Philip W. ComfortThe Origin of the Bible

Of course, no one can aver that GOD himself picked up a quill and physically wrote the Scriptures. The author does NOT do that. Good. Otherwise I would have thrown the book in the trash. I wanted an erudite, academically researched, and fact-based treatment of the transmission through time of the Scriptures as Man has accomplished. I played enough "Broken Telephone" to instill doubts about translations and reproductions of the Scriptures. How perverted and inaccurate was that book I called the Bible upon which my eternal soul's future depends? Well, thanks to these authors for using archaeological evidence, linguistic studies, and political history to show how the Bible came to be in its various modern day versions. After reading this book, I have a high level of confidence that the Bible of today is extremely close to carrying the original concepts from antiquity to the present. Nevertheless, faith is required to believe that the original penman were scribbling the Word of God as their inspiration compelled. Despite relying the faith of these original scribes, my gambit of faith is well ground now after having read this book. Thank you, God.

This book is helpful to understanding (1) the origin or English translations of the Bible and (2) the reliability of the sources that translators have used when developing various English translations. The book is helpful for a humble seeker of information on the topic. It won't easily offend and doesn't take strong positions on translation. It's more an outlay of the facts. This may help young Christians in today's environment of KJV-only people who bash other translations and KJV-no-way people who bash the KJV.

This book has a wide variety of information about the origin of the Bible. This is a good introduction to the selection of the selection of the books of the Bible, the Bible as literature (three chapters), the texts and manuscripts of the Bible, and the translation of the Bible. The information on the old manuscripts is helpful in understanding why our modern translations are different from the KJV. This book can help conservative Christians appreciate differences we have in understanding the inspiration of the Bible.

Horrible idea to have multiple authors write each chapter. It was painful to read at times. I wanted more substance but all I got I felt was opinion. Let me wanting more.

Awesome Product!!

This was a very hard to find work. Well I found it

It is the most informative book on the history of the Bible I have ever found.

If you are looking to understand how we got our bibles then this book is what you need to get started

A pretty good resource to have. Answers the basic questions. I am comfortable with the 'bias' and am honest in recognizing that any book that tackles this subject area is biased (Including the ones that are referred to as 'unbiased' by those who simply reject certain flavours within Christianity). It is not perfect, but it is quite good.

I was hoping for more so have taken a while to write my review. I was hoping for the 'family tree' approach to the origins of the manuscripts so I could delineate the lines from which the Bibles we use today have come. I always understood that there were three lines from which, substantially, one could trace the origins of our Bibles and that out of these, two had been subject to more changes at the hands of people with agendas of their own, such as Westcott and Hort who were deliberately removing the divinity of Christ and even changed Christ for the Devil in one instance. There is no mention of this or of the separation of these different lines from which the sources of the manuscripts have come and this has led to it all looking like a big soup of manuscripts with the "New" bibles being the most modern and understandable. The different backgrounds of the manuscripts and their heritage, plus the information we have from the people who altered texts in the past and then passed them on as legitimate are not discussed. Neither do they say that there are parts taken out of these Bibles when compared with the King James Bible and I think this is an important issue which ought to be addressed in a scholarly book.

Excellent