The Bible: Inspiration & Intimacy

Peter said, "No prophecy of scripture was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." This tells us the prophecies in scripture were not fabricated by humans & that they were accurately recorded. Very interesting is the fact that Peter only says the prophecies of scripture are accurate. He makes no such claim regarding the rest of scripture.

Paul said, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable.." But there are translations of this that read this way, "All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable.." The verb for "is" before the word inspired does not appear in the original Greek. Therefore the 2nd reading is actually more accurate.

Some will point out that the word inspired actually means "God breathed." Well God breathed into Adam but through the freedom of his flesh he did not maintain perfection. Jesus breathed into His disciples but through the freedom of their flesh they still made mistakes. Scripture is also said to be God breathed yet it had to pass through the hands of free flesh to be physically written down. Did God suspend the way He relates to all of mankind by violating the freedom of those men who wrote the scriptures when "inspiring" & "moving" them?

Scripture Inspiration Possibilities:
1. God only flawlessly inspired about 40 men in all of history. God gave us the same Holy Spirit the New Testament authors have & an even better relationship to the Spirit than the Old Testament authors had. However God will never ever inspire anyone as perfectly as He did those who wrote the scriptures therefore we must rely on the superior scriptures over His inferior living Spirit inside of us despite the fact that Jesus told us to rely on the Spirit to lead us to all truth & made no command to rely on the scriptures. God also ensures that we will all always have inferior communication with Him despite the new covenant declaring us equally given His Spirit "without measure."
2. God never flawlessly (robotically) inspires anyone but He does inspire them & they write & speak freely from His inspiration. Like any human they can flawlessly record something someone else told them but may not always do so.

#1 strikes me as God violating free will, treating the New Testament writers as His all time favorite people, & as honestly unscriptural.
#2 strikes me as God maintaining free will, loving all of His children the same, & as scriptural based on God's character & dealings with people as recorded in scripture itself.

Jesus wanted us to trust Him. Yet I think there is no doubt that most Christians read scripture & trust in the validity of it more than they interact with God & trust Him, trusting Him to speak to them accurately. We are all seen as having been given a smaller measure of the Spirit than those who wrote the scriptures when scripture itself says that we have the Spirit without limit. We all, including the writers of scripture, always have the freedom to walk by the Spirit or by the flesh, to speak & write from our renewed mind & to realize not all of our mind is renewed.

Some will argue that following the Spirit over the scripture is dangerous. To them I say it is easier to get someone to follow you into falsehood by saying, "the bible says.." than it is by "God told me.."

Jesus never prophesied about a perfect book being compiled to teach us about God & guide us in our lives. He prophesied about the Holy Spirit described many times as THE gift of God to guide us to ALL truth & relate to us like a friend & a father. HIS Spirit is HERE & NOW!

The Letter Kills...
"The letter kills & the Spirit gives life." Why? because the letter is dead & the Spirit is living. The letter has truth but that truth is not alive without the Spirit. But here is the big question..

What does the letter kill?
The answer...

Your relationship with God.

Instead of being real & talking to God ourselves & asking Him for answers, allowing Him to point us to scripture if He so chooses, we instead choose to go to a book & read it, honestly often hoping we won't encounter Him there. It is like having the chance to interview someone you admire but instead you blow him off & just study his autobiography. It is like reading love letters from your spouse on the edge of your bed while refusing to be intimate with him or her. Just as those who begged Moses to relate to God for them, we beg the bible to relate to God for us. The scriptures kill intimacy with God. They don't always do this & can aid in knowing Him better but it is beyond easy to make the bible God & live without ever even touching the hem of His robe. What we want is to believe the bible, to believe things ABOUT God. We don't want to believe IN God, we don't want to trust Him. We like ideas about God because we want to know ABOUT HIM without KNOWING HIM.

We, in our shame, our fear, our laziness, our apathy, we don't want God to really know us. So the bible is the perfect solution. I don't have to talk to God. I don't have to be honest with God. I don't have to love God. God doesn't get to really love me.. I just treat Him like a text book maybe because I'm trying to get a grade in a class, maybe because there is just something uncomfortable about us getting to know each other more.

So in the name of a "relationship" with God we reject relating to God. We pick up a book about Him & say, "oh that's cool.." "boy I should get on doing that.." Inside we think, "I've gotta remember this." We fight for our idea of TRUTH for our WAY of LIFE without ever getting to know The TRUTH, THE WAY, THE LIFE.

So are we going to let the bible be our safe & sterile substitute for the man Christ Jesus? Are we choosing book over brother, facts over Father?

I don't care if you claim to walk under grace. Grace is A GIFT. HE IS THE GIFT. Until you engage God you're just walking under a religion, gathering facts, feelings, & forewarnings. The "facts" make you feel right & smart & superior ready to shut down anyone who disagrees with you. The feelings are a fact, they are fun, they are peaceful but are you partying alone? Are you resting WITH God or resting to get away from relating to God? The forewarnings could be used for wise compassion or they could just be facts+fear.

So do you just want the love letter or do you want the love?
Would you rather open a book about THE Father or fall into YOUR Father's open arms?
Why not decide now?

Scripture is NOT the Living & Active Word of God, Jesus is

Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."

The Word of God this scripture is talking about is not the Bible but Jesus. Simply look at what it says all together..

"For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. AND there is no creature hidden from HIS sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of HIM with whom we have to do."

The very context points out that this is referring to Jesus because it is speaking of the word of God as a "Him" in the very next verse. Read this chapter & you will see Scripture isn't being spoken about here. The chapter is about Jesus. Jesus is elsewhere identified as the "Word of God" in John 1 & Revelation 19:13.

Certainly Jesus is living and active. 1 Chronicles 28 says, "The Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts." To think that quoting scripture to someone is guaranteed to pierce to their soul is a false idea. The living God is the one who does this, you can not force it. It is His job to do. Jesus is the sword of the Spirit spoken of in Ephesians 6:17. Jesus is a life giving Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). The Word of God is Jesus who speaks to our hearts lovingly & in the present tense.

Related Posts
The Idea That the Bible Replaced God

The Meaning of "My Word shall not return to Me void"

In Isaiah 55:11 God says, "My word which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me void, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." Jesus said in Mark 7:13, "The traditions of men make void the word of God." So in one place God says His word can't be made void & in another He says it can, thus these must be talking about different "words."

God got the idea across in Isaiah 55:11 of, "I will accomplish what I desire." Something like that pertains to keeping promises. God makes a similar statement in Isaiah 45:23 while making a specific promise at the end, "I have sworn (made a promise) by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance." Remember also 2 Timothy 2:13, "If we are faithless, He remains faithful. He cannot deny himself."

Another interesting thing about Isaiah 55:10-11 is that it is actually future tense. He says, "the word from my mouth shall be as trustworthy as the rain coming from above to water the earth before it evaporates." Thus, at the very least, we cannot assume "the word" He is speaking about is scripture written before Isaiah.

In Mark 7:5-13 Jesus first quotes Moses (scripture) then He quotes a tradition which makes a truth claim. Here the "word of God" being referred to is the truth of God found in scripture. It can be made void by man made traditions.

The parable of the sower in Matthew 13 also gives us this idea of the word/truth of God being made void. There Jesus speaks of "the word of the kingdom" referring to the truth of the kingdom, something we now have written in scripture. Jesus says "the word can be snatched away by the evil one," "the word can fall away because of affliction or persecution," & that "the word can be choked & made unfruitful by the worries of the world & the deceitfulness of wealth."

So it is evident from the teachings of Jesus & the original context of Isaiah 55:11 itself, God saying, "My word will not return to Me void" does not refer to scripture or the reading of it but instead to the effectiveness of His promises.

The Idea that We Should Read the Bible Every Day

I wonder how many of us are actually led by the Spirit to read the bible. Most of us think we are supposed to do it so we find a place to read & pray "God teach me what this scripture means." Since we prayed the prayer we assume that whatever we think when we are done reading must be what it means. We assume we have no bias in an unrenewed part of our mind that will block us from the truth. Jesus even said, "the traditions of men stop the word of God." So if you believe in those traditions or traditional doctrines how do you expect to learn from God? You've already stopped Him from teaching you with your presuppositions. Considering all these things why do we think we can randomly pick a place in scripture & God will show us the full truth of it?

Because I thought I was supposed to I read the bible every single day from February 1999 to November 2006 & I learned almost nothing. I read through the bible in a year based on one of those plans & all I remember was crowning Leviticus as the boringest book. We can be like a 2nd grader opening up a calculus book & pointing to a random page saying, "Teach me this." There is a lot to learn before you can get there. Yet with scripture we assume that any place is a good place to start & that we won't deceive ourselves in our ignorance while reading it. Churches pretty much tell us, "Forget about knowing the gospel or being rooted & grounded in God's loving grace for you, just start reading the bible somewhere & listening to sermons & everything will be ok." Life doesn't work like that!

I picture God answering our prayer like this, "How can I teach you that scripture? I didn't even tell you to read that. You need to learn 7 more things & unlearn 36 more things before you can be ready to learn what that says."

Legalistic bible reading (seeing it all as law or even reading it as an obligation because you think it is a law to do so) leads to self-condemnation more than anything else. Scripture hopping, chapter picking, or even reading along with a commentary often result in you believing falsehood even deeper than if you had never picked up the bible at all.

When God said, "My word will not return to me void" He wasn't talking about the reading of His scriptures, He was talking about the effectiveness of His promises. Maybe we should stop thinking "the scriptures will guide us into all truth" & believe what Jesus actually said, "The Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth."

It is great to trust God to teach you the scriptures. But when is it a good idea for the student to say "teach me this" when the wise teacher knows the student is not ready to learn that yet? Jesus said "the Holy Spirit would guide you into all truth" not "you will guide yourself & the Holy Spirit will still get you to all truth." Sure you'll get some truth that way but life will end up being insanely harder & much more wasteful. I know I've been there.

See also:  The Meaning of "My Word shall not return to Me void"

The Knowledge of God's Will

Paul said to the Colossians (v1:9) "We have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding." Our problem comes when we assume "the knowledge of His will" refers to "the knowledge of His will for our lives." It does not. Jesus said in John 6:40, "This is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and trusts in Him will have eternal life." So to be filled with the knowledge of God's will is to have a deep & unmixed understanding of the gospel & of God's love for mankind. God will gladly teach you that if you ask Him & if you don't try to teach yourself by referring to men/authors/preachers/commentaries. You want to trust the Spirit of God to teach you & lead you to all truth as Jesus promised He would. You don't do that by running to a man to give you answers. If you don't trust Jesus (especially to teach you) you won't learn from Him & you will be easily deceived by the falsehood out there in sermons & other things.

God speaks to us using truth found in the bible but just because we are reading the bible doesn't mean we are learning the truth. The bible is the easiest book to be deceived about because we put so much confidence in what it says or rather what we think it says. Believe it or not whether or not it is good for you to read the bible depends on where you are in your walk with God. Jesus never told anyone to read the scriptures. If we start with wrong perceptions of God & of ourselves, we will have wrong premises & wrong paradigms, we will twist the scriptures to our own destruction without even meaning to.

The main way to have God's voice clear from your side is to know the type of things God says & the type of things He wouldn't say (read Help in Knowing God's Voice for that). Ask God questions, not about your life but about truth He wants to teach you. His truth will impact your life. He has answered every question of mine regarding His truth.

If you spend more time thinking about your failures than you do your Father & His favor you need to know a lot more about how incredibly much God loves you. The same goes if you focus on other people's failures, you need to know a lot more about how incredibly much God loves them. God wants to reveal His heart for other people by revealing their hearts to you.

Mistranslation of Words in The Bible

Many words are poorly translated in the Bible because of the lens the translators look through. Pretty well all of them look through an institutional or authoritative lens (concerning men). I think it is fine to say, "This word was translated wrong. It does not mean what the authors intended." Just because we see a word in the Bible does not mean it is the right word, a good word, or a word to defend. I don't think Christianeze is helpful especially when the original words in the text were common words of the times and not special, exclusive, religious, or spiritual words.

Most words that you'd only hear in church are translated wrong and are common words and should be translated as such. The Spirit will teach truth but the Bible warns so much about false teaching because lies told as truth blind you to the real truth. That is a fact and millions have been deceived. I never intend to fight about words but to expose the truth. Improper word usage can leave you confused (usually unknowingly) and even lead to poor choices and beliefs.

The King James Version translators had a rule from King James and Anglican Archbishop Richard Bancroft to "use The Old Ecclesiastical Words," that "the Word Church is not to be translated Congregation etc." They wanted the words used by the organized church to be used in the translation to validate themselves to the people who will now have the Bible available to read. Before this "authorized version" came about several people who translated scripture into English were murdered for doing so. Interesting that one of them, William Tyndale, used "congregation" instead of "church" in his translation.

Most translations follow the KJV in one degree or another and because institutional churches still stand today we get the same ecclesiastical words in our new translations. Protestants retranslated the words "bishop" and "presbytery" which are found in the KJV because those words don't apply to protestantism, they aren't protestant "positions of authority" so there was no need for them to use these words to back themselves up for having those positions. Of course they still retained the words pastor & deacon in their scriptures because their lens supports their non-biblical hierarchical authority system that displaces Christ.

Most words in scripture, are regular words defined by context. English translators took these common, neutral words and chose to translate them into special words that existed in the church systems of their era. Some mistranslations are intentional or started out that way and some remain because of ignorance. Be assured that the translators do know the real meanings of these words but their bias or lens keeps them from translating them properly.

Preach
One outrageous example of translators bias is how the Greek word behind "preach" means "proclaim" or "announce." It has been translated as the special word "preach" when referring to Jesus or the apostles but when "common men" who were healed by Jesus "preach" the translators chose to use the word "proclaim." They should use proclaim or announce in every case but they decided, because of their authoritative lens, to only use the word "preach" when referring to the "special" men and not with the "common" men. There is no justification for this distinction. It is simply the biased lens they look through. From what I've seen intentional or unintentional lies make it much much harder to trust God because they hide His trustworthiness.

Doctrine
A doctrine is "a teaching." I wouldn't need a doctrine about my wife because I just have a relationship with her. Since God is invisible and relates to many people teachings about Him are useful. Doctor is an old religious word for "teacher" so doctrine is a religious word for "teaching." I'd rather not use the word "doctrine" because it conjures up the idea of overly intellectual academic facts or beliefs that don't really affect how we live (even if they should) that are meant to be argued about. Some view the word "doctrine" as spiritual, official, established, and true but it only means "a teaching," one that can be true, false, or mixed.

Ministers
The only flip-flop translation I can think of is minister. Today we think of minister as a leader but the Greek word it was translated from simply means "servant" which is the opposite! Someone grows up in a church & hears the word minister being used only for leaders so when they go to read the Bible and see the word minister they think of the leader guy at the church building and not a servant. I don't think God is the author of such confusion.

Common Mistranslations, etc.
Faith - Trust
Believe - To Trust
Forgive - Remove A Burden, Take Away, Set Free
Forgiveness - Freedom, Removal
Grace - Favor, Loving Favorable Opinion
Gospel - Good News
Fear - Revere, Respect, Worship
Confess (in 1 Jn 1:9) - Agree, Say the Same Thing As Another
Repent - Change your mind
Repentance - Change of mind
Convict - Convince
Righteous - Right With Relationally, Guiltless
Justified - Made Right With, Made Blameless

Minister - Servant (not an authoritative position)
Pastor - Shepherd (not an authoritative position)
Elder - Older Person (not an authoritative position)
Deacon - Servant (not an authoritative position)
Bishop - Overseer, Guardian (not an authoritative position)
Evangelist - One who proclaims good news
Apostle - Delegate, One Sent on Behalf of another
Prophet - Spokesman
Ministry - Service
Church - Assembly
Ordain - Recognize
Doctrine - A Teaching
Preach - Proclaim or Announce
Sanctuary, Altar - Not Found in the New Testament
Sermon, Pulpit, Surrender, Revival, Rededicate - Do not Appear in the Bible

Devil - Adversary
Angel - Messenger
Prophecy - Message from God
Prophesy - Speak from God
Baptize - Immerse
Believer - One who Trusts
Faithful - Trustworthy
Hypocrite - Actor, Pretender
Heresy - Sect
Scripture - A Writing
Holy - Pure
Saint - Holy person, Pure person
Sanctify - Purify
Sanctification - Purification

Related Posts
The Problem with Mistranslations
How "Preach" is Used with Bias in Translating the Bible
All Posts on Mistranslations

Jesus is The Word of God

The Word of God is Jesus and Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would lead us to all truth. He did not say that about the holy bible. I'm not saying that the Bible isn't important. The book itself is not essential but its truths are. God can and did teach people those truths without the book. For many hundreds of years Christians did not have bibles in their homes. How did they possibly make it? They had a real spiritual relationship with God.

Today we think "If I haven't read the Bible I can't possibly know God's heart." Do not beat yourself up about not reading the Bible as much as you think you should. As a child of God the words of God should never condemn you. The Bible in the Christian life is not meant to be used as, "I'll follow the rules in the book and then I will meet Jesus."

Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from HIS sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of HIM with whom we have to do."

The Word of God this scripture is talking about is Jesus not the Bible. & Jesus is certainly living and active. 1 Chronicles 28 says, "The LORD searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts."

To think that quoting scripture to someone is guaranteed to pierce to their soul is a false idea. The living God is the one who does this, you can not force it. It is His job to do. Jesus is the sword of the Spirit spoken of in Ephesians 6:17. Jesus is a life giving Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 15:45). The Word of God is the loving, present tense Jesus speaking to the heart.

A lot of churches will teach that the Christian life is about oughts, shoulds, musts, supposed tos, trying to live by the laws that God had put in place, coming up with and following principles and methods for Christian living. What all of that is really doing is looking at pages in a bible and looking at a historical figure for methods and rules. The reality of the Christian life is Christ in you right here and right now, we are in union with Him. We live not by methods, rules, and trying to replicate past happenings but by living right here, in the here and now, with Jesus Christ and His life living in us.

Paul gives us great insight into the value of knowing Jesus in Philippians 3:8,
"Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as turds, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I became righteous through trust in Christ."

Who or What is the Bible About?

Wordle is a site that generates "word clouds” from text that you provide. The larger the word the more often it appears in the text. I had the ability to put the entire text of The Bible in using the World English Bible translation. It shows the top 150 non-common words (common words are "a, the, and"...).

See if you can figure out who the Bible is about.

The Bible

The Old Testament
 
The New Testament

The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John)

 See also one I did for The book of Colossians

The Father of Light Looks to Love

Christianity sometimes imagines God as an absent Father who left a set of rules for us to follow.

Imagine you are a parent who did this. You leave your children alone with a set of rules and a few stories that seem to teach principles. Where is the love in that? Where is the relationship in that?

Imagine you are the child who is left with these rules. You feel like you need to please your absent father by obeying the rules in order to get him to "show up" once in a while. Do you feel loved by your father? Do you think you have a relationship with him?

Many of us think of God as someone who did this. God is not that kind of father. He gives us His Spirit to live in us at all times so we may have a loving relationship with Him. God is not just the author of the bible. He is the author of our trust in Him (see Hebrews 12:2). Our trust is built by experiencing His love. We have a Father who loves us more than we know.

God loved the world so greatly that He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who trusts in His Son will not perish but have eternal life. Now this is eternal life – to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He sent.

What is the Bible? Where does it come from?

Background
What we call the Bible contains the words of God. The word bible simply means book which is why the Bible is usually labeled as The Holy Bible, meaning the pure book, the book from God. The words of God were written by God's specific influence, spiritual direction, & sometimes dictation by His followers who were eye-witnesses of the events they wrote about. The Bible speaks about who God is and what God has done.

The Bible was originally written primarily in languages Hebrew, for the Old Testament, and Greek, for the New Testament. The text of the Bible has been preserved in what we are called manuscripts. Manuscripts are handwritten copies of a portion of text written by someone else. There are 5,686 Greek manuscripts for the New Testament and those manuscripts agree with each other 99.5% of the time. To put this in perspective, the New Testament was written in the first century. Shakespeare wrote his works in the 1600s and there is more variation in the surviving manuscripts of Shakespeare's works than in the Bible's manuscripts. Even if there were no manuscripts existing at all of the New Testament all but 11 verses from the entire New Testament can be reconstructed from material written within 150 to 200 years from the time of Christ. Based on the number of manuscripts, the date the manuscripts were written, and the agreement between the manuscripts, the Bible by far is the most reliable ancient text in existence. God has very much preserved His words through the many ancient manuscripts.

As the Bible spread throughout the world and new languages began to emerge the Bible has been translated many times into many languages. There are no perfect translations. Simply because of the difference between languages it cannot be so but many translations are largely accurate. Today we have a wealth of information regarding the languages of Greek and Hebrew to help us get the best understanding of what the Bible says even with our imperfect translations. Some translations today are more literal which means they take one word in the original language and translate it as one word into English and words are only added to help the English reader comprehend what has been written. A paraphrase is a translation that takes the meaning of a text of multiple words and rephrases it for an often clearer & simpler understanding. The benefit of the more literal translation is that there is less interpretation occurring from the translator. The NASB is an example of a more literal translation. The Message is an example of a paraphrase.

Illumination
When reading an ordinary book it is not necessary to meet the author to benefit from the book. With the Bible, everything is different. It is necessary & vital to meet the Author if you are to understand the Bible. We can’t we expect to know the Bible of God without knowing the God of the Bible. One can never understand the message and intent of the Bible, unless you have a redeeming encounter with its Author.

The Holy Spirit of God is given to those who receive the free gift of eternal life that Jesus offers. It is the Holy Spirit of God who illuminates us to God’s word. By illuminates I mean that illumination makes the Bible understandable & clear, that the Holy Spirit of God shines light on the truth for us to see it. Jesus said in John 14:16, "The Helper, the Holy Spirit, will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you."

1 Corinthians 2:12-16 explains how the Holy Spirit of God is essential to learning the knowledge of God.
"We have received the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given to us by God. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. "Who can know what the Lord is thinking?" We can understand these things because we have the mind of Christ.

In Psalm 43:3, the writer prayed this, “O God, Send out Your light and Your truth, and let them lead me.”
Note the combination of light and truth in his prayer. It is wise to pray to the Holy Spirit for His light before you expose yourself to His truth. It is not enough to have the Bible. Many people take up the Bible and read—and receive no benefit at all. Why? Because they had the truth, but had no light to detect it.

Supplementary
More On Manuscript Trustworthiness
Homer's Iliad is an ancient Greek writing. It is the second most reliable ancient text next to the Bible. It said to have been written around 900 B.C. but the oldest manuscript we have of the Iliad is from 400 B.C. That is 500 years between supposed writing and the oldest existing copy. Again the New Testament was written in the first century. The oldest existing manuscript containing a portion of the New Testament is from 125 A.D. a mere 25 years from the first century. The 5,686 manuscripts of the New Testament agree with each other 99.5% of the time. Homer's Iliad has 653 manuscripts which only agree with each other 95% of the time and it is the second best preserved ancient document. The oldest manuscripts of Plato's writings are from 1200 years after he was said to be alive.

Let's say my great grandpa wrote a letter for our family's future generations. I made a copy of the letter 25 years after he died to preserve it. Would you say it would be likely that the copy I made was really of my great grandpa's letter after only 25 years? Now let us say that in the future people claim I wrote a letter to you but the oldest know copy of that letter came over 1000 years after I died. How much less reliable is that letter if it came so long after my death?

More on Literal Translations vs. Paraphrases
If anyone supposes he knows something not yet to know as he ought know (1 Corinthians 8:2, Literal)
If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know (1 Corinthians 8:2, NASB)
The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. (1 Corinthians 8:2, NIV)
If someone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know to the degree that he needs to know. (1 Corinthians 8:2, NET)
Sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. (1 Corinthians 8:2, The Message)

See how in The Message, which is a paraphrase, meaning is lost and changed from what the original author intended. It almost even implies that our proud minds can, at other times, help us more than our humble hearts. So it is good when reading a paraphrase to have a more literal translation on hand to look at as well. Still I have come across times where The Message or the New Living Translation (another paraphrase) gave the meaning to the original words much more outright than the more literal NASB and others.