Title: Rethinking
the Textual Reliability of the New Testament after the 2008 Greer-Heard forum
Author: Christopher Travis Haun for http://rethinker.net/biblia
Update: October 2008
Copyright: This rethink may be reproduced and distributed freely so long
as no changes or charges are made
Feedback: Please feel free to email any criticism, questions or
suggestions to cthaun[at]rethinker[dot]net
In April 2008 I attended and enjoyed
the Greer-Heard Conference
on the Textual Reliability of the New Testament documents. Six long months later I am only now getting
around to the attempt to articulate what I took away from the conference and how
it has impacted my rethinking. So while
not everything is perfectly fresh upon my memory, I did take good notes at the
time and will focus on what was of lasting impact to me. Despite the MP3 recordings of the conference
being inexpensive ($10 from here)
I probably won’t bother listening to the conference a second time.
I enjoyed having my mind stretched by
Bart Ehrman, Daniel Wallace, Michael Homes, David
Parker, Dale Martin, William Warren, and more.
For those of you who order the MP3s of the event, I’m the guy who,
during one of the the Q&A sessions, asked Daniel
Wallace the question about Mark 16, the pumiced out area of Codex Sinaticus, and multispectral imaging. (Something that had been weighing heavily
upon me for many months and which I’m happy to say Wallace answered quite to my
satisfaction.)
My personal interest in the debate
was hearing both Bart Ehrman (henceforth BE) and
Daniel Wallace (henceforth DW). Both
have had tremendous impacts upon my rethinking, my believing, my doubting, my questions.
In the 1990s I came across a copy
of Ehrman’s controversial book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.
What I remember most from that book at that time was the notion that the
scribes in the Greco-Roman Church (especially as it existed during and after
Emperor Constantine hijacked Christianity) edited texts of the New Testament to
enable them to more easily support their version of "Orthodoxy"
against heterodox groups like the Arians. This book caused some
serious rethinking for me and I can still feel the reverberations today. I was rather impressionable then. And my faith in the integrity of both the
Bible and Church (or the Church after Emperor Constantine rather) were both
deeply shaken. Another thing which
makes Ehrman fascinating to me is that he had a
background that is very similar to mine.
He grew up as an evangelical. He
graduated from an evangelical college.
And something(s) happened—something involving suffering and tragedy, I
think—which made him lose his evangelical faith. I too lost faith in evangelicalism as a system. Bart Ehrman played
a part in that. Even though I didn’t
ultimately land in the same place as Bart (i.e., apostate, shipwreck) I still
remain interested in considering what he has to say.
In 1996-7 I took some koine Greek courses at Tyndale.edu and, in the process,
quickly became impressed with Daniel Wallace’s Greek
Grammar Beyond the Basics.
It took away my ignorance about how Greek grammar works; it also helped
me realize that translation can be a really complicated challenge. This was important for me because many of my
doubts about the Bible which I had struggled with between 1991 and 1995 had
been partially because my young mind couldn’t properly understand what the
bible was really trying to say. Some
came from translation issues. Some came
from exegetical issues. Some came from
just immaturity on my part. In showing me a good glimpse of how meaning is based on usage, and how
usage is a fairly flexible thing, Wallace, among others, helped humble my proud
doubts and allow for rethinking to continue.
After four semesters of basic Greek and two semesters of advanced Greek,
I’d have to say that I now know that I really don’t know Greek! (But when I have the freedom to pick it up
again someday I’ll probably start with Wallace’s book.) I also have come to respect and enjoy Dan’s
“soapbox” writings at Bible.org. I think he has a lot of great insight to
offer. I should extend this to say that
I hope all those who take the Bible seriously should listen to Daniel (with
Berean styled methods of course). I’m
excited about his cool project of travelling the world to make high-quality
photographs of ancient bible manuscripts (http://www.csntm.org/).
But first I have to confess that only
in April 2008 did I finally learn how to properly pronounce “pericope.” After
reading about periscopes for years only now can I finally say it like the
pros: “Prick-eh-pee.” (Or if you have a strong
southern american-english accent, “Prick-ah-pay,” perhaps.) This gives you some idea of my lack of
expertise on the matter. I probably
first noticed the word periscope in 1990 or so when I discovered Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Volume II. I always assumed that it was pronounced
“per-uh-cope” or per-ee-uh-cope” but never bothered
to look it up. Never needed to since I
never once had conversations with a real person about periscopes.
One of the main questions the debates
seemed to surround was simply, whether or not the new
testament documents we have today are the same as what the apostles and
their coworkers wrote 2,000 years ago. I
suppose that is really what this rethink is about. After listening to the debates, do I believe
that the New Testament manuscripts which the English translations I use are
made from are essentially the same as the manuscripts the apostles and their
scribes penned? What percentage is
essentially original? We’ll come full
circle to this.
As I flew to New Orleans I poured
over a document Daniel Wallace had previously written in response to Bart Ehrman:
When DW first addressed the audience,
he basically read this document. He
seemed pained. Like a man out for some
justice and trying desperately to right a great wrong. .. Like a man who cared deeply about the public
perception of the reliability of the Bible and was wounded by Ehrman’s unfair undermining of the public confidence in the
New Testament. It seemed like he spoke
to try to expose Ehrman and, if possible, to get Ehrman to change.
That’s the way I took it. And I
appreciated that. Ultimately I agree
with Wallace. Ehrman
does seem to be one of those guys the Bible warned about. And in this scenario, Wallace seems like the episkopos whose job it is to try to rebuke and correct it.
Ehrman clearly didn’t see this coming. Ehrman responded by
saying, “I thought this forum was about the reliability of the New Testament
rather than the reliability of Bart Ehrman.” Ehrman was at
first clearly perturbed over having been attacked by Wallace. I felt bad for Ehrman
at first because he had been blindsided.
But then I got philosophical about it.
If you know you’re going to be in a debate with Daniel Wallace about a
specific topic, you should take a moment to open a search engine like
google.com and search for something like: Daniel Wallace Bart Ehrman reliability new testament. If I were going to be in a debate, I would
do this and more. The simplest of
searches would have allowed Bart to find the bible.org document that Wallace
had written long before the debate.
So my sympathy was replaced with disrespect that he was so cocky (?)
that he didn’t even prepare for this forum.
But after a few minutes he was able to regain
his composure and get his usual charm and charisma back. And there is no doubt that Bart Ehrman does have a charm.
I can see why he gets invitations to speak in such televised venues as
The Late Show. (?) He has a way of
speaking which is easy to listen to and easy to enjoy. He’s disarming. He’s likable.
It’s strangely easy to trust him while listening to him.
A huge part of the drama underlying
all this is what Ehrman has been doing to the
popular/public view of the Bible. He
essentially helps people who are ignorant about the Bible to not trust either
the church or the bible. One of Wallace’s
agendas was to try to begin to help pastors and Christian educators to nip this
gangrene in the bud. Because
it’s not fair.
It seems like Holy Blood, Holy Grail
didn’t really take in american
society until it was regurgitated by Dan Brown’s The Davinci
Code. After the Davinci
Code, it’s all the more common to hear people spout
the assumption that the Church invented the Bible, left books of the Bible out,
corrupted the Bible, etc. Ehrman has been surfing that wave.
Ehrman walked the tightrope well for
us. I’m not going to simply demonize
him. Although I don’t want him infecting
the ignorant public with his doubts, I also think he’s partially here to keep
us honest about the bible. Ultimately
I’m glad that he’s studying the ancient NT manuscripts and trying to figure out
what to do with them all. I think his
opinions are worth hearing out and considering by scholars.
The ultimate question was whether or
not the New Testament documents we have today are the same as what the apostles
and their coworkers wrote 2,000 years ago.
The ultimate takeaway for me was that after hearing from four or five
textual scholars, each of which fitting in different places along the spectrum
of conservative pole to liberal pole, there was ultimately agreement that a
very small percentage of the New Testament pericopes
were not original, were corrupt. For all practical purposes, yes. Yes we do have the ability to sort through
the 5,000 or more Greek manuscripts and piece our way back to something I can
call the original.
Technically we cannot know with
perfect certainty that the vellum that Paul wrote upon with his own hand is
certainly the exact same greek
letters that come from our earliest manuscripts from the 3rd
century. There is no way to prove
this. And this is something that Ehrman was camping on.
Well, I agree with Ehrman on that. You can’t know with absolute certainty. Ehrman has
demonstrated this David Hume type sense of empirical certainty on other
historical matters. However, where I
disagree with Ehrman is that I remain very reasonable
and still believe with confidence that our textual scholars have made their way
back to the pre-constantine texts. And, therefore, I can be confident that my
bible is essentially what the apostles wrote.
The exceptions are very few and very minor. The ultimate difference between Ehrman and Wallace may be, from one angle, a philosophical
judgment about epistemology. Wallace
can look at the manuscripts and can know that this is what the Apostles wrote, this is what the Apostles heard Jesus say. Ehrman can not do this. If
we could pin him and force it out of him I expect he would agree that it
probably is the same as the original.
But he doesn’t want to deal with probabilities. He seems to have adopted a philosophy of
empiricism that, when applied to anything in history, only allows for
agnosticism. In the tradition of David
Hume he wants to only know what he can know with absolute and empirical
certainty. He will not be able to fully
believe that we have “the original text” until he has a videotape unearthed
from the first century where Luke is filming Paul dictating the Letter to the
Romans, for example, to the scribe
Tertullian. Or a tape of Mark
writing as Peter dictated to him. This
will never happen of course. And as
long as Ehrman holds to his philosophical
presuppositions, he’ll never allow himself to believe what other reasonable men
believe.
The critique of David Hume ultimately
applies well to Bart Ehrman. If you’re on a golf course and you hear of
a man who says he just made three hole-in-ones in a row, how do you approach
this? Hume and Ehrman
would say, “While admitting that such an event is a theoretical possibility, it
is statistically unlikely. Therefore we
men who are champions of reason and the scientific method and empirical
verification cannot believe that it really happened.” While I too would be skeptical at first, I
would be at least open to the possibility.
Before I could believe it I would want to ask if the eyewitnesses saw it
too.
I think this may be the difference
between honest doubts and conscious unbelief.
To be continued….
(I have a lot of handwritten notes
that need to be transcribed still)
Mark
16:9-20
Longest. Probably
inauthentic.
No great commission here = Wasn’t completed! (contra some theonomist dude)
And, no, don’t drink poison and pick
up snakes.---think that came from Acts?
This is a relief to me.
Every living
creature? Francis of Assisi preaching to birds.
Ehrman says:
Mark ends awkwardly with 16:8. Scribes didn’t like that apparently so they
added their own ending to it. The ending
is too tidy. Rough
transition. Maybe the real ending got lost? Ehrman thinks it
ended with 16:8 because in Mark Jesus is always frustrated with his disciples.
Multispectral
CdoexB – wouldn’t have put in 12
verses? No, not enough room. Not nearly enough room. Proven by a few.
3 other gaps at end of book.
Therefore switching genres.
Western order = mark was last
Retained gap of western order.
John
7:53-8:11 (Pericope adulterae)
Longest. Probably
inauthentic. Woman
in adultery.
A big favorite.
Ehrman uses it to alarm people.
Cslewis used it well.
Seems to fit Jesus
well.
Kenneth Bailey has interesting things
to say about it.
You can’t make a Jesus movie without
John 7/8. Vocabulary is wrong. Placement
is wrong. This wasn’t an accident,
however. Might have
been a ‘paragraph?’
1st
John 5:7-8
Explicit trinity
passage.
Probably
inauthentic.
Not even printed in modern
translations at all.
Comes in at 1000
years after council of 381.
John 1:18
Is it the unique God or is it the
unique Son? Too hasty. Attacks
deity.
Mt 24:36
No one knows… NOR
THE SON. Overconfident
and overstating?
Hebrews 2:8-9
Jesus died for us “by God’s grace” vs “apart from God”
Xariti theou vs xwris theou
Hangs on to closely related 10th
century mss.
Probably a scribal
lapse.
Ehrman…
Mark 1:41 – compassion or angry?
The scribe would be more likely to change
from angry to compassionate rather than vice versa.
Conclusion: you cannot e sure if we
have copies x10 of the originals.
(Hume?)
Per Bailey, look at the Coptic and Syriac texts.
Wallace…
Mark 1:41
Healing a leper. What was the motivation for healing?
I am willing…. Or I am angry?
Or moved with compassion? Changes entire view of X in Mark? Overstated thesis. Jesus is an angry healer?
Fee:
Too often turns possibility into probability/certainty.
Wallace:
We agree on the text. We disagree on the inter
and all.
Two poles: Avoid total certainty
(like kjv only). And avoid total despair too.
True, we cannot have perfect
certainty. Postmodernism: only be
certain about uncertainty.
“Reasonable
accuracy” in the textbook with Metzger.
But Bart goes both ways.
How many variants? 140,000 words. 400,000 variants. What is 140,000 x 5700
compared to 400,000?
And what theological conclusions are
really at stake?
Pricope Bombs – Ehrman
just lights the fuse.
Pulpits need more academic honesty
for the sake of the flock.
Ehrman exaggerates and overstates and
misleads and is over certain. He
propagates uncertainty. He has
agendas. He mixes truth with error.
Bottom line is that the cardinal
doctrines are NOT affected!
He misuses Bengel
and Metzger.
Hebrews 5:7
Jesus was totally distraught?
Terrified? Freaked out? Only human? Just making way too much
out of it.
Ehrman:
In Luke Jesus is presented as clam.
In Mt he is freaked out? Luke gets rid
of the sweating of blood, for example.
Bread broken for
you? Cup for you?
In Luje –
without that no place in luke
where it suggests it is an atonement.
Where km suggests atonement, luke took it out. Except this las supper bit.
Luke had a different theology than mark.
Wallace has 3 tier bibliology?
1.
Innerancy / truth
2.
Faith
+ practice
3.
History
of God’s acts
John 1:1c
New light. Inclusion of the
article in Codex-L from 8th century. Ho logos. The god.
Bart thinks it has no article = God,
not god.
Original is anartharous.
Not surprising that scribes would add
o’ to help out later.
1.3 million pages
of text in greek
10,00 latin and Coptic and syriac
texts. 5,000 more
maybe?
20,000 handwritten MSS
1 million church father quotations
124 mss within 300 years of writing. They’re fragmentary but contains the whole of the NT several times over.
Paul’s epistles attest to
gospels. So in a way, we do have first
century texts.
This was perhaps my biggest takeaway from Daniel Wallace.
..
There are 124 manuscripts that we have which date to
within 300 years of the writing of the originals. They are all fragmentary but between the 124
of them they contain the entire New Testament several times over.
For Wallace, when he compares two of the oldest and most
valuable manuscripts he can visualize the common ancestor back to the early
second century.
P75 (Papyrus Bodmer XIV [Luke] and XV [John]) and Codex Sinaiticus (aka
Codex B).
P75 is 100-150 years older than
Sinaiticus but from a different stream.
“This proves a common ancestor in the
2nd century. A pure stream. Deep into the second century.”
I don’t have a problem saying that our bibles go back to the
early second century. The reason this is
cool to me is that it puts it long before the time of Emperor Constantine where
the State began paying the Church. This
takes away possibilities of conspiracy theories. There is no force capable of corrupting it to
any serious degree from the originals.
This was one of the things I needed to hear anyway. If I felt we were carrying bibles that only
went back to the fourth or fifth century, I’d be very concerned that the Constantinian church doctored the MSS heavily. I’d have trust issues. But getting back before that time solves my
doubts. As far as I’m concerned, we do
have the original manuscripts, for all practical purposes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_75
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaiticus
The western text was wild.
Alexandrian text looks controlled.
No conspiracy – just good practices.
The text was out of control = no way
to have a conspiracy
Ist Thess 2:7
Became GENTLE among you
Or
Became little CHILDREN among you
Or
We became HORSES among you
Less than 1% of the variants are
meaningful and viable. Even then, no big deal.
Rev 13:18 – 666 or 616?
The earliest fragment says 616.
Most fameous
instance per pbart
Mt 24:36
No one knows… nor the son…
Did scribes add them? Or remove them?
A protoorthodox response to heresy of adoptonism?
The earliest fathers didn’t have a
problem with this.
Irenaeus used it for humility.
Parallel in mk 13:32 – nor the son.
Bart’s rebuttal to Wallac…
Just comfort talk. Intelligence rather than
evidence.
Paul wrote galatina
churches. What if the scribe flubbed?
What if the copyists in Galatia made
flubs?
P46 is from 200 AD
We have no DIRECT EVIDENCE prior to
200.
We cannot KNOW FOR CERTAIN
Only 1% of variants matter?? One word can completely change the
meaning. Unsure why criteria is major
doctrine is affected is litmus teast. It transcends that. Doctrine isn’t changed by missing entire
books. Galatians was copied over and
over. Possible
changes. How do we know that we
have the original Galatians? We cant!
5 passages used for the preservation
doctrine in the westerminster confession.
1.
Those
five passages don’t work for that.
2.
2.
Doesn’t work for the OT!
End of mark. The abrupt ending is rarely used but may be
profound. – DW.
What are you going to do about it?
Eusebius went to v.8.
Rethink the missionary ending of mk 16. Pumiced or not? Abrupt ending okay?
Handling snakes in acts.
Drink poison? What??? Where did that come from.
Helpful scribe.
Implications for great commission.
It is not already complete, contra Demar.
We have 4 other better versus.
Do we have the “original text?”
Or is it a copy of cppy …telephone
game?
Both DW and BE agree that its close,
real close. 99.5%
A lot hangs on Bruce Metzger.
It seems that Bart Ehrman has inherited his
mantle. Bart got his PhD at
Princeton, under the direction of Metzger
http://www.deanburgonsociety.org/Preservation/metzger.htm