” of the Bible made by man that will equal that done by God himself, through a great prophet like Joseph Smith. Again, see the above links for further discussion. Then he continues:
“Several thousand ancient manuscripts now stored in research libraries throughout the world confirm the remarkably reliable transmission of the biblical text over many centuries. Everyone recognizes that there are minor differences in spelling and word among the ancient manuscripts.”
That is not what is in dispute, see above. And finally, he concludes as follows:
“But in direct contradiction to Mormon claims, there is no historical evidence of any substantial corruption in the copying and transmission of the texts that would change any significant point of Christian teaching today (see chapter 4 for further discussion).”
Two points with that one. Firstly, there is plenty of evidence for missing scripture in the Bible, as shown above. Secondly, he talks about “Christian teaching today” as though all Christians are united and in agreement about all aspects of Christian doctrine, which of course is not the case. If they were, there would be only one church or denomination, not thousands of them. His remaining criticisms and objections will be dealt with in other posts.
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