The Providentially Preserved Manuscripts
In this post, I want to lay out the manuscript evidence, or at least a synopsis or summary. This is what God has preserved that we can observe today. We’ll look at both Old and New Testament texts.
The Old Testament Text
Deuteronomy 17:18 And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
A. The Masoretic Text
The Masoretic text of the Old Testament is the basis of our OT Bible today. The name comes from “editors” who produced and safe guarded the OT manuscripts for many years (AD 500-1000). These men carefully formed a system by which to copy scripture.
EG: They counted the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurs in each book; they pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and the middle letter of the whole Hebrew Bible and made even more detailed calculations than these. The Masoretic text comes to us from the influence of the Ben Asher family in the 9th-10th centuries. There are also manuscript witnesses to another family of texts from the family Ben Naphtali and between the two, there are very little differences. Within the Masoretic text family, there was a particular manuscript of great importance called the Leningrad Codex, which is the oldest complete manuscript of the entire Old Testament which was probably copied in the year 1008. Most translations after 1937 have used this text and others before, such as the KJV were translated from 1524-25 Blomberg edition prepared by Jacob Ben Chayyim who was a Jewish Christian. Both manuscripts are Masoretic texts and the differences are very small and inconsequential.
B. Other Hebrew MSS
The Dead Sea Scrolls – discovered by a shepherd throwing rocks in the caves in 1947. These were preserved for thousands of years by the Eseenes, an ancient Jewish sect of isolationists. The scrolls were copied in the first century. The difference in these manuscripts in comparison to the other extant manuscripts of the OT is amazingly small. God certainly preserved His OT words with intense care and accuracy.
Other MSS of the OT were found at the Masada site where the Jews held out against the Romans and were finally crushed. Those few manuscripts date back to 66-73AD. A few others that date back to the first and second century have also survived.
2. The New Testament Manusripts
There are, at this time over 5000 partial or whole manuscripts of the New Testament text and only 50 of these contain the entire NT. These MSS range from the time of the first century to the 12th century and they also represent a wide array of different types of writing, paper, and geographical locations from where they originated from. These copies of NT MSS can be put into five main categories:
Papyri – Made from papyrus. It was a kind of paper made of reeds in the marshy areas of the Nile River and other waterways. Few of these MSS survived since this kind of paper easily disintegrates over time. Unicals – This term refers to MSS written in all CAPS. This was the writing used of literary works in its day. It’s more formal, takes longer to write and was mostly written on Vellum (animal skins) for longer lasting life of the document. There are over 260 extant manuscripts of this style.
Minuscules – About the 9th Century a reform in handwriting took place, with the result that a cursive script using smaller letters was adopted to produce books. They were faster to write, took less space on a page and as a result, most extant MSS of NT books are minuscules.
Lectionaries – These are church reading books containing select portions of Scriptures to be read on set days according to liturgical order.
Early Church Fathers’ testimony – The other source of NT MSS is to look at the quotations of Scripture from the sermons and letters of the early church fathers as a witness to what they would have been reading as the Bible, even if there are no extant MSS to back up one of their quotations. There are so many commentaries and sermons by the early church fathers, that if all of the copies of MSS were to disappear, you could still reproduce almost the entire NT with just their quotations!
EG– I John 5:7 quoted by Cyprian in the 3rd Century, yet there is very little MSS evidence for the verse.
“The Lord warns, saying, “He who is not with me scattereth.” He who breaks the peace and the concord of Christ, does so in opposition to Christ; he who gathereth elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. The Lord says, “I and the Father are one;” and again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” And these three are one.” And does any one believe that this unity which thus comes from the divine strength and coheres in celestial sacraments, can be divided in the Church, and can be separated by the parting asunder of opposing wills? He who does not hold unity does not hold God’s law, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation.”
Most scholars will attribute his quote to the passage in Matthew when Jesus is baptized and brush it off. There is much speculation as to why it is not in most MSS except a small handful. Nobody really knows.
Among these five types of MSS evidence types, there are basically two MSS families that all of them can be classified under:
Alexandrian MSS – There are a few papyri that were discovered in the 1890’s, 1950’s, but the most famous of Alexandrian MSS’s were found by Constatin von Tischendorf in 1844. Constantin was a Christian actually looking for ancient MSS in order to defend the Bible which was being put under attack in European Universities in order to further prove the Bible’s reliability. Some people such as DA Waite whom I quoted a few weeks ago libelously label him an apostate because they are so bent on discrediting this MSS since it has become one of the major MSS underlying the new versions. He found a great many NT MSS in the St. Catherine monastery on Mt. Sinai. They were being prepared to be used for the monks’ fire and he rescued many of them. Some KJVO advocates will try to say they were in a trash can because they were such bad MSS as if the trash had not been taken out for nearly 1600 years! To make a long story short, Tischendorf received funds from the Russian Czar to buy as many as he could from the monks and he brought them back to Russia. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the newly established Communist government sold this MSS to the British Museum for $100K British pounds. This MSS is called Codex 01. Scholars believe that it was one of the fifty codices that Eusebius of Caesarea produced for Constantine in approx. 332 AD.
The second Alexandrian uncial MSS to be discovered is called Codex Alexandrinus which is dated at the 5th Century. The gospels were written in a Byzantine text type which will be discussed next.
Another Alexandrian uncial is called Codex B or Vaticanus because of where it was found – the Vatican library. It is dated in the middle 4th century. It is the most complete OT and NT and apocrypha MSS of its kind. It is also believed that this is another one of the 50 copies of the Scriptures as ordered by Emperor Constantine. Some believe that it was a reject because of the many different scribal corrections -15,000 by one count. This codex has been in the Vatican library since 1475. I have read that there are differences in these manuscripts that have a large number of textual disagreements, one writer says there are at least 3000 in the gospels alone. It is hard to know how significant those differences are. Most will be spelling variations, word order variations, and omission of words in some places and addition of words in other places. This is going to be true of all manuscripts when they are compared with each other. These differences are called “Textual Variants”.
It is also historically significant to note that in the 7th century when the Muslims took over North Africa, they destroyed the great library of Alexandria and other institutions which would have had many NT MSS, and this may be one reason so few exist today. Some KJVO advocates like to say that they were rejected by the church as heretical and unreliable, and that’s why they were not used or copied. This is pure speculation on their part, and there is no evidence for such arguments. Historical events such as the Muslim conquests, and the move from Greek to Latin in the 5th century, much better account for the scarcity of Alexandrian MSS.
Byzantine MSS –
These MSS are also called the Majority text, the Syrian, Koine or Traditional text. The MSS used to construct most of what has been called the “Textus Receptus (Received Text)” are based on a small group of Byzantine MSS. These were circulated mostly in the Syrian side of the Roman Empire and in modern day Turkey, and Eastern Europe. The Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire was at it’s fullest strength between the 4th and 7th Centuries before it was over run by the Muslims in the 8th century and beyond. It was during this time that the Greek language flourished in the East while Latin flourished in the Western part of the Empire. Therefore, the eastern churches continued using Greek MSS while the Western side of the church did not. Eventually the Western Roman Catholic Church used the Latin Vulgate as the standard Bible and very little of Greek and Hebrew MSS were used for anything. As a result of this historical fact, the Byzantine MSS were copied and reproduced in greater number throughout the medieval times and dark ages. Most of the earliest Byzantine MSS date back to the first Millennium. When the Muslims took over Asia Minor in the 1400’s thousands of people fled to Greece bringing with them thousands of Greek MSS including the NT. They ended up in monasteries, universities, private collections and libraries throughout Europe.
The vast majority of MSS available are in the Byzantine family and are minuscule cursives. Textual historian John Burgon concluded that the quotations of the early church fathers agree and identify with the Byzantine text 60% of the time. Only two Greek New Testaments have been published on the basis of the majority readings of the Byzantine text, one by Robinson and Pierpont and the other by Hodges and Farstad. We have yet to see an English translation of the Majority Greek Byzantine Text. It is important to note that it is an error to call make the Byzantine text synonomous with the Received text. There are nearly 2000 differences in the TR and the Byzantine majority. The TR is a text based on a very small percentage of the Byzantine MSS and thus differs in numerous places, and there are several editions of the TR that we will talk about later.
Variants:
There is a common claim that there is a number upwards to 200,000 variant readings in the NT alone. There are no two MSS that are completely identical in any MSS family. These were mostly scribal errors that happened by mis spelling, mis hearing the word and writing the wrong one, getting tired, and accidentally skipping a line in the sentence and keep writing, thereby omitting a whole one or two verses. The truth is, even in the Critical text that is based on the Alexandrian MSS, only 1/8th were of any significant difference. No matter which MSS family you prefer you have about a 98% accuracy rate among the extant copies. Church historian Philip Schaff estimated that there were only 400 variants that affected the sense of a passage, and only 50 of those were actually important and not one of them affect an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other undoubted passages. So, there is no evidence of a wide conspiracy in the early church by heretics to re-write the Bible, because to do so would have meant that they would have had to collect thousands of scrolls from all over Africa and Western Europe, corrupt them and then send them all back. There’s no way that happened. The actual areas of real concern regarding textual variants amount to 1/1000th % of the entire Bible. 90% of those 1/1000th have been solved because in most instances the variant that best explains the origin of the others is also supported in the earliest MSS.
The amazing thing about all of this is that there are so many MSS, early translations, quotations and commentaries that contain scripture, we can be certain that the true readings of every doubtful passage is preserved in some or one or another of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.
Yet to say that God has preserved his Word in a particular MSS or collation of several is to go beyond what God has revealed about preservation. It is right to conclude that that God has not chosen to preserve His words in one particular place, text type or MSS, but through the thousands of manuscripts that agree so closely. The differences between the Alexandrian and Byzantine MSS are about %15 and most of those disagreements are minor word orders, spellings or large portions of scripture that were omitted for one reason or another.
Next post, we will look at the two main texts that have come from these MSS: The Textus Receptus and the Eclectic or Critical text on which the KJV is based and the other versions are also based.
OK a few responses:
Actually you can say the same thing about Corpus Aristotelicum. If you look at the version in Bibliotheca Teubneriana you’ll see better preservation and more unity.
The problem being that the fathers disagree with each other on the exact wording and often quote quite figuratively. By the time of the later fathers we had divergent texts. We can reproduce from the father’s the approximate text not a perfectly preserved text.
I’m not sure what exactly you mean by a conspiracy of heretics to rewrite the bible, but the most common claim (at least academically) is that the corruption came from the orthodox not the “heretics”, Ehrman (Orthodox Corruption of Scripture) does a good job summarizing the common argument. Moreover the manuscripts we have are later than when the battles against heresies happened (mostly). They can’t prove anything one way or another.
You need to do critical analysis from within the manuscripts and between them, as well as look at early translations. And this evidence does not support the books looking like the one we have today. You are being far to blasé about the manuscripts of early we have.
This is perhaps off topic regarding KJV vs. Critical Text since the UBS process is essentially conservative and we don’t have bible early enough but I thought it was worthwhile to at least state that the situation is nowhere near as comforting as you are presenting it to be.
Ehrman is an unbelieving liberal infidel who will go to hell. If you believe his fodder, instead of the promises of Scripture about scripture (already covered earlier) you will too.
Wow quite the ad-hominum attack. OK lets get some basic ground work here regarding scripture.
The bible claims quite explicitly over and over again that the faith is grounded in historical events. That is that Christianity is a historical faith based on things that objectively happened. It not only claims that its history is knowable to unbelievers but that its moral codes are as well. The Christian God is a god of all creation not just cultic deity whose influence is limited to the members of his cult (I’m using cult here in the technical sense).
So it doesn’t matter whether Ehrman or any other scholar is a fundamentalist, liberal, atheist or Hindu. The objective historical reality of Christianity is the same. You get to have your personal theology not your personal history. Your defense of the bible is in effect denying on the of the central claims of the bible.
That being said in 1993 when Orthodox corruption was published, and most certainly during the earlier years when it was written Ehrman was an evangelical / fundamentalist Christian. He was one whose faith was collapsing but it had not yet collapsed. More importantly than Ehrman was the fact that I had cited Ehrman for his summary of other’s works not his own personal conclusions, so unless you think he is fabricating other people’s positions his faith is even less relevant.
But what I find interesting is how you freely talk about the weight of manuscript evidence. Virtually all of the archeology and reconstruction work on the biblical manuscripts done in the last 500 years was done by Liberal Protestants, Catholics (usually liberal Catholics) and atheists. It seems to me you feel quite comfortable citing the work of the hell bound when they agree with your conclusions as you did in this article.
So take your pick, are you talking about the physical manuscript evidence we actually have here on Earth which is equally accessible to people of all faiths, or to some spiritual manuscripts evidence only accessible to the anointed believers? If the later I think you should state it and if the former I think you should drop the irrelevancies regarding your opinion of other’s relationships with God.
CD,
You are more than welcome to comment here, but I hope you realize that this is a blog dealing with an intra-Christian issue, in particular an intra-conservative-Christian issue. Though we disagree with King James Onlyism, we would agree with the vast majority of King James Onlyists on the authority and infallibility and sufficiency of scripture.
we should probably have a statement up shortly. but just understand that we too believe that God inspired His word and that we can have confidence in the Bibles we have today. We realize that no mss, translation, or version is perfect. We don’t hate the KJV (some are KJV-preferred). We aren’t “ESV-only” either. We believe God preserved His word, but the difference between us and KJVO is “how.”
I’ve had a hard time figuring you out, and im sure it’s just my own ignorance. Your blog brings up a lot of intriguing issues, but it seems like more of an attack on traditional Christianity than anything else. in fact, I don’t see an indication that you are a Christian. you seem to side with unbelievers in almost every topic. I know this sounds like ad hominem, and its unrelated to the post, but im just really curious as to where you stand. You’ll find that in our own blogs, we too critcize aspects of Christianity (KJVO who comment here do the same), but we also post about our love for Christ and His Word (KJVO who comment here also do the same) as we are more concerned about living for Him and giving Him glory than the theological differences that divide us.
Those differences, however, are not to be ignored, and I hope this blog continues to provide dialog in the area of Bible versions. But what I’m telling you is that we do, unashamedly, have a bias. So do you. So does Bart. Remember that Ehrman had a professed problem reconciling the idea of God with the idea of suffering. So did Charles Templeton, but he wasn’t a text critic. Both apostatized, but Ehrman uses text criticism as a foundation for that. Dan Wallace was also a student of Bruce MEtzger, has done an enormous amount of research in the same areas, admires Ehrman as a scholar, and agrees with Ehrman on a host of issues, but doesn’t reach the same conclusions as him. I think it’s safe to say both are motivated by other forces.
For me, and the authors of this blog, and Dan Wallace, Moises Silva, Maurice Robinson, Craig Blomberg, D.A. Carson, Gordon Fee, Gleason Archer, B.F. Westcott, F.A. Hort, Tregelles, Bengle, Burgon, White, Owen, Turretin, Grudem, Packer, and a host of other textual critics, NT scholars, apologists, pastors, and laymen, we are influenced by faith that God has preserved for us a reliable Book, from which we derive our practice and doctrine.
but we’re all patriarchal complementarians, so perhaps we’re disqualified. . .
About CD
Hey all, CD has admitted he is not a believer before. He is interacting because he does think some Christians are irresponsible in their handling of evidence. He is also quite charitable and gracious, so we let him provide info and interact on the blog.
It is correct there is bias however. I want to address a few things CD said.
CD,
1) You gave an example of a book better attested than the New Testament. I for one, don’t think we have to have a singularly preserved argument in play. We have promises and we see preservation, but it isn’t something our faith depends on. However, the book you mention is most likely not preserved to the same extent the Bible is. How many MSS copies are we talking? How many variants? Preservation without the variants can speak to a later recension more easily than a valid preservation. That is one of the benefits of a preservation in multiple textual streams like the NT has.
2) You mention orthodox corruption. That is certainly one interpretation of the evidence. Scholars like Philip Comfort who works with and has examined virtually all the NT papyrii, would disagree with you there. That some amount of orthodox corruption occurred is admitted by textual critics and anyone espousing the UBS text. But it was not a wholesale corruption. The variants don’t affect the Christian theology wholesale. Take 1 Jn. 5:7 for instance. Virtually no one argues that this isn’t an orthodox corruption. But did it affect the debates on the Trinity in the historic church? No. It wasn’t even used in that whole discussion. It’s a text gloss that got put into the text inadvertantly (likely) or intentionally, and gradually made its way into the Latin line, and into the Greek through the TR mainly.
Bob
Cyprian and 1 John 5:7
This came up in a comment recently, I think under the Rev. 16:5 post. Anyway, Will, you give the quote by Cyprian. Notice where the quotation marks are from Cyprian. He is noted as being very precise in his quotations. I’ll reproduce the pertinent part here:
The line that is bolded is the quoted phrase: “And these three are one.” This phrase is basically the same one found in 1 Jn. 5:8 in the UBS text. This quote does nothing to prove the validity of the disputed line: “And there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost”. Cyprian could be referring to the phrase about the earthly witnesses (the Spirit, the water, and the blood) as referring to the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost. See Dan Wallace’s explanation of the Cyrprian quote here.
Bob
Also there are a few minor quibbles I have with the post, a few inaccuracies made about certain manuscripts. You also omit the Western text in your discussion, too. I don’t have time to spell out the minor corrections I’d make, but it is a good post nonetheless, discussing the textual evidence we have.
Thanks again, Will,
Bob
Bob,
I welcome any factual corrections on my research. My research is at a laymen’s level, but then again, this blog is for their benefit anyway. It won’t be perfect, so I welcome your help.
CD mentioned that I use the textual work of the hell bound – well, the truth is, God used many unbelievers work to preserve manuscripts, and to compile documents. Their ultimate committments are not rooted in faith from a born again heart, and therefore I don’t have any real interest in their opinions on the credibility of Scripture. CD is coming at this from a liberal unbeliever’s standpoint. No amount of imperical evidence will pursaude him because his problem is not intellectual, it’s moral. This is the problem with all unbelievers and so, I’m not going to have a friendly chat with him as if he were a brother, instead, I’m going to do what Paul said in:
Ephesians 5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
His presuppositions are corrupted in sinful unbelief. He needs to repent. Then we’ll talk.
After all, I am a fundamentalist.
Hi Damien –
Lets see. First off my point to William was that Ehrman’s faith was irrelevant to his summary of the last 150 years of evidence he discussed in Orthodox Corruption. Certainly Ehrman’s faith may later have been relevant to his own conclusions, but I don’t see how it would have effected his arguments Moreover I’m not even quite sure what is being talked about regarding corruption of scripture by heretics and when. One of the things I’m finding difficult in these conversations in the blog in general is that their aren’t dates being attached to various claims.
Church Discipline isn’t an attack on traditional Christianity, in general though it does examine religious issues from an outside perspective. That perspective is really the only way to address these sorts of issues. Lets take an example, ” but it seems like more of an attack on traditional Christianity than anything else”. My personal feeling would be that what is being discussed here, IFB theology, is essentially 19th century at the earliest. It isn’t traditional at all it is relatively recent. I take a firmly historical not a biblical perspective on what is “traditional”, people did what the historical record showed they did.
For example you made the comment about, “patriarchal complementarians” so I assume you read the women’s issues discussions. My earliest posts on the topic, A defense against patriarchy was actually an examination of what were the the opinions of Christians on issues of gender roles and sexuality. What I found were distinct stages with radical different views on these issues, and the currently fashionable ones in “traditional” circles are anything but traditional. I don’t want to take us too far afield of the KJVonly discussion. Certainly I do however approach biblical history in the same way. What happened at different periods of time is what the documentary record shows, things that theologies assert occurred for which there is strong counter evidence occurred in mytho-history not history. This applies equally to:
* Catholic positions about a doctrine of a single politically unified church having existed since the first century
* Mormon teachings about lost teaching of Jesus in America
* Pagan teachings about wicca having emerged in its current form 10,000 years ago and not during the 1920s.
etc…
“First off my point to William was that Ehrman’s faith was irrelevant to his summary of the last 150 years of evidence he discussed in Orthodox Corruption.”
Oh, but it is very relevant to the subject, because his sinful unbelief is what governs his intellect and is the grid by which he interprets facts. Your problem is, you want your intellect to be satisfied before you concede to faith. That will never happen because your intellect is darkened and blinded by proud arrogant sinful rebellion against God. So whether the subject is texual criticism or creation and evolution if your heart is not in submission to the Lordship of Christ, no amount of evidence will convince you to believe. You are dead in trespasses and sins and you need life…so does Bart Ehrman.
And might I add, that spiritual life must be granted to you from Christ by sovereign grace appropriated by faith which is also the gift of God.
Bob –
You hit two big topics here the textual credibility of Aristotle and the Orthodox corruption.
In terms of Aristotle you are absolutely right the manuscripts unified much earlier, if they had to unify at all. In terms of number of early manuscripts there is no comparison with the NT, Aristotle has far more. And of course once you get out to the 4th century the situation completely reverses.
Other than that I’m starting to suspect I don’t understand what is meant by “preservation” in the way you all are using it.
Lets start with an individual book. What is your theory for the origin of Luke? I.E. questions like:
1) Why is there so much sharing with Matthew yet an incompatible infancy narrative?
2) The heavy sharing (Q material)
3) What role does Mark play?
What does a preserved Luke look like? What would a non preserved Luke look like? Assuming perfect knowledge how could I tell the difference? What if anything would be a perfect Luke if this is different from a preserved Luke?
I have a feeling the later is of more general interest so unless you really want to discuss the former….
As for Orthodox corruption these are long arguments. But we can take a worst case line, a reference to a 2nd century book in a supposed Pauline writing, 1Tim 6:20, “O Timothy, protect what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and ‘Antithesis’ of so-called ‘Gnosis’”. How does one explain that? Obviously by itself, this doesn’t prove a 2nd century origin, Paul might just used an interesting word choice, a phrase which sounds 2nd century. But if you have dozens and dozens of these after a while you start to draw the conclusion you just aren’t looking at a 1st century text at all. That’s what happened in the 19th century with higher criticism. It became a major point of division between the liberals who went with the evidence and said, this is a 2nd century book and the conservatives who asserted in spite of the evidence that faith demanded this be a first century book.
During the 20th century the same sort of thing happened with lower criticism. The evidence isn’t quite as clear cut though because most of our manuscripts are rather late. But if you start to compare the early papyri (late 2nd, 3rd century) to the unicals (early 4th and 5th century) you do a pattern. Now there are only two explanations for the pattern:
1) Some sort of bias in what survived; which as far as I understand it is what the KJVO advocates preach.
2) A move towards orthodoxy in scripture, Orthodox corruption.
Now if we take what we know was going on, a the creation of a unified church suppressing heresy and a slow unity of consensus emerging. It is starts to get pretty clear what the general flow is. Now you compound that with the 20th century collecting non canonical works and the finds of non canonical works and the external evidence becomes overwhelming. You mentioned a whole bunch of scholars, I have yet to hear any of them put together a sensible time line that explains the early Christian literature.
I’m glad you are willing to admit the case with 1Jn 5:7 because we assert it happened once for sure, the question is how often it happened. I also happen to agree that the Trinity doctrine (in essentially its modern form) predates the textual changes. Orthodox corruption comes from a unified position not the other way around. So we aren’t disagreeing there.
I’d give an analogy in modern times with regard to translation. Translation choices are made to defend/enhance creedal doctrines. I.E. Christian doctrine -> Christian choices in translation -> further support for Christian doctrines. The key point is the translation choices are supporting doctrine not inventing them. I love to give the example of Price’s translation http://www.amazon.com/Pre-Nicene-New-Testament-Fifty-four-Formative/dp/1560851945 as an example of what an textually accurate but very hostile to Christian doctrine translation would like.
I will comment though that you and Will have a fundamental disagreement, he’s denying the corruption existed you are agreeing it existed but asserting it happened in a minor way. The original essay asserted this denial was based on the actual textual evidence, and as you commented the actual textual evidence showed the opposite. That was my point and it is an excellent example.
CD,
I suppose we asked for this with this post. We don’t really want to be addressing all of the things you’re bringing up, in this context right now. You act like there aren’t answers but there are. There are plenty of evangelical discussions of exactly this sort of thing by competent scholars. The Luke question is clearly out of the realm of the topic at hand. The supposed quotation of a 2nd Century book is one example not hundreds.
Regarding orthodox corruption, I don’t agree there was the kind of wholesale corruption that Ehrman later went on to espouse. I agree his research should be able to stand on its own, and the book in question was written before he abandoned evangelical Christianity. This isn’t to say his interpretations were not clouded by his prejudice.
Regarding Aristotle’s works, I still haven’t found a precise number of textual witnesses for them. I hadn’t heard it to be a larger number than the witnesses for the New Testament (5700+ in Greek alone, let alone more than that in Latin, and a good number of other ancient language translations + church fathers’ writings).
This post is aimed at a layman’s level and so is not a detailed scholar’s description of the evidence. Some of the “warm” Christian interpretation of the evidence should be a given, considering our venue here. It’s not just a warm and fuzzy faith devoid of evidence. Taking a step back and seeing the big picture might help more at this point.
Bob
Hi Bob.
I really wasn’t sure what the point of this post was either. The sorts of people with serious questions about the preservation of scripture from say the 4th century to the 20th are generally not even Protestant much less fundamentalist. You see some of this in liberal churches.
Again it would be easier if this post had made its thesis and what is was arguing against more clear (in particular dates).
Luke 2:14 is a good example in this debate. We know the version most Christians used during the 2nd century:
“Glory to God among the high, and peace to men of good will on earth” which is essentially the KJV’s Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men . The NA27s reading is inconsistent with the early Church’s usage but consistent with the early bibles. What does it mean to “preserve” this verse? Preserve the oral or preserve the written form from the 2nd century church?
These IMHO are the kinds of questions that need to get asked to make heads or tails of this debate. The word “preservation” seems to be getting thrown around in a very very loose way.
And then lets go back another century, regarding what is meant by “preservation”? If there is some guy names Luke running around during the 0050′s and 60′s with Paul who writes a book fairly early we have one set of things that need to be established about preservation. There is a whole century where the case is astonishingly weak, and frankly contra indicated. On the other hand if we have Luke emerging as a work in the middle 2nd century then it gets quoted heavily almost immediately and with a few minor exceptions we have excellent evidence for its preservation.
I.E. If there is good evidence for preservation if and only if there is bad evidence for Luke having written Luke. It seems to be an either/or choice. Which makes it a great book for discussing what is meant by “preservation”. Because the people here are asserting an early data (i.e. Luke as the companion of Paul) the problems with Luke’s preservation become much more severe.
I haven’t found good answers to this. What I’ve found in evangelical writings are sort of blase passing over of the details. If you can recommend someone who really digs in and makes a strong evangelical case for preservation / authenticity I’d love to read it. I’ve read a lot on this topic and every single time what I find is a major skipping of details and proof by assumption.
This is the problem in one sentence you say it is off topic on the other hand you give these kinds of statements. How am I supposed to respond without going down that road? You are well read enough to know these sorts of lists exist and have for 150 years.
IMHO when we talk about the KJVO situation there are 2 totally different positions:
1) The first century church had an accurate bible. Very quickly that was lost, the original meaning was restored but corruption occurs quickly and further revelation is required. An example of that was what happened with the KJV which is the only non corrupt English language bible. (Will Kinney)
2) The 21st century bible is the TR which was the 1st century bible and in all the centuries in between. (Kent, as far as I can make sense of his position).
Then on the KJV friendly side we have:
1) The NA27 is a better text than the TR neither is word for word correct but both are “preserved” (again no idea what that means for this theory). AFIAK this seems to be your theory.
2) KJV preferred (not sure what that means)
I think everyone agrees that by the 5th century something fairly close to the TR is the Greek, the West has switched to Latin as their primary bible. So if we are going to be debating this we need to be looking closely at the time period 60-405. And during most of that period, the idea of a bible is up in the air. IMHO talking about preservation of the “bible” is pointless these books aren’t traveling together until the 5th century in any consistent way.
This BTW brings us to Aristotle. We don’t have 5700 manuscripts from the early church we have a few fragmentary quotes from church father’s and liturgies. P52, P90… are mid 2nd century you have to be in the early 3rd century till P75, P46, P64 gives you a nice chunk of any book. Certainly by 4th century there is no comparison of number of manuscripts of the bible to number of manuscripts of Aristotle. Again the issue probably boils down to what one means by “preservation”.
As for laymen, I’m a laymen. I’ve never been a pastor, never been to divinity school….
With Aristotle we have a single unified book that is copied rapidly and well distributed.
I’m not sure how to argue this without talking about the books themselves. In real life, there was no bible in the 1st, There was no concept of a bible in the 1st century. There was a huge range of proto-Christian writings floating around staring around 200 BCE.
At the end of the day the question is does the 2nd century church have the most accurate bible or not?
Regarding orthodox corruption, I don’t agree there was the kind of wholesale corruption that Ehrman later went on to espouse. I agree his research should be able to stand on its own, and the book in question was written before he abandoned evangelical Christianity. This isn’t to say his interpretations were not clouded by his prejudice.
Regarding Aristotle’s works, I still haven’t found a precise number of textual witnesses for them. I hadn’t heard it to be a larger number than the witnesses for the New Testament (5700+ in Greek alone, let alone more than that in Latin, and a good number of other ancient language translations + church fathers’ writings).
This post is aimed at a layman’s level and so is not a detailed scholar’s description of the evidence. Some of the “warm” Christian interpretation of the evidence should be a given, considering our venue here. It’s not just a warm and fuzzy faith devoid of evidence. Taking a step back and seeing the big picture might help more at this point.
CD,
Just getting back to the blog here. Sorry for the wait in responding.
This is an intramural discussion among believers. We take for granted that the 27 NT books are divinely inspired and were accepted as Scripture long before the 5th century. There is some evidence of that as well.
When we speak of preservation, we are saying the original readings were preserved down to our day. The difference with your Aristotle example is we do not have manuscripts dating back to within 100 years of Aristotle himself. We do have manuscripts within 100 years of the NT authors, however.
Most KJV Onlyists would not be as radicaly as Will Kinney, or at least per your description of his belief. They do believe in a special act of some kind in 1611, but they don’t believe that prior to 1611 there was no presence of God’s Words here on earth. They were available but not in as good a form as we have now. Most would be in that camp. Some are like Kent and say the TR is the main thing, and before that we can assume there was some kind of availability of the TR readings.
You seem to grant our current historical knowledge and understanding of the past with a level of omniscience. Just because we don’t have certain evidence means we there was no evidence ever.
That’s all I have time to say in response presently.
Bob
Sorry for my interjection here. I am curious about doctrines that are affected by removal of some words in new bible versions based on the assumption that they were added into the texts at a later time. For instance fasting. While the doctrine of fasting is not completely removed in the new bible versions, the reason for doing so has certainly been obscured. For instance the reason for fasting is because of spiritual warfare. If I am not convinced of the reading of the earliest MSS on this doctrinal issue what would what I call liberal evangelical Christians believe about this doctrine and how can they if they do in fact diminish the need for fasting justify this when the true original readings are so hotly contested by both sides of this argument?