Following claim was made in 1 Pet 1:23 and Isa 40:8
“The word of the Lord endureth forever”.
How can we believe this proclamation to be true when there is not a single original manuscript of the Hebrew scripture earlier than A.D 1008 (now preserved in Leningrad) and none of the complete (or nearly complete) Greek manuscripts earlier than the fourth century after Christ ?
We should keep in mind that the prophecy states that the “word” would endure, not necessarily the medium those words were written on. Those words consist of revelations, laws, principles, doctrines etc...If we were to accept this premise, how can it be verified ?
One way is to examine the history of how the scriptures were copied.
For those who are interested, here is a short synopsis of this process:
Until the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians, the “book of the law”(Pentateuch)
was kept preserved by the side of the ark of the covenant. First by Joshua (Josh 24:26) then Samuel (1Sam 10:25).
For a time these copies were lost, until 641 B.C. when the “forgotten “book of the law” were discovered by Josiah, at which time the worship of Gods such a Marduk, various triads, Shamash, rulers of the Zodia etc... was eliminated and the worship of Jehovah was restored in Judah.
According to Daniel 9:2 the “word of the Lord” was available in Babylon.
After the return from the exile in Babylon, Ezra is found reading the law to the people.(Neh 8:1-18)
Since not all the Jewish exiles who in 537 B.C returned from captivity spoke or understood Hebrew but rather Aramaic or a related Semitic language, the Pentateuch had to be interpreted or paraphrased. This was done orally and is know as the Targum. There are various extant Targums versions today of all the Hebrew scriptures, except Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah.
Subsequently various translation were made, the oldest is the Samaritan Pentateuch around 450 B.C. (However extant mss are of far later date).
About 280 B.C. The Hebrew Scriptures began to be translated in Greek and is called the Septuagint.
A great number of these were distributed throughout the ancient world and played a large part in the preservation of God's word and became the basis for translation into other languages.
As to the Greek Scriptures, genuine texts have been preserved not only in the Sinaitic and Vatican 1209 mss, but in about 4,000 more Greek mss, in addition to 9,000 other language mss. Interestingly, so many Bible text are quoted in the post-apostolic period in various literary work, that almost the entire Greek text could be compiled from these quotations.
No other book in the world has ever receive such a reverent, fastidiously careful treatment and careful copyist procedure throughout the centuries as has the Bible .
In order to make the Word of God known its copyists and translators often added to their painstaking labour the sacrifice of their lives.
Additionally no other book had to face such a powerful foe, that not only legislated the murder of translators and distributors of it, but burned countless thousands copies of the Holy Scriptures along with those that read it.
Do you find that history support the assertion that the Bible has been preserved ?
Some claim that it is only by Divine intervention that we are able to have a copy of the Bible today, what do you think ?
In the Middle East, during the 2nd millennium BCE (excluding Egypt, which Egyptians used papyri to write on), the most common materials used for writing were on clay tablets, from Elam and Babylonia in the east, to the Levant (eg Syria, Phoenicia, Canaan, etc) and the Hittite empire in the west.
Before the invention of the alphabets, cuneiforms were most popular writing systems in the Middle and Late Bronze Age.
There are no evidence of Hebrew being used or written during these periods (eg Middle and Late Bronze Age, thus the 2nd millennium BCE).
So there were no writings by Abraham, Jacob, Moses or Joshua, and it is highly likely that everyone one mentioned in these books were mythological and fictional figures.
You said that the Torah and other books were lost, and later found during King Josiah’s reign. And these were copied down by Josiah’s scribes, and later still during the Babylonian Exile and their return and the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s temple.
Yes, I heard of that story of the Josiah’s “forgotten books” before, except that itself is a myth, because it is based on “tradition”, not history.
Yes, during the Josiah’s reign, people began busily writing up the Torah and other books, but where are the “forgotten books” that they supposedly copy from?
If the Hebrew Scriptures were re-written from older sources, then where are the original “forgotten books”?
Did forgotten books get lost again?
That’s convenient, and it reminds me of the convenience of Joseph Smith translating from gold plates that were then taken back to heaven by angel.
Just as we cannot verify Joseph Smith’s gold plates existence, we cannot verify the existence of Josiah’s discovery of the forgotten books. Both have mysteriously and conveniently vanished.
History isn’t just about what were written in the past, but what can be verified, and we cannot verify what tradition say about forgotten books were discovered during Josiah’s reign.
