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Originally Posted by xepherys
I'd say the basis is a simple matter of linguistics. Even in the modern world, our best scholars and liguists do not always translate items 100% correctly (especially with conveyance of meaning or colloquial language). It can be posited, then, that centuries ago the same could be said. Therefore translations from greek and hebrew would not be 100% correct. Also, extremely old sections of the old testament were likely to have been written in a language other than those two. Potential additional translation. Also, most modern English bibles are written in English that either does not have the same meanings as it may have hundreds of years ago, or has been rewritten in modern English, again offering the possibilty of changes in meaning.
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Not really.
The OT is written in Hebrew. Now, if older versions of the material were in oral traditions before being written...maybe. But they *are* written in Hebrew. I don't know what other language they might even possibly be composed with.
The NT is even clearer. Exclusively written in Greek, with short quotes in Aramaic, we pretty much can fix the original text, with many available copies of the cannonized writings. The contemporary literature gives us a pretty clear fix on vocabulary and usage in most circumstances. I study Paul for instance...and there are only a handful of words that we have any serious problems with.
Now, translation does incur some level of misrepresentation, but we're not talking wholesale problems. Interpretation is still an open game, but this idea that the text is completely uncertain just isn't true.