What are the original actual words of God?

Answer 1

There are none. There are NO original manuscripts of anything in the Bible. And the few minor chunks that exist are A) copies, and B) very, very tiny. The bottom line is: they don't exist. It's all just hearsay at best, mythology at worst.

Sorry.

AnswerThe above response is a typical dismissive response showing a lack of real understanding of scripture. No one would ever suggest that Hamlet was not written by Shakespeare, although no original copies of the work exist. The fact is that whenever we read a book by an author, whether it's Shakespeare, Dickens or Dan Brown, we are reading copies. Faithful, accurate copies... but copies.

Similarly the earliest manuscripts of the books of the Bible are all copies of the originals, but by using the science of 'Textual Criticism' a faithful reflection of the original document can be obtained, that peovides well the ideas that the author of the book tried to convey.

The Bible as we know it is known as the 'Word of God' but of course the whole Bible was written, not by God, but by various humans over a span of many hundreds of years. Nevertheless the Bible is stamped clearly with the mark of God, who inspired the writers to write as they did.

When we read scripture, we read it in English, as, of course, it is a translation of the original Hebrew or Greek. Therefore when we read an English translaton we cannot read the 'actual' words of God. Even when the Bible was written in the original language the 'actual' words may not have been written down word for word, but the sentiment, ideas and reflection of God's Word certainly was.

The Bible has many different types of book, from historical to novels, from poetry to prophesy. Throughout the books God reveals himself in different ways but in the Old Testament the books of Prophecy (the major and minor prophets) contain the most 'words' by God, but even these are the words that the writers of these books used themselves, under God's inspiration, when trying to put God's message into everyday Hebrew.

In the New Testament, however, Christians believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate. In the Gospels we hear Jesus speaking, teaching, praying. So are these the actual words of God? Possibly, although in some books, such as John, the words of Jesus may well be stylised.

In Matthew, however, things are different. Most Bible scholars regard Matthew's gospel written by the tax collector disciple Matthew/Levi. If so, then Matthew would have been skilled in a form of shorthand taught by the Romans that tax collectors used in their business. It's no surprise, then, that Matthew's gospel contains most of jesus' teaching, the sermon on the mount, and many parables. And if these were recorded verbatim by Matthew, we can be pretty certain that these were the actual words of Jesus - and therefore of God incarnate.