 All right, welcome back to the class. Just before the break, we started to look at how the Old Testament scriptures were transmitted through the ages. Was it accurate? Was it done carefully? So we saw that in the early 1900s. I think maybe the people in the early 1900s had no other work. So they did a lot of criticizing and all of that. So they said this 935 AD document which we have with us. Yes, it's been written by the Masurids, those people who were very careful about how they did the copies. But how do we know whether that copy which they have written is from some source document, which is identical to the original scriptures which were written by Moses, by Isaiah. What is the guarantee that accuracy was preserved over the ages? That was the question which these critics raised. And the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls helped a lot in settling these arguments. So let's look at a little bit of the background of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now, about 300 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, these were generally called the silent years because Malachi was the last prophet through whom God spoke directly. And the Lord, in fact, warned the Israelites that after that, even if they long to hear his voice, they will not hear it until that person comes who will prepare a way in the wilderness and straighten the paths for the Messiah. So this was all prophesied in the Old Testament. And so during the silent years after Malachi is gone and now you no longer have the prophets actively speaking. So during that time, they were about 300 years before the birth of Christ. They were this godly group of Jewish people who were very displeased by what they were seeing in the Jerusalem temple. The people had become so corrupt. No one was honoring God. All the rituals which they're supposed to perform are now just superficial outward external actions. There is no repentance. There is no genuineness. And so this group of Jewish people, they decided that they would go away. They would separate themselves from this corrupt community and they would go and live out in the wilderness where they would devote themselves to spending time with God, learning his scriptures, growing in him. And so this community began or came to be known later as the Qumran community. They were a group of people called the Essenes, E-S-S-E-N-E-S. So they were the Essenes people. So this community started to live out in the Judean desert and they would no longer mingle with the corrupt people of Jerusalem. And so they spent their entire time in prayer and meditation upon the scriptures. And they also began to make a lot of hand copies of all the scrolls. So this is basically what they were doing for almost around, yeah, 370 years. So around the time before the birth of Jesus, the Romans began to attack. And so the invading armies, the Roman invading armies began to destroy what do you call them? The synagogues, they began to attack the Jewish people spiritually. So when all that was going on, these Essenes, they thought to themselves, it's risky. If one of these invading Roman armies comes to the Judean desert and destroys all the scrolls, which we have so carefully copied out, it would create a lot of harm. And so they took their entire collection of scrolls and they hid them in caves. So then, of course, Jesus was born. I know he did his ministry. And then finally in AD 70 is when you have the Roman general Titus, he comes, he completely destroys the Jerusalem temple. And at that time, he also attacked the Essenes community. Most of them were killed. But even though they died, the scrolls, which they had carefully hidden away in the caves, those remained safe. And so for the next 2000 years, nobody even saw those scrolls, all very carefully, safely hidden away by God in the caves near the Dead Sea. Finally, it was in 1947, 2000 years later, that a shepherd accidentally discovered the caves. He found the scrolls which are there inside. And so, totally 11 caves were found with scrolls stored inside. Now, why is this an interesting thing for us? Because you see that 935 AD document, that complete copy of the Old Testament, which was hand copied in 935 AD, these scrolls are 1000 years earlier than this 935 AD manuscript. So the critics were very, very curious. They wanted to compare the Dead Sea scrolls with this 935 AD manuscript to see how many defects there will be in the 935 AD manuscript. And when they did a comparison, a careful line by line comparison, except for some spelling mistakes, they could not find any major defects. No teaching was changed, no doctrine was affected, accuracy was preserved. And so they realized for a thousand years, so when the S&E's community made copies and then they perished, other people continued making copies. Till finally, someone made a copy in 935 AD in that entire span of time, accuracy had been maintained. Yes, small spelling mistakes were there here and there, but no major teaching was affected. Some names changed, some numbers changed because of the copyists were a little careless in the way they copied. So some numbers changed, names changed, some sentences changed, but no doctrine, no teaching in the Old Testament was touched. So it was completely laid to rest. Now this fact that the transmission of the Old Testament was done most carefully, most accurately. So if you were to look at the Dead Sea Scrolls, they were written over a long period of time, right from the time from about 300 years before the birth of Christ, all the way up to AD 17, the different copies were made and then these were stored in the caves. So among them, one of the oldest manuscripts that we find is one portion of the book of Samuel, which is almost 300 BC. Yeah, so that is one of the oldest manuscripts found in the caves. And of course, there were two Isaiah scrolls which were discovered and that was also a very helpful find because those two Isaiah scrolls proved that one single Isaiah wrote the entire Isaiah and not three different Isaias. Now we talked about that in the Old Testament course, so we will not touch upon it now. So the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls helped prove that the transmission of the Old Testament scriptures was done very carefully always. Let's look at the New Testament. How reliable is the New Testament? New Testament is highly reliable because the writings were written almost immediately after Christ's ascension, like no time was left in between for wrong ideas to come in, for memories to fade and people to forget the details, almost immediately after Jesus ascension, these New Testament writings began to be written down. So the crucifixion of Jesus was probably around 30 AD. About two years after that in 32 AD is when Paul becomes a believer. He has his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and he becomes a follower of Jesus. About two years after Jesus' resurrection and ascension. And immediately after he becomes a believer, he starts preaching in all the synagogues about how Jesus is the true Messiah. And he begins to write his epistles. First Corinthians is one of the first letters which he writes. So they say that maybe he wrote it in around 40 AD, around 40 AD is when he would have written it. So at this time, you know, the Jerusalem temple has not even fallen. I mean, Titus has not come and even attacked us yet. So right there in this early days itself, Paul and the others began to do their writing. Now, why is this important? Because you see, whatever they are writing, not only will the believer community read those things, even the hostile Jews also will be reading it. And so if they have written any tall stories which are not true, if they've written fiction over there, the Jews would have risen up as a community and said, look, you're writing all lies in your writings. So even not only eyewitnesses who love Jesus have given their accounts, hostile eyewitnesses, those who are against Jesus, even they have looked at these writings because these writings were not written hundreds of years later, when you can cook up stories and say, ah, Jesus did this miracle, Jesus did that miracle. These records were written when the people who hate Jesus are still alive and none of them could raise a finger and say, ah, look, you're writing lies. So you see the accuracy of the New Testament scriptures is very easy to establish. So it was probably in around 40 AD that Corinthians was written. And many of the epistels were, many of these letters which he wrote, he would have written in the 40s and 50s is when he would have written it. So which means like just about 50 years after Jesus ascended, he's already writing down these things and all the churches are reading these things. Mark was probably written in the late 50s. Matthew and Luke were probably written in the 80s. So Matthew and Luke were written after the Jerusalem fell down, so after the attack of Titus. So Mark would have been written in the late 50s. Matthew and Luke were probably written in the 80s and John was written probably around 90 AD. So that was like the, you know, the last gospel, of course, the gospel of John and his letters and revelation were all probably around, written around 90 AD. So today, do we have anything from that time? We have some copies, you know, and of course we don't have the originals, but then we have very ancient copies which were handwritten in 200 AD. Eight of Paul's epistels and a large portion of Hebrews, copies which were handwritten in 200 AD are available with us today. So in that brief time of 200 years, not much corruption, you know, would have happened because the details would be very clear in their minds and the early church would have made sure that no wrong things are being produced. So we can rely upon the authenticity of the New Testament scriptures that have come down to us. Now, there's something which critics say about the New Testament. This is what they say. I mean, you see it on the internet. It says, you know, they say that the New Testament has got 200,000 defects and mistakes. And that sounds like a very large number. So they are saying that there are 200,000 mistakes in the New Testament copies. You know, if you were to place 10 handwritten copies in front of you and start comparing them, when you start comparing the different copies, according to them, you will be able to find defects. What is there in one document? We'll be different in the other document. So according to them, there are 200,000 variations and differences, but actually the number which they are quoting is wrong. They are cheating in the sense. Let us say, let's just use an example, a fictional example. Let's assume that in one hand written copy, the copyist made a mistake and he put the wrong spelling for the word gospel. Now someone took that document and then another hundred copies were made using that defective document. So which means now all the hundred copies will have a wrong spelling of gospel. So now what do the critics say? They'll say that, oh, there are 101 mistakes. So the same, but actually it's not 101 mistakes. It's one mistake, one spelling mistake, which is repeated a hundred times, but it doesn't mean there are 101 mistakes. So they have a wrong way of calculating the variations and they say there are 200,000 variations, but actually what they're doing is they're repeating the same defect in each document. So the word gospel is misspelled in 500 documents. They're saying, oh, there are 500 defects, which is actually not correct. It's just one mistake and that one mistake has been reproduced in different documents. So actually what they are saying is wrong. In reality, 95% of all the documents match, there are, how many are available to us today? 5,520 handwritten copies are available today. I mean, they're available in different museums. 5,520, I think is the number I don't really remember. That many copies. And if you go to compare all the copies, you will discover that 95% they match. The remaining 5% is the mistakes in spelling mistakes. And things like that. So we can say that the scriptures are highly accurate. The scriptures which have been transmitted down the ages to us are highly accurate. Now, it's very biased, very prejudiced, the kind of criticisms that these people raise against the Bible. Because when it comes to other ancient writings, they accept them at face value when they say, yeah, these are accurate. But when it comes to the Bible, they come up with all kinds of criticisms. You know, I mean, in the eighth century BC, there was this person named Homer, and he wrote a book called The Iliad. So the Iliad was written by Homer in the eighth century BC. And now today we have 643 handwritten copies of that particular book. And when you compare all the 643 copies, there are mistakes, but most of it is identical. And so based on that, the people today accept that this copies which they have in their hand is matching the original. Even though they do not have the original in their hand. On the other hand, when it comes to the New Testament, like I said, we have somewhere around 5,520 copies. And when you match that many copies, you're able to find identical content, 95%. Only 5%, there's small variations. So when they're so happy about accepting the Iliad as being original, why are they so reluctant to accept the Bible as equally, you know, original and authentic? So it's actually the prejudice of critics which makes them attack the Bible more than they attack the other ancient writings. Another example that is given by one Christian scholar, he said that the same man Homer, he wrote another book in the eighth century. It was called the Odyssey. Now the Odyssey was written by Homer in the eighth century. The earliest handwritten copy that we have of the Odyssey was copied 2,200 years later, which means there was a gap of 2,200 years between the original document and the copy which is there in our hands now. Even though there's such a long gap, people are willing to accept that the Odyssey is authentic. But when it comes to our scriptures, you know, like I had just told a little while ago, we have epistels, Paul's epistels which were hand copied in 280. So a gap of just maybe 170 years or so between the original writing and the copy. So imagine how much more authentic and reliable our New Testament handwritten copies will be because the time gap between the original and the handwritten copy is much less, it's much narrower. So therefore we can trust what the scriptures which we have with us today. So let us very briefly look at some of the kind of copyist errors which we see in our scriptures. Okay, so that we will have a clearer picture about these things. So what are the different? Now many of the copyist errors happened because when the person who's copying from the source document may not really understand the handwriting which is used in the source document. So sometimes, especially when it comes to yeah, even the Greek language, but especially when it comes to the Hebrew language, the alphabets are so similar, it's easy to think that one alphabet is actually the other alphabet. No, because they are so similar in their shape. And so sometimes mistakes happened because a person who's copying would think that one alphabet is being used when actually another alphabet is being used. So as a result of that, one example would be Genesis chapter 10 verse four and first chronicles chapter one verse seven. Now in both of these places, Genesis 10, four and in first chronicles one, seven, it gives a list of the descendants of a person named Jawan. Okay, so this man Jawan, his descendants are mentioned in both of these places. In Genesis, one of his descendants is referred to as the dodenim. Whereas in the chronicles passage, the descendants are referred to as the rodanim. So the the and the re got interchanged. That's because the is shaped like this. The re is also shaped like this. The difference between the and re is that the will have a little bit of the top line sticking out. So it's like this, but it's a little line sticking out. The re on the other hand is just like this. It's that similar. So which is why some poor person who was copying probably thought that the re is re or thought maybe that the re is the. We don't know whether the rodanim or the dodenim. There are small variations like that because of difficulty in understanding the handwriting. So most of the mistakes which took place took place with regard to numbers, the numbering. They would use the Hebrew alphabets to write down their numbers. So sometimes they would be, they would either, they would, they would understand that alphabet wrongly. And so you'd end up with wrong numbers. So for instance, you know, Jeho Yakin, when he came to the throne, we don't know how old he was because second king's chapter 24 will say that he was 18 years old, but second chronicles 36 will say that he was eight years old because you see that the, no, because 18 is one eight, right? So we don't know whether the copyist added the one over there or whether he removed the one over there. So we don't know whether Jeho Yakin was actually 18 or eight when he came to the throne, but it's just this small matters like this. In the same way, we don't know whether, yeah, in Ezra chapter two, it says that there were 200 singing men and women. In Nehemiah seven, it says there were 245 singing men and women. So small errors like that, which will not affect teaching in any way, which will not affect doctrine in any way. So most of the mistakes are that type, where there's a small change in the name or there's a change in the numbering. Now, sometimes when the person was copying, accidentally added an alphabet or removed an alphabet, sometimes it led to a change in the meaning. So in that case, let us say the error was more serious, but even then no doctrinal matter got affected. It's just that the sentence changed into something else, but the teachings, the important teachings which are contained in the Old Testament and New Testament, those were not affected ever by any of the errors. For example, one very popular copyist error, which is discussed generally in the internet, would be who killed Goliath? Oh, that's actually a very simple answer, because we're exactly first Samuel chapter 17 versus 45 to 50. If you read that, it's very clearly given how David went, what he did, what he spoke and how he killed Goliath. It's very, very clear. There's no doubt about it. If anyone who looks at first Samuel chapter 17 versus 45 to 50 will have a clear picture of exactly who killed Goliath. But this event is mentioned in another place, second Samuel 2119, and over there in second Samuel 2119, if you were looking at the original Hebrew, the original Hebrew, you know, the Masoretic original Hebrew Bible which has come down to us, if you were looking at that, the wording over there, it looks like as if Elhanan, the son of Jair killed Goliath. And that's because there is a copyist error in that particular verse. Now, most of our Bibles will give the correct version. They will say that Elhanan, the son of Jair killed the brother of Goliath, not Goliath himself. And in the footnote, they will mention. So if you have your Bible in front of you, if you were to look at second Samuel chapter 21 verse 19, and if you look at the footnotes for that particular verse, or there it will be written, in the original Hebrew, it does not mention brother of Goliath. It just mentions he killed Goliath. So that's because the person who was doing the copying made a couple of small errors. Basically the person was copying in, how do we know what the defect is in second Samuel 2119? Because second Samuel 2119 is almost identical with first Chronicles chapter 20 verse five. So the verse which is written in second Samuel 2119, and the verse which is written in first Chronicles 25, both of these verses are almost identical word for word. They're both talking about the same event. So when we compare the second Samuel 21 verse with the first Chronicles 20 verse, we realize what the defect is in second Samuel 2119. So in second Samuel 2119, the copies just basically made two small errors which led to a complete change in the sentence itself. First mistake he made was, in one particular word, he added the word burr. The second small mistake which he did was, another word which has got three alphabets. He changed the middle alphabet because those two alphabets look very same. Instead of putting kerr over there, he put ter, because kerr and ter look very identical. Kerr is basically like this. Kerr is basically like this. Your ter is also like this. Only thing your ter will have a small comma attached down below. That's the difference. So the second mistake which this copyist made was, when he was writing down the second word, he changed that second letter which was there. And the third letter in that word is just one small stroke, one tiny little stroke like this. That's it. That's an alphabet. And that's actually called the yod. He forgot to mention that. Now because of that, that verse sounds very different from the first Chronicles 25 verse. And you get the wrong impression that Elhanan killed Goliath rather than the verse which actually should be saying that he killed the brother of Goliath. So sometimes these very small errors led to a change in the entire sentence. But it doesn't affect the teaching because we have another passage which clearly talks about who killed Goliath. So even the small errors did take place sometimes. It did not affect the doctrine of the Bible in any manner. Now, okay, there's some, people use the term textual variants. Oh, that's basically means if I'm placing 10 handwritten copies in front of me. So I have basically 10 texts in front of me. And then I see small variations between the 10 texts. The spelling over here is one thing and the spelling over here is another thing. So those are textual variants. Now, small, small spelling mistakes don't really affect us in any way. But sometimes you see an entire Bible passage missing from one of the old manuscripts. And that is when people start criticizing and they say, oh my, was this additional passage added later? Was it not there in the original thing? Or is it, was it missed out accidentally? It leads to controversies like that. So there are three such controversies which maybe we should keep in mind because it's important. Because especially the Muslim community criticizes the church regarding these three passages. So let's look at the first one. Okay, before we look at the first one, maybe we need to have a little background. Now, you might have heard people raise this criticism. Yeah, just go ahead. Usually like when someone is like, when we are in conversation with someone and rather than clarity, just for the sake of discussion and disrupting, if they keep asking such questions and things, is it wise to just refrain or seek some time and respond? Or is it okay to get into the conversation and think? Because their primary objective is not about getting clarity. It's more about just trying to confuse us. So what would be the right, especially when you're talking to a Muslim community? It all depends on whom you're having the discussion with because recently someone had sent me some YouTube clipings of this gentleman wearing white, that Arabic kind of thing and is attacking some Christian and saying, look, we know that this Bible passage is contradicting this Bible passage. What is your answer to that? Another poor Christian is looking very puzzled and doesn't even know what to say. So when that person is in full onslaught mode and attacking, maybe even if this person speaks up and says something, maybe it really wouldn't work because that man is trying to prove his point and he's in a very aggressive state of mind. So in such settings, maybe it would be better to just be quiet and leave it at that. On the other hand, if someone seems to have a cool mind and they seem open to an actual discussion, then maybe you could talk about how there are textual variants, how there are spelling mistakes, but there are no mistakes in the original manuscript and you can go into a discussion of that if the person seems open and receptive to having a discussion. But when a person is in attack mode and they just want to prove their point because they're so heated up in their mind, they may not really be open. It'll only lead to a argument. And because that person has spent months researching that topic and now is coming and attacking you, you may not still have that required research from your side to be able to combat. So in such situations, it would be better to just pray silently and leave it. But if you know that person personally and if you get an opportunity to someday bring up the topic again after you have done your preparation, you could always reopen the topic. It would always depend on whom you're talking to and the state of mind of the person. What is their motive in having brought up this whole conversation? Is it, they just want to attack Christians or are they genuinely wanting to know what my outlook is regarding this particular thing? Then I can present and I can openly present what I. And so yes, we are not all well researched regarding these matters. So when such a thing happens, maybe the wise thing would be to say, I don't really know the answer to this, but I'll definitely find out. I'll talk to someone or I will look up that and then I'll get back to you and then we can talk about it. So that way it kind of keeps the door open where you can actually go back one day with better equip, with better information and actually have a discussion with that person. And even as you're praying inside your heart, who knows the Holy Spirit may convict that person and point out to them the authenticity of the Christian scriptures. So that would actually help. So I guess it's all a matter of setting, based on the setting, you would take your step accordingly. All right, some people raise this question and they say, this NIV Bible, it leaves out entire passages. What a terrible thing to do. So on the other hand, the NKJV has got all these passages which are correctly in place. Why are not those NIV do that? Why does it just throw out certain passages and don't even include them? That's one argument which people make. So just for us to understand a little bit about the background of that, because that will help us to understand more about this textual variations which critics attack us about. The King James version was the English translation was done in the 16th or 17th century. At that time, whatever documents they had, the manuscripts which they had in their hand, they use those manuscripts faithfully, sincerely, to do the English translation. So most of the manuscripts which they had in their hands were the handwritten copies from around 600 AD, 700 AD, all the way up to 900 AD. So the documents which they had in their hand, those were handwritten copies ranging from 600 AD to 900 AD. Those are called the Byzantine manuscripts. So the KJV was translated into English based on the Byzantine manuscripts. At that time, the more ancient manuscripts had not even been discovered. It was only in the 1900s that archaeologists accidentally discovered older manuscripts from 200 AD. Like the one we were talking about, the epistels of Paul which are available, which were handwritten around 200 AD. And also they have found two in the early 1900s. They found two complete copies of the New Testament, one which was handwritten in 325 AD and another which was written in 350 AD. These two copies have the complete New Testament in them. So these are also part of the Alexandrian documents. Now in the 17th century, the people who did the translation for the KJV never even had these documents in their hands simply because they had not been discovered. It was only much later in the 1900s that these older, more original Alexandrian manuscripts came to light. And when a comparison was done between the Byzantine documents and the Alexandrian documents, people realized that the Byzantine manuscripts seemed to be longer in length. In fact, they have 6,000 extra words. So the older, more ancient Alexandrian manuscripts have less amount of words. The Byzantine manuscripts have much more 6,000 extra words. So people began to think maybe as time went by, just to give a little clearer explanation, maybe some of the copies added some extra things into the documents. So which is why NIV and many of the modern translations, they prefer to do their translation directly from the Alexandrian manuscripts rather than the Byzantine manuscripts, which is why sometimes some passages are left out because those passages were not there in the more ancient earlier manuscripts. So based on that, they will put it in the footnote saying that the earliest manuscripts do not have this passage. They'll just explain and they will not mention that passage in the content. So which is why there's a difference between NIV and the other modern translations when we compare it with KJV and NKJV, which are based on the Byzantine manuscripts. So this being the case, let us look at some passages which are considered controversial. On the other hand, we may not have time to go through all of them. Okay, we will talk about textual variants maybe in the first hour of next class and then enter into doctrine of God in the second hour. Today maybe we can talk about another small aspect. I want to cover this controversial passages properly. So we will do that in the first hour of our next session. And then in the second hour of our next session, we'll get into the doctrine of God. The reason that I spent more time on the doctrine of the word of God is because our entire faith is and our entire lives are based on this word of God. So it is very important for us to have a clear picture about its origins, about its transmission, about the arguments which are raised against it. So we will not spend this much time on all the other doctrines, so but this was something important. So we will look at these controversial passages briefly in the next class, but today I would really like to touch upon our translations. I mean, now that we actually brought up this whole idea about NIV and KJV and all of that, there are some people who ask, they say, are all the translations correct? Because if you compare two Bibles, two translations and keep them next to each other, the verse says something completely different. The verse looks almost completely different. So which version is more accurate? Now, the simple truth is this, all the people who have done the English translations, from the bottom of their heart, they wanted to translate as accurately as possible. Nobody did a lighthearted translation just like that for the fun of it. Because when a particular translation team sits down to do the translation work, it's something that they do over many years. They check, they cross check, they look at the meaning of those original words, they look at what all the scholars are saying about the meaning of those words and then they translate literally word by word, sentence by sentence. It's done very carefully to use an example. When NIV was trying to bring out its second edition, they had five or six teams and five or six teams would work on the same Bible passage and then they would come together to see how each team has translated that particular passage. And so then based on the differences in the translation, they would sit and discuss and debate and decide which is the best way to do this passage. So for every single passage, you would have three, four teams working on the same passage and then comparing and contrasting to see which is the best fun, which should finally be undertaken. No translation was ever done carelessly, ever. So whichever Bible version you're holding in your hands, please know that hundreds of people worked day and night most prayerfully, most sincerely to bring out the translation which you're holding in your hand. So don't just criticize any of the translations and say, these people didn't even care what they were writing. Now, maybe you can say that about the paraphrases but not about the actual translations. What do I mean by that? Let's, we will talk about it. There are basically three kinds of English Bibles that we have. There are Bibles which use what is called a formal translation method. So Bibles which have a formal translation method, they are interested in doing little word by word translation of the original Hebrew and the original Greek. So they will take that original Hebrew sentence and then they will try to translate it literally word by word. So that is called your formal translation method and for them, the main emphasis for them, the goal is to be as accurate as possible, literally word by word translating. So they are not that interested in making the verse understandable to the modern reader. For them, accuracy is important. So they don't emphasize on the modern reader understanding the meaning. They're more interested in preserving the accuracy. Which are the translations, which use this formal translation approach. You have MKJV, of course, and then you have NASB, you have the ESV, you have the NASU, you have the HCSB. Now, these are all, which will have a literal word to word translation. So if you're looking for that kind of accuracy, these are the translations which are best, but for them, the important point is not bringing out the meaning. So you have a second translation method, which have been used by other translators, that is called the functional translation method. Here, the goal is not to preserve that Hebrew Greek structure exactly. The goal is to bring out the meaning, which is contained in that particular sentence. So when they are doing the translation, they will not do a literal word-by-word translation. They do their best to bring out the original meaning, which is there in that. Let's use an example. So Acts chapter 10, verse 34. Now, I don't think any of you have a KJV Bible with you, but if you had a KJV Bible with you, Acts 10, 34, this is the way the verse would be rendered over there. Acts 10, 34, it says, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. That is your actual literal KJV translation, where it says God is no respecter of persons. Why on earth would they write something like that? That is because the Greek word, which is used over there, that word literally means an acceptor or a respecter of a face or an acceptor or a respecter of a person. So they wanted to literally translate that. And so in your original Acts 10, 34, the English KJV, it will say, God is no respecter of persons. But that meaning sounds very wrong to our modern years. It almost sounds like I said, God doesn't have respect for people. That is not what they were trying to convey in the Greek word. The Greek word is saying, I don't care what your face is, whether you're a rich man or a poor man, I'm not a respecter of faces. I care about treating people equally. That actually is the Greek meaning. But when you do this literal translation, the meaning of that word doesn't come out. So which is why, in fact, even NKJV also follows the more loose translation. So NKJV, NIV, this is the way they translate it. They say, God does not show favoritism. So that term, God does not show favoritism, is not a word by word translation. The actual word by word translation would be, God is not a respecter of faces or respecter of persons. But the actual meaning is, God does not show favoritism. He treats everyone equally. So you see the functional translations have tried to bring out the meaning of what is being said. So that would be your NIV, NLT, GNT, NCV. These are all your functional translation. Where they're not translating word by word, they are rather translating thought by thought. They want to bring out the actual meaning of the thought which was conveyed in the original. So they want to convey that. It's a third kind of translations which exist today. And these are what you call the paraphrases. These are not very accurate. They are more reader friendly, but they are not accurate. Living Bible and the message Bible are two very popular paraphrases. The living Bible was written by a man, forgot his name. He basically wanted to translate the Bible for his child, for his son in simple English in a way which his son will be able to understand. So he's not very accurate in the way he translates. In fact, he gives, in some places, it's almost as if his interpretation of those verses is coming out. So it's very, very simple, very readable, very reader friendly, but it's not very accurate because it's a paraphrase. It's not an actual translation. It's a paraphrase of the original. Now I grew up with the living Bible from childhood because that was the easiest Bible available. So my father presented it to me and I think up to 10th standard, I lived on the living Bible. And so by the time I came to my 10th standard, I knew what is there in each chapter in the Bible. I knew all the thoughts and ideas which are there. And then I was able to move to NKJV because the NKJV English is high and half the time you don't know what on earth they're talking about because I had already become familiar with the scriptures in the living Bible. It was easy for me to move from there to NKJV and understand what is being said. So for some people, a paraphrase may be easy to read but do not expect accuracy, all right? So you basically have these three types of translations available. And so based on what you're looking for, whether you're looking for readability or whether you're looking for accuracy, you would choose the translation which you feel is best for you. So when you're presenting a Bible to a new believer as a gift, it would be best if you don't give them the word-to-word translations. It would be maybe more, if they're comfortable with English and they read journals and they read newspapers and they're comfortable with that level of English, functional translation would be better like NIV or GNT or NLT because the English in that is easier to understand. But of course, maybe it's not a good idea to give anybody the paraphrase because the paraphrase is not emphasizing accuracy. So the message Bible is something that you read for the fun of it, just to see what new twists they have given to the verses. It's interesting the way they write some of the verses. It's interesting to read, but when it comes to accuracy of translation, that is not found in your paraphrases. So those are all the things that we could touch upon today. There are a few aspects of this doctrine of the word of God which we have left out. I will quickly cover those things in the first hour of our next session. So let's just close with a word of prayer. Lord, we just thank you that you guarded your word through the ages of Lord. You placed people in the right positions at the right time to make sure that your word was transmitted accurately so that it will come to us the modern reader in all of its power with no corruption. We thank you a lot for what you have done for us and we thank you a lot that you gave us your very own direct words so that we can use them to bring life to our bodies, to bring life to our inner spirit so that we can grow in you and have a new life in you. We thank you a lot for this word of God and we pray a lot that we would be people who would spend time meditating upon this word, discipline ourselves and carve out the necessary time to spend meditating upon this word because a lot of people went through a lot to be able to present this Bible to us today and Lord, we should not neglect it. So we pray that you would help us to become sincere, disciplined students of your word. Thank you Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.