Dear Conrad -- I was wondering, there are a lot of different translations of the Bible, and that means a lot of changes, so is it possible that any vital stuff was changed that could be bad for us as Christians? -- Spaniel

Dear Spaniel,

It would help to give a background on how the Bible was created. Paul for example wrote the book of Romans. Physically he wrote a letter to the Romans and sent it. The original goes to Rome and was also copied a bunch of times and sent to other churches.

What we have in the Bible now is what we consider to be closest to the original manuscript as possible. We check that through comparison of the copies. And since there are so much archeological evidence comparison isn’t as hard as some might think. Stuff that gets left out sometimes are things like commas and punctuation.

Actually as more time goes by and as we find more manuscripts and translation techniques become more advanced – the translations we have keep getting more accurate.

And of course, God is in control. It’s his revelation to man, and he keeps an eye on how his Word is treated for all the billions of Christians over time.

About the multiple translations – that’s not really a problem because if you are translating anything, like Spanish into English, you have to make some judgment calls, does this Spanish word “XXX” mean, “love” as in the love of a man for a woman, or “love” of food. So even if the word “XXX” is the same in Spanish, we might have a couple different words for it. That explains why there are a few different translations.