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The Virgin Birth and the Messiah 23

We am NOT say ing the New Tes ta ment is bo gus. Many falsely ac cuse us of that since they
can not re fute our ar gu ments us ing the Old Tes ta ment or schol ar ship! All we are say ing is that even
if the cor rup tion ex ists in a small per cent age of the over all num ber of pas sages it is un wise to ul ti -
mately base one's faith on a col lec tion of writ ings PROVEN to be cor rupt or ques tion able in var i ous
ar eas, which were col lected by men that are also proven to be cor rupt. We are also not im ply ing
wide spread cor rup tion. It does n't take much cy a nide or co bra venom to kill. One drop is all that is
needed. Like wise, a scri bal "edit" of just a few care fully placed words can to tally poi son truth, par -
tic u larly when those words are con tained in a hand ful of cru cial verses. As stated pre vi ously, this
prob lem is mul ti plied when oth er wise cor rect texts within the Greek manu scripts are mis trans lated!
It is for this rea son one should fol low the New Tes ta ment au thors' pleas to ALWAYS base one's
faith ULTIMATELY on what is writ ten in the Old Tes ta ment, and by ver i fy ing that their in ter pre ta -
tion of New Tes ta ment pas sages has Old Tes ta ment sup port.

When the ad vice of the New Tes ta ment au thors to ver ify the New Tes ta ment by us ing the
Old is fol lowed, the vir gin birth is proven to be false (as are many other teach ings within Chris tian -
ity, par tic u larly the "God in the flesh" Mes siah and anti-To rah doc trines).

It is also un wise to as sume Eng lish ver sions of the Bi ble to be the "Word of God", which are
based upon bi ased ren der ings from the avail able He brew and Greek manu scripts. Bias does not
nec es sar ily im ply in tent to cor rupt. It is sim ply a fact of hu man na ture that bias will in ev i ta bly en ter
into a trans la tion when the trans la tor must choose be tween var i ous le git i mate ren der ings of a He -
brew or Greek word. Of course, vir tu ally all Bibles used by Chris tians were trans lated by in di vid u -
als that were bi ased against the He braic world view.

One book which dis cusses the is sue of scri bal ma nip u la tion of the New Tes ta ment writ ings
is The Or tho dox Cor rup tion of Scrip ture, by Bart D. Erhman, which we briefly men tioned ear lier.
There are LOTS of other books which prove that the New Tes ta ment is most cer tainly NOT in fal li -
ble. We will not spend time prov ing what many schol arly pub li ca tions al ready do. If oth ers wish to
be lieve the New Tes ta ment is the "per fect and in fal li ble Word of God," and re fuse to ver ify their
stated be lief, so be it. There are many that pre fer ig no rance over truth be cause truth is too much for
them to ac cept. Such is the case of those that wish to be lieve the New Tes ta ment writ ings are free
from er ror.

The Septuagint

Now we will ad dress the com mon ar gu ment re gard ing the Greek word found in the Sep tu a -
gint, which is prop erly ren dered as "vir gin"; how ever, the Greek word, parthenos, is not lim ited to
al ways mean ing "vir gin". The Sep tu a gint was, for the most part, a no to ri ously sloppy trans la tion,
and its ver sion of Isa iah was gen er ally more er ror-rid den than the rest. By the Mid dle Ages, the
Jews had aban doned the Sep tu a gint, and later Greek trans la tions, by Aquila, Theodotion, Lucien
and oth ers, did not use the word parthenos. (The Sep tu a gint, com monly known as the LXX, is still
fa vored by East ern Or tho dox churches.) Briefly, there are a few points one must con sider:

1. First, it is a fact that the Sep tu a gint is a trans la tion. The sit u a tion is no dif fer ent than an Eng lish
trans la tion from the He brew that all in the Eng lish speak ing world carry. Only the most gro tesquely
de ceived will dare claim the Eng lish Bi ble is "per fect". Most se ri ous stu dents of Scrip ture ref er -

The Berean Voice