7. The Transmission of the New Testament
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Handout
Intro: A few weeks ago, I made the case that the Bible is unique amongst religious texts because of its historical verifiability, it’s cohesiveness, and because it contains no errors.
Well, there are a lot of people out there that would challenge that assertion—especially the part about the Bible having no errors. One of the main accusations that gets leveled against the Bible is that the Bible has been corrupted over time. Secular scholars and Muslims alike have leveled this accusation.
A couple weeks ago during our Bible Museum night, we did a broad, sweeping overview of how we got our Bible. That may have raised some questions in your mind, so tonight and for the next couple of weeks, we’re going to look more closely at how we got our Bible and examine some of the challenges to its trustworthiness.
Now, I’m going to warn you in advance that some of what we’re going to talk about may make you uncomfortable at first. And, there’s a tendency amongst many Christians to take the ostrich approach and stick their head in the sand. But, that’s what Muslims and cults do—they avoid the tough questions and whenever there’s any threat to what they believe, they get defensive or just dismiss it all as “faith.”
But...
Faith that is founded upon ignorance is not faith, it’s just opinion.
We don’t want the kind of faith that is built upon the sands of human opinions. We want faith that is founded upon the rock of truth, so that when the storms come, it stands firm.
So, for the next couple of weeks, we’re going to dig into some deep questions.
Questions to answer:
How can we be sure that the text we have today is what the authors originally wrote? Has the text been corrupted?
Who decided what books to include in the Bible? Why do Catholics and Orthodox have some books that we don’t?
Can we trust modern translations? How should we understand translations?
Does anyone else have a question that you would like to make sure we get answered? (I’m not going to try to answer it right this moment, but I want to make sure that we do get it answered.)
Write down any other questions that arise.
The Alleged Corruptions
The Alleged Corruptions
Q: Can anyone tell me where the original letters that Paul wrote are stored?
A: It’s a trick question; we do not have the originals.
Problem 1: Lost Autographs
Problem 1: Lost Autographs
We don’t have the original 10 commandments—the Ark of the Covenant was probably destroyed by the Babylonians when they invaded and sacked Jerusalem around 600 B.C.
We have zero originals of the biblical books in our Bible.
This leads some scholars and skeptics to allege that the Bible has been corrupted, and that we don’t even know what the Bible originally said.
Problem 2: Manuscript Variants
Problem 2: Manuscript Variants
Have students look at their Bibles and compare for these examples.
The “Long Ending of Mark”
The “Long Ending of Mark”
[SOME OF THE EARLIEST MANUSCRIPTS DO NOT INCLUDE 16:9–20.] 9 [[Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons...
17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” ...]]
Contra KJV which has no brackets or footnotes for this section.
The Woman Caught in Adultery
The Woman Caught in Adultery
[THE EARLIEST MANUSCRIPTS DO NOT INCLUDE 7:53–8:11.]53 [[They went each to his own house, 1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst...And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”]]
52 They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet. 53 And every man went unto his own house. 1 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. 2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. 3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst...And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
Other Major Variants
Other Major Variants
4 And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” 5 And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.
4 And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? 5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. 6 And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. 7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.
9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.* 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you...*some manuscripts add “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen”
9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. 14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
And there are a lot of other places where the variants are just a couple of words.
Problem 3: Different Canons
Problem 3: Different Canons
Comparison of the Canons of Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians
Pseudepigraphal writings (e.g., Book of Enoch)
Gnostic Gospels/Nag Hammadi texts (e.g., Gospel of Thomas)
Problem 4: Disagreeing Translations
Problem 4: Disagreeing Translations
If you read more than one translation of the Bible, you’ll eventually encounter some translation differences. Some are obviously minor, while others seem to affect the meaning more.
What about the KJV?
How can we trust the Bible when scholars can’t even agree on how to translate it?
So, taken together, this leads skeptics to say, “You can’t trust the Bible, it’s corrupted.” And, at first glance, it seems like an impossible task to assert the authority of the Bible when you face all of that. But, I firmly believe that our Bible is trustworthy, has no errors, and that it is reasonable to base your life upon it. How in the world is that possible?
Is it possible to recover the Autographs?
Is it possible to recover the Autographs?
The fact is that we simply do not have the originals, the autographs, of any of the books in our Bibles. What we do have is copies of those autographs.
The printing press wasn’t invented until 1455, so before then, every book and document had to be hand copied. These hand-copies are called manuscripts.
When you are hand-copying a long document, there are inevitably variations between copies due to human error.
There are many variants amongst the biblical manuscripts.
This fact alone seems, on the surface, to be a huge problem for Christianity. In fact, some scholars, like Bart Ehrman, have tried to use this fact to completely discredit the Bible:
Why Should I Trust the Bible? Was Jesus misquoted?
We don’t have the originals [of the biblical manuscripts]. ... What we have are copies made later—much later. … These copies differ from one another in so many places that we don’t even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms:
So, Bart Ehrman (and many others) raises some serious allegations.
The science of evaluating manuscripts and reconstructing the originals is called Textual Criticism.
Reconstructing the New Testament Autographs
Reconstructing the New Testament Autographs
The earliest New Testament book written may have been Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, around 48-49 A.D.
The latest New Testament book was Revelation, c. 90-95 A.D.
The NT MSS have more variants than the OT MSS.
The NT MSS have more variants than the OT MSS.
You will generally find more footnotes about MSS variants in the NT than you will in the OT. Why?
We have a lot more Greek NT MSS than we have Hebrew OT MSS; More MSS = More variants.
(NT MSS: 5,808)
That is an absurd number of MSS, especially when you compare it to what we have for other ancient documents.
Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism The Wealth of Manuscripts
If we had only a handful of New Testament manuscripts, it would be extremely challenging to identify places where the text had been corrupted. But this is not the case; thousands of New Testament manuscripts have come down to us, and they are continually being discovered. This embarrassment of riches poses some challenges for us, but one of its benefits is that errors in transmission can be more easily identified and removed.
Gentile Christians did not have quite as well developed scribal traditions as the OT Hebrew scribes.
That being said, it’s not as if Gentile Christian copyists didn’t take their work seriously—that’s simply not true.
The overwhelming majority of variants are extremely insignificant.
The overwhelming majority of variants are extremely insignificant.
3 ἀπεκρίθη
Some MSS include an article, “the Jesus,” while others do not. In Greek, the article is optional for proper names, but it makes absolutely no difference when translating to English, because we don’t use an article in front of proper names.
4 Λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν
Same thing, but with Nicodemus’ name. Some MSS include the article, some don’t.
In v. 12, some MSS have an accent marker on the word believe, some don’t. Meaning is unaffected.
In v. 15, some MSS say “everyone who believes on him,” some say “everyone who believes in him,” and some say “everyone who believes upon him.” Meaning is unaffected.
Other minor variants of this nature would include things like spelling variations (two ‘n’s in John vs. one ‘n’), missing or added accent markers (like on the word ‘believe’ in v. 12)
Most MSS variants are minor and do not affect meaning:
Including/excluding the article (e.g., Jn. 3:3—‘the’ Jesus).
Spelling variations (e.g., Ἰωάννης vs. Ἰωάνης)
Variations in accents (e.g., Jn. 3:12—πιστεύετε vs. πιστευετε)
Variation in prepositions (“believe in/on Jesus”)
Additions or omissions of a clarifying word (“his disciples vs. the disciples”)
How many of the variants actually potentially affect translation or meaning?
Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism Interpreting the Estimate
...only about
What’s more is that most of those are fairly well decided. Just because a variant exists doesn’t mean that scholars don’t know which is original. Most of the time, because of the number of MSS, scholars are able to figure out which is the original reading with a fair bit of confidence.
As a former Bible translator, I can attest that the actual number of variants that meaningfully affect translation that scholars are truly undecided on is extremely low. It is extremely rare to come to a variant that meaningfully affects the text and that scholars genuinely don’t know what to do with.
Variants that could potentially affect the meaning or translation of a text are clearly footnoted in every major translation.
Variants that could potentially affect the meaning or translation of a text are clearly footnoted in every major translation.
Now, the minor spelling variations and such are not marked because that would be pointless and make your Bible very cluttered. But, anything that might potentially affect the meaning will be marked. There is no cover-up or conspiracy here. These have always been clearly marked.
13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.*
13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.*
Some manuscripts (like Alexandrinus) include this phrase, but the MSS that are generally considered the most reliable (P66, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and others) do not have this phrase.
They’re clearly labeled; there’s no ‘cover-up’ here.
No major Christian doctrine or practice depends solely upon a disputed text or variant.
No major Christian doctrine or practice depends solely upon a disputed text or variant.
The two longest textually doubtful passages are Mark 16:9–20 (the “Long Ending of Mark”) and John 7:53–8:11 (the woman caught in adultery), each involving a dozen verses. In both cases:
Both are clearly labeled in modern translations.
Most scholars do not think they are original to Mark’s and John’s Gospels.
Many scholars think they represent genuine, oral tradition about Jesus’ ministry.
Neither passage changes our doctrine or understanding of Christ either with its presence or absence.
The reason
The autographs likely survived for a long time.
The autographs likely survived for a long time.
In 2009, a study on libraries in the ancient world studied 53 ancient libraries and found that the average time a book remained in circulation was around 150-300 years, with some remaining as long as 500 years.
Perhaps as many as 40 of the Qumran scrolls were 200-300 years old when the Romans destroyed the Qumran community.
Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were still in use and were re-inked about 500 years after they were originally copied.
Craig Evans, an eminent NT Scholar, argues that the Gospel of Matthew, if it was written around 75 A.D., could have easily still been in circulation, available for reference by copyists, as late as 225 A.D. (as a very conservative estimate).
Many of our earliest and most reliable MSS would have been copied while the autographs were still around.
It is not improbable that our oldest copies of the New Testament—Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus—could have been copied at least in part from autographs.
Tertullian (c. 180-190 A.D.) seems to refer to the autographs of several NT books and references their known locations:
...run over the apostolic churches, in which the very thrones of the apostles are still pre-eminent in their places, in which their own
Bishop Peter, writing in the 4th century, refers to the autograph of the Gospel of John in Ephesus.
The existence of the autographs probably helped to control and correct the mistakes in copying, ensuring that we have a reliable MSS history.
Misquoting the Evidence
Misquoting the Evidence
Bart Ehrman’s claims misrepresent the evidence.
The number of variants is grossly misconstrued. Ehrman seems to be counting every instance of every variant in every MSS to arrive at his astronomical number of 500,000 variants, then compares that against the number of words in a single copy of the NT. If you compare this number against the millions and millions of words amongst all of these MSS, the rate of variance drops dramatically.
Most of the variants are inconsequential
Any variant that might affect the meaning or translation is clearly marked in our Bibles. Most of these variants do not
Only a handful are really contested.
No major point of doctrine or practice depends solely upon a contested variant.
The presence of such a plethora of manuscripts makes it possible to reconstruct the autographs with overwhelming certainty.
Conclusions
Conclusions
What inerrancy doesn’t mean:
Doesn’t mean that the originals have been perfectly preserved. Inerrancy applies to the originals, not the copies nor the translations.
Doesn’t mean that they necessarily had to be grammatically perfect or had perfect spelling and punctuation.
Doesn’t mean that quotations have to always be verbatim.
Doesn’t mean that you have to interpret everything literally. Authorial intent and genre are still important.
Doesn’t mean all numbers are scientifically precise. Rounding and approximation are not errors. Neither is hyperbole and other figurative language.
If we don’t have perfect copies, why bother talking about inerrancy?
Inerrancy is still important because:
Inerrancy flows from the idea that the Bible was breathed out by God. Thus, the originals necessarily had to be without error. Because Scripture is God-breathed, what we believe about Scripture reflects upon the character of God.
Our copies, and therefore our current translations, are dependent upon these originals. It’s important to know that the starting point was perfect. We are, in fact, confident that more than 99% of of the words of our NT reflect the originals.
Since the variants that do exist are so inconsequential, and since no major point of doctrine is affected by them, we can be confident that our Bibles are absolutely trustworthy and true. Even for most good translations, we can say that everything they say is true—it contains no falsehoods. It may not be a 100% replica of the original (indeed, no translation is), but it is still the Word of God and it’s still true. If my son paraphrases my command to “Go get 6 donuts” as “Dad said to get half a dozen donuts,” that paraphrase is still without error. It is true to what I said.
Next week:
Who decided what books go in the Bible?
Can we trust translations?
