Reliability of the New Testament

Chuck McWhirter

Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

Textual Criticism

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Opening Story

Imagine your son/daughter/grandson/granddaughter coming home on Spring Break next month

There’s something different, perhaps their smile isn’t as bright or they seem a bit distant as if something is on their mind

As they cautiously ask this question you can hear the heartfelt emotion behind the question. “(Mom/Dad/Nanny/Pawpaw), how do we know that we can trust the Bible?”

Quickly they expand on their question to get to the root of what is on their heart; she says “I mean, like how do we know that what was written close to 2000 years ago is what we read today?”

Softly you ask “Honey, why do you ask? Are you doubting your faith or is there something that is causing you to doubt the Bible?”

As the emotion wells up inside her you begin to see the pain and discomfort she’s having in wrestling with this question.

She responds “I don’t want to doubt and I feel ashamed of my feelings, but my professors have been telling me we can’t possibly know what was written by the original authors.”

Through tears she says “I took a New Testament class this past semester and my professor said that we don’t have any of the originals or even copies that are close to the originals. he said there are more errors in our New Testament than there are even words. Like 3 times the number of errors than words. He has us reading these books and studying material that makes our Bible look like a complete legend. Several of my classmates have walked away from Jesus and are telling me I have no rational reason to hold on to a myth.”

Fact or Fiction

Some would say the story I just told is sensational.

Its a story to provoke emotion and fear.

Its a story that’s exaggerated to cause fear about the universities and what our children are facing when they leave our home for the first time to head off to the college classroom.

However, the basis of this story and the teachings referenced in this story is playing out this semester in a university less than 20 miles from this church.

While this story doesn’t recount a specific conversation, it is based on parts of several stories that I have heard first hand from parents and grandparents that have walked through the heartache of seeing a loved one that grew up in a Christian home, grew up attending church, made a profession of faith, was baptized and now claims to no longer believe in or have faith in Jesus Christ.

Generation Z

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Statistics show that 75-85% of students that are raised in a Christian home, have made a profession of faith and are baptized will leave their faith in the University.

Please hear me when I say these are statistics and I’m not making any theological statement or judgement on the validity of those professions of following Christ. That is between those individuals and God.

Those statistics are for the millennials. And yet the millennials are done with college, in their careers and starting families.

However, Generation Z (born 1995-2010) are now our seniors in the university and the next generation to pave their way into society

So how are we doing with this generation?

Most socialistically inclined generation

1st Generation of this nation that is Post-Christian with 30% of enrolling college students identifying as atheist.

30% are atheist - 1st post Christian

73% are pro-same sex marriage

48% of students support campus speech codes where certain forms of speech should be regulated

66% define Hate speech as anything a particular student finds offensive

81% believe words can be a form of violence

30% believe violence is morally justified to prevent someone from using hate speech

“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?” ~Joseph Stalin

Addressing the Problem

Ratio Christi Overview

As a church we must be sharing the Gospel

We must be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is in us with gentleness and kindness. 1 Peter 3:15

Purpose

Tonight my purpose is to equip with how one might respond to this loved ones doubt.

If you were to find yourself in this situation whether it is your own child or perhaps someone else challenged you on the authenticity of the Bible. How might you respond.

Let me start by saying this “If there is one thing for you to remember tonight. If you forget everything else I say this evening. Write this down, memorize this, take a photo of the screen with your phone. Whatever you need to do, make sure you remember this.”

The New Testament is the most historically preserved, attested and reliably transmitted literature of any work from ancient past up to and including the time of the printing press. <repeat>

Understanding the Issues

So in light of that statement how could a NT professor teach a class on the New Testament in a manner to cause a student to have such doubt.

We need to first understand what the skeptics are claiming to then begin to unravel the truth behind these statements.

All too often, in any communication, we want to jump to what we have to say before we’ve taken the time to listen to what the person is saying.

You’ve heard the saying God has given us two ears, yet one mouth. puts it bluntly “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,

The Question and Statements

but only in expressing his opinion.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), .

Her Question: “How do we know what was written close to 2000 years ago is what we read today?”

She quoted two statements behind her question - These are called defeaters.

Defeaters are statements that when effective can cause doubt about a belief

We will evaluate the defeaters to determine whether there is a good reason to doubt our belief

Manuscript Evidence

Credit Daniel Wallace

NT Scholar and Textual Critic from Dallas Theological Seminary

Founder and Executive Director for the Center for the Study of the New Testament

Statement 1 - “My professor said we don’t have any of the originals or even copies that are close to the originals.”

Is this a true statement?

Bart Ehrman in his introduction to Misquoting Jesus says “We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later - much later”

It is true that we don’t have the original manuscripts (autographs) that were hand-written by the authors.

Credit Daniel Wallace

It is true that we don’t have the original manuscripts (autographs) that were hand-written by the authors.

NT Scholar and Textual Critic from Dallas Theological Seminary

Founder and Executive Director for the Center for the Study of the New Testament

It is true that we don’t have the original manuscripts (autographs) that were hand-written by the authors.

It is NOT true that our copies are “not even close to the originals”

To understand the evidence we look to a field of study called Textual Criticism.

The goal of New Testament Textual Criticism is the study of the handwritten copies of the New Testament whose original is unknown or non-existent, for the primary purpose of determining the exact wording of the original.

So scholars in this field collect ancient handwritten manuscripts in the original Greek and translations of the Greek, from numerous types of sources (papyri, pottery shards, stones, etc) and they compare the manuscripts to determine how well they align with each other and where there is any variation.

Two Major Considerations when weighing manuscript evidence.

Having more manuscripts allows for more comparison.

Having earlier manuscripts gets us closer to the originals

So what do we currently have that have been catalogued, studied and analyzed?

An Embarrassment of Riches

According to Daniel Wallace, Textual Critic scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary “We have an embarrassment of riches when compared to all other classical literature.”

Quantity

Greek manuscripts: 5824

Latin manuscripts: 10,000+ (avg size is 400+ pages)

Other ancient versions: 5000-10,000

Quotations from the New Testament by church fathers: over 1 million

Removing the quotations of the church fathers we have somewhere between 20-25k manuscripts

Dating

P52 - Oldest MS Fragment - Discovered in 1934 - Dated AD 100-150

ii. John Ryland Papyrus 52 – 30-50 years post Autographa

Papyrus 90 - 30-50 years post Autographa

Codex Sinaiticus – 350 AD

Codex Vaticanus – 350 AD

Within 125 years of the completion of the NT, over 43% of all verses are found in the papyri

Within 125 years of the completion of almost all classical literature, 0% of the document is found in any manuscripts.

Okay, these are numbers and numbers can mean different things depending on how we compare those numbers. What does this all mean? So lets compare where our NT stands in relation to other works that we base our history and understanding of the ancient world on.

Classical literature

Grecco Roman Authors

Pliny the Elder: 700 years for oldest - 200 copies

Plutarch: 800 years -

Josephus: 800 - 20 manuscripts

Polybius: 1200 years

Pausanias: 1400 years - Geography of Greece

Herodotus: 1500 years (considered father of history on how you write history) 26 copies

Xenophon: 1800 years - If NT our earliest copies would come about when the Wright Brothers invented the airplane.

Comparison

Within 125 years of the completion of the NT, over 43% of all verses are found in the papyri

Within 125 years of the completion of almost all classical literature, 0% of the document is found in any manuscripts.

We have more than a 1000 times the amount of manuscript evidence of the classical scholar has for classical authors

According to Dan Wallace “To say the NT doesn’t represent what we originally had would require us to be 1000 times more skeptical of all of our other classical authors resulting in us immediately moving back to the dark ages.”

Variants in the Manuscripts

Statement 2 - “he said there are more errors in our New Testament than there are even words. Like 3 times the number of errors than words.”

Where does this come from? You might have guessed!

Bart Ehrman “And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, 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: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”

Due to the volume of manuscripts there are some variations in the text

Its important to remember that all of these manuscripts were copied by hand and it is unlikely to have two manuscripts that are exactly alike.

Furthermore, while scribes exhibited great care in their efforts they were not immune from human error

So what types of errors exist?

skipping of words or losing one’s place

Slips of the pen (marks) or writing notes in the margins

Confusing similar sounding words

Intentional errors when a scribe attempted to correct a perceived error or tried to harmonize a passage with doctrine

Now let’s weigh the variants to see how impactful they truly are.

Two types of variants

Meaningful Variants - change the meaning of the text

Viable Variants - Good reason to believe they represent the original wording. (two viable variants - either variant could represent the original)

Over 99% of all variants in the manuscripts are not meaningful, not viable or both.

not meaningful - The don’t change the meaning (misspelling, word order, etc.)

Example - In the Greek language there is over 1,200 different ways to write the the statement “John loves Mary”, yet it is always translated and interpreted the same

Example - In the Greek language there is over 1,000 different ways to write the the statement “John loves Mary”, yet it is always translated and interpreted the same

There are different ways in Greek to

Spell John

Spell Mary

Word order

Predicates

Conjunctions

Different verbs for ‘loves’

not viable - There isn’t enough evidence to support it is the original

Take this statement “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Onion...”

One examples in a manuscript is “Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, thought we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were (little children / gentle) among you.

The difference in Greek is between the words ‘nepioi’ vs ‘epioi’

One late manuscript had ‘hippoi’ which is translated ‘horses’!

both - There’s no change in meaning and there’s very little evidence it was the original text.

Less than 1% (1/4 of 1%) are both meaningful and viable

Examples:

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set (us/you/me) free from the law of sin and death”

“and most of the bothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word (of God) without fear.”

Is what we have now what they wrote then?

We’ve looked at the number of variants and how the number of variants is a direct reflection of the number of manuscripts we have.

There’s nothing that compares to the richness of evidence for NT manuscripts

As time goes on we are getting closer and closer to the original wording. Not farther and farther.

In 1611 during the translation for the King James there were 7 Greek manuscripts with the earliest being 11th century

Today we have 5800+ Greek manuscripts with the earliest being 2nd Century

We have almost 1000 times more manuscripts which some are nearly 1000 years earlier that when the King James was written

There is not a single manuscript variant that impacts a single piece of doctrine.

Media reports: Polar bear attacking a man, bystanders do nothing example

Bart Ehrman Misquoting Jesus

So how are we to respond to the claims of Bart Ehrman and those that have been misled?

You could certainly use everything we covered tonight. It will be recorded and on the Sagemont website and Facebook pages.

But specifically to those that take these books written by Bart Ehrman, I like to use Bart Ehrman against Bart Ehrman.

In his book Misquoting Jesus the original hard back didn’t have an appendix, but later copies has a Q&A appendix. Some even later copies no longer have that appendix included.

The editors record a dialogue where Bart is discussing his dedication of the book to his mentor Bruce Metzger, who is a follower of Christ.

His editors ask Bart Ehrman “Why do you believe these core tenets of Christian orthodoxy to be in jeopardy based on the scribal errors you discovered in the biblical manuscripts?"

His books are used by 10’s of thousands of college students

His own editors after editing this book came to the same conclusion which prompted the question.

I’ve spoken with numerous people who have been lead astray by this one book alone.

Yet in limited editions there’s this Q&A with the editors. Who ask this question and what is the key point of his response?

“The position I argue for in Misquoting Jesus does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament."

Conclusion

What we know about our Bible, its historical reliability, the centuries of scholarly work put into attacking, defending and scrutinizing is unique to the Christian faith.

Unlike any other world religion we offer up our Bible for the deepest and harshest scrutiny to the truth claims that are made and the preservation of the text.

Remember this one thing “The New Testament is the most historically preserved, attested and reliably transmitted literature of any work from ancient past up to and including the time of the printing press.”

a. Textual Criticism – Are the available manuscripts of the Bible’s books accurate representations of the original manuscripts?

i. Autographa – The original writings

1. No originals exist of any biblical text; only copies are available.

ii. Textual evidence comes from anything written on clay tablets, stone, bone, wood, various metals, potsherds and mostly papyrus and parchment.

iii. Science – textual critic scholars sift through all the existing manuscripts in order to reproduce the most plausible reading of the original manuscripts.

1. Criteria used:

a. Dating

b. Text Type (Geographic Distribution)

c. Attested Readings (how many manuscripts have a certain reading)

iv. SKEPTIC – Bart Ehrman “Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have the copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later-much later.

v. NT Evidence Comparison

1. Tacitus, Roman Historian – Annals of Imperial Rome in AD 116.

a. First six books exist in only one manuscript and it was copied in AD 850

b. Books eleven through sixteen are in another manuscript dating from the 11th century.

c. Books seven through ten are lost

2. Josephus – 1st century historian – The Jewish War

a. Nine Greek manuscripts written in the 10th, 11th and 12th century; Latin translation from the 4th century and medieval Russian materials from 11th or 12th century

3. Homer’s Iliad, bible of the ancient Greeks

a. Fewer than 650 Greek manuscripts today from the 2nd and 3rd century. Homer composed his epic approx.. 800 BC

4. NT

a. Greek manuscripts - 5,760

b. Latin Vulgate – over 10,000

c. Other early translations – 9,300

d. Earliest fragments

i. Dead Sea Scrolls – 2nd Century BC

ii. John Ryland Papyrus 52 – 30-50 years post Autographa

iii. Papyrus 90 - 30-50 years post Autographa

iv. Codex Sinaiticus – 350 AD

v. Codex Vaticanus – 350 AD

1. Due to the sheer multiplicity of manuscripts there are some variations in the text.

2. Because they were copied by hand it is highly unlikely to have two manuscripts that are exactly alike.

3. While scribes exhibited great care in their efforts they were not immune from human error

4. Typical errors

a. Skipping words or losing one’s place

b. Slips of the pen or writing notes in the margins

c. Confusing similar sounding words

d. Intentional errors when a scribe attempted to correct a perceived error or tried to harmonize a passage with doctrine

vii. SKEPTIC – Bart Ehrman “And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, 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: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”

1. D. Wallace “When we take the largest number and spread that over all NT manuscripts, 25k, it averages out to 8 variants per manuscript.”

viii. NT Transmission Evidence

1. The NT is not materially affected by the existence of variants, which actually pertain to only a small portion of the NT.

2. 94% of its content is exactly the same in virtually all the existing manuscripts

3. Of the remaining 6%, 3% constitute nonsensical readings that are clearly not original but are the result of scribal errors.

4. Thus only 3% of the text is even subject to investigation, and none of the 3% has any doctrinal impact.

5. Scholars Norman Geisler and William Nix conclude “The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great book”