Is the Bible Corrupted?
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Transcript of Is the Bible Corrupted?
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Corrupted Bible?Analyzing Claims of Textual Corruption
J. Luis Dizon
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Unless otherwise stated, scripture quotations are taken from the
English Standard Version. Copyright 2002, 2007 by Crossway
Publishers. Used by Permission.
Copyright 2010 by J.L. Dizon. All rights Reserved.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 7
1. Counting the Manuscript Evidence 8
2. Wholesale Editing? 14
3. Textual Criticism and Alleged Corruption 19
4. Textual Criticism, Inspiration and Inerrancy 29
Conclusion 33
References 35
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Introduction
In the past few decades, one of the staple arguments used by
those who seek to discredit the authority of the Bible has been
to allege that the scriptural text has become lost due to
corruption. This may have happened over the course of the
centuries, or during a decisive period in the history of the
Christian church. And this kind of attack can come from almost
any angle. Anybody who has encountered Islamic apologists, forexample, will undoubtedly have heard the charge that the Bible
(which was inspired by God in its original form) has been
changed. The level of knowledge these apologists actually have,
of course, varies. Some are absolutely clueless regarding the
textual history of the bible, and are merely repeating canards
taught to them by their imams. Others are a bit more
sophisticated, and may rely on liberal scholarship to substantiate
their point.
But how well does this argument stand when the claims in
question are actually examined? It is well worth going over the
textual history of the bible and the manuscripts that have come
down to us over the centuries in order to see whether we still
have the bible that God originally revealed to us, or whether it
has been lost in transmission during the course of time.
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Counting the Manuscript Evidence
The Bible did not always exist as this book with a leather cover,
gold-gilded pages and thumb-indexing that one can simply buy at
any bookstore today. Like any other ancient document, the Bible
has a textual history. It has been handed down to us through
generations of constant copying. The result of this is that we
have thousands of manuscripts of the bible. As Drs. Norman
Geisler and William Nix put it in their General Introduction to theBible,
The fidelity of the New Testament text rests on a
multitude of manuscript evidence. Counting Greek copies
alone, the New Testament is preserved in some 5,656
partial and complete manuscript portions that were
copied by hand from the second through the fifteenthcenturies.
1
And yet we did not always have this wealth of manuscripts. Back
in the 19th century, we did not have as many manuscripts
available to us. They have been accumulated over the past two
centuries by various persons who have worked hard to locate
these ancient manuscripts. In The Text of the New Testament,Bruce Metzger recounts the story of how the 19th century
textual scholar Constantin Von Tischendorf discovered one
particularly important biblical manuscript from an old
monastery:
In 1844, when he was not yet thirty years of age,
Tischendorf, a Privatdozent in the University of Leipzig,
1Geisler and Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. p. 385.
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began an extensive journey through the Near East in
search of Biblical manuscripts. While visiting the
monastery of St. Catharine at Mount Sinai, he chanced to
see some leaves of parchment in a waste-basket full of
papers destine dto light the oven of the monastery. On
examination these proved to be part of a copy of the
Septuagint version of the Old Testament, written in an
early Greek uncial script. He retrieved from the basket no
fewer than forty-three such leaves The forty-threeleaves which he was permitted to to keep contaianed
portions of I Chronicles, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and Esther
In 1846 he published their contents
A second visit to the monastery by Tischendorft in 1853
produced no new manuscripts because the monks were
suspicious as a result of the enthusiasm for the MSdisplayed during his first visit in 1844. He visited a third
time in 1859, under the direction of the Czar of Russia,
Alexander II. Shortly before leaving, Tischendorf, gave the
steward of the monastery an edition of the Septuagint
that had been published by Tischendorf in Leipzig.
Thereupon the steward remarked that he too had a copyof the Septuagint, and produced in his cell a manuscript
wrapped in a red cloth. There before the astonished
scholars eyes lay the treasure which he had been longing
to see. Concealing his feelings, Tischendorf casually asked
permission to look at it further that evening. Permission
was granted, and upon retiring to his room Tischendorf
stayed up all night in the joy of studying the manuscripts
He soon found that the document contained much more
than he had even hoped; for not only was most of the Old
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Testament there, but also the New Testament was intact
and in excellent condition2
Of course, this was not the end of the story. The manuscript
came into the hands of the Soviet Union, and remained in their
possession until England bought the manuscript for one hundred
thousand pounds.3
Today, this manuscript is known as Codex
Sinaiticus, and is one of the most valuable early witnesses we
have of the bible.4
And Codex Sinaiticus is just one of many important manuscripts
on which we base the text of our bible. As was already explained
earlier, we have thousands of manuscripts of the New
Testament, some of which actually go back to within mere
decades of the writing of the originals. K.A. Kitchen puts it this
way in The Bible and Its World:
Among works of classical (Greek and Latin) literature, the
writings of the New Testament4 gospels, 21 letters, the
history of Acts and visions of Revelationhave a
manuscript attestation second to none, and superior to
most. No one blinks an eyelid at depending for the Latin
text of Julius Caesars Gallic Wars (Composed within 58-56
BC) upon manuscripts all of which are 900 years later than
Caesars time, only nine or ten of the manuscripts being
good textual copies. No-one doubts that we still read the
real text of the works of Herodotus or Thucydides (450
2Metzger. The Text of the New Testament. pp. 43-44.
3 Dailey. Mysteries of the Bible. p. 66.4
Today, Codex Sinaiticus may be viewed online at The Center for
the Study of New Testament Manuscripts:
.
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BC), even though the oldest available full manuscripts
(only eight or so) date from 1,300 years later!
For the New Testament, how different and how vastly
superior is the manuscript evidence. Some 5,000 Greek
MSS (whole or fragmentary) are known, not a mere eight
or ten. The most notable MSS are the Codexes Vaticanus
and Sinaiticus of c. 350 ADonly 250 years after the end of
the New Testament period (100 AD), not 900 or 1,300
years! Older still are the Chester Beatty and Bodmer
biblical papyri, including six new Testament MSS of the
second and third centuries AD, only 150 years after the
New Testament period.
Further back still, there is a Rylands fragment from a
manuscript of Johns Gospel [containing John 18:31-33,
37ff] datable by its script to about 130 ADlittle more than
a generation after the New Testament period itself. As this
fragment came from Egypt, it is evident that Johns gospel
had been composed, recopied and begun to circulate well
beyond Palestine before 130 AD. Hence, on this evidence
alone, it must have been composed (at latest) by 90/100
AD, and more probably earlier.
5
To the modern mind, a few decades may seem like a long period
of time, but when we are talking about ancient times, this time
period is just a blink of an eye. This is primarily because of the
culture of memorization and the strong emphasis on accurate
transmission of tradition that existed in ancient Middle Eastern
cultures. In the words of Sir Frederic Kenyon (as quoted by thelate F.F. Bruce):
5
Kitchen. The Bible and Its World. p. 131.
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The interval between the dates of original composition
and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to
be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt
that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as
they were written has now been removed. Both the
authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the
New Testament may be regarded as finally established.6
And we have similar documentation for the Old Testament. This
is demonstrated by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dating
to as early as 250 B.C.E., these scrolls are centuries earlier than
the next earliest manuscript of the Old Testament that we have,
which is the Nash papyrus (a papyrus that contains portions of
Exodus and Deuteronomy, and dates to around the second
century C.E.).7
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a remarkable testimony
of Gods promise to preserve His Word. As the Royal OntarioMuseum explains it,
The Dead Sea Scrolls are widely considered among the
greatest archaeological finds of the past century. They
include the earliest written sources for the Hebrew Bible
(Christian Old Testament), as well as other less well known
writings. Many of the ideas and beliefs contained in thiscollection of ancient parchments have resonated through
the centuries and remain influential today. Indeed, they
reflect the foundations of important religions such as
Judaism and Christianity and have influenced Islam.
Dating from around 250 Before Common Era (BCE) to 68
Common Era (CE), the Scrolls include some 207 biblical
6Bruce. The New Testament Documents. p. 20.
7Adair. Nash Papryus.
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manuscripts representing nearly all of the books in the
Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament). Approximately
900 Scrolls were discovered; some almost entirely
preserved and others in fragments. Together, they
comprise one of the most important collections of writings
ever discovered. The Scrolls are a collection of biblical
writings, apocryphal manuscripts, prayers, biblical
commentary and religious laws. Prior to the discovery of
the Scrolls, the oldest known copies of biblical texts werewritten 1,000 years later.
8
When we compare the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the ninth
century Masoretic texts on which our modern Old Testaments
are based upon, the amount of preservation that has taken place
is quite remarkable. Apart from some minor variations in the
text, the only real significant difference is the inclusion of vowelmarkers to the Masoretic text (which were not yet invented
during the first century) to make recitation easier. Richard Deem
ofEvidence for God remarks,
How do we know the Bible has been kept in tact for over
2,000 years of copying? Before the discovery of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, our earliest Hebrew copy of the Old Testamentwas the Masoretic text, dating around 800 A.D. The Dead
Sea Scrolls date to the time of Jesus and were copied by
the Qumran community, a Jewish sect living around the
Dead Sea. We also have the Septuagint which is a Greek
translation of the Old Testament dating in the second
century B.C. When we compare these texts which have an
800-1000 years gap between them we are amazed that
8Dead Sea Scrolls.
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95% of the texts are identical with only minor variations
and a few discrepancies.9
In other have more copies of the Bible than we do for any other
document that has ever been written prior to the invention of
the printing press. In the words of renown textual scholar Dr.
Daniel B. Wallace, what we have here is an embarrassment of
riches. But now comes another question: Do these manuscripts
accurately preserve the words of the Bible for us, or are they all
hopelessly flawed due to edits? Some people would allege that
these manuscripts are no good because they have been changed
beyond recognition, and it is to this claim that we turn our
attention next.
9
Deem. Is Our Copy of the Bible a Reliable Copy of the Original?
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Wholesale Editing?
Back in 1982, a popular conspiracy book entitled Holy Blood,
Holy Grail, was released by three authors: Michael Baigent,
Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. This book was popular amongst
conspiracy theorists due to its rejection of mainstream
historiography in favour of a revised version of history (Here is an
interesting side note: This is the same book that Dan Brown
would use to come up with his own conspiracy thriller The DaVinci Code two decades later. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy
Grail have actually sued him for this). In particular, the authors
attack the authenticity of the Bible by alleging that it is the
product of the fourth century:
In AD 303, a quarter of a century earlier, the pagan
emperor Diocletian had undertaken to destroy allChristian writings that could be found. As a result Christian
documentsespecially in Romeall but vanished. When
Constantine commissioned new versions of these
documents, it enabled the custodians of orthodoxy to
revise, edit, and rewrite their material as they saw fit, in
accordance with their tenets. It was at this point that most
of the crucial alterations in the New Testament were
probably made and Jesus assumed the unique status he
has enjoyed ever since. The importance of Constantines
commission must not be underestimated. Of the five
thousand extant early manuscript versions of the New
Testament, no complete edition pre-dates the fourth
century. The New Testament, as it exists today, is
essentially a product of fourth-century editors and
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writerscustodians of orthodoxy, adherents of the
message, with vested interests to protect.10
Of course, this is a bogus claim. First of all, Diocletian only
managed to destroy manuscripts of the bible in certain portions
of the Roman Empire. At this time, Christianity was already so
widespread that no amount of persecution can get rid of all
copies of the Scriptures. Second, even if Diocletian did somehow
manage to wipe out all Christian writings throughout the Roman
Empire, that would still not touch the Christian communities and
their Scriptures that have been established in other lands such as
Ethiopia, Persia, Armenia, etc. And finally, in order for the
custodians of orthodoxy to revise, edit and rewrite anything,
one would have to presuppose that they had access to the
Scriptures in the original form. And if this original form had been
lost, as Baigent et. al. would have us believe, then we have noway of actually proving that the copy of the Bible that we have
now was edited back in the fourth century.
Also, it is just highly misleading to say that no complete edition
of the New Testament did not exist prior to the fourth century.
Every book that makes up the modern New Testament was
already written by the end of the first century. However, becauseof the difficulties faced by the early church, it took centuries
before all of these books can be gathered into a single codex.
The process was gradual, with the books first being arranged into
collections before finally being gathered into a single document.
As renowned textual scholars Kurt and Barbara Aland state,
It is probable that by the third century the Gospels werecirculating as a single corpus rather than separately, and
10Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. pp. 368-369.
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the Pauline corpus even earlier. Acts, however, was
probably at first associated with the Gospels (cf. P45, and
also Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis). Then in the fourth
century, when Acts began to be grouped with the Catholic
[i.e. General] letters, this meant bringing manuscripts
together from different sources; even if the Catholic
letters were already in circulation as a single group, they
must have been brought together from manuscripts of
different origins when the group was first formed.
11
So we see that rather than a single event in history, the
canonizing of the New Testament was a gradual process that
culminated in various provincial synods in the late fourth century
(not the Council of Nicaea, as many historical revisionists would
like to claim). Even then, these provincial synods did not invent a
biblical canon out of thin air, but were expressing the long-established beliefs of those provinces where these synods took
place.
That being said, we do have an interesting papyrus known as the
Muratorian Canon which dates back to 170 C.E. and mentions
the existence of four gospels (two of which are explicitly named)
plus many other books that appear in the New Testament.
12
Also, as has been pointed out before, we actually have many
manuscripts that predate the fourth century. The Chester-Beatty
papyrii, for example, date to around the second and third
centuries and contain several portions of the Old and New
Testaments, plus the apocryphal book of Enoch and an early
Christian homily.13
And finally, we have the John Rylands Papyrus
11Kurt and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. p. 50
12Marlowe. The Muratorian Fragment.
13Bruce. The Chester Beatty Papyrii. The Harvester.
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(otherwise known as manuscript P52
). Why is this little papyrus
so important? It would be well worth noting the details behind
this manuscript:
This small fragment of St Johns Gospel, measuring less
than nine centimetres high, is one of the collection of
Greek papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. On
one side it contains parts of verses 31-33, on the other
side parts of verses 37-38 of the eighteenth chapter of
Johns Gospel.
It was originally discovered in Egypt, and may come from
the famous site of Oxyrhynchus (Behnesa), the ruined city
in Upper Egypt where Grenfel and Hunt carried out some
of the most startling and successful excavations in the
history of archaeology; it may be remembered that among
their finds of new fragments of Classical and Christian
literature were the now familiar Sayings of Jesus.
The importance of this fragment is quite out of proportion
to its size, since it may with some confidence be dated in
the first half of the second century A.D., and thus ranks as
the earliest known fragment of the New Testament in any
language.
It provides us with invaluable evidence of the spread of
Christianity in areas distant from the land of its origin; it is
particularly interesting to know that among the books
read by the early Christians in Upper Egypt was St Johns
Gospel, commonly regarded as one of the latest of the
books of the New Testament.
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Like other early Christian works which have been found in
Egypt, this gospel manuscript was written in the form of a
codex, i.e. book, not of a roll, the common format for non-
Christian literature of that time.14
Now, if Baigent et. al. are right about the claim that the Bible was
edited wholesale during the early fourth century, then we should
be able to compare this revised Bible with the early copies of
the scriptural books that predate this revision and see what the
original Bible really looked like. Now, if we look at these pre-
fourth century manuscripts, we find that the contents of the
Bible have remained largely intact. In fact, even if we didnt have
these early manuscripts, we can still verify the contents of the
Bible as having been preserved for us, since we have the writings
of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, who quote hundreds of thousands of
times from the Scriptures and verify for us that their reading hasbeen preserved.
15All of these things testify against the allegation
that there had been any kind of wholesale editing that has been
performed on the Scriptures. With that out of the way, it must
be pointed out that the allegation of textual corruption still
exists. This allegation comes not from conspiracy theorists but
from recognized scholars who provide us with a more subtle and
nuanced argument against the textual reliability of the Bible. To
this, we shall now turn.
14
St John Fragment: A fragment of the fourth gospel.15 The writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers and the scripture
passages they cite from are widely available online. The best source
for their writings would be the Christian Classics Ethereal Library:
.
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Textual Criticism and Alleged Corruption
Anybody who knows anything about textual criticism of the New
Testament has undoubtedly heard of Bart Ehrman and his
bestselling book, Misquoting Jesus. When he published his book
back in 2005, Ehrman became one of the oft-cited textual
scholars by both atheist and Muslim critics of the bible because
of the case that he attempts to present against the textual
reliability of the New Testament. Ehrmans case can be summedup in what he wrote in his introduction to the book:
It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but
the reality is that we dont have the originalsso saying
they were inspired doesnt help me much, unless I can
reconstruct the originals. moreover, the vast majority of
Christians for the entire history of the church have not hadaccess to the originals, making their inspiration something
of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we
dont have the first copies of the originals. We dont even
have the copies of the copies of the originals, or the
copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What
we have are copies made latermuch later. In most
instances, they are copies made many centuries later. 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 so many places that
we dont even know how many differences there are.
Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there
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are more differences among our manuscripts than there
are words in the New Testament.16
This is the man who is often lauded these days as the one who
has exposed the secrets of textual criticism to the light of day.
However, most of the arguments in the book have more to do
with shock value (sadly, most Christians are ignorant about these
issues, so its easy to shock them with these kinds of things) and
misinterpretation of facts (which we will be delving more into as
we go along). Most of the things Ehrman says is really nothing
new for those who are familiar with textual criticism. Many
textual critics, such as the Alands, Nicholas Perrin, Daniel
Wallace, and Bruce Metzger (whom was actually Erhmans
mentor), have known about these issues for decades, and they
do not interpret the facts the way Ehrman does. Dr. Daniel
Wallace, one of the few textual scholars who can hold a candleto Ehrman in terms of influence in the field of New Testament
textual criticism, wrote a comprehensive revew of his work
entitled, The Gospel According to Bart. Here, Dr. Wallace shows
the various flaws in Ehrmans thinking, especially the unbalanced
view that he holds concerning the reliability of the Bible:
What strikes me as most remarkable in all this is howmuch Ehrman tied inerrancy to the general historical
reliability of the Bible. It was an all-or-nothing proposition
for him. He still seems to see things in black and white
terms There thus seems to be no middle ground in his
view of the text. In short, Ehrman seems to have held to
what I would call a domino view of doctrine. When one
falls down, they all fall down.
16
Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. pp. 10-11.
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it seems that Barts black and white mentality as a
fundamentalist has hardly been affected as he slogged
through the years and trials of life and learning, even
when he came out on the other side of the theological
spectrum. He still sees things without sufficient nuancing,
he overstates his case, and he is entrenched in the
security that his own views are right.17
Aside from this, it should also be pointed out that he does not
even go as far as many who wish to use his writings to attack the
reliability of the Bible go, as evidenced by certain portions of his
own writings where he shows a bit more conservatism in his
view of the Scriptural text:
These are questions that plague textual critics, and that
have led some to argue that we should abandon any quest
for the original textsince we cant even agree on what it
might mean to talk about the original of, say, Galatians
or John. For my part however, I continue to think that
even if we cannot be 100 percent certain about what we
can attain to, we can at least be certain that all surviving
manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts, which
were themselves copied from other manuscripts, and thatit is at least possible to get back to the oldest and earliest
stage of the manuscript tradition for each of the books of
the New Testament. All our manuscripts of Galatians, for
example, evidently go back to some text that was copied;
all our manuscripts of John evidently go back to a version
of John that included the prologue and chapter 21. And so
we must rest content knowing that getting back to the
17Wallace. The Gospel According to Bart.
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earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether
or not we have reached back to the original text. This
oldest form of the text is no doubt closely (very closely)
related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the
basis for our interpretation of his teaching.18
Many critics of the Bible (such as the majority of Muslims) would
like to think that the text of scripture has been so badly
corrupted that its original form cannot even be discerned
anymore. Yet, as we can see, this is a totally unwarranted
assumption. The amount of resources textual critics have to
work with is great enough that the original reading of the whole
Bible can be derived from them.
When one copyist changed the wording of a text in a
fourth-century manuscript known as Codex Vaticanus, a
later copyist rewrote the original word and added the
marginal note: Fool and knave! Leave the old reading,
dont change it! Certainly, copyists did alter the text from
time to timebut the consistency of the available
manuscripts of the New Testament demonstrates that
these alterations were exceptions, not the rule.19
It is interesting to note that Ehrman mentions the same incident
in his book, saying that to him, it is a constant reminder about
scribes and their proclivities to change, and rechange, their
texts.20
This shows how ones paradigm can affect the way one
sees the evidence. What ought to be seen as an example of how
the scribes took the accurate transmission of the text seriously,
18Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. p. 62.
19Jones. Misquoting Truth. p. 50.
20Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. p. 56.
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Ehrman uses to lampoon the reliability of the textual
transmission of the New Testament. After all, it should be a
wonder why the later copyist would even bother to preserve the
original reading if he did not regard such accurate transmission
as important. Ironically, Ehrman himself admits that the
It is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christian
texts was by and large a conservative process. The
scribeswhether non-professional scribes in the early
centuries or professional scribes of the Middle Ages
were intent on conserving the textual tradition they
were passing on. Their ultimate concern was not to
modify the tradition, but to preserve it for themselves and
for those who would follow them. Most scribes, no doubt,
tried to do a faithful job in making sure that the text they
reproduced was the same text they inherited.
21
Now, the reason why every manuscript differs is because the
scribes copying them are human. They may make slips every now
and then and make a spelling error, miscopy a word or leave out
a phrase. This is true of every ancient document, which is why
every writing that exists before the invention of the printing
press has a textual history (even the Quran). In The King JamesOnly Controversy, Dr. James White talks about the difficulties
early scribes faced when they copied out:
The scribes of old made errors Even the best
professionals had bad days. They made mistakes in what
they were copying, even when they were copying the
Scriptures. They worked under much more difficultsituationsoften in the cold or the heat, almost always
21Ibid., p. 177.
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with inferior lighting. Today we have glasses, or even Lasik
surgery, and other accessories of which the men of old
could not even dream. Many of them had to work long,
arduous hours. Fingers cramped, and backs ached. You
may think of one of those long essay tests from college to
get a slight idea of the rigor of the work. All of these things
contributed to the simple fact that there is not a single
handwritten manuscript of the Bible, in Greek or Hebrew,
that does not contain, somewhere, an error, an oversight,a mistake. Such is true, of course, of all ancient
handwritten documents, including those that are claimed
to be Scriptures (such as the Quran).22
Now, how about the claim by Ehrman that there are four
hundred thousand textual variants? to the untrained ear, that
sounds like a pretty big claim to make. However, Ehrman is onlygiving a part of the story. Many of those textual variants are not
what they sound like at first glance. As Dr. Wallace points out
how misleading this figure is:
Ehrman overplays the quality of the variants while
underscoring their quantity. He says, There are more
variations among our manuscripts than there are words inthe New Testament. Elsewhere he states that the
number of variants is as high as 400,000. That is true
enough, but by itself is misleading. Anyone who teaches
NT textual criticism knows that this fact is only part of the
picture and that, if left dangling in front of the reader
without explanation, is a distorted view. Once it is
revealed that the great majority of these variants are
22White. The King James Only Controversy. pp. 60-61.
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Thus, only 2.9 percent of the text contain any real meaningful
textual variants, and if we bring up the question of which of
these textual variants are both meaningful and viable, then the
number drops even lower to only 1 percent. Some scholars go
even higher than this. For example, Drs. Norman Geisler and
William Nix would point out that the text of the New Testament
has survived in a purer form than any other great booka form
that is 99.5 percent pure.25
It should be added to this that in the
remaining 0.5 percent where there is any signficant doubtconcerning the original reading, not a single cardinal Christian
doctrine is affected.
So ultimately, it is not a question of whether manuscripts of the
bible have errors in them, but whether these errors prevent us
from knowing what the original text of the bible actually says.
You can have thousands of manuscripts that all have errors inthem, but unless every single manuscript has mistakes in the
exact same spot (and really, this is where the they all differ from
one another argument falls flat on its face), this is does not
provide any evidence that the bible has been corrupted. There is
a concept in textual criticism called tenacity, which means that
when a textual variant enters into the manuscript tradition, it
does not simply disappear. Even if it is an insignificant variant
with no chance of being the original, it will nonetheless persist in
a few manuscripts over the centuries.26
Now, if such variants
manage to survive, how much more with the original readings?
We can be certain that the original reading has survived; it is
simply a matter of distinguishing it from the textual variants (and
most of the time this is actually quite easy, as there are relatively
25Geisler and Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. p. 367.
26Kurt and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. p. 56.
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that is more documented than any other in the ancient
world.27
However, is Ehrman correct in saying that the existence of these
textual variants provides evidence that God has not kept his
word in preserving the Holy Scriptures and that the doctrines of
Biblical Inspiration and Inerrancy are thereby proven false? This
shall be point of discussion for the final part of this article.
27
Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus. p. 87.
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Textual Criticism, Inspiration and Inerrancy
As he points out in Misquoting Jesus, what drove Bart Ehrman to
lose his faith in the reliability of the text of scripture is the idea
that God had not preserved the text of scripture:
This became a problem for my view of inspiration, for I
came to realize that it would have been no more difficult
for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would
have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he
wanted his people to have his words, surely he would
have given them to them (and possibly, even given them
the words in a language they could understand, rather
than Greek and Hebrew). The fact that we dont have the
words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not
preserve them for us. And if he didnt perform thatmiracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he
performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words.28
It would seem that the bit where Ehrman complains about the
language the Bible written in is a momentary lapse in logic on his
part. He asks why God would give the words of scripture in
Hebrew and Greek rather than in a language the people couldunderstand, when in fact, Hebrew and Greek were the languages
the people who the biblical books were originally written to
could understand. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew
because that was what the Jews to whom it was revealed to
understood, and the New Testament was written in Greek
because that was the common language of much of the near and
28Ibid., p. 11.
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middle eastern world at the time of the New Testament (Koine
Greek is basically the first century equivalent of English today).
To make the point clear, think of a hypothetical scenario where
the official language of the United States of America changed
from English to Spanish. The vast majority of people would no
longer be able to read the Constitution in the original English it
was written in, but would have to rely upon a Spanish translation
of the American Constitution. And suppose that there were
different Spanish translations of the Constitution, which function
on different translation principles or whose translators thought
certain Spanish words conveyed the meaning of the original
English better. Now, would it be fair to accuse the founding
fathers of the United States of having been so inconsiderate as to
have written the Constitution in English rather than Spanish,
which is what most people can understand? Well of course not,because English was the common language of the American
people when the Constitution was written!
That being said, has the existence of textual variation
compromise the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy? Not at all. Now,
perhaps if the original reading of the scriptural text has been
lost, this argument might hold water, but since it are still with us,this does not pose any problems for the doctrine of inerrancy. As
Dr. Wallace points out,
Inspiration relates to the wording of the Bible, while
inerrancy relates to the truth of a statement. American
evangelicals generally believe that only the original text is
inspired. This is not to say, however, that copies cant beinerrant. Indeed, statements that bear no relation to
scripture can be inerrant. If I say, I am married and have
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four sons, two dogs, and a cat, thats an inerrant
statement. Its not inspired, nor at all related to scripture,
but it is true. Similarly, whether Paul says we have peace
or let us have peace in Rom 5.1, both statements are
true (though each in a different sense), though only one is
inspired. Keeping this distinction in mind as we consider
the textual variants of the NT should clarify matters.
Regardless of what one thinks about the doctrine of
inerrancy, the argument against it on the basis of the
unknown autographs is logically fallacious. This is so for
two reasons. First, we have the text of the NT somewhere
in the manuscripts. There is no need for conjecture,
except perhaps in one or two places. Second, the text we
have in any viable variants is no more a problem for
inerrancy than other problems where the text is secure.Now, to be sure, there are some challenges in the textual
variants to inerrancy. This is not denied. But there are
simply bigger fish to fry when it comes to issues that
inerrancy faces. Thus, if conjectural emendation is
unnecessary, and if no viable variant registers much of a
blip on the radar called problems for inerrancy, then not
having the originals is a moot point for this doctrine.29
Even in the two cases where there are conjectural emendations
involved (which are Acts 16:12 and Revelation 21:17), there is
hardly any difference. In Acts 16:12, the emendation involves the
inclusion of a single word that has very little impact on the
meaning of the text.30
In Revelation 21:17, the emendation
29Wallace. The Gospel According to Bart.
30Metzger. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. pp.
393-395.
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concerns a variation in spelling that has zero impact on the
meaning of the text at all. Apart from those two very minor
emendations, the text of the New Testament can be deduced
from all the manuscripts that we have available to us. As Dr.
Bruce Metzger states in his Textual Commentary on the Greek
New Testament,
During the twentieth century, with the discovery of
several New Testament manuscripts much older than any
that had hitherto been available, it has become possible
to produce editions of the New Testament that
approximate ever more closely to what is regarded as the
wording of the original documents.31
And finally, it must be remembered that even with the most
significant textual variations, we do not end up with radically
different books handed down to us. The Gospel of Matthew is
still the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Philippians is still
the Epistle to the Philippians, etc. In other words, our biblical
faith remains perfectly intact. In the words of Dr. White,
The reality is that the amount of variation between the
two most extremely different manuscripts of the New
Testament would not fundamentally alter the message of
the Scriptures! No textual variants in either the Old or
New Testament in any way, shape, or form materially
disrupt or destroy any essential doctrine of the Christian
faith. This is a fact that any semi-impartial review will
substantiate32
31
Ibid., p. 10.32
White. The King James Only Controversy. p. 67.
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Conclusion
The attack upon the reliability of Scripture by arguing that it has
not been preserved for us and has been corrupted over the
centuries is one that is very popular in this day and age, yet we
can see that there is no firm basis for believing this claim. We can
see that God has kept His word from passing away through the
sands of time. Dr. White concludes rather nicely when he points
out how great our case is for the reliable preservation of thescriptures:
There is no question that it was Gods intention to
preserve the biblical text in a particular fashion, one that
would safeguard it against the primary attacks of its
critics. The objection that We just cant know what was
originally written; it may have been changed is ruled outby the means God used to distribute the text explosively
in the first few centuries, resulting in its multifocality.
Combined with the tenacity of the text, we have been
given great confidence in the face of the faiths
adversaries.33
The Lord Jesus Christ has promised to us that His words shallnever pass away (Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31); not one jot, not
one tittle. And we see that He has kept His promise. The means
by which He has done this may not be the means that we would
desire Him to (for it is a means that requires careful study and
research on the part of those involved), but it has been most
profitable in keeping our Biblical text preserved amidst the
forces that seek to corrupt it (or, in this case, claim that it has
33Ibid., p. 87.
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been corrupted). Thus, the Christian who opens up his or her
Bible, reads and benefits from it must be thankful that it has
come down to us as it has, for the Lord God was providentially at
work in its preservation.
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.34
34
Isaiah 40:6-8, English Standard Version.
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References
Adair, James R., Jr. Nash Papryus. Religion and Technology
Centre, Inc. .
Aland, Barbara and Kurt Aland. The Text of the New Testament:
An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and
Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (Second Edition, Translated
by Erroll F. Rhodes). Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995.
Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Holy Blood,
Holy Grail. New York: Dell, 1983.
Bruce, Frederick Fyvie. The Chester Beatty Papyrii. The
Harvester (11) 1934: 163-164.
-------. The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Grand
Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1980.
Dailey, Timothy J., Ph.D. Mysteries of the Bible: Exploring the
Secrets of the Unexplained. Lincolnwood IL: Publications
International, Ltd., 1998.
Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World. Archdiocese of
Toronto.
.
Deem, Richard. Is Our Copy of the Bible a Reliable Copy of the
Original? Evidence for God.
.
Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who
Changed the Bible and Why. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2005.
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Geisler, Norman L. Aand William E. Nix. A General Introduction to
the Bible. Chicago IL: Moody Press, 1980.
Marlowe, Michael D. The Muratorian Fragment. Bible Research.
.
Jones, Timothy Paul. Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies
of Bart Ehrmans Misquoting Jesus. Downers Grove IL:
InterVarsity Press, 2007.
Metzger, Bruce Manning. A Textual Commentary on the Greek
New Testament (Second Edition). Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.
-------. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission,
Corruption and Restoration. New York: Oxford University Press,
1992.
Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. The Bible and Its World. Downers
Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977.
St John Fragment: A fragment of the fourth gospel. The John
Rylands University Library.
.
Wallace, Daniel Baird. The Gospel according to Bart. Bible.org.
.
White, James Robert. The King James Only Controversy: Can YouTrust the Modern Translations? (Second Edition). Minneapolis,
MI: Bethany House Publishers, 2009.
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