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Oy, vey. Well, this first bit is just my personal opinion, but ... if people have changed it (a "fact" which is by no means certain), does that really invalidate it? For example, 1 John 5:7 (KJV) is considered by many scholars to be a later addition, not in the original manuscripts ... but its presence doesn't automatically invalidate any other verses about the Trinity, nor does it invalidate the parts where Jesus said "Love one another", nor the parts where the history of the Jews is explained.

At most, I'll say that (going with the above example), if it could be proven that all verses dealing with the Trinity were add-ons or misinterpretations, that would invalidate the concept of the Trinity ... and that would mean that Christ's claims to divinity were false -- so that would destroy our faith. But frankly, I can't think of any other disputed Trinity verses. I mean, sure the Jehovah's Witnesses tend to reversion the Bible, but since they hate the Trinity, their arguments are suspect; they have an axe to grind.

But that's just my opinion.

Now, as for the Bible overall being modified by humans ... well, it has. There's no doubt of that. It's an unavoidable side-effect of translation. No, I'm not saying that some scribe someplace decided he didn't like something and changed it; I'm saying that there are concepts and idioms in any language that don't translate to other languages, so substitutes have to be used.

And, of course, the languages have changed over time. "Suffer" used to mean "permit" or "tolerate". The "passion" used to mean "suffering", now it means "intense emotion". "Charity" used to mean "love for each other", now it means "money-collectors at Christmas". I'm being a smart-alec, I know, but you get the idea.

But ... does this mean that God has changed? Or that our records of Him are so wildly inaccurate that we have no idea if He's even real at all? No. And we can say He's real, and what He's like, because we still have the ancient records. If a piece of parchment dating back to 100 AD can still be translated to John 3:16, just as we have it today, then it's a safe bet that we've translated that correctly, despite the passage of time. If the Bible says that Jericho was in a given place, and archaeologists can go to that spot and find it with no problems, then apparently the Bible's accurate.

The advantage of the Bible, as opposed to most other "sacred writings", is that it was written over centuries, by many different people, and that it was copied and recopied and translated and retranslated and basically scattered to the four winds. Sure, it deals with God and man; it also deals with history, and that history is confirmed by non-religious sources. Josephus wrote about Christ, the Romans chronicled their troubles with the Jews, and so forth. And forty-odd people, scattered across a dozen nations and five millenia, all wrote in unison, so that even though we may find passages that seem to contradict each other, the overall picture is complete.

Now, I can't quote the Bible here to back up what I say, because this is about doubting the Bible. But frankly, I can't imagine that God would do the things He's done for so long, if He didn't want us to know about Him. And preserving a set of writings, even guiding the authors and translators, should be a piece of cake for Him.

To sum it up, is the Bible changed from the original writings? Yes. Is it changed enough to cause concern? No. Is it therefore null and void? No.

BUT ... let's imagine that what I've said isn't enough for you. Let's pretend that you still have doubts about the Bible. Let me ask you this: do you really want to take a chance on being wrong? I'd rather assume there's a Jesus, then find out I was wrong, than assume He isn't there and be wrong.

Well, the truth is, the Bible can't be added to or changed too dramatically; translators try their hardest to use original manuscripts and make the most accurate translations as possible. Anyone who's going to translate the Bible is going to go to as many ends as possible to get the most accurate translation. My own Bible has notes on certain verses that say, "Some manuscripts have [this]" rather than what was noted.

Dragonbait is right in that there will be a few mistranslations, but there is definitely no adding or changing done except what is necessary for accurate translation. You wouldn't go to the pain of translating thousands of pages just to change what they say, would you?

So naturally, you have to assume that whatever translations are out there are going to be as accurate as we can possibly make them.

Tryan, that's a good view, but there's one tiny flaw with it: it's circular logic.

We trust the Bible because we trust God. We trust God because we trust the Bible.

Now, don't misunderstand; I don't distrust God or the Bible. I believe that trusting both is good, and I don't dispute a thing you've said. But you couldn't use this to explain our faith to someone else, an outsider. Once somebody's reached the point where they accept the one, then yeah, use this to get them to accept the other; that's fine. Don't start off with this.

Here is the apologetic answer for you.

We have over 5,600 non-biblical contemporary, which means they were written within 100 of Jesus death, documents that talk about Jesus, some of which where writen by people that didn't even believe him. None of which dispute the things that he did, which they could have easily done. In fact Josephus, the jewish historian for the roman goverment, wrote that Jesus did many signs and wonders. We have more contempory writings about Jesus then we do Abraham Lincoln and he's the most writen about president of the U.S.A. Ask any historian and they will tell you Alexander the Great was a real man yet we have less than 10 docmentents writen about him and they were done 500 years after his death. There over 3000 mistakes in the Bibles that we have. Not a singal one of those effects any doctorian. Most of them are in the Old Testiment when they are stating how many people died in a battle in one place and it's different in another. It's mainly due to the fact of rounding numbers, how many men were killed, how many people, which side they are talking about, ect. Do any of those effect what we believe in? No they do not. The Bible is so dependable that archelogoist have used it to find to find excavation sites. Not to mention that most of the places it talks about you can still go to.

Now for the spiritual one.

Out of the thousands of prophasies about Christ if you were to randomly pick six of them the probablity of someone fulfilling six of them is like putting a half dollar that you painted black in the middle of a 3 foot deep pile of half dollars that's as large as Texas. Then you take bulldosers and you mix them all around. Then a person walks through only once and picks up that black half dollar. That's how rare it is and that's for only six. Jesus had to fulfill every single one of them. These prophets weren't just making a bunch of stuff up either.

"I want you to remember what the holy prophets said long ago and what our Lord and Savior commanded through your apostles."
2 Peter 3:2

This proves God spoke it through the prophets and apostles. In the orginal language where it says commanded the word there is breathed. Now there are different forms of that the word breathed in the language that Peter was writing but the only other time that form is used is when it says "God breathed life into man" (that is why you will see Bible with the title The Living Bible).

Check this out! Published yesterday

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2949640/Noahs-Ark-found-in-Turkey.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=News#ixzz0mIvTDKNW

The Claim of over "5600" documents within 100 years of Christ's death is nothing more than a sad Fabrication made up sometime in the past sixty years by well meaning Christians to try and add a sense of validity to the Histrocitiy of the bible, the actual number (Outside of the Gospels) is more like "3"non contemporary ,non Gospel sources within one hundred years of Christ's death.

But "Translations" aside, and discarding the NT, even the OT is "Riddled" with fabrications Editations, mistakes in the actual time line of events, the OT that made it into our Current Bible was missing fourteen books from the Jewish Talmud of the time, and the one that Prodestant's use is missing "Seven" that were in the Catholic bible.

Prior to the Babylonian capticity of the Jew's no manuscripts containing the Creation account in Genesis can be found, they all Omit it, and pick up just after the expulsion of Adam and Eve.
The creation story itself is also disturbingly simmiler to the the Babylonian creation myth.

We have fact's that the Books Of Moses, were authored by three different people over a period of two hundred years.

Al of these are cold hard facts, known among any Biblical schollar,Beliver or not. We know the OT and probably the Gospels have been edited, added to , removed from, cut and paste to no end over the 2800 years of there existence.

However this does not detract from the core of our faith and barely matters as anything further than an interlectual pique, as any Christian who has felt the Holy Spirit will tell you, for we look to Christ as our proof and guidence, and the spirit he enters us with.

Not "Sola Scripture"

I in no way attacked the bible, I simply pointed out facts pertaining to it , it's no more an attack than saying Cars cant fly is an attack on the motor industry.

Of course we need the Bible and the gospels without it we would be nothing but a bunch of Spiritualists wandering around after a figure none of us could substantiate. The Bible contains the history and works of God and Christ and the obviously the prophecy pertaining to the validity of Christ's claims , and the standards that we as Christians are subsequently expected to rise to.

The Gospels have not existed for 2800 years I mentioned the OT as existing for that long in one form or another(though looking back it was a poorly worded sentence, im sorry) , we know about the masses of editations(Your right it should be a word) merely from examining Jewish documents and scripture now, then, and "way" back then and pointing out all the discrepancies , sadly the Dead Sea scrolls dont really pertain to it.

As for the "Three authors" of the pentetauch, Tradionally there was "E" and "A" however I read in "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong that current Jewish schollars(not the rest of the community) have been leaning towards a third author within in Deut and Lev, not authoring a whole book by any means but certianly lending his pen to certain parts for whatever reason, however it's not a widely held claim so I probably shouldn't have mentioned it, consider the statement retracted to Two authors, A and E.

Regarding the number of credible Non contemporary sources, I was going of a combination of what a professor Rev John Marsland President of St Cuthberts College(A Catholic Seminary) and to my shame, Wiki told me on the matter.

Regarding Babylon and creation, your right they could indeed share a common source, I just find it odd that it didnt get into the Jewish literature, untill after they had Jerusalem, then lost it and sufferd slavery to a people with a well established faith and mythos.

The Majority of my sources are Books ive read over the years, information ive gleaned from previous debates(often sourced). I pulled the entire post from memory , it doenst take a huge stress of effort to find out most of what's mentioned in the post.

However I do realise that as a claimant it falls upon me to substantiate the various claims i make and I will from here on endevour to do so.(Assuming this debate even carries on and you dont just dismiss me as an energetic troll as youve hinted at)

In light of that very statement im also sorry you feel that way about me, Ill simply have to do better in regards to my response. I suppose the Muslim thing lends me no credence it was a Brag and a Dare that got well out of hand, very informative however and I made more than a good number of Muslim friends.

One thing you must keep in mind especially regarding the manner I post , is that while im a Christian and I am (Though I only need to proove it and testify it before God) Im not one who will blindly follow my convictions when evidence is put in front of me which is obviously contrary to them.

A minor look into the History of my account and my old one "Three Mile Sprint"(Possibly even my one before that "Syrokal(though don't hold your breath)) will show you that I always have been and will continue to be a Christian and an Apologetic for the faith.
If it really comes to it, I can give you my facebook and you can look at all the Christian groups, and organization Im a member of and look at the date I joined them, because I would be more than happy to let you do that.(Sadly shy of meeting you this is really all I can think of on the spot to proove it)

I appreciate that you judge the spirit against the scripture, but i Personally find that hard to fully do, when I know the scripture is so open to debate, and error. Perhaps this is something I will overcome, but by my current understanding of scripture and its sources, however expansive or limited that may be, it's not something that I can see happning soon.

We seem to be on to differant pages with regards to the clarification of my faith, as I became Christian "purely" through the personal Gnosis of the Holy Spirit, before that all reading the Bible did was lend support to my milliant form of Atheism. It took me quite some time to come to trust the word of Gospel and of the Bible to the extent I do now.
That was Five years ago , and of course a lot has changed since then.