Richard
The bible is constructed from a patchwork of fragments of manuscripts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, which are all copies of copies of copies..... Even within the individual fragments there are serious internal inconsistencies. The selection and piecing together of the fragments is done by textual critics using textual theory and technology.GryffinSong said:Only slightly tongue in cheek ... Everyone thinks they understand the bible, when the truth is that NO ONE understands the bible. Quite frankly, it would be impossible to do so, since it's a highly contradictory book, and there are so many versions available that one doesn't even know where to start.
The modern language versions are, of course, translations from the original languages. The difficulty of translation is staggering. A literal word for word translation does not work because of idiomatic differences in phrasing between the orginal and target languages. A non-literal translation is better, but it must rely on interpretation, which obviously is not an exact science. To further complicate matters, some parts of the bible are intended to be taken as history while others are allegorical or poetic.
In the final analysis, the bible is more of a concept than a unified document, but it is an interesting concept nonetheless.