The History of the Bible: Part 1 (of 3)

Is the Bible the Word of God?  That is a question that only faith can answer.  Is the Bible we have today an accurate representation of what its authors originally wrote?  That is a question that evidence can prove.  The Bible is by far the most well attested ancient document with a rich manuscript history and a fascinating story of ordinary people who rose to the occasion to protect it, or sank to the depths to try to keep it from the people.  It is a story of hand-written copies, and a story of translation efforts from the original Greek and Hebrew.  This three part series will open the door to the much larger subject of the history of the text of the Bible, its preservation and transmission from the ancient world to the plethora of English Bibles that we have available to us today.  Along the way, it will help answer questions about the reliability of our text, the affect that variants have upon our confidence in the text, as well the reasons why we have so many translations in English today.

            There are skeptics who don’t believe that we can have any confidence that our text is the same as what was originally written. Amazingly, they agree with the essential facts of history that the Bible’s manuscript tradition is rich and ancient, sadly, they draw opposite conclusion from this evidence and end up with nothing but doubt. There are “perfect” Bible zealots who have complete confidence in one particular translation of our text, made 400 years ago, who are immune to evidence because their belief in the text of the Bible is a matter of faith not facts.  Both of these groups think that ordinary Christians will have their faith destroyed if they learn the truth about the history of the Bible, they’re both wrong.  The Word of God has been handed down to each new generation throughout the history of the Church, and that story is something that every Christian should want to know.

Parts 2 & 3 to follow (previous versions already available via the History of the Bible tab at the top of the web page) next week and the week after.

Why Christians should care about the work of CSNTM

I would imagine that most pastors, let alone most Christians, are unfamiliar with the work of CSNTM (gotta love acronyms).  The Center For The Study Of New Testament Manuscripts is an organization founded by noted New Testament manuscript expert, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace (a personal favorite) in 2002.  What does CSNTM do?  The organization's mission is to utilize emerging technologies to preserve and study Greek New Testament manuscripts. Since then, CSNTM has collaborated with more than forty institutions on four continents to produce hundreds of thousands of images of New Testament manuscripts. In the process, CSNTM has discovered dozens of New Testament manuscripts. - From the About page of the CSNTM Website
What is the importance of this work?  By cataloging surviving NT manuscripts, and digitally preserving them, CSNTM is helping to add further depth and breadth to our understanding of the original autographs of the NT. 
Why don't we just look at the originals?  Easy enough to answer, they no longer exist.  No autograph (original from the hand of the author) of any ancient document {excluding those carved in stone, not exactly an option for the entire NT) has survived to the modern age.  Time, wear and tear, natural disasters, and deliberate destruction (think marauding barbarians gleefully setting fire to libraries) have seen to that. 
What do we have then?  Around 5,800 NT manuscripts (some whole, some very fragmentary) in Greek, 10,000 in Latin and 9,300 in various other languages (the non-Greek being translations, still useful, but not as much as those in the original language, Greek).  The further beauty of CSNTM is that they have discovered, cataloged, and digitally photographed 90 previously undocumented NT manuscripts.  In other words, the surviving evidence of the original NT text is getting stronger thanks to this work.
How is the work of CSNTM utilized?  Scholars are able to remotely study individual manuscripts much easier than finding them and gaining permission to view them, without risk of damaging this delicate ancient documents.  In addition, the printed Greek text that underpins nearly all English translations (exceptions being the KJV and NKJV which use the Textus Receptus, and the Douay-Rheims based on the Latin Vulgate {the Catholic Bible, based on Jerome's 4th century translation into Latin}) is today the Nestle-Aland's 28th Edition or the United Bible Societies' 5th Edition both of which are in a continual process of being updated to take advantage of new discoveries and new scholarship (like that of CSNTM) to further refine the 99% accuracy of our current text.

For further study, check out my 6 hour lecture on the History of the English Bible (located conveniently at this blog), where I delve into the history of the copying by hand of the NT, the advent of printed editions, and the translation work that brought the Bible from its original hand copied Hebrew and Greek manuscripts to our printed English texts today.

The purposeful exaggeration of Bart Ehrman on Textual Variants

I'm in the process of reading Darrell Bock and Daniel Wallace's excellent book, Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture's Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ, and their first chapter confirms something I've noticed (not uniquely) about the writings and interviews of Biblical scholar, skeptic, and former evangelical, Bart Ehrman who is most famous for his book, Misquoting Jesus.  Dr. Ehrman routinely lists facts about the text of the N.T. that are not disputed by believing Biblical scholars, in fact most of what he says is very educational and helpful, but then he ends his recitation of the facts with a conclusion that is hardly necessary and in fact a rather significant amount of hyperbole.  For example, when listing off the most important textual variants that affect our ability to know the original text, Ehrman begins with Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 (the longer ending of Mark and the woman caught in adultery), as if these two texts are somehow not already well known for having been late additions to the text.  Those two additions, thirteen and twelve verses, are by far the most significant "changes" to the text, but neither passage has anything to do with Christian Orthodoxy, neither proclaims an exclusive doctrine, and concluding that both are not original doesn't hurt the Christian faith one bit.  How are these examples of significant changes that will destroy our faith?  The other passages listed by Ehrman in Misquoting Jesus (p. 208) as being a danger to the accepted Biblical text are: Mark 1:41, Hebrews 2:8-9, John 1:18, I John 5:7-8, and Matthew 24:36.  In Dethroning Jesus, Bock and Wallace look at each reference in turn, only to uncover that whether or not Jesus is "angry" in Mark 1:41 is not going to shake the foundations of the Church, nor will it harm us to have to see the Trinity in the totality of the N.T. instead of relying upon the late addition of I John 5:7-8, something that Erasmus knew was inauthentic over 500 years ago.  In the end, Ehrman is much sound and fury, eloquently stated with passion to be sure, but rest assured, his earth shattering revelations are far from it.