cover image Searching for the Original Bible

Searching for the Original Bible

Randall Price, . . Harvest House, $12.99 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-7369-1054-5

Price, president of World of the Bible Ministries and author of such works as Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Unholy War , has declared war on critics of the Bible. Writing from a conservative evangelical Christian perspective, he defends the integrity of the Scriptures against popular writers like Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code ) as well as serious scholars like Bart Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus ). To many students, the issue of biblical inerrancy—generally understood to mean that the original manuscripts of the Bible are without error—is something of a red herring. We don't have those manuscripts; how can we know that they are free from error? Price admits that we likely would not profit much by having these manuscripts and claims the copies we have are reliable. Instead, he gives the reader a scholarly, though very readable, defense of existing translations. He goes beyond the question “Can we trust the Bible?” and takes a serious look at the canonization process, the abundance of translated resources available to Bible students, the impact of extra-biblical resources and the consistency of Bible translations over thousands of years. Many charts and graphs aid the reader in putting all the information together. This is a fine book for lay and professional readers alike. (Oct.)