Text and translation

Questions about manuscripts, additions, dating and what a Hebrew or Greek word can bear.

Did Moses write the first five books of the Bible? Deuteronomy 34:5-12; Numbers 12:3; Genesis 12:6; Genesis 36:31; John 5:46
Tradition names Moses as author of the Pentateuch, but the books describe his death, call him the humblest of men, and mention later kings.
Did the Gospel of Mark originally end at 16:8? Mark 16:1-8; Mark 16:9-20
The oldest manuscripts of Mark end with frightened women and no appearance of the risen Jesus. Later copies add twelve verses, and some other endings.
Does Isaiah 7:14 say "virgin"? The translation behind the virgin birth Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-35
Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the virgin birth, using the Greek word parthenos. The Hebrew word, almah, means a young woman, and the context concerns a king named Ahaz.
The Johannine Comma: is 1 John 5:7 original? 1 John 5:7-8
The King James Version has a clear statement of the Trinity in 1 John 5:7. It is missing from nearly all Greek manuscripts before the sixteenth century.
Was the story of the woman caught in adultery part of John's Gospel? John 7:53-8:11
The story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, "let him that is without sin cast the first stone," is absent from the earliest manuscripts of John.
When was the book of Daniel written? The sixth century or the second? Daniel 1:1; Daniel 5:1-2; Daniel 5:31; Daniel 11:21-35
Daniel presents itself as written in sixth-century Babylon. Many scholars date it to about 165 BC, because its history grows exact up to the reign of Antiochus IV and then goes wrong.
Why are Matthew, Mark and Luke so alike? The synoptic problem Luke 1:1-4; Mark 1:1-15; Matthew 3:1-17
Three Gospels share so much wording and order that they must be related. How, and who copied whom, is a long-running debate.