How can we trust the Bible when we don’t have the originals??What do we have? Manuscript copies
WE MUST EXAMINE 2 THINGS:
1. Reliability of the copies
2. Time interval between the originals and the extant (existing copies)
Let's first examine the RELIABILITY.There are 4 things that need to be analyzed before coming to a conclusion on the reliability of the New Testament:
1) Antiquity (how old are the manuscripts we are dealing with?)
2) Multiplicity (how many manuscripts do we have to deal with?)
3) Trustworthy scholarly methods (What do we do with the manuscripts?)
4) Quality and Quantity of the variants (judging the differences between the manuscripts)
Antiquity
The New Testament has manuscripts that are very old. For example..
• The oldest extant manuscript that we have is P52 (John Rylands Manuscript, which is a papyrus fragment measuring only 2.5 by 3.5 inches and containing only a few verses from the Gospel of John (18.31-3, 37-8). [1]
• The oldest extant manuscript we have of the entire New Testament is Codex Sinaiticus which also contains portions of the Old Testament. This MSS is from the fourth century. [2]
BUT THESE ARE STILL SO FAR REMOVED FROM THE ORIGINALS?? HOW CAN THIS BE GOOD ANTIQUITY?Well, let's compare the antiquity of the New Testament to the antiquity of some other ancient classical literature:
([3]Click for bigger image)
‘If someone were to claim that we can’t have confidence in the original content of the Gospels because the existing manuscripts are far too removed from the autographs, then that person would also have to cast doubt upon our knowledge of almost all ancient history and literature.’ [4]
Multiplicity
There are 5,700 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament alone! If you count all the translations, there roughly 25,000 total!!
Compare this to some other Greek writings:
([5]Click for larger image)
Trustworthy scholarly methodology
The methodology being incorporated is the science of textual criticism. The scholars involved in this science seek to recover what the original document actually said, with the greatest accuracy possible.
‘Though there is certainly a measure of subjectivity in text criticism, it is by far the most objective discipline in New Testament studies. If you were to take two different teams of text critics and ask them to work independently on a critical edition of the Greek New Testament, they would agree more than 99 percent of the time' [6]
Quantity & Quality of variants- There are a lot of variants…
Bart Ehrman said this:
‘What can we say about the total number of variants known today? Scholars differ significantly in their estimates- some say there 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more! We do not know for sure because, despite impressive developments in computer technology, no one has yet been able to count them all. Perhaps, as I indicated earlier, it is best simply to leave the matter in comparative terms. There are more variations among manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.’ [7]Do not be shaken by this.
• THERE A LOT OF VARIANTS BECAUSE THERE ARE A LOT OF MSS!
Listen to F.F. Bruce on this subject: 'if the great number of MSS increases the number of scribal errors, it increases proportionately the means of correcting such errors, so that the margin of doubt left in the process of recovering the exact original wording is not so large as might be feared; it is in truth remarkably small.’
For example, I found a few manuscript copies of this sentence in my backyard:
o Jesus Christ Loves Joseph Smith
o Jesus Christ Loves Joseph Smiht
o Jesus Christ Love Joseph Smith
o Jesus Christ Loves Joe Smith
o Chris Jesus Joseph Smith
They seem to differ in several areas. In fact, if you only found the last manuscript (#5), you would think it was referring to five different people. But with five copies, we are then able to compare them to each other and accurately conclude that the original did indeed say: Jesus Christ Loves Joseph Smith.
No imagine the accuracy you would have with 5,700 Greek copies! (and many more translations).
• MOST OF THEM ARE INSIGNIFICANT.
Bart Ehrman will tell us this himself in the same book in which he remarked about the quantity of variants:
‘Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant. A good portion of them simply show us that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most people can do today' [8]
• THESE THAT ARE SIGNIFICANT DO NOT CHANGE DOCTRINE:
o Mark 16:8 – John 7:53-8:11 – John 5:3b-4 (Most of these passages were not found in the earliest and best manuscripts)
• WE KNOW WHERE THEY ARE!
It's not like there are a bunch of unidentified variants floating around the Bible. They are carefully noted and documented even in your own study Bible.
• THE BIBLE IS INCREDIBLY ACCURATE IN ITS MSS!
Remember, those significant variants only make up less than 1% of the Bible. That means that the Bible you know have in your hands is 99.5% accurate in what it says! And the other half of a percentage does not change any doctrine that Christianity adheres to at all.
Works Cited
1~ Metzger, Bruce M., and Bart D Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament. 55.
2~ Metzger, Bruce M., and Bart D Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament. 62.
3~ Price, Randall. Searching for the Original Bible.
4~ Roberts, Mark D. Can We Trust the New Testament Gospels? 30-31.
5~ Roberts, Mark D. Can We Trust the New Testament Gospels? 31.
6~ Metzger, Bruce M., and Bart D. Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament. 51.
7~ Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. 89-90.
8~ Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus. 10-11.
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4 comments:
I think there is another question: Reliable for what purpose?
My point is that reliability is not a fixed concept; it varies with the application. Sometimes, lack of information is enough to render a thing unreliable. If an airplane has not been through the standard pre-flight safety check, it’s not reliable. Even if it’s in perfect working order and capable of passing the check with flying colors, no pilot should take it up and no passenger should board it. On the other end of the spectrum might be my fifteen-year-old lawn mower. If I can get it started by the tenth try and it doesn’t die more than a half dozen times while I am cutting the grass, it meets my criteria for reliability. The same electric motor that might be perfectly reliable in a vacuum cleaner might not be reliable in a respirator.
This is why I don’t see any significance in comparing the textual reliability of the New Testament and something like the Iliad. After all, what am I going to use the Iliad for other than having an enjoyable read and getting some insight into an ancient culture? There could be an awful lot of variants in there and I would still consider it perfectly reliable for those purposes.
The New Testament, on the other hand, is used for so much more and my question is whether it is reliable for the purposes for which it is used. Is the text of the New Testament reliable for purposes of deciding social policy towards homosexuals? Is it reliable enough to ban them from military service? Is it reliable enough to saddle people with a lifetime of guilt over a trait that they cannot control? Is it reliable enough to send a young person into a coercive and potentially destructive course of therapy in order to repress his or her natural desires? I would certainly never consider any other document from antiquity that reliable.
Unfortunately, there are a bunch of unidentified variants floating around. We know that variants were introduced every time the documents were copied because no two manuscripts are identical. We also know from the early manuscripts we have that the early scribes made more mistakes than the later ones. Our first copy of Galatians dates about to the year 200 A.D. We can be confident that variants were introduced during the first 150 years of copying that we will never be able to identify.
Suppose that Paul wrote something sympathetic about homosexuals in his letter to the Galatians. If we had that verse, we might look at the other verses in his letters that touch on the subject as being directed only against specific groups at specific times and we might look at the Old Testament passages on the subject as anachronisms on a par with the bans on eating shellfish. How could we ever know whether some scribe in those first 150 looked at what Paul wrote and said, “This can’t be right,” and deleted it?
In my opinion, the problem is not that the New Testament text is unreliable compared to other documents of antiquity. The problem is that it is not sufficiently reliable for the purposes to which evangelical Christians wish to put it in our society today.
Vinny-
I see your point regarding the differences between Illiad and the New Testament. Homer's writings did not include influential doctrines. You are right in asserting that the doctrinal statements in the NT intensify our need for accuracy.
Of course, my argument was not in the paltry amount of manuscripts that Homer had in supporting his work, but the wealth of manuscripts that the New Testament does have by comparison. 5,700 Greek manuscripts should be a significant 'pre-flight safety check,' when it comes to any document, even one that ups the ante with doctrinal beliefs.
You asked:
'How could we ever know whether some scribe in those first 150 [years] looked at what Paul wrote and said, “This can’t be right,” and deleted it?
To this I would refer you to any textual critic, as they seem to be unanimous in the belief that scribes never intentionally omitted a text. They were more prone to add to a passage in the hopes of clarifying, than they were to omit anything. You can also see the result of adding to the text as it has grown (not shrunk) by about 2% [1] (although this is over a huge period of 1400 years, and is incredibly small in my opinion).
Your assertion that scribes were more inclined to mess up in the first 150 years of the autograph is similar to what Bart Ehrman states in Misquoting Jesus. However, this ignores the hundreds, if not thousands of testimonies of people who would have still been around (during the earlier years), or would have had accurate accounts of the apostles still glued to their minds through oral culture. Let's say that you are right, and that scribes messed a lot of things up. It would have been within one or two generations of people who would have been able to correct any mistakes in the process of 'handing down' information.
Secondly, this assertion assumes that scribes were writing down the apostles teaching right from the start. But this did not occur until much later. Remember, the Jews were dependent on their oral culture in order to transmit important information. Not only that, but Christianity was an illegal religion thanks to Nero and Diocletian. If you add to this that the modern book form (codex) was not even around yet, and papyrus was thick and awkward to carry in bulk, the transmission of writings would have been extremely difficult, and not in use until much later anyway.
In regard to your reference to Old Testament Law, I would implore you to distinguish the differences between Old Testament Ceremonial laws given and the ones that were to remain unbroken.
So if the reliability of the New Testament is based off of the number, age, and quality of available manuscripts, than I conclude that I can personally trust in the New Testament as God's Word (homosexual passages and all).
[1]- Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace. Reinventing Jesus 92-93.
I have been listening to the recent Greer-Heard forum where Ehrman debated Dan Wallace on the first day and two conservative and two liberal scholars gave presentations on the second. It seemed to me that even the conservative scholars conceded that the early manuscripts show the greatest rate of variants. No one said anything specific about deletions as opposed to additions.
Regarding correction by eyewitnesses, I cannot see how this could have happened with Paul’s letters. Only he would know exactly what he meant and what he wanted to write. Once a letter left his hands, I would think there would be very few people who understood Paul well enough to correct any alterations made by scribes.
When it comes to the gospels, it seems likely that there might be hundreds or thousands of eyewitness if the gospel accounts are reliable, but that is the question that we are trying to answer. I don’t think we can assume that the gospels are reliable about the eyewitnesses and then use that as evidence that the gospels are reliable.
Vinny-
Sorry for my delay.
No one said anything specific about deletions as opposed to additions.
That's ok. I'm sure they left out many things that they did not have enough time to cover in a debate. But it is in books that both Wallace and Ehrman have written (Misquoting Jesus & Reinventing Jesus), so we know that they adhere to these tools when in study.
Regarding correction by eyewitnesses, I cannot see how this could have happened with Paul’s letters. Only he would know exactly what he meant and what he wanted to write. Here is how it would have happened: The letters written by Paul were used for the edification of the churches to which they were named- in other words, the pastor of the Galatian church would have read the book of Galatians to his congregation. That entire congregation (which already had excellent memory retention, being first century Jews) would have been witness to his letter. It is understandable that they wouldn't have been able to retain every jot and tittle after one reading, but it is absolutely feasible to deduce that they would have known if a strange doctrine was introduced in the letters, especially if the extant copies are that close (200 AD). Also remember that Paul didn't just leave his letters to pastor the churches he planted. He left pastors he had raised himself.
I don’t think we can assume that the gospels are reliable about the eyewitnesses and then use that as evidence that the gospels are reliable.
I think there was a misunderstanding. I wasn't referring to the internal evidence of eyewitnesses in Scripture (although I find solid reason to believe the Gospel accounts). I was referring to the Early Church fathers who quoted the New Testament so many times (36,000) that even without the manuscript evidence, we can still reconstruct the New Testament from their citations alone, minus eleven verses.
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