Paul Younan Wrote:We don't do things in the East that way. Thank God they didn't have the same freedom to revise as the Greeks did with their manuscripts. Anyone who even tried would have had their bowels ripped out and roasted for dinner. Semites do not alter their scriptures. Try and revise a Tanakh or a Koran.....and see how far you get.
You know originally. Any commentaries on Tanakh were written on Aramaic, because they didn't want anyone to think they were adding to the word of God, by writting their thoughts in Hebrew and some simple person thinking it was part of the text.
There's more support for what you say Paul. The Mishneh Torah which was kept in the hands of western Jews who lived in the european lands, thought they could make the text 'clearer' than the original. So there are hundreds of thousands of variations, while the yemenite Jews did their utmost to perserve the original, so there are hardly any scribal errors in their manuscripts. The european editions are so badly edited that you get the opposite message from their version than you would from the original. Things that are forbidden are permitted and vice visa.
I say the westerners have an awful lot to learn from the easterners.
To learn self restraint and discipline.
To stop playing silly games with 'out there' theories and thoughts.
To learn to remain content with the stable truth which has been passed down from the elders.
And oh yeah. The easterns actually know the Bible in the original language. Perhaps a little humility is in order on the part of the westerns?
I'm come to develop a profound respect for the semites.