ORIGINAL BIBLE TEXTS
When religious people say that the Bible is God’s inerrant word, they reflect an attitude that says all Bibles are the same and that every word in every Bible is God’s spoken word. This attitude shows gross ignorance of the history of Bibles and how they are written. They are not all the same and every word in them is not God’s spoken word.

It is beyond the scope of this website to discuss the origins of original Bible texts and the history of how they were used to create Bibles down through the ages. Many Bible scholars have done that and written many reports for study. The following is a short list of articles that begin to inform us about the long and complicated history of Bibles:

What we learn from these articles is that the history is not simple. The Bibles we read did not come from God’s mouth and transfer directly and purely to words  on paper. The Bibles we read had their origins in many original texts, and it was written and re-written by thousands of Bible scholars over thousands of years.

It is accurate to say that the Bible is not one, complete, uniform, inerrant work. It is accurate to say that no Bible includes words that are all perfect translations of God’s words. It is accurate to say that large percentages of all Bibles were written by men — not by God.

STUDY TIP: See GOD’S WRITTEN WORD AND HIS VOICE ARE NOT THE SAME .

These statements will shock and offend religious people who believe that all words of all Bibles are God’s words, and may discourage anyone who wonders if they can trust any Bible to teach them about God and the way to salvation and heaven. The good news for everyone is that God has a perfect solution that overcomes all questions and problems regarding the written word: Listen to his voice. Listening to his voice while studying the Bible is the way to salvation.

All Bibles have problems and shortcomings. This is predictable because Bibles are written by scribes who have made the written words of the Bible into lies and deceptions. The sooner Bible readers accept these  truths, the better off they will be. The sooner that religious people accept these truths, the sooner they will obey God’s call to come out of religion and enter into eternal life.

This process will seem unfair until religious people accept the good news that God never intended that written Bibles would be the authority regarding him and his ways. The good news is that the Bible is only a tool that will lead people to faith. And the Bible will lead us to faith if we make a point of listening to his voice while reading the Bible.  Readers who do not listen to God’s voice while reading the Bible study for the wrong reasons. They are only feeding their intellectual minds and their religious pride. Coming to faith only happens to those who listen with their heart.