Pastor Bob,

            I really enjoyed some of the things that you wrote.

I love studying history, and you did an exciting job of making it come alive, in comparison to many high school history teachers.

When you quoted that one marginal note:

“when tyrants cannot prevail by craft, they burst forth into open rage”

I couldn’t but help think of when Hilary was being questioned about Benghazi.

Your account of Mary Stuart makes for very interesting reading, since recently she is portrayed so “sweetly” in the CW TV-series “Reign”.

You did a good job of explaining the difference between formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence.

I thought that it was good that you brought out that it was the Hebrew Masoretic old testament and the Robert Stephanus new testament.

If you could, it would probably make good reading if you told the story of the Hebrew Masoretic.

Also the appearance of line numbers in Stephanus’ fourth edition, especially with your gift of making history fun & interesting.

 

The only sad thing for me was when you wrote:

“The fact is there is NO perfect Bible.”

Too bad that the LORD was unable to preserve for us a perfect Bible, that would have been very nice, as well as extremely practical for us.

Creating the universe in six days was no doubt very hard to do.

However, preserving the word of God must have been impossible, if it is a “fact” that “there is NO perfect Bible”.

 

When my Brother & I got saved nearly four decades ago, we had been Catholics, and quite ignorant of the scriptures.

My Brother went off to Bible college, and when he was in, I think, his 3^rd year of Greek, I wrote a letter to him with a question I had.

As a very new, and also un-discipled, believer, I had questions as I read the Bible, and there was no internet then for me to do a search.

I had begun to wonder where is the “real” Bible today.

I asked him that I knew about the men who first penned things down, many years ago, but where is the true word of God today?

He sent me back a copy of an Aland & Metzger Greek New Testament, as well as a Critical Apparatus, and called me on the phone.

He told me to look through the Critical Apparatus, that the list of all those texts, manuscripts, papyri, etc., was where the word of God was today.

In my shock, I asked him if someone had shot God with a shotgun?

He was quite offended at that and asked me if I was a Ruckmanite.

I didn’t have the slightest idea of what he was talking about, but it sounded real bad, so I surely didn’t want to be labeled one of those, whatever it meant.

He calmed down and explained that (later in the 70s) in his Bible College Bookstore, there were little booklets by the check-out counter.

They said, “Beware of Ruckmanites”, and everyone there certainly was wary, although many didn’t know for sure what that derogatory term really meant.

My Brother only knew that it had something to do with the Bible, but that the Faculty would be very upset if they thought that someone might be one.

Since he said it in response to my question, then it must have something to do with looking for the “real” Bible today.

 

At that time I used to go to a Bible Church (I hadn’t yet been exposed to any of those fire-breathin’, mule-skinin’, barn-stormin’ Independent Baptists).

All the Bible school graduates, interns, and visiting ministers, as well as radio teachers, were all starting to get into that fad in the 70s.

That fad was where they all said something similar to, “The Bible unfortunately renders this verse incorrectly, or this word incorrectly”.

Then they would give other possible variants, in Hebrew, if it was the old testament, or Greek, if it was the new testament.

We would all be completely mesmerized by this, and revered them highly.

Apparently, since it looked like God had lost his perfect Bible somewhere,

and since they convinced us that we couldn’t trust our copy, they would step forward to help.

It seemed like a good thing, though, if they were rescuing God from a potentially embarrassing situation.

For me it was comfortably familiar.

As a Catholic, I had to go to the priest to get the truth, or the deeper things, since they were the only ones who knew ancient Latin.

This was absolutely no different for me, only now I was to go to men who knew ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek.

All I had was the Bible I got saved by, and the indwelling Holy Ghost, but what is that in comparison to years of linguistic study of ancient languages?

It sure seemed to me, at that time, that God must be hiding the truth from babes, but revealing it only to the wise and prudent.

Good thing that there were enough of the wise and prudent to go around, since apparently most of us needed a bridge between us and God.

How shameful that must have sounded for me to ask a silly question like, “Where is the true word of God today?”

 

                                    Thank you, especially if you read through this entire letter,

                                                Gino