| May
19, 2006
Davinci Code?
Mathew 5:18: I tell you the truth, until
heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest
letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will
by any means disappear from the Law until everything
is accomplished. -NIV
With the new movie The Davinci Code out this
week a lot of questions have been raised about
the validity of the Bible. I would like to address
one of the key questions raised in this movie
from a person perspective.
I have been in training the last three months
to be a Medical Transcriptionist. An MT is a
person who rigorously trains themselves to type
what is dictated to them by another. When they
do this they are barraged with a number of highly
esoteric medical terms and “code”
language and they are also hampered by poor
audio quality, tired dictators and sometimes
language barriers. As they transcribe the document
they are required to make minor changes to the
dictation to make the document understandable
to the reader. This includes minor grammatical
changes and expanding out abbreviations and
acronyms. There is a whole industry of transcriptionist
out there doing millions of pages of this type
of work every day and they operate with a degree
of accuracy that rivals the ancient monks whose
job it was to copy older documents. As I have
been learning this field I have been struck
by how easy it is to make a mistake in transcribing
and can understand how, to the average lay person,
it would be easy to think that the Bible could
have been subject to errors. There is however
a major difference between what an MT does and
what was done in keeping the Bible archived
for the future. The difference is that the MT
is transcribing something new every day. Every
report is unique and there is nothing to compare
it to for errors except the audio dictation
that may have been unclear to begin with. The
Bible on the other hand has had (and to this
day still does have) many older copies to compare
it with. There have been many scrolls, like
those found in the caves around the Dead Sea,
that are over 2000 years old. Other writings
are dated to within decades of the original
manuscripts and when they are all put together
they serve to give a clear picture of the original
meanings. The other difference is that even
though a MT may make minor edits for grammar
the MEANING is never to be changed. We have
seen in all the new translations -like the TNIV
and The Message- many edits for common language,
but again the meaning has not been changed,
only some concessions to changes in language
use. Jesus said nothing in the word would change
throughout time. He was saying that because;
as he is the word, he would be unchangeable,
and always be there for us. He was also giving
us the surety that when we read his word we
would KNOW that it was free from corruption
throughout the ages.
We can be sure that Jesus is always there for
us. We can always come to him and we can always
rely on his word.
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