Challenge #2 : The Bible's Portrait of Jesus Can't Be Trusted Because the Church Tampered With The Text.
Textual criticism. The words sound dry as toast. My eyelids are starting to droop just reading those two words.
Yet, one of the current and most effective challenges to the Christian faith is being waged in the area of textual criticism. The church is vulnerable to this attack because so many in our churches know so little about it.
Fortunately, Lee Strobel takes a very dry topic and energizes it in one chapter of his new book .
What is a textual critic?
"The textual critic seeks to determine the original text of a document or a collection of documents, which the critic believes to come as close as possible to a lost original (called the archetype), or some other version of a text as it existed — or was intended to exist — in the past." ~ wikipedia
The original papyri that the New Testament letters and books were written on have long since perished. What we have are copies of the originals dating back to early in the second century. We have lots of copies too. Thousands in fact. Far more so than any other work of antiquity.
Without the originals, the job of determining what was in the original document falls to scholars who specialize in ancient languages and textual criticism. Imagine if we lost the Declaration of Independence from the National Archives? The job of recreating what was written on that parchment would be a type of textual criticism. You and I could probably do a fairly good job of reproducing what was written in the Declaration of Independence. Now, as you can imagine, going back 20 centuries to the time the New Testament was written requires a bit more expertise.
Fortunately, there are people who want to do this and have lots of manuscripts to get the job done. At present, we have 5,700 Greek copies, 10,000 Latin copies, and up to 15,000 copies written in Coptic, Syriac, Armenian and Georgian. Plus, we have the writings of the early church fathers who lived in the second, third and fourth centuries. We could just as easily piece together the entire New Testament using citations from their writings alone.
So, there are a wealth of manuscripts.
However, copyists did make errors when they produced these manuscripts. Every time a word is different in one manuscript it is called a variant. Whether it is one mispelling in a fourth century manuscript, or the substitution of the word 'Jesus' for 'Lord', it counts as a variant.
Given that we have tens of thousands of hand copied manuscripts, and given that Greek New Testament contains 138, 162 words, you might expect that the possibility of variants would number in the tens of millions. It doesn't. It numbers between 200,000 and 400,000. While this sounds alarming to those of us who don't do this sort of thing, it is old news to Biblical scholars in this field. In fact, such a high number testifies the overwhelming number of manuscripts we have of the New Testament. As Strobel quotes in his book, "it is an embarrassment of riches!"
While the vast majority of these variants are the third-century equivalent of a "fat finger", there are a few passages you will find in the New Testament that are disputed as authentic because of variants. This has opened the door for an agnostic scholar by the name of Bart Ehrman to suggest that scribes in the second through fourth centuries tampered with the text to advance their own theological agendas.
Ehrman has the credentials too. He studied under uber Biblical scholar Dr. Bruce Metzger. Ehrman also attended Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College before attending Princeton Seminary. Wheaton is hardly a liberal school. Billy Graham is an alumni of Wheaton College. This only adds to the intrigue to Ehrman's assault and gives it legs.
Strobel found a world class textual scholar by the name of Dr. Daniel Wallace to respond to Ehrman's challenge. Wallace has the credentials to match Ehrman. Strobel's encounter with Wallace will be the subject of my next post on The Case For The Real Jesus.
Sounds good, I look forward to it!
Posted by: Matt | September 25, 2007 at 22:55
Based on my reading, what we have dating back to the early second century is a single fragment of the Gospel of John containing three verses. I think there are very few surviving manuscripts dated prior to 300 A.D. that contain more than a few chapters of any single book. Most of the manuscripts included in the numbers you cite date to the tenth century or later.
I would note that Ehrman's door was also opened by early church fathers who complained about scribes altering the texts. Although such activities were usually attributed to heretics, Ehrman cites one occasion when Origen appears to be complaining of believers who "make additions and deletions as they please."
I wonder about the source for the statement that "we could just as easily piece together the entire New Testament using citations from [the early church father's] writings alone." That sounds rather optimistic to me.
Posted by: Vinny | September 26, 2007 at 15:59
Early second century is one generation past the life of the Apostle John. The oldest papyrus fragment we know about today goes back that far and it is a few verses out of John.
Fast forward a generation from that and we have more papyrus. Mid 2nd century and we have the entirety of the gospel of John. Late 2nd century and we have Paul's letters, Luke and Hebrews on papyrus.
Given the delicacy of papyrus, I think that is phenomenal.
Each century it grows.
For those who live and breathe the study of ancient documents, the New Testament has an impressive collection of old manuscripts ... especially when compared to any other ancient literature.
The Origen cite is interesting. I'd like to read more about that sometime.
In my opinion, what guards us against a rogue scribe here and there is the plethora of manuscripts. If we had a small number of manuscripts descending to us from the first millenium, I think your concerns would carry more weight. Given the explosion of Christianity in the first 4 centuries and the number of surviving manuscripts coming from all corners of the empire during the first 10 centuries, we can be confident that what we have today is what we had in 100 A.D.
Again, a lot of this argument is shaped by one's presuppositions and biases. Critics like Ehrman seem to laser in on the variants and ignore the rich doctrine that exists in the invariants. Ehrman is a product of his biases like anyone else.
If you are truly interested in diving into this topic in depth, as it seems you are, then I would recommend you buy and read :
I am told by reliable sources that this book is a rebuttal of Ehrman. It is always good to challenge our biases and assumptions, true?
I hope you take me up on that and read it and report back. Btw, I appreciate your civil tone! I don't take that for granted.
Have a good day.
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | September 27, 2007 at 09:02
I am happy to challenge my assumptions when I can borrow the book from my library. That is why I read "The Case for Christ" and I am on the waiting list for "The Case for the Real Jesus." I am less happy to challenge my assumptions when I have to pay to do so and it does not appear that my library has "Reinventing Jesus."
What is your source for manuscript information? Ehrman does not give a detailed count in his book and the ones I have found on line look to be about twenty years old.
As far as Ehrman's biases go, he started out defending inerrancy at Moody and Wheaton. It was only after he got deeper into the manuscripts that he began to have his doubts.
Posted by: Vinny | September 27, 2007 at 10:20
The generally accepted view of inerrancy for conservatives is the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy. Here is Article X:
We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original. We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.
Bart Ehrman's view of inerrancy is far more restrictive than this.
Here are some free resources rebutting Ehrman:
P.J. Williams
Daniel Wallace
Jim Snapp
Another resource, from which I culled the three previous ones, is Dr. Mark Roberts blog. His doctorate is from Harvard for what that's worth. His 11-part series, The Bible, the Qur'an, Bart Ehrman, and the Words of God, is a wealth of information and he writes in a very accessible and personable style.
Enjoy.
Posted by: Laughing Boy | September 27, 2007 at 14:30
Thanks for the links!
In addition to Strobel's interviews with Metzger and Wallace, my source for manuscript data are :
and
Both Strobel and McDowell are more like aggregators than experts. They are interviewing and citing the experts, however. Dr. Bruce, however, was an established Bible scholar and writes an accessible book for the layman.
I have not read Reinventing Jesus though I am tempted to do so after this discussion.
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | September 27, 2007 at 15:28
I took a look at the three links you mentioned. Wallace certainly seems to have the credentials to address textual criticism on Ehrman’s level. I couldn’t find as much on Williams but his review looked pretty fair. Snapp seemed a little snippy and it didn’t look like he was in the same league as the others. One of the first things I did after I read Misquoting Jesus was to look for reviews from conservative Christian scholars and it did not seem like there was much doubt about his expertise in the field.
The issue seems to be the implication of the variants rather than their existence. I don’t think that Ehrman’s view of inerrancy is really any different. I think he acknowledges “that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture.” What he disagrees with is the assertion that the autographic text “can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy.” What I take away from Ehrman is that he views the question of inerrancy as mooted rather than refuted. What meaning can inerrancy have if we cannot be sure what the inerrant texts are?
The counter-argument seems to be that the manuscripts are good enough, indeed much better than we have for any other ancient works. I certainly am not qualified to make a comparison, but I still have trouble with that argument. My reason is that no one has ever come to my local school board meeting using Tacitus to claim that the biology curriculum should give as much weight to the arguments of a few religious think tanks as it gives to the conclusions reached by every leading research university in the world. No one has ever claimed that peer-reviewed research in geology, paleontology, and astronomy should be reconsidered in light of someone’s account of Julius Ceasar crossing the Rubicon. No one has demanded that the conclusions of the American Psychiatric Association about homosexuality be rejected based on Virgil. No one has claimed that foreign policy in the Middle East should be influenced by land distribution schemes from the Illiad.
In short, I am unimpressed with the argument that the text of the New Testament is as reliable as the text of Annals of Imperial Rome because conservatives Christians claim that the New Testament can be relied upon in ways that no other work of history would ever rely be relied upon. This unique kind of reliability, which extends to the entire Bible, seems to trump the usual way of applying reason to evidence in a variety of fields. To rely on something that much, I would expect the supporting evidence to be close to unassailable.
By the way, here is an interesting list of the known early manuscripts. I cannot vouch for the person who put it together, but it seems to line up with other sites that claim to rely on Aland and Metzger. http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/texte/Papyri-list.html. Prior to circa 200 A.D., it only shows fragments containing twenty-one verses of Matthew, seventeen verses of John and seven verses of Revelations.
Posted by: Vinny | September 27, 2007 at 22:50
Take a look at the 4th link, which I think is the best of the lot. It can be digested in small chunks since it is a series of articles but it addresses some of the the issues you raise. Dr. Roberts is a published author in the field of NT studies and, though he is a pastor, not a full-time NT scholar, he knows his stuff and knows how to present it without being snippy.
I think Williams addresses Ehrman's point fairly well. Not having the original materials does not mean the message is lost.
I'm not sure what your references to Tacitus, etc., contribute to your argument. Certainly our knowledge in a variety of areas has advanced over the last couple millenia. If your ideas is, "Who cares what an roughly 2,000 yr. old text says about anything?" that's a question for another time. For now, the issue is more similar to taking a book by Tacitus to your school board meeting and the people there disputing that what you are reading is really what Tacitus wrote.
You said, "This unique kind of reliability, which extends to the entire Bible, seems to trump the usual way of applying reason to evidence in a variety of fields. To rely on something that much, I would expect the supporting evidence to be close to unassailable."
Actually, I think it is you who are not judging Scripture in the usual way. We should judge all ancient texts using the same measure. If I understand what you said, you think the Bible should be held to a higher standard; nearly unassailable, to use your words. The Bible already far surpasses the standards by which other ancient texts have been measured and accepted as reliable. But the idea that Ehrman and many other skeptics seem to hold is either:
a) "We may not know how God should have broadcast His message, but the way we see could NOT be that way."
or b) "We KNOW how God would have broadcast His message the the way we see is not that way."
Either way it is quite a claim.
Please read some of Mark Robert's blog and see if it is of interest. I hope that it is.
All the best to you.
Posted by: Laughing Boy | September 28, 2007 at 09:19
In thinking about this, remember this: It's widely believed that "Play it again, Sam," is a famous line from Casablanca, even though that line is never uttered. And the actual film is widely available. My point in bringing this up is that the things people say tend to morph in people's memories, so there's no guarantee that even if we had a true original copy of a Gospel, there's no guarantee that what was written was ever actually said.
Posted by: tgirsch | September 28, 2007 at 12:32
There no guarantees about anything but death.
People may widely believe that Bogart said, "Play it again, Sam", but the 'truth' is out there for everybody to see for themselves - and plenty of other people, besides yourself, that can correct someone who makes that mistake.
The same is true about the conservation of the sayings of Jesus (which, btw, Ehrman does not dispute) and the events mentioned in the NT. If they were inaccurately recorded, they would have been disputed by other living witnesses, just like the bogus Bogart line. That these events happened long ago does not mean we can suspend common rational judgements in dealing with them.
But this post is not about whether the NT authors wrote fiction or fact, it's about the conservation of the content of whatever was written through time to us, and I suppose our host has more to add about that in future posts.
Posted by: Laughing Boy | September 28, 2007 at 13:45
What makes you think that they were not disputed? Paul specifically addresses the problem of false teachers. That certainly sounds to me like somebody had a different version of things.
Posted by: Vinny | September 28, 2007 at 16:09
"But this post is not about whether the NT authors wrote fiction or fact, it's about the conservation of the content of whatever was written through time to us, and I suppose our host has more to add about that in future posts."
Bingo. The post is about transmission and not about inspiration nor about inerrancy (even as defined by Ehrman). Like you said Vinny, Ehrman's argument is directed at the reliability of the transmission ... not at the divine authorship or the existence of errors in the autographs.
What we need to focus on is the nature of the variants and also on what is invariant.
Wallace is a recognized expert in the field so the Strobel interview should shed some light on those questions.
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | September 28, 2007 at 16:37
People may widely believe that Bogart said, "Play it again, Sam"
What's funny about this is that the closest the movie comes to that isn't a line uttered by Bogart at all -- it's Bergman who says something close.
And as Vinny points out, there were disputes, as the Epistles attest. The problem here is that even back then, there was no "original recording" to go back to, only conflicting memories/records of what was said. We simply can't know what Jesus did or did not say. For the most part, it must be taken on faith.
(That's not to say that textual study and criticism are useless; they aren't, of course. It's merely to say that they are limited in what they can accomplish.)
Posted by: tgirsch | September 30, 2007 at 02:02
This thread really has nothing to do with the oral tradition of what Jesus said. It is about the written transmission of the original books.
I realize that you find it hard to believe that people can't remember the gist of what other people said. I disagree. You and I don't have a clue what is like to be raised and educated in an oral tradition. Our 21st century Western opinions about memory don't apply to first century Palestine.
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | October 01, 2007 at 07:56
If we do not have a clue about oral traditions, then wouldn't that confirm that we can't know what Jesus did or did not say?
Posted by: Vinny | October 01, 2007 at 13:49
"If we do not have a clue about oral traditions, then wouldn't that confirm that we can't know what Jesus did or did not say?"
No. What it means is that Tom and myself don't know what it is like to be raised in an oral culture.
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | October 01, 2007 at 13:58
I realize that you find it hard to believe that people can't remember the gist of what other people said.
Care to try that sentence again? :)
Posted by: tgirsch | October 04, 2007 at 15:45
"I realize that you find it hard to believe that people can't remember the gist of what other people said.
Care to try that sentence again? :)"
Look, if you are not unable to follow my non-obfuscatory sentences then I won't need to de-complexify them ... however, I will try to to write clearer English next time. :)
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | October 04, 2007 at 21:58
I think it important to know this sourt of thing so that we can stay focused on god.
Posted by: cboy | October 14, 2007 at 14:23