I have a friend who believes we have to follow the Torah to be saved. He says our Bibles are mistranslated and Christianity is a pagan religion. He says we are to follow the and observe the Law the way Christ did. Is he wrong or should I be following the Torah?
One of the favorite tactics used by people who can’t find support for their beliefs in the Bible is to say it isn’t translated correctly. And yet the best scholars of each generation have poured over the ancient manuscripts to give the most accurate translations possible. Also there are over 5600 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and cross checking has shown their consistency to be over 99%. In other words all these ancient Greek manuscripts essentially say the same thing. For additional support there are 19,000 early manuscripts in other languages. This exceeds the manuscript base for any other ancient book by a very wide margin.
A reasonable person would conclude that for all practical purposes our New Testament is an accurate rendering of these manuscripts. Therefore the only conclusions we can draw are that either 1) all these scholars have been mistaken in similar ways in their translation efforts, or 2) they’ve all participated in a massive conspiracy to mislead us that has spanned 2,000 years, or 3) the people who say the Bible is translated incorrectly because it doesn’t support their position are wrong.
This doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that the Bible is the Word of God, so He would have to permit it to be falsified and let 50 generations of sincere believers who trusted it be lost. Remember, His word is all He has given us for this age. Do these people expect us to believe He would let this happen after going to such extremes to save us?