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Delve into the accuracy and authenticity of the New Testament through textual criticism, exploring transmission methods and manuscript authority. Discover intentional and unintentional variances, shedding light on the reliability of ancient writings.
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If the New Testament is a document written by eyewitnesses of the life and teachings of Jesus, the accurate transmission of these documents over time is a real problem. How can we possible know that what we now call the New Testament is in fact what was originally written?
TEXTUAL CRITICISM • To deal with the issue of recovering the original text of ancient writings a discipline called textual criticism was developed. • When a variation is found in a text the oldest are preferred, assuming the changes were added later for a textual clarification. • The shortest versions are preferred for the same reason. • Another technique is to prefer the reading of the majority of texts.
Scribes copied books in two ways. One was for each scribe to have an edition of the book they wished to copy, called an exemplar, sitting in front of them. They would then tediously copy word for word. • Another way was to have a lector read out loud from the exemplar to several scribes at the same time.
TRANSMISSION • A common misconception about the New Testament is that it was transmitted like links in a chain. Kind of like the telephone game. • This is not how the New Testament writings were handed down. • When a church received a document from an Apostle, they shared the book by making a number of copies to send to other churches. The recipients also made multiple copies and sent them to other churches, and so on.
MANUSCRIPT AUTHORITY • The more manuscripts we have the more accurately the original text can be recovered. • In the case of the New Testament, if we limit ourselves to the original language manuscripts, we have over 5,300 copies, including fragments.
How does this compare to other ancient manuscripts? • Homer’s Illiad probably has the next greatest manuscript authority next to the New Testament. Homer wrote the Illiad around 900 BC. The oldest copy we have is from 400 BC, a 500 year span from the original. The total number of manuscripts we have is 64. and they agree 95% of the time.
Aristotle wrote between 384 and 322 BC. The oldest copy we have is dated AD 1100, 1400 years later. The total number of original language manuscripts is 49 of any one book. Plato wrote his Tetralogies between 427 and 347 BC. The earliest copy is from AD 900, 1,300 years later. We know of only 7 manuscripts.
In addition to the original language manuscripts of the New Testament we have, we also have 8,000 Latin Vulgates. We also have 9,000 earlier versions, that are translated into various languages like Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Nubian
When the original language manuscripts are compared with each other, we find there are around 200,000 variants in 10,000 different places. • Variances are, simply, disagreements between texts. • These variances can be divided between two categories: unintentional and intentional.
UNINTENTIONAL VARIANCES • These are comprised of misspellings, interpolations of words or lines, or are orthographical in nature. • Each time a word is misspelled in a certain point in the text it is counted as a variant. For example, if a certain word in a certain verse had the same misspelled word in 537 copies, that would count for 537 errors.
Orthographical variants refer to the way words are spelled differently in different places. The difference between “theatre” and “theater” is orthographical. Both spellings are correct, but each is preferred in different places. These would be considered errors.
INTENTIONAL VARIANCES • The other kinds of errors that are found in the New Testament are intentional errors. • They are deliberate changes to the text by the scribes. It was probably not the scribes intention, however, to corrupt the text. • They would sometimes try to correct what they saw as an error or to improve the text in some other way.
EXAMPLE Mark 1:1-3 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face,who will prepare your way,3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”
Mark 1:1-3 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the Prophets:“ Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,Who will prepare Your way before You.” 3 “ The voice of one crying in the wilderness:‘ Prepare the way of the LORD;Make His paths straight.’”
Regardless of the value of the techniques described, there are some parts of the New Testament where we are just not sure what the original said. About 400 words fall into this category and comprise about 40 verses. The content of these verses contain no basis for any essential doctrine of the Christian faith. As a result, scholars can recover 97 to 99 percent of the original content of the New Testament with certainty.
It turns out, rather than being a disadvantage by not having the original writings, we find ourselves in a position of good fortune. If we had the originals, a critic of the writings would only need to call into question one document. Instead, a critic need to deal with over 5,300 documents that agree substantially 99.5% of the time.
Since the New Testament documents history, and events that happened to real people in real places at certain points in time, one way to test its reliability would be to compare its writings to archaeological finds. Do archaeological finds corroborate the New Testament or contradict it?
With the rise of archaeology as a scientific field the reliability of the New Testament could be tested. Archaeology has repeatedly and consistently confirmed the New Testament. Much information about the Mediterranean world at the time that was only in the New Testament has now been corroborated by archaeological finds. Title, names of local rulers, time periods, and landmarks that were once thought to be in error or even fictional are now considered to be fact
FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS (AD 37-100) The most famous non-Christian sources is Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian in the employment of the Romans. In his writings are mentions of James (Jesus brother), John the Baptist, Herod the great, and many other people and events documented in the New Testament. Also he speaks of some of the great miracles that Jesus had done.
CORNELIUS TACITUS (AD 55-117) Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
PLINY THE YOUNGER I have asked them if they are Christians and if they admit it, I repeat the question a second time and a third time, with a warning of the punishment awaiting them. If they persist, I order them to be led away for execution; for, whatever the nature of there admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness and their unshakable obstinacy ought not to go unpunished…
They also declared that the sum total of their quilt or error amounted to no more than this: that they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately among themselves in honor of Christ as if to a god, and also to bind themselves by oath, not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery, and adultery….
This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture of two slave-women, whom they call deaconesses. I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths.
LUCIAN OF SAMOSATA "Christian’s still worship the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world…the poor wretches have convinced themselves, first and foremost, that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, in consequence of which they despise death and even willingly give themselves into custody; most of them. Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once, for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws. Therefore they despise all things indiscriminately and consider them common property, receiving such doctrines traditionally without any definite evidence.
FROM THESE 4 NON-CHRISTIAN’S WE SEE: • Jesus was a real person who lived in Palestine during the time of Tiberius and Pontius Pilate. • He had a reputation for working wonders and teaching radical doctrine. • He was worshiped as God. • His followers met on a certain day and exhibited extreme devotion, even to the point of torture and welcoming death. • They cared for each other and held a high ethical standard.
The word inspiration literally means “God-breathed.” It does not mean divine dictation where each author became a robot mechanically recording the words of God. Rather, God used the personalities, experiences, and talents of each writer to reveal Himself. It is because man is sinful and prone to error that God superintended the writing of Scripture.
But a claim to be an inspired Word of God is not unique to the New Testament. The Quran, for example, is among other books that also make this claim. However, the content of the books that claim inspiration cannot be reconciled with each other; they are incompatible. Either one of them is the inspired Word of God or all of them are uninspired.
JESUS • Jesus claimed that He was God incarnate, the Word made flesh. If it can be shown that Jesus made this claim, He surely must have also provided a way to authenticate the claim. • This authentication came in the form of the resurrection, which He Himself predicted. If these claims can be proven then we must take what Jesus said about the Old and New Testament seriously.
If it can be shown that Jesus claimed to be God, and if it can be shown to be reasonable to believe the resurrection is a historical event, then we have a good reason to believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. And if the Bible is inspired, then it is reasonable to believe that it also infallible. Infallibility is a by-product of inspiration.
CONCLUSION The New Testament commands a manuscript authority that far outstrips any other ancient writing and allows us to have a very high degree of certainty of the original text. The claim of inspiration that the New Testament makes is not an idle boast. It is a claim that can be investigated. Thus, it is no ordinary work of men, but the infallible, ever-reliable Word of God spoken through instruments of His choosing.
