This statement by Norris and the response to it got removed from the forum, but you can see where Norris stands on preservation of the Bible.
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Originally Posted by Logos1560
No one claimed that the word of God was and is preserved in the original autographs on earth. You are making a bogus, false accusation. No one claimed that only the original autographs are Scripture.
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What was actually properly referred to was the preserved Scriptures in the original languages which referring to the existing original language manuscripts of Scripture.
You deny the accusation and then reaffirm it only with a small semantical difference just one paragraph later.
My view and stand concerning the preservation of the Scriptures is in agreement with what the Scriptures actually state and teach and is in agreement with the views of the Reformers, the early English translators including the KJV translators, and with doctrinally sound Baptists.
Your claims and reasoning about my statements are incorrect.
According to its title page for the New Testament, the 1611 KJV's New Testament was "newly translated out of the original Greek." The first rule for the translating referred to “the truth of the original.“ The sixth rule and fifteen rule referred to “Hebrew” and to “Greek.“ Lancelot Andrewes, a KJV translator, wrote: "Look to the original, as, for the New Testament, the Greek text; for the Old, the Hebrew" (
Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, p. 59). In the preface to the 1611 KJV entitled "The Translators to the Reader," Miles Smith favorably quoted Jerome as writing “that as the credit of the old books (he meaneth the Old Testament) is to be tried by the Hebrew volumes, so of the New by the Greek tongue, he meaneth the original Greek. Then Smith presented the view of the KJV translators as follows: "If truth be to be tried by these tongues [Hebrew and Greek], then whence should a translation be made, but out of them? These tongues therefore, we should say the Scriptures, in those tongues, we set before us to translate, being the tongues in which God was pleased to speak to his church by his prophets and apostles." In this preface, Smith wrote: “If you ask what they had before them, truly it was the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New.“ Earlier on the third page of this preface, Smith referred to “the original” as “being from heaven, not from earth.“ In the dedication to King James in the 1611, Thomas Bilson also acknowledged that the KJV was a translation made “out of the original sacred tongues.“ John Eadie noted that the account of the Hampton Court conference written by Patrick Galloway, the king’s Scottish chaplain, [“an account revised by the king himself”] stated “that a translation be made of the whole Bible, as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek” (
English Bible, II, p. 179).
The 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith by Presbyterians, the 1658 Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order by Congregationalists, the 1677 Second London Confession by Baptists, and the 1680 Confession of Faith by Congregationalists in New England stated: "The Old Testament in Hebrew . . . and the New Testament in Greek . . . , being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them (Walker,
Creeds, p. 369; Lumpkin,
Baptist Confessions of Faith, p. 251; Woods,
Report, p. 95). John Lee also asserted concerning the Church of Scotland: “The doctrine of this National Church is well known to be, ‘That the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God, are authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them” (
Memorial for the Bible Societies in Scotland, p. 186).
Reformer Francis Turretin (1623-1687) pointed out: "Our teaching is that only the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New have been and are authentic in the sense that all controversies concerning faith and religion, and all versions, are to be tested and examined by them" (
Doctrine of Scripture, p. 126). John Diodati (1576-1649), translator of the 1607 Italian Bible, is translated as writing: “The authentic text of Scripture, and that which is truly God-breathed, consists only of the Hebrew originals in the Old Testament and Greek originals in the New Testament” (Ferrari,
Diodati’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture, p. 47).
Baptist scholar John Gill (1697-1771) presented the Baptist view of Bible translation of that period that was also in agreement with the view of the early translators and the view in the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith and the 1677 Second London Confession by Baptists. John Gill wrote: “The apostle Paul speaks of himself, and other inspired apostles of the New Testament, Which things, says he, we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches [1Cor 2:13], and it is the writing, or the word of God as written, that is, by inspiration of God [2Tit 3:16]. Fourth, This is to be understood of the Scriptures in the original languages in which they were written and not of translations. Unless it could be thought, that the translators of the Bible into the several languages of the nations into which it has been translated, were under the divine inspiration also in translating, and were directed of God to the use of words they have rendered the original by; but this is not reasonable to suppose.” Gill added:
To the Bible, in its original languages, is every
translation to be brought, and by it to be examined,
tried, and judged, and to be corrected and amended;
and if this was not the case, we should have no certain
and infallible rule to go by; for it must be either all
the translations together, or some one of them; not
all of them, because they agree not in all things: not
one; for then the contest would be between one nation
and another which it should be, whether English,
Dutch, French, etc. and could one be agreed upon, it
could not be read and understood by all: so the papists,
they plead for their vulgate Latin version; which has
been decreed authentic by the council of Trent; though
it abounds with innumerable errors and mistakes;
nay, so far do they carry this affair, that they even
assert that the Scriptures, in their originals, ought to
submit to, and be corrected by their version; which
is absurd and ridiculous (
Body of Divinity, p. 18)
The Reformers, the early translators including the KJV translators and translators into other languages, Baptists, Presbyterians, and other believers clearly regarded the preserved Scriptures in the original languages as the greater authority or standard for making and evaluating translations. 
