The New Testament is the second part of the Christian biblical canon. The first part being the Old Testament, based on the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. Christians regard both the Old and New Testaments together as sacred scripture. The New Testament [...]
Bart Ehrman (born 1955) is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of New Testament, historical Jesus, and development of early Christianity. Ehrman has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished [...]The King James Version (KJV) of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church of England.
There were (and still are) no original texts to translate. The oldest manuscripts we have were written down hundreds of years after the last Apostle died. There are over 8000 of these old manuscripts, with no two alike.
The King James translators chose to use none of the texts. Instead, they edited previous translations to create the New Testament their king and parliament would approve.
So today, 21st century Christians believe the "Word of God" is a book edited in the 17th century from 16th century translations of 8000 contradictory copies of 4th century scrolls that claim to copies of lost letters written in the 1st century by unknown authors!
On the New Testament, nobody can claim that they invariably contain faithful accounts of Jesus's words or a description of his actions strictly in keeping with reality. We have seen how successive versions of the texts showed a lack of definite authenticity and moreover that their authors were not eyewitnesses
It is of enormous importance in establishing the biblical text. There are three earliest manuscripts of the Bible New Testament:
1. Codex Alexandrinus is one of the earliest and most important manuscripts of the entire Bible in Greek
2. Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world and is kept in the British Library. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament.
<"a href="http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/" target="_blank">codexsinaiticus.org
3. Codex Vaticanus in Rome
The earliest New Testament manuscripts are in Koine Greek. But there are Aramaic phrases in the Gospels. Therefore, Scholars believe an Aramaic layer lies beneath the written Greek of the New Testament, one which may never have been written down.
If true, the Greek text is itself a translation, and English text would be a translation of a translation, which raises textual inerrancy and corruption issue.
Since every translation is a personal judgement of which word to best use, made at the translators discretion.