On the other hand, a functional equivalence translation is usually clear and quite understandable. But if the translators missed the point of the original (either intentionally or unintentionally) they may communicate an idea foreign to the biblical text.
Which Translation Is Best?
To the question: Which translation is best?—There can be no singular answer. I suggest that every Christian who is serious about studying the Bible own at least two translations. At least one formal equivalence (word-for-word) translation and one functional equivalence (phrase-for-phrase) translation. It would be even better to have two good functional equivalence translations because in this type of translation, the translator is also the interpreter. If the translator's interpretation is correct, it can only clarify the meaning of the text; if it is incorrect, then it only clarifies the interpretation of the translator!
The King James Version (KJV) and The New King James Version (NKJV)
The KJV has with good reason been termed, "the noblest monument of English prose" (RSV preface). Above all its rivals, the KJV has had the greatest impact in shaping the English language. It is a literary masterpiece. But, lest anyone wishes to revere it because it was "good enough for Jesus," or some such nonsense, we must remember that the KJV of today is not the KJV of 1611. It has undergone three revisions, incorporating more than 100,000 changes. Even with all these changes, much of the evidence from new manuscript discoveries has not been incorporated. The KJV was translated from later manuscripts that are less accurate to the original text of the Bible. Furthermore, there are over 300 words in the KJV that no longer mean what they meant in 1611. If one wishes to use a Bible that follows the same Greek and Hebrew texts as the KJV, I recommend the New King James Version (NKJV).
Revised Standard Version (RSV) and New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
The RSV was completed in 1952 and was intended to be, in part, a revision of the KJV. Its attempt to be a fairly literal translation makes its wording still archaic at times. The NRSV follows the same principle of translation, though it has been updated based on new manuscript discoveries, exegetical insights, and linguistic theories. Much of the difficult wording has been made clearer, and gender-inclusive language has been incorporated. At times, this is very helpful; at other times, it is misleading.
The American Standard Version (ASV) and The New American Standard Bible (NASB)
Like the RSV, the ASV and NASB were intended to be a revision of the KJV. However, there are three major differences between the RSV and the NASB: (1) the NASB is less archaic in its wording; (2) its translators were more theologically conservative than the RSV translators; and (3) because of the translators' desire to adhere as closely as possible to the wording of the original, the translation often contains stilted and wooden English.
New English Bible (NEB) and the Revised English Bible (REB)
The neb was completed in 1971, after a quarter of a century of labor. It marks a new milestone in translation: it is not a revision of the KJV, nor of any other version, but a brand new translation. It is a phrase-for-phrase translation. Unfortunately, sometimes the biases of the translators creep into the text. The REB follows the same pattern as the neb: excellent English, though not always faithful to the Greek and Hebrew.
onsdag 29 september 2010
Choosing a Bible Translation
Before the year 1881, you had three choices for an English Bible translation: the KJV, the KJV, or the KJV. Obviously, this is no longer the case. How did the King James Version get dethroned? Which translation is best today? Are any of the modern translations faithful to the original?
What is a Faithful Translation?
Many people today think that a faithful translation of the Bible means a "word-for-word" translation. If the original has a noun, they expect a noun in the translation. If the original has sixteen words, they don't want to see seventeen in the translation. This type of translation is called "formal equivalence." The KJV, ASV and NASB come the closest to this ideal.
On the other end of the spectrum is a "phrase-for-phrase" translation, also known as a "dynamic equivalence" or, more recently, as a "functional equivalence" translation. A dynamic equivalence translation is not as concerned with the grammatical form of the original language, as it is with the meaning of the original. It allows more room for interpretation and is easier to understand. The NIV and the NEB follow this philosophy.
The Difficulty of Translating a Language
Anyone who has learned a second language knows that a word-for-word translation is impossible much or most of the time. Idioms and colloquialisms in a language need to be paraphrased to make sense in another language.
Even the KJV translators realized this. In a couple of places in the Old Testament, the Hebrew text literally reads, "God's nostrils enlarged." But, the KJV translates this as, "God became angry"—which is what the expression means. In Matthew 1:18 the KJV says that Mary was found to be with child. But the Greek is quite different and quite graphic: "Mary was having it in the belly!" In many places in Paul's letters, the KJV reads, "God forbid!" But the original has neither "God" nor "forbid." Literally, it says, "May it never be!" (as most modern translations render it).
Therefore, when we speak of a translation being faithful to the original, we need to clarify the question: Is it faithfulness to form? Or, faithfulness to meaning? Sometimes faithfulness to one involves lack of fidelity to the other. There are problems with each of the translation philosophies. The KJV, with its attempted fidelity to form, does not make sense in some passages. (In 1611, these instances did not make sense either). Likewise, The NASB often contains wooden, stilted English.
On the other hand, functional equivalence translations sometimes go too far in their interpretation of a particular phrase. The NIV, in Eph 6:6, tells slaves to "Obey (their masters) not only to win their favor." However, the word "only" is not in the Greek, and I suspect that Paul did not mean to imply it either. This reveals one of the problems with dynamic equivalence translations: the translators don't always know whether their interpretation is correct. The addition of one interpretively-driven word can change the entire meaning of a clause or a passage.
Some versions don't interpret—they distort. Some are notorious for omitting references to Christ's blood, or for attempting to deny his deity. In these instances, the translators are neither faithful to the form or the meaning. They have perverted the Word of God.
Yet, functional equivalence translators who are honest with the text often make things very clear. In Phil 2:6, for example, the NIV tells us that Jesus was "in [his] very nature God." But most formal equivalence translations state that he was in the form of God. The problem with these formally correct translations is that they are misleading: the Greek word for "form" here means essence or nature.
A formal equivalence translation lets the reader interpret for himself or herself. However, the reader often does not have the background information or the tools to interpret accurately. The net result is that he or she runs the risk of misunderstanding the text, simply because their translation was not clear enough.
What is a Faithful Translation?
Many people today think that a faithful translation of the Bible means a "word-for-word" translation. If the original has a noun, they expect a noun in the translation. If the original has sixteen words, they don't want to see seventeen in the translation. This type of translation is called "formal equivalence." The KJV, ASV and NASB come the closest to this ideal.
On the other end of the spectrum is a "phrase-for-phrase" translation, also known as a "dynamic equivalence" or, more recently, as a "functional equivalence" translation. A dynamic equivalence translation is not as concerned with the grammatical form of the original language, as it is with the meaning of the original. It allows more room for interpretation and is easier to understand. The NIV and the NEB follow this philosophy.
The Difficulty of Translating a Language
Anyone who has learned a second language knows that a word-for-word translation is impossible much or most of the time. Idioms and colloquialisms in a language need to be paraphrased to make sense in another language.
Even the KJV translators realized this. In a couple of places in the Old Testament, the Hebrew text literally reads, "God's nostrils enlarged." But, the KJV translates this as, "God became angry"—which is what the expression means. In Matthew 1:18 the KJV says that Mary was found to be with child. But the Greek is quite different and quite graphic: "Mary was having it in the belly!" In many places in Paul's letters, the KJV reads, "God forbid!" But the original has neither "God" nor "forbid." Literally, it says, "May it never be!" (as most modern translations render it).
Therefore, when we speak of a translation being faithful to the original, we need to clarify the question: Is it faithfulness to form? Or, faithfulness to meaning? Sometimes faithfulness to one involves lack of fidelity to the other. There are problems with each of the translation philosophies. The KJV, with its attempted fidelity to form, does not make sense in some passages. (In 1611, these instances did not make sense either). Likewise, The NASB often contains wooden, stilted English.
On the other hand, functional equivalence translations sometimes go too far in their interpretation of a particular phrase. The NIV, in Eph 6:6, tells slaves to "Obey (their masters) not only to win their favor." However, the word "only" is not in the Greek, and I suspect that Paul did not mean to imply it either. This reveals one of the problems with dynamic equivalence translations: the translators don't always know whether their interpretation is correct. The addition of one interpretively-driven word can change the entire meaning of a clause or a passage.
Some versions don't interpret—they distort. Some are notorious for omitting references to Christ's blood, or for attempting to deny his deity. In these instances, the translators are neither faithful to the form or the meaning. They have perverted the Word of God.
Yet, functional equivalence translators who are honest with the text often make things very clear. In Phil 2:6, for example, the NIV tells us that Jesus was "in [his] very nature God." But most formal equivalence translations state that he was in the form of God. The problem with these formally correct translations is that they are misleading: the Greek word for "form" here means essence or nature.
A formal equivalence translation lets the reader interpret for himself or herself. However, the reader often does not have the background information or the tools to interpret accurately. The net result is that he or she runs the risk of misunderstanding the text, simply because their translation was not clear enough.
The Bible: God's One and Only Published Work
Something very sad is happening in contemporary Christianity. People are just not giving the Bible the attention it deserves. Research shows that the number of Christians who read the Bible on a daily or even regular basis is dropping at an alarming rate. Nowadays, it seems, many view Scripture not as a book to read regularly but as a text book that one dips into when wishing to remind oneself of the basis of the faith, or when seeking an answer to some perplexing spiritual issue. However we look at it there is little doubt that the Bible is not being viewed by many of today’s Christians with the same degree of importance as it once was.
There are a number of reasons for this. Liberal Christianity – which puts it own views above God’s views – has attacked the authority and sufficiency of the Bible causing many to believe that whilst the Bible is a good book, even a great book, it is not necessarily God’s book, in the sense that He is its Author. Whatever degree of inspiration may be claimed for the Bible (they say) it is no higher than that which can be claimed for other sacred works such as Paradise Lost or Dante’s Inferno.
But before we spend too long focusing on what is happening in liberal Christianity we must not overlook the fact that something sinister is going on in many of our evangelical/charismatic churches too. In a lot of these communities (thankfully not all) the Christian life is portrayed as less a matter of assimilating truth from the Bible than experiencing a spiritual high. The leaders of such churches, albeit unwittingly, may be conveying the message that the Christian life is more about experiencing something than learning something.
Duncan Leighton, a minister in New Zealand writing in Evangelism Today (August 2000 edition) spoke for all who have a concern about this when he wrote:
There are many who feel that church has become an irrelevance. Music dominates. Sentimental jingles have replaced largely doctrinal-teaching hymns which prepare people for the uncertainties of life. The messages are often pick and mix affairs with the Bible treated like a Promise Box full of goodies with everything nice inside. Much of the resulting doctrine is built upon little more than clever observations and personal experience rather than upon the timeless revelations of God.
Pastors and Christian leaders who do not hold up to their congregations the importance of getting into the Bible for themselves may one day be in the position of pastoring communities who are charismatically sophisticated but biblically illiterate. Whilst I am all for genuine spiritual encounters I have no hesitation in saying that faith and certainty are anchored more to historical and biblical fact than they are to ecstatic spiritual experiences.
Another reason why regular reading of the Bible is dropping amongst today’s community of Christians may be due to the fact that people in general don’t read as much as they once did. Publishers tell us that bulky books are going out of fashion because people, especially the younger generation, have neither the time nor inclination to read them. Thin paperbacks are therefore the order of the day and, as a result, there is a good deal of literary slimming going on. The Bible is a bulky book. It has about 773,000 words, 1,189 chapters and 66 books. What a book! For this reason many people find the thought of ploughing through it from start to finish somewhat daunting.
However, I think the real reason for this drop-off in Bible reading turns on how the Bible is viewed. One’s convictions on the character and nature of the book makes an enormous difference in one’s approach to it. If one believes, for example, that the Old Testament is nothing more than a fragmentary record of a group of unimportant Semetic tribes, and the New Testament nothing more than the record of a good man named Jesus of Nazareth (and some of His chief disciples) whose main message was that we should love our neighbours as ourselves, then the Bible deserves no exceptional respect. But if a man or woman believes, on the other hand, that, though the Bible was written over a period of fifteen hundred years by about forty penmen, but was actually authored by God, and is His one and only published work, then he or she will come to the book in a completely different frame of mind.
Convinced Christians regard the Bible not as an ordinary book and are teachable before it. They approach it not with thoughts about whether they are in contact with God’s Word (that issue has already been settled) but only with questions about how God’s message relates to their present situation and how they may best translate that message into their daily lives.
In the days when I was a pastor and a counsellor, whenever anyone would come to me complaining that the Bible was a difficult book to get into, I would begin not by attempting to lay out for them a reading plan or strategy but I would try to help them understand the nature of the book itself.
I would start off by saying something like this: nearly every brand of religion is based on a book. From the Book of Mormon to the Koran of Islam there are many illustrations of this fact. That is supremely true of the Christian faith also. It, too, is based on a book, a Holy Book called the Bible. Whilst all well-meaning Christians would speak with profound respect of the sacred writings of other faiths and would not deny the value of their ethical and moral principles, the Bible is in a category all of its own.
As Dr W E Sangster put it:
Whatever degree of divine inspiration may attach to other Christian writings (The Imitation of Christ, The Pilgrim’s Progress and so on) the Bible is unique in that it contains the only record of God’s incarnate life, the spiritual pilgrimage of the race among whom He was born, and the birth of the Christian Church. Scripture is not the first of a group; it is in a classification alone. It is not the leader of equals; it is a book apart.
Listen to what the Bible has to say about itself:
…prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).
It says this also:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16).
And this:
…we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe (1 Thess 2:13).
Just as in the mystery of the Incarnation God linked Himself to humanity, so in the mystery of the inspiration of Holy Scripture God made use of human channels, yet without surrendering His divine authority or permitting the book to become the word of man rather than the Word of God. Both men and message were inspired.
If, when reading the Bible, we are in contact with God’s eternal Word, how can Christians not help then but study it daily, store their memories with precious fragments of it, learn its highways and its byways, and make its reverent reading a prime part of every day? Not to do so almost borders on unbelief.
One great Welsh preacher, John Morgan, said: “The point at which all Christians know they are growing is when they desire to have the mind of Christ in their mind.” This being so, to imagine one can know the mind of Christ without soaking in the book where alone it is disclosed is folly of the first order.
One of the great passions of my life has been to encourage people to get into the Scriptures on a daily basis. In 1965 I began to encourage people to get into the Bible by writing a series of daily Bible notes entitled Every Day with Jesus. This year (AD 2000) I celebrate the 35th anniversary of that publication which began with distribution amongst a handful of people and is now read in 150 countries of the world by nearly half a million people every day.
In more recent days I have been gripped by a deep concern to encourage every Christian in the world to read through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime. Many Christians, I find, have their favourite passages of books but, valuable though it is to study them and meditate on them, just to focus on these and nothing else means they have a truncated version of Scripture composed of their favourite passages, but missing out many other parts of the Bible. The only way to make sure such passages are not missed is to go systematically through the Bible and take in its message as a whole.
Some years ago I sat down with a colleague and planned a strategy of reading through the Bible in one year chronologically, that is following the events of the Bible as they happened. The programme is called Cover to Cover – through the Bible following the events of Scripture as they happened.
At the beginning of the year 2000 I set a target of getting one million people around the world to commit themselves to making the first year of the new millennium the year when they would read through the whole of Scripture. Now as we approach the end of the year, over half a million people have taken up the challenge, and there is evidence that in the year 2001 that number may well be exceeded.
The letters I receive from people who are participants in this programme are quite incredible. One person said: ”What began as a duty turned out to be one of the greatest delights of my life.” Another said: “Scriptures I have heard preached on came alive in a new way as I saw them not only in the context of the chapter or even the book but set against the great backdrop of the whole of God’s Word.” Still another: “Delving into the Word of God in this way (chronologically) has given me a sense of God’s Story in a way I have never seen before. Truly history is His Story.” With all the conviction of my being I say this: every Christian I believe would profit in ways beyond their utmost imagination from reading through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime.
To quote Dr W E Sangster again:
The tooth of time gnaws at all books but the Bible. It is relevant to every age. It bears the living water that comes sweet and untainted to the thirsting souls of each succeeding age. It has passed through critical fires no other volume has suffered and its spiritual truth has endured the flames and come out without as much as the smell of burning.
Nothing fortifies the soul, prepares it for the day and tones up the spiritual and mental health of a person like time spent in the Bible. The old aphorism is as true now as it was when it was first uttered: The more your Bible is falling apart the more likely it is that you are a “together” person.
H J Wilmot-Buxton, a Christian writer tells this story:
I heard of a young man who was left heir to his father’s property but, when the father died, another disputed the son’s claim. The matter came into the law-court and the young man was told that if he could produce his father’s will, his inheritance would be secure. One day he opened the family Bible, seeking comfort and guidance in his troubles, and from between its pages a paper fell out. It was his father’s will which showed quite clearly the property was distinctly left to him.
Spiritually speaking, that sort of thing is a regular occurrence amongst devoted readers of the Bible. Like the psalmist they are able to say: “I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:162).
Let the last word be with the patriarch Job who said: “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12, NKJ). I wonder how many of us see time spent in the Bible as more important than our daily food? If we believe that the Bible is truly God’s one and only published work, and is in a most special sense the Word of God, then we will count any day ill-spent which does not include some time spent perusing its pages.
There are a number of reasons for this. Liberal Christianity – which puts it own views above God’s views – has attacked the authority and sufficiency of the Bible causing many to believe that whilst the Bible is a good book, even a great book, it is not necessarily God’s book, in the sense that He is its Author. Whatever degree of inspiration may be claimed for the Bible (they say) it is no higher than that which can be claimed for other sacred works such as Paradise Lost or Dante’s Inferno.
But before we spend too long focusing on what is happening in liberal Christianity we must not overlook the fact that something sinister is going on in many of our evangelical/charismatic churches too. In a lot of these communities (thankfully not all) the Christian life is portrayed as less a matter of assimilating truth from the Bible than experiencing a spiritual high. The leaders of such churches, albeit unwittingly, may be conveying the message that the Christian life is more about experiencing something than learning something.
Duncan Leighton, a minister in New Zealand writing in Evangelism Today (August 2000 edition) spoke for all who have a concern about this when he wrote:
There are many who feel that church has become an irrelevance. Music dominates. Sentimental jingles have replaced largely doctrinal-teaching hymns which prepare people for the uncertainties of life. The messages are often pick and mix affairs with the Bible treated like a Promise Box full of goodies with everything nice inside. Much of the resulting doctrine is built upon little more than clever observations and personal experience rather than upon the timeless revelations of God.
Pastors and Christian leaders who do not hold up to their congregations the importance of getting into the Bible for themselves may one day be in the position of pastoring communities who are charismatically sophisticated but biblically illiterate. Whilst I am all for genuine spiritual encounters I have no hesitation in saying that faith and certainty are anchored more to historical and biblical fact than they are to ecstatic spiritual experiences.
Another reason why regular reading of the Bible is dropping amongst today’s community of Christians may be due to the fact that people in general don’t read as much as they once did. Publishers tell us that bulky books are going out of fashion because people, especially the younger generation, have neither the time nor inclination to read them. Thin paperbacks are therefore the order of the day and, as a result, there is a good deal of literary slimming going on. The Bible is a bulky book. It has about 773,000 words, 1,189 chapters and 66 books. What a book! For this reason many people find the thought of ploughing through it from start to finish somewhat daunting.
However, I think the real reason for this drop-off in Bible reading turns on how the Bible is viewed. One’s convictions on the character and nature of the book makes an enormous difference in one’s approach to it. If one believes, for example, that the Old Testament is nothing more than a fragmentary record of a group of unimportant Semetic tribes, and the New Testament nothing more than the record of a good man named Jesus of Nazareth (and some of His chief disciples) whose main message was that we should love our neighbours as ourselves, then the Bible deserves no exceptional respect. But if a man or woman believes, on the other hand, that, though the Bible was written over a period of fifteen hundred years by about forty penmen, but was actually authored by God, and is His one and only published work, then he or she will come to the book in a completely different frame of mind.
Convinced Christians regard the Bible not as an ordinary book and are teachable before it. They approach it not with thoughts about whether they are in contact with God’s Word (that issue has already been settled) but only with questions about how God’s message relates to their present situation and how they may best translate that message into their daily lives.
In the days when I was a pastor and a counsellor, whenever anyone would come to me complaining that the Bible was a difficult book to get into, I would begin not by attempting to lay out for them a reading plan or strategy but I would try to help them understand the nature of the book itself.
I would start off by saying something like this: nearly every brand of religion is based on a book. From the Book of Mormon to the Koran of Islam there are many illustrations of this fact. That is supremely true of the Christian faith also. It, too, is based on a book, a Holy Book called the Bible. Whilst all well-meaning Christians would speak with profound respect of the sacred writings of other faiths and would not deny the value of their ethical and moral principles, the Bible is in a category all of its own.
As Dr W E Sangster put it:
Whatever degree of divine inspiration may attach to other Christian writings (The Imitation of Christ, The Pilgrim’s Progress and so on) the Bible is unique in that it contains the only record of God’s incarnate life, the spiritual pilgrimage of the race among whom He was born, and the birth of the Christian Church. Scripture is not the first of a group; it is in a classification alone. It is not the leader of equals; it is a book apart.
Listen to what the Bible has to say about itself:
…prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).
It says this also:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16).
And this:
…we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe (1 Thess 2:13).
Just as in the mystery of the Incarnation God linked Himself to humanity, so in the mystery of the inspiration of Holy Scripture God made use of human channels, yet without surrendering His divine authority or permitting the book to become the word of man rather than the Word of God. Both men and message were inspired.
If, when reading the Bible, we are in contact with God’s eternal Word, how can Christians not help then but study it daily, store their memories with precious fragments of it, learn its highways and its byways, and make its reverent reading a prime part of every day? Not to do so almost borders on unbelief.
One great Welsh preacher, John Morgan, said: “The point at which all Christians know they are growing is when they desire to have the mind of Christ in their mind.” This being so, to imagine one can know the mind of Christ without soaking in the book where alone it is disclosed is folly of the first order.
One of the great passions of my life has been to encourage people to get into the Scriptures on a daily basis. In 1965 I began to encourage people to get into the Bible by writing a series of daily Bible notes entitled Every Day with Jesus. This year (AD 2000) I celebrate the 35th anniversary of that publication which began with distribution amongst a handful of people and is now read in 150 countries of the world by nearly half a million people every day.
In more recent days I have been gripped by a deep concern to encourage every Christian in the world to read through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime. Many Christians, I find, have their favourite passages of books but, valuable though it is to study them and meditate on them, just to focus on these and nothing else means they have a truncated version of Scripture composed of their favourite passages, but missing out many other parts of the Bible. The only way to make sure such passages are not missed is to go systematically through the Bible and take in its message as a whole.
Some years ago I sat down with a colleague and planned a strategy of reading through the Bible in one year chronologically, that is following the events of the Bible as they happened. The programme is called Cover to Cover – through the Bible following the events of Scripture as they happened.
At the beginning of the year 2000 I set a target of getting one million people around the world to commit themselves to making the first year of the new millennium the year when they would read through the whole of Scripture. Now as we approach the end of the year, over half a million people have taken up the challenge, and there is evidence that in the year 2001 that number may well be exceeded.
The letters I receive from people who are participants in this programme are quite incredible. One person said: ”What began as a duty turned out to be one of the greatest delights of my life.” Another said: “Scriptures I have heard preached on came alive in a new way as I saw them not only in the context of the chapter or even the book but set against the great backdrop of the whole of God’s Word.” Still another: “Delving into the Word of God in this way (chronologically) has given me a sense of God’s Story in a way I have never seen before. Truly history is His Story.” With all the conviction of my being I say this: every Christian I believe would profit in ways beyond their utmost imagination from reading through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime.
To quote Dr W E Sangster again:
The tooth of time gnaws at all books but the Bible. It is relevant to every age. It bears the living water that comes sweet and untainted to the thirsting souls of each succeeding age. It has passed through critical fires no other volume has suffered and its spiritual truth has endured the flames and come out without as much as the smell of burning.
Nothing fortifies the soul, prepares it for the day and tones up the spiritual and mental health of a person like time spent in the Bible. The old aphorism is as true now as it was when it was first uttered: The more your Bible is falling apart the more likely it is that you are a “together” person.
H J Wilmot-Buxton, a Christian writer tells this story:
I heard of a young man who was left heir to his father’s property but, when the father died, another disputed the son’s claim. The matter came into the law-court and the young man was told that if he could produce his father’s will, his inheritance would be secure. One day he opened the family Bible, seeking comfort and guidance in his troubles, and from between its pages a paper fell out. It was his father’s will which showed quite clearly the property was distinctly left to him.
Spiritually speaking, that sort of thing is a regular occurrence amongst devoted readers of the Bible. Like the psalmist they are able to say: “I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:162).
Let the last word be with the patriarch Job who said: “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12, NKJ). I wonder how many of us see time spent in the Bible as more important than our daily food? If we believe that the Bible is truly God’s one and only published work, and is in a most special sense the Word of God, then we will count any day ill-spent which does not include some time spent perusing its pages.
The Bible: God's One and Only Published Work...Continued from page 3
H J Wilmot-Buxton, a Christian writer tells this story:
I heard of a young man who was left heir to his father’s property but, when the father died, another disputed the son’s claim. The matter came into the law-court and the young man was told that if he could produce his father’s will, his inheritance would be secure. One day he opened the family Bible, seeking comfort and guidance in his troubles, and from between its pages a paper fell out. It was his father’s will which showed quite clearly the property was distinctly left to him.
Spiritually speaking, that sort of thing is a regular occurrence amongst devoted readers of the Bible. Like the psalmist they are able to say: “I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:162).
Let the last word be with the patriarch Job who said: “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12, NKJ). I wonder how many of us see time spent in the Bible as more important than our daily food? If we believe that the Bible is truly God’s one and only published work, and is in a most special sense the Word of God, then we will count any day ill-spent which does not include some time spent perusing its pages.
I heard of a young man who was left heir to his father’s property but, when the father died, another disputed the son’s claim. The matter came into the law-court and the young man was told that if he could produce his father’s will, his inheritance would be secure. One day he opened the family Bible, seeking comfort and guidance in his troubles, and from between its pages a paper fell out. It was his father’s will which showed quite clearly the property was distinctly left to him.
Spiritually speaking, that sort of thing is a regular occurrence amongst devoted readers of the Bible. Like the psalmist they are able to say: “I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:162).
Let the last word be with the patriarch Job who said: “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12, NKJ). I wonder how many of us see time spent in the Bible as more important than our daily food? If we believe that the Bible is truly God’s one and only published work, and is in a most special sense the Word of God, then we will count any day ill-spent which does not include some time spent perusing its pages.
The Bible: God's One and Only Published Work...Continued from page 2
One great Welsh preacher, John Morgan, said: “The point at which all Christians know they are growing is when they desire to have the mind of Christ in their mind.” This being so, to imagine one can know the mind of Christ without soaking in the book where alone it is disclosed is folly of the first order.
One of the great passions of my life has been to encourage people to get into the Scriptures on a daily basis. In 1965 I began to encourage people to get into the Bible by writing a series of daily Bible notes entitled Every Day with Jesus. This year (AD 2000) I celebrate the 35th anniversary of that publication which began with distribution amongst a handful of people and is now read in 150 countries of the world by nearly half a million people every day.
In more recent days I have been gripped by a deep concern to encourage every Christian in the world to read through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime. Many Christians, I find, have their favourite passages of books but, valuable though it is to study them and meditate on them, just to focus on these and nothing else means they have a truncated version of Scripture composed of their favourite passages, but missing out many other parts of the Bible. The only way to make sure such passages are not missed is to go systematically through the Bible and take in its message as a whole.
Some years ago I sat down with a colleague and planned a strategy of reading through the Bible in one year chronologically, that is following the events of the Bible as they happened. The programme is called Cover to Cover – through the Bible following the events of Scripture as they happened.
At the beginning of the year 2000 I set a target of getting one million people around the world to commit themselves to making the first year of the new millennium the year when they would read through the whole of Scripture. Now as we approach the end of the year, over half a million people have taken up the challenge, and there is evidence that in the year 2001 that number may well be exceeded.
The letters I receive from people who are participants in this programme are quite incredible. One person said: ”What began as a duty turned out to be one of the greatest delights of my life.” Another said: “Scriptures I have heard preached on came alive in a new way as I saw them not only in the context of the chapter or even the book but set against the great backdrop of the whole of God’s Word.” Still another: “Delving into the Word of God in this way (chronologically) has given me a sense of God’s Story in a way I have never seen before. Truly history is His Story.” With all the conviction of my being I say this: every Christian I believe would profit in ways beyond their utmost imagination from reading through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime.
To quote Dr W E Sangster again:
The tooth of time gnaws at all books but the Bible. It is relevant to every age. It bears the living water that comes sweet and untainted to the thirsting souls of each succeeding age. It has passed through critical fires no other volume has suffered and its spiritual truth has endured the flames and come out without as much as the smell of burning.
Nothing fortifies the soul, prepares it for the day and tones up the spiritual and mental health of a person like time spent in the Bible. The old aphorism is as true now as it was when it was first uttered: The more your Bible is falling apart the more likely it is that you are a “together” person.
One of the great passions of my life has been to encourage people to get into the Scriptures on a daily basis. In 1965 I began to encourage people to get into the Bible by writing a series of daily Bible notes entitled Every Day with Jesus. This year (AD 2000) I celebrate the 35th anniversary of that publication which began with distribution amongst a handful of people and is now read in 150 countries of the world by nearly half a million people every day.
In more recent days I have been gripped by a deep concern to encourage every Christian in the world to read through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime. Many Christians, I find, have their favourite passages of books but, valuable though it is to study them and meditate on them, just to focus on these and nothing else means they have a truncated version of Scripture composed of their favourite passages, but missing out many other parts of the Bible. The only way to make sure such passages are not missed is to go systematically through the Bible and take in its message as a whole.
Some years ago I sat down with a colleague and planned a strategy of reading through the Bible in one year chronologically, that is following the events of the Bible as they happened. The programme is called Cover to Cover – through the Bible following the events of Scripture as they happened.
At the beginning of the year 2000 I set a target of getting one million people around the world to commit themselves to making the first year of the new millennium the year when they would read through the whole of Scripture. Now as we approach the end of the year, over half a million people have taken up the challenge, and there is evidence that in the year 2001 that number may well be exceeded.
The letters I receive from people who are participants in this programme are quite incredible. One person said: ”What began as a duty turned out to be one of the greatest delights of my life.” Another said: “Scriptures I have heard preached on came alive in a new way as I saw them not only in the context of the chapter or even the book but set against the great backdrop of the whole of God’s Word.” Still another: “Delving into the Word of God in this way (chronologically) has given me a sense of God’s Story in a way I have never seen before. Truly history is His Story.” With all the conviction of my being I say this: every Christian I believe would profit in ways beyond their utmost imagination from reading through the whole of the Bible at least once in their lifetime.
To quote Dr W E Sangster again:
The tooth of time gnaws at all books but the Bible. It is relevant to every age. It bears the living water that comes sweet and untainted to the thirsting souls of each succeeding age. It has passed through critical fires no other volume has suffered and its spiritual truth has endured the flames and come out without as much as the smell of burning.
Nothing fortifies the soul, prepares it for the day and tones up the spiritual and mental health of a person like time spent in the Bible. The old aphorism is as true now as it was when it was first uttered: The more your Bible is falling apart the more likely it is that you are a “together” person.
The Bible: God's One and Only Published Work...Continued from page 1
Convinced Christians regard the Bible not as an ordinary book and are teachable before it. They approach it not with thoughts about whether they are in contact with God’s Word (that issue has already been settled) but only with questions about how God’s message relates to their present situation and how they may best translate that message into their daily lives.
In the days when I was a pastor and a counsellor, whenever anyone would come to me complaining that the Bible was a difficult book to get into, I would begin not by attempting to lay out for them a reading plan or strategy but I would try to help them understand the nature of the book itself.
I would start off by saying something like this: nearly every brand of religion is based on a book. From the Book of Mormon to the Koran of Islam there are many illustrations of this fact. That is supremely true of the Christian faith also. It, too, is based on a book, a Holy Book called the Bible. Whilst all well-meaning Christians would speak with profound respect of the sacred writings of other faiths and would not deny the value of their ethical and moral principles, the Bible is in a category all of its own.
As Dr W E Sangster put it:
Whatever degree of divine inspiration may attach to other Christian writings (The Imitation of Christ, The Pilgrim’s Progress and so on) the Bible is unique in that it contains the only record of God’s incarnate life, the spiritual pilgrimage of the race among whom He was born, and the birth of the Christian Church. Scripture is not the first of a group; it is in a classification alone. It is not the leader of equals; it is a book apart.
Listen to what the Bible has to say about itself:
…prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).
It says this also:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16).
And this:
…we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe (1 Thess 2:13).
Just as in the mystery of the Incarnation God linked Himself to humanity, so in the mystery of the inspiration of Holy Scripture God made use of human channels, yet without surrendering His divine authority or permitting the book to become the word of man rather than the Word of God. Both men and message were inspired.
If, when reading the Bible, we are in contact with God’s eternal Word, how can Christians not help then but study it daily, store their memories with precious fragments of it, learn its highways and its byways, and make its reverent reading a prime part of every day? Not to do so almost borders on unbelief.
In the days when I was a pastor and a counsellor, whenever anyone would come to me complaining that the Bible was a difficult book to get into, I would begin not by attempting to lay out for them a reading plan or strategy but I would try to help them understand the nature of the book itself.
I would start off by saying something like this: nearly every brand of religion is based on a book. From the Book of Mormon to the Koran of Islam there are many illustrations of this fact. That is supremely true of the Christian faith also. It, too, is based on a book, a Holy Book called the Bible. Whilst all well-meaning Christians would speak with profound respect of the sacred writings of other faiths and would not deny the value of their ethical and moral principles, the Bible is in a category all of its own.
As Dr W E Sangster put it:
Whatever degree of divine inspiration may attach to other Christian writings (The Imitation of Christ, The Pilgrim’s Progress and so on) the Bible is unique in that it contains the only record of God’s incarnate life, the spiritual pilgrimage of the race among whom He was born, and the birth of the Christian Church. Scripture is not the first of a group; it is in a classification alone. It is not the leader of equals; it is a book apart.
Listen to what the Bible has to say about itself:
…prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).
It says this also:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:16).
And this:
…we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe (1 Thess 2:13).
Just as in the mystery of the Incarnation God linked Himself to humanity, so in the mystery of the inspiration of Holy Scripture God made use of human channels, yet without surrendering His divine authority or permitting the book to become the word of man rather than the Word of God. Both men and message were inspired.
If, when reading the Bible, we are in contact with God’s eternal Word, how can Christians not help then but study it daily, store their memories with precious fragments of it, learn its highways and its byways, and make its reverent reading a prime part of every day? Not to do so almost borders on unbelief.
The Bible: God's One and Only Published Work
Something very sad is happening in contemporary Christianity. People are just not giving the Bible the attention it deserves. Research shows that the number of Christians who read the Bible on a daily or even regular basis is dropping at an alarming rate. Nowadays, it seems, many view Scripture not as a book to read regularly but as a text book that one dips into when wishing to remind oneself of the basis of the faith, or when seeking an answer to some perplexing spiritual issue. However we look at it there is little doubt that the Bible is not being viewed by many of today’s Christians with the same degree of importance as it once was.
There are a number of reasons for this. Liberal Christianity – which puts it own views above God’s views – has attacked the authority and sufficiency of the Bible causing many to believe that whilst the Bible is a good book, even a great book, it is not necessarily God’s book, in the sense that He is its Author. Whatever degree of inspiration may be claimed for the Bible (they say) it is no higher than that which can be claimed for other sacred works such as Paradise Lost or Dante’s Inferno.
But before we spend too long focusing on what is happening in liberal Christianity we must not overlook the fact that something sinister is going on in many of our evangelical/charismatic churches too. In a lot of these communities (thankfully not all) the Christian life is portrayed as less a matter of assimilating truth from the Bible than experiencing a spiritual high. The leaders of such churches, albeit unwittingly, may be conveying the message that the Christian life is more about experiencing something than learning something.
Duncan Leighton, a minister in New Zealand writing in Evangelism Today (August 2000 edition) spoke for all who have a concern about this when he wrote:
There are many who feel that church has become an irrelevance. Music dominates. Sentimental jingles have replaced largely doctrinal-teaching hymns which prepare people for the uncertainties of life. The messages are often pick and mix affairs with the Bible treated like a Promise Box full of goodies with everything nice inside. Much of the resulting doctrine is built upon little more than clever observations and personal experience rather than upon the timeless revelations of God.
Pastors and Christian leaders who do not hold up to their congregations the importance of getting into the Bible for themselves may one day be in the position of pastoring communities who are charismatically sophisticated but biblically illiterate. Whilst I am all for genuine spiritual encounters I have no hesitation in saying that faith and certainty are anchored more to historical and biblical fact than they are to ecstatic spiritual experiences.
Another reason why regular reading of the Bible is dropping amongst today’s community of Christians may be due to the fact that people in general don’t read as much as they once did. Publishers tell us that bulky books are going out of fashion because people, especially the younger generation, have neither the time nor inclination to read them. Thin paperbacks are therefore the order of the day and, as a result, there is a good deal of literary slimming going on. The Bible is a bulky book. It has about 773,000 words, 1,189 chapters and 66 books. What a book! For this reason many people find the thought of ploughing through it from start to finish somewhat daunting.
However, I think the real reason for this drop-off in Bible reading turns on how the Bible is viewed. One’s convictions on the character and nature of the book makes an enormous difference in one’s approach to it. If one believes, for example, that the Old Testament is nothing more than a fragmentary record of a group of unimportant Semetic tribes, and the New Testament nothing more than the record of a good man named Jesus of Nazareth (and some of His chief disciples) whose main message was that we should love our neighbours as ourselves, then the Bible deserves no exceptional respect. But if a man or woman believes, on the other hand, that, though the Bible was written over a period of fifteen hundred years by about forty penmen, but was actually authored by God, and is His one and only published work, then he or she will come to the book in a completely different frame of mind.
There are a number of reasons for this. Liberal Christianity – which puts it own views above God’s views – has attacked the authority and sufficiency of the Bible causing many to believe that whilst the Bible is a good book, even a great book, it is not necessarily God’s book, in the sense that He is its Author. Whatever degree of inspiration may be claimed for the Bible (they say) it is no higher than that which can be claimed for other sacred works such as Paradise Lost or Dante’s Inferno.
But before we spend too long focusing on what is happening in liberal Christianity we must not overlook the fact that something sinister is going on in many of our evangelical/charismatic churches too. In a lot of these communities (thankfully not all) the Christian life is portrayed as less a matter of assimilating truth from the Bible than experiencing a spiritual high. The leaders of such churches, albeit unwittingly, may be conveying the message that the Christian life is more about experiencing something than learning something.
Duncan Leighton, a minister in New Zealand writing in Evangelism Today (August 2000 edition) spoke for all who have a concern about this when he wrote:
There are many who feel that church has become an irrelevance. Music dominates. Sentimental jingles have replaced largely doctrinal-teaching hymns which prepare people for the uncertainties of life. The messages are often pick and mix affairs with the Bible treated like a Promise Box full of goodies with everything nice inside. Much of the resulting doctrine is built upon little more than clever observations and personal experience rather than upon the timeless revelations of God.
Pastors and Christian leaders who do not hold up to their congregations the importance of getting into the Bible for themselves may one day be in the position of pastoring communities who are charismatically sophisticated but biblically illiterate. Whilst I am all for genuine spiritual encounters I have no hesitation in saying that faith and certainty are anchored more to historical and biblical fact than they are to ecstatic spiritual experiences.
Another reason why regular reading of the Bible is dropping amongst today’s community of Christians may be due to the fact that people in general don’t read as much as they once did. Publishers tell us that bulky books are going out of fashion because people, especially the younger generation, have neither the time nor inclination to read them. Thin paperbacks are therefore the order of the day and, as a result, there is a good deal of literary slimming going on. The Bible is a bulky book. It has about 773,000 words, 1,189 chapters and 66 books. What a book! For this reason many people find the thought of ploughing through it from start to finish somewhat daunting.
However, I think the real reason for this drop-off in Bible reading turns on how the Bible is viewed. One’s convictions on the character and nature of the book makes an enormous difference in one’s approach to it. If one believes, for example, that the Old Testament is nothing more than a fragmentary record of a group of unimportant Semetic tribes, and the New Testament nothing more than the record of a good man named Jesus of Nazareth (and some of His chief disciples) whose main message was that we should love our neighbours as ourselves, then the Bible deserves no exceptional respect. But if a man or woman believes, on the other hand, that, though the Bible was written over a period of fifteen hundred years by about forty penmen, but was actually authored by God, and is His one and only published work, then he or she will come to the book in a completely different frame of mind.
fredag 24 september 2010
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 6
It seems clear that Ehrman has investigated the New Testament documents with an a priori conviction that inspiration requires zero scribal variations—a standard that could never be met in the real historical world of the first century. Ironically, as much as Ehrman claims to be about real history, his private view of inspiration, by definition, prevents there from ever being a New Testament from God that would have anything to do with real history. Not surprisingly, therefore, Ehrman "concludes" that the New Testament could not be inspired. One wonders whether any other conclusion was even possible.
Conclusion
Did the battles over heresy and orthodoxy in earliest Christianity affect the transmission of the New Testament text? Yes. No doubt a variety of scribal changes are due to these early theological disputes. But do these changes affect the text in such a way that we cannot be sure what it originally said? Not at all. Since the New Testament is a historical book that has been passed down to us through normal historical means (copying manuscripts by hand), then it inevitably contains the normal kinds of scribal variations that we would expect from any document of antiquity. No doubt some of these scribal variations were intentional and motivated by the theological debates of the day. However, the New Testament is different from most other ancient texts in a fundamental way: the wealth of manuscript evidence at our disposal (both in quantity and date) gives us good reasons to think that the original text has not been lost but has been preserved in the manuscript tradition as a whole. Given the fact that the vast number of textual variants is "insignificant," and given that our text-critical methodology can tell which "significant" readings are original and which are secondary, we can have confidence that the text we possess is, in essence, the text that was written in the first century.
Conclusion
Did the battles over heresy and orthodoxy in earliest Christianity affect the transmission of the New Testament text? Yes. No doubt a variety of scribal changes are due to these early theological disputes. But do these changes affect the text in such a way that we cannot be sure what it originally said? Not at all. Since the New Testament is a historical book that has been passed down to us through normal historical means (copying manuscripts by hand), then it inevitably contains the normal kinds of scribal variations that we would expect from any document of antiquity. No doubt some of these scribal variations were intentional and motivated by the theological debates of the day. However, the New Testament is different from most other ancient texts in a fundamental way: the wealth of manuscript evidence at our disposal (both in quantity and date) gives us good reasons to think that the original text has not been lost but has been preserved in the manuscript tradition as a whole. Given the fact that the vast number of textual variants is "insignificant," and given that our text-critical methodology can tell which "significant" readings are original and which are secondary, we can have confidence that the text we possess is, in essence, the text that was written in the first century.
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 5
Unresolved Variants and Biblical Authority
It is here that we come to the crux of the issue regarding biblical authority. Do we need to have absolute 100 percent certainty about every single textual variant for God to speak authoritatively in the Scriptures? Not at all. When we recognize not only how few unresolved variants exist but also how little they impact the overall story of the New Testament, then we can have confidence that the message of the New Testament has been sufficiently preserved for the church. All the teaching of the New Testament—whether regarding the person of Jesus (divinity and humanity), the work of Jesus (his life, death, and resurrection), the application of his work to the believer (justification, sanctification, glorification), or other doctrines—are left unaffected by the remaining unresolved textual variations.65 Belief in the inspiration of the original autographs does not require that every individual copy of the autographs be error-free. The question is simply whether the manuscript tradition as a whole is reliable enough to transmit the essential message of the New Testament. As we have seen above, the manuscript tradition is more than adequate. It is so very close to the originals that there is no material difference between what, say, Paul or John wrote and what we possess today.
Of course, as we have seen above, Ehrman has taken a very different approach. For him, the quest for the original text is somewhat of an "all or nothing" endeavor. Either we know the wording of the original text with absolute certainty (meaning we have the autographs, or perfect copies of the autographs), or we can have no confidence at all in the wording of the original text.66 Unfortunately, this requirement of absolute certainty sets up a false dichotomy that is foreign to the study of history. As historians, we are not forced to choose between knowing everything or knowing nothing—there are degrees of assurance that can be attained even though some things are still unknown. This false dichotomy allows Ehrman to draw conclusions that are vastly out of proportion with the actual historical evidence. Although his overall historical claim is relatively indisputable (that the New Testament manuscripts are not perfect but contain a variety of scribal variations), his sweeping conclusions simply do not follow (that the text of the New Testament is unreliable and unknowable). We can have reliable manuscripts without having perfect manuscripts. But it is precisely this distinction that Ehrman's "all or nothing" methodology does not allow him to make.
As a result, addressing the historical evidence (the nature and extent of textual variants) will not ultimately change Ehrman's conclusions about the New Testament. It will not change his conclusions because it is not the historical evidence that led to his conclusions in the first place. What, then, is driving Ehrman's conclusions? Ironically, they are being driven not by any historical consideration but by a theological one. At the end of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman reveals the core theological premise behind his thinking: "If [God] really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he miraculously inspired them in the first place."67 In other words, if God really inspired the New Testament there would be no scribal variations at all. It is his commitment to this belief—a theological belief—that is driving his entire approach to textual variants. Of course, this belief has manifold problems associated with it. Most fundamentally, one might ask, where does Ehrman get this theological conviction about what inspiration requires or does not require? How does he know what God would "surely" do if he inspired the New Testament? His approach certainly does not reflect the historical Christian positions on inspiration (except perhaps those in the King-James-Only camp).68 Instead, Ehrman seems to be working with an arbitrary and self-appointed definition of inspiration which, not surprisingly, just happens to set up a standard that could never really be met. Does inspiration really require that once the books of the Bible were written that God would miraculously guarantee that no one would ever write it down incorrectly? Are we really to believe that inspiration demands that no adult, no child, no scribe, no scholar— not anyone—would ever write down a passage of Scripture where a word was left out for the entire course of human history? Or is God prohibited by Ehrman from giving revelation until Gutenberg and the printing press? (But there are errors there, too.)
It is here that we come to the crux of the issue regarding biblical authority. Do we need to have absolute 100 percent certainty about every single textual variant for God to speak authoritatively in the Scriptures? Not at all. When we recognize not only how few unresolved variants exist but also how little they impact the overall story of the New Testament, then we can have confidence that the message of the New Testament has been sufficiently preserved for the church. All the teaching of the New Testament—whether regarding the person of Jesus (divinity and humanity), the work of Jesus (his life, death, and resurrection), the application of his work to the believer (justification, sanctification, glorification), or other doctrines—are left unaffected by the remaining unresolved textual variations.65 Belief in the inspiration of the original autographs does not require that every individual copy of the autographs be error-free. The question is simply whether the manuscript tradition as a whole is reliable enough to transmit the essential message of the New Testament. As we have seen above, the manuscript tradition is more than adequate. It is so very close to the originals that there is no material difference between what, say, Paul or John wrote and what we possess today.
Of course, as we have seen above, Ehrman has taken a very different approach. For him, the quest for the original text is somewhat of an "all or nothing" endeavor. Either we know the wording of the original text with absolute certainty (meaning we have the autographs, or perfect copies of the autographs), or we can have no confidence at all in the wording of the original text.66 Unfortunately, this requirement of absolute certainty sets up a false dichotomy that is foreign to the study of history. As historians, we are not forced to choose between knowing everything or knowing nothing—there are degrees of assurance that can be attained even though some things are still unknown. This false dichotomy allows Ehrman to draw conclusions that are vastly out of proportion with the actual historical evidence. Although his overall historical claim is relatively indisputable (that the New Testament manuscripts are not perfect but contain a variety of scribal variations), his sweeping conclusions simply do not follow (that the text of the New Testament is unreliable and unknowable). We can have reliable manuscripts without having perfect manuscripts. But it is precisely this distinction that Ehrman's "all or nothing" methodology does not allow him to make.
As a result, addressing the historical evidence (the nature and extent of textual variants) will not ultimately change Ehrman's conclusions about the New Testament. It will not change his conclusions because it is not the historical evidence that led to his conclusions in the first place. What, then, is driving Ehrman's conclusions? Ironically, they are being driven not by any historical consideration but by a theological one. At the end of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman reveals the core theological premise behind his thinking: "If [God] really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he miraculously inspired them in the first place."67 In other words, if God really inspired the New Testament there would be no scribal variations at all. It is his commitment to this belief—a theological belief—that is driving his entire approach to textual variants. Of course, this belief has manifold problems associated with it. Most fundamentally, one might ask, where does Ehrman get this theological conviction about what inspiration requires or does not require? How does he know what God would "surely" do if he inspired the New Testament? His approach certainly does not reflect the historical Christian positions on inspiration (except perhaps those in the King-James-Only camp).68 Instead, Ehrman seems to be working with an arbitrary and self-appointed definition of inspiration which, not surprisingly, just happens to set up a standard that could never really be met. Does inspiration really require that once the books of the Bible were written that God would miraculously guarantee that no one would ever write it down incorrectly? Are we really to believe that inspiration demands that no adult, no child, no scribe, no scholar— not anyone—would ever write down a passage of Scripture where a word was left out for the entire course of human history? Or is God prohibited by Ehrman from giving revelation until Gutenberg and the printing press? (But there are errors there, too.)
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 5
Unresolved Variants and Biblical Authority
It is here that we come to the crux of the issue regarding biblical authority. Do we need to have absolute 100 percent certainty about every single textual variant for God to speak authoritatively in the Scriptures? Not at all. When we recognize not only how few unresolved variants exist but also how little they impact the overall story of the New Testament, then we can have confidence that the message of the New Testament has been sufficiently preserved for the church. All the teaching of the New Testament—whether regarding the person of Jesus (divinity and humanity), the work of Jesus (his life, death, and resurrection), the application of his work to the believer (justification, sanctification, glorification), or other doctrines—are left unaffected by the remaining unresolved textual variations.65 Belief in the inspiration of the original autographs does not require that every individual copy of the autographs be error-free. The question is simply whether the manuscript tradition as a whole is reliable enough to transmit the essential message of the New Testament. As we have seen above, the manuscript tradition is more than adequate. It is so very close to the originals that there is no material difference between what, say, Paul or John wrote and what we possess today.
Of course, as we have seen above, Ehrman has taken a very different approach. For him, the quest for the original text is somewhat of an "all or nothing" endeavor. Either we know the wording of the original text with absolute certainty (meaning we have the autographs, or perfect copies of the autographs), or we can have no confidence at all in the wording of the original text.66 Unfortunately, this requirement of absolute certainty sets up a false dichotomy that is foreign to the study of history. As historians, we are not forced to choose between knowing everything or knowing nothing—there are degrees of assurance that can be attained even though some things are still unknown. This false dichotomy allows Ehrman to draw conclusions that are vastly out of proportion with the actual historical evidence. Although his overall historical claim is relatively indisputable (that the New Testament manuscripts are not perfect but contain a variety of scribal variations), his sweeping conclusions simply do not follow (that the text of the New Testament is unreliable and unknowable). We can have reliable manuscripts without having perfect manuscripts. But it is precisely this distinction that Ehrman's "all or nothing" methodology does not allow him to make.
As a result, addressing the historical evidence (the nature and extent of textual variants) will not ultimately change Ehrman's conclusions about the New Testament. It will not change his conclusions because it is not the historical evidence that led to his conclusions in the first place. What, then, is driving Ehrman's conclusions? Ironically, they are being driven not by any historical consideration but by a theological one. At the end of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman reveals the core theological premise behind his thinking: "If [God] really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he miraculously inspired them in the first place."67 In other words, if God really inspired the New Testament there would be no scribal variations at all. It is his commitment to this belief—a theological belief—that is driving his entire approach to textual variants. Of course, this belief has manifold problems associated with it. Most fundamentally, one might ask, where does Ehrman get this theological conviction about what inspiration requires or does not require? How does he know what God would "surely" do if he inspired the New Testament? His approach certainly does not reflect the historical Christian positions on inspiration (except perhaps those in the King-James-Only camp).68 Instead, Ehrman seems to be working with an arbitrary and self-appointed definition of inspiration which, not surprisingly, just happens to set up a standard that could never really be met. Does inspiration really require that once the books of the Bible were written that God would miraculously guarantee that no one would ever write it down incorrectly? Are we really to believe that inspiration demands that no adult, no child, no scribe, no scholar— not anyone—would ever write down a passage of Scripture where a word was left out for the entire course of human history? Or is God prohibited by Ehrman from giving revelation until Gutenberg and the printing press? (But there are errors there, too.)
It is here that we come to the crux of the issue regarding biblical authority. Do we need to have absolute 100 percent certainty about every single textual variant for God to speak authoritatively in the Scriptures? Not at all. When we recognize not only how few unresolved variants exist but also how little they impact the overall story of the New Testament, then we can have confidence that the message of the New Testament has been sufficiently preserved for the church. All the teaching of the New Testament—whether regarding the person of Jesus (divinity and humanity), the work of Jesus (his life, death, and resurrection), the application of his work to the believer (justification, sanctification, glorification), or other doctrines—are left unaffected by the remaining unresolved textual variations.65 Belief in the inspiration of the original autographs does not require that every individual copy of the autographs be error-free. The question is simply whether the manuscript tradition as a whole is reliable enough to transmit the essential message of the New Testament. As we have seen above, the manuscript tradition is more than adequate. It is so very close to the originals that there is no material difference between what, say, Paul or John wrote and what we possess today.
Of course, as we have seen above, Ehrman has taken a very different approach. For him, the quest for the original text is somewhat of an "all or nothing" endeavor. Either we know the wording of the original text with absolute certainty (meaning we have the autographs, or perfect copies of the autographs), or we can have no confidence at all in the wording of the original text.66 Unfortunately, this requirement of absolute certainty sets up a false dichotomy that is foreign to the study of history. As historians, we are not forced to choose between knowing everything or knowing nothing—there are degrees of assurance that can be attained even though some things are still unknown. This false dichotomy allows Ehrman to draw conclusions that are vastly out of proportion with the actual historical evidence. Although his overall historical claim is relatively indisputable (that the New Testament manuscripts are not perfect but contain a variety of scribal variations), his sweeping conclusions simply do not follow (that the text of the New Testament is unreliable and unknowable). We can have reliable manuscripts without having perfect manuscripts. But it is precisely this distinction that Ehrman's "all or nothing" methodology does not allow him to make.
As a result, addressing the historical evidence (the nature and extent of textual variants) will not ultimately change Ehrman's conclusions about the New Testament. It will not change his conclusions because it is not the historical evidence that led to his conclusions in the first place. What, then, is driving Ehrman's conclusions? Ironically, they are being driven not by any historical consideration but by a theological one. At the end of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman reveals the core theological premise behind his thinking: "If [God] really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he miraculously inspired them in the first place."67 In other words, if God really inspired the New Testament there would be no scribal variations at all. It is his commitment to this belief—a theological belief—that is driving his entire approach to textual variants. Of course, this belief has manifold problems associated with it. Most fundamentally, one might ask, where does Ehrman get this theological conviction about what inspiration requires or does not require? How does he know what God would "surely" do if he inspired the New Testament? His approach certainly does not reflect the historical Christian positions on inspiration (except perhaps those in the King-James-Only camp).68 Instead, Ehrman seems to be working with an arbitrary and self-appointed definition of inspiration which, not surprisingly, just happens to set up a standard that could never really be met. Does inspiration really require that once the books of the Bible were written that God would miraculously guarantee that no one would ever write it down incorrectly? Are we really to believe that inspiration demands that no adult, no child, no scribe, no scholar— not anyone—would ever write down a passage of Scripture where a word was left out for the entire course of human history? Or is God prohibited by Ehrman from giving revelation until Gutenberg and the printing press? (But there are errors there, too.)
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 5
Unresolved Variants and Biblical Authority
It is here that we come to the crux of the issue regarding biblical authority. Do we need to have absolute 100 percent certainty about every single textual variant for God to speak authoritatively in the Scriptures? Not at all. When we recognize not only how few unresolved variants exist but also how little they impact the overall story of the New Testament, then we can have confidence that the message of the New Testament has been sufficiently preserved for the church. All the teaching of the New Testament—whether regarding the person of Jesus (divinity and humanity), the work of Jesus (his life, death, and resurrection), the application of his work to the believer (justification, sanctification, glorification), or other doctrines—are left unaffected by the remaining unresolved textual variations.65 Belief in the inspiration of the original autographs does not require that every individual copy of the autographs be error-free. The question is simply whether the manuscript tradition as a whole is reliable enough to transmit the essential message of the New Testament. As we have seen above, the manuscript tradition is more than adequate. It is so very close to the originals that there is no material difference between what, say, Paul or John wrote and what we possess today.
Of course, as we have seen above, Ehrman has taken a very different approach. For him, the quest for the original text is somewhat of an "all or nothing" endeavor. Either we know the wording of the original text with absolute certainty (meaning we have the autographs, or perfect copies of the autographs), or we can have no confidence at all in the wording of the original text.66 Unfortunately, this requirement of absolute certainty sets up a false dichotomy that is foreign to the study of history. As historians, we are not forced to choose between knowing everything or knowing nothing—there are degrees of assurance that can be attained even though some things are still unknown. This false dichotomy allows Ehrman to draw conclusions that are vastly out of proportion with the actual historical evidence. Although his overall historical claim is relatively indisputable (that the New Testament manuscripts are not perfect but contain a variety of scribal variations), his sweeping conclusions simply do not follow (that the text of the New Testament is unreliable and unknowable). We can have reliable manuscripts without having perfect manuscripts. But it is precisely this distinction that Ehrman's "all or nothing" methodology does not allow him to make.
As a result, addressing the historical evidence (the nature and extent of textual variants) will not ultimately change Ehrman's conclusions about the New Testament. It will not change his conclusions because it is not the historical evidence that led to his conclusions in the first place. What, then, is driving Ehrman's conclusions? Ironically, they are being driven not by any historical consideration but by a theological one. At the end of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman reveals the core theological premise behind his thinking: "If [God] really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he miraculously inspired them in the first place."67 In other words, if God really inspired the New Testament there would be no scribal variations at all. It is his commitment to this belief—a theological belief—that is driving his entire approach to textual variants. Of course, this belief has manifold problems associated with it. Most fundamentally, one might ask, where does Ehrman get this theological conviction about what inspiration requires or does not require? How does he know what God would "surely" do if he inspired the New Testament? His approach certainly does not reflect the historical Christian positions on inspiration (except perhaps those in the King-James-Only camp).68 Instead, Ehrman seems to be working with an arbitrary and self-appointed definition of inspiration which, not surprisingly, just happens to set up a standard that could never really be met. Does inspiration really require that once the books of the Bible were written that God would miraculously guarantee that no one would ever write it down incorrectly? Are we really to believe that inspiration demands that no adult, no child, no scribe, no scholar— not anyone—would ever write down a passage of Scripture where a word was left out for the entire course of human history? Or is God prohibited by Ehrman from giving revelation until Gutenberg and the printing press? (But there are errors there, too.)
It is here that we come to the crux of the issue regarding biblical authority. Do we need to have absolute 100 percent certainty about every single textual variant for God to speak authoritatively in the Scriptures? Not at all. When we recognize not only how few unresolved variants exist but also how little they impact the overall story of the New Testament, then we can have confidence that the message of the New Testament has been sufficiently preserved for the church. All the teaching of the New Testament—whether regarding the person of Jesus (divinity and humanity), the work of Jesus (his life, death, and resurrection), the application of his work to the believer (justification, sanctification, glorification), or other doctrines—are left unaffected by the remaining unresolved textual variations.65 Belief in the inspiration of the original autographs does not require that every individual copy of the autographs be error-free. The question is simply whether the manuscript tradition as a whole is reliable enough to transmit the essential message of the New Testament. As we have seen above, the manuscript tradition is more than adequate. It is so very close to the originals that there is no material difference between what, say, Paul or John wrote and what we possess today.
Of course, as we have seen above, Ehrman has taken a very different approach. For him, the quest for the original text is somewhat of an "all or nothing" endeavor. Either we know the wording of the original text with absolute certainty (meaning we have the autographs, or perfect copies of the autographs), or we can have no confidence at all in the wording of the original text.66 Unfortunately, this requirement of absolute certainty sets up a false dichotomy that is foreign to the study of history. As historians, we are not forced to choose between knowing everything or knowing nothing—there are degrees of assurance that can be attained even though some things are still unknown. This false dichotomy allows Ehrman to draw conclusions that are vastly out of proportion with the actual historical evidence. Although his overall historical claim is relatively indisputable (that the New Testament manuscripts are not perfect but contain a variety of scribal variations), his sweeping conclusions simply do not follow (that the text of the New Testament is unreliable and unknowable). We can have reliable manuscripts without having perfect manuscripts. But it is precisely this distinction that Ehrman's "all or nothing" methodology does not allow him to make.
As a result, addressing the historical evidence (the nature and extent of textual variants) will not ultimately change Ehrman's conclusions about the New Testament. It will not change his conclusions because it is not the historical evidence that led to his conclusions in the first place. What, then, is driving Ehrman's conclusions? Ironically, they are being driven not by any historical consideration but by a theological one. At the end of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman reveals the core theological premise behind his thinking: "If [God] really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he miraculously inspired them in the first place."67 In other words, if God really inspired the New Testament there would be no scribal variations at all. It is his commitment to this belief—a theological belief—that is driving his entire approach to textual variants. Of course, this belief has manifold problems associated with it. Most fundamentally, one might ask, where does Ehrman get this theological conviction about what inspiration requires or does not require? How does he know what God would "surely" do if he inspired the New Testament? His approach certainly does not reflect the historical Christian positions on inspiration (except perhaps those in the King-James-Only camp).68 Instead, Ehrman seems to be working with an arbitrary and self-appointed definition of inspiration which, not surprisingly, just happens to set up a standard that could never really be met. Does inspiration really require that once the books of the Bible were written that God would miraculously guarantee that no one would ever write it down incorrectly? Are we really to believe that inspiration demands that no adult, no child, no scribe, no scholar— not anyone—would ever write down a passage of Scripture where a word was left out for the entire course of human history? Or is God prohibited by Ehrman from giving revelation until Gutenberg and the printing press? (But there are errors there, too.)
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 4
In Mark 3:32, the crowd sitting around Jesus said to him, "Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you." However, evidence from some other early Greek manuscripts (A D) and Old Latin, Old Syriac, and Gothic witnesses (combined with some strong internal considerations) suggest that the original may have been "Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside, seeking you." Even the editorial committee of the UBS Greek New Testament was divided on the question, which has prompted a number of English translations to include a footnote in this verse with the variant reading.60 Whichever way one decides, very little is at stake here. We know from other passages that Jesus had sisters (Matt. 13:56), and no doubt they would have been concerned about him along with the rest of the family. Another example, Mark 7:9, reads, "And he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish (stesete) your tradition!'" But, a number of majuscules (א A K L Δ Π ), some of which are quite early, substitute "keep" (teresete) for the word "establish" (stesete). Given the similar spelling and similar meaning of these words, it is quite di"cult to determine which gave rise to which. However, either way, it leaves the meaning of the passage virtually unchanged.
Both of the above examples are typical "unresolved" variants—not only are they very rare, but most of the time they affect the meaning of the text very little (and thus are relatively boring). But Ehrman has suggested that there are some other hard-to-solve variants that do impact the meaning of the text in a substantive manner. For example, Luke 22:43-44 describes the anguish of Jesus in the garden: "And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." These verses are attested by a number of important witnesses including Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, and other church fathers. However, these verses are also omitted by a number of important witnesses as well as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Consequently, it is difficult to be sure whether the verses are original to Luke.61 The question, then, is whether either option raises a substantial problem or changes any biblical doctrine (Christological or otherwise). We know from other passages that Jesus felt great anguish in the garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:37-38; Mark 14:34), and that he was a real human being that could suffer temptation and sorrow (Heb. 2:17-18). Moreover, we have other accounts where angels attended Jesus in times of great need (Mark 1:13). These realities remain unchanged whether we include or omit this reading. Thus, either option seems to be consistent and compatible with what we know about Jesus and his ministry.
Ehrman offers another example from Mark 1:41 ('()) where Jesus sees a leper and was "filled with compassion" (splagchnisthei). Though this reading has superior external support in its favor (א A B C K L W Δ Θ Π f1 f13), Codex Bezae (D) and a number of Old Latin witnesses declare that when Jesus saw the leper he was "filled with anger" (orgistheis). Although the external evidence is in favor of "filled with compassion," a number of internal considerations (e.g., which reading would the scribe have likely changed?) suggest that the original may have been "filled with anger." In short, it is difficult to know which reading is original.62 So, again, we ask whether either option raises a substantial problem or issue related to the teaching of the New Testament. Although "filled with anger" certainly changes our understanding of the passage—Jesus was likely expressing "righteous indignation at the ravages of sin"63 on the world, particularly the leper—this perspective on Jesus fits quite well with the rest of the book of Mark, where he shows his anger in 3:5 in a confrontation with the Pharisees and in 10:14 as he is indignant with his disciples. But it is also consistent with the Jesus of the other Gospels. Particularly noteworthy is John 11:33 where Jesus is faced with the plight of Lazarus, and the text tells us that he was "deeply moved" (enebrimesato), a term that can better be understood to mean Jesus felt "anger, outrage or indignation."64 Was Jesus angry at Lazarus? No, the context suggests that he was angered over the ravages of sin on the world, particularly as it affected Lazarus. In John 11:33, then, we have a vivid parallel to what might be happening in Mark 1:41—both are examples of Jesus showing anger toward the effects of sin in the midst of performing a miracle of healing and restoration. In the end, whichever reading in Mark 1:41 is original, neither is out of step with the Jesus of he New Testament.
Both of the above examples are typical "unresolved" variants—not only are they very rare, but most of the time they affect the meaning of the text very little (and thus are relatively boring). But Ehrman has suggested that there are some other hard-to-solve variants that do impact the meaning of the text in a substantive manner. For example, Luke 22:43-44 describes the anguish of Jesus in the garden: "And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." These verses are attested by a number of important witnesses including Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Eusebius, and other church fathers. However, these verses are also omitted by a number of important witnesses as well as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Consequently, it is difficult to be sure whether the verses are original to Luke.61 The question, then, is whether either option raises a substantial problem or changes any biblical doctrine (Christological or otherwise). We know from other passages that Jesus felt great anguish in the garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:37-38; Mark 14:34), and that he was a real human being that could suffer temptation and sorrow (Heb. 2:17-18). Moreover, we have other accounts where angels attended Jesus in times of great need (Mark 1:13). These realities remain unchanged whether we include or omit this reading. Thus, either option seems to be consistent and compatible with what we know about Jesus and his ministry.
Ehrman offers another example from Mark 1:41 ('()) where Jesus sees a leper and was "filled with compassion" (splagchnisthei). Though this reading has superior external support in its favor (א A B C K L W Δ Θ Π f1 f13), Codex Bezae (D) and a number of Old Latin witnesses declare that when Jesus saw the leper he was "filled with anger" (orgistheis). Although the external evidence is in favor of "filled with compassion," a number of internal considerations (e.g., which reading would the scribe have likely changed?) suggest that the original may have been "filled with anger." In short, it is difficult to know which reading is original.62 So, again, we ask whether either option raises a substantial problem or issue related to the teaching of the New Testament. Although "filled with anger" certainly changes our understanding of the passage—Jesus was likely expressing "righteous indignation at the ravages of sin"63 on the world, particularly the leper—this perspective on Jesus fits quite well with the rest of the book of Mark, where he shows his anger in 3:5 in a confrontation with the Pharisees and in 10:14 as he is indignant with his disciples. But it is also consistent with the Jesus of the other Gospels. Particularly noteworthy is John 11:33 where Jesus is faced with the plight of Lazarus, and the text tells us that he was "deeply moved" (enebrimesato), a term that can better be understood to mean Jesus felt "anger, outrage or indignation."64 Was Jesus angry at Lazarus? No, the context suggests that he was angered over the ravages of sin on the world, particularly as it affected Lazarus. In John 11:33, then, we have a vivid parallel to what might be happening in Mark 1:41—both are examples of Jesus showing anger toward the effects of sin in the midst of performing a miracle of healing and restoration. In the end, whichever reading in Mark 1:41 is original, neither is out of step with the Jesus of he New Testament.
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 3
The essence of Ehrman's argument, then, seems self-defeating. He is using theologically motivated scribal changes as a reason for why we cannot know the original text, but then he must assume we can know the original text in order to prove these scribal changes. Which one is it? In the end, it seems that Ehrman wants to be able to have his text-critical cake and eat it, too.
Unfortunately, it seems the agenda in Misquoting Jesus is forcing Ehrman not only to deny the overall reliability of the field of textual criticism—the very field to which he has committed his life's work—but to deny even his own prior scholarly works.
What, then, is driving these inconsistencies in Ehrman's text-critical approach? Inevitably, it goes back to his commitment to the Bauer thesis and, in particular, his application of the Bauer thesis to the field of textual criticism. Even though the field of textual criticism has historically argued that some variants really are more original than others, the Bauer thesis implies that, in one sense, all textual variants are inherently equal. After all, why should one form of the New Testament text be considered genuine and not another? Who is to say which text is right? Different Christians in different regions experienced different textual variants (and to them these variants were the word of God). It seems, then, that Ehrman is being pulled back and forth between these two competing positions—historical textual criticism that privileges one reading over another and the Bauer thesis, which suggests no reading can really be regarded as superior. The latter position seems to be prevailing when Ehrman declares, "It is by no means self-evident that [reconstructing the original text] ought to be the ultimate goal of the discipline . . . there may indeed be scant reason to privilege the ‘original' text over forms of the text that developed subsequently."59
Thus, Ehrman's Bauer-driven approach to textual criticism is more radical than one might first realize. His claim is not simply that the battles over heresy and orthodoxy altered the original text, but he goes one step further to say that the battles over heresy and orthodoxy imply that there is no original text. Put differently, the Bauer hypothesis does not just explain the cause of textual variants, but it determines what our attitude should be towards textual variants. They are all equal. Once again, it is clear that Ehrman's conclusions are driven less by the discipline of textual criticism and more by his prior commitment to the Bauer thesis and the pluralistic nature of early Christianity.
Thesis 4: The Impact of Unresolved Variants: the remaining number of truly unresolved variants is very few and not material to the story/ teaching of the New Testament
The prior section has argued that even "significant" variants do not present a problem for the integrity of the New Testament because our text-critical methodology allows us to determine, with a reasonable degree of certainty, which is the original text. However, a very small number of significant variants remain where our methodology is not always able to reach a certain conclusion in either direction. In such a case, we may have two (or more) different readings and not know for sure which one is the original. Although these "unresolved" variants are quite rare, they are the only legitimate places where the New Testament text is genuinely in question, and therefore they need to be addressed.
Examples of Unresolved Variants
Needless to say, the question of what constitutes an "unresolved" variant is not always easy to answer (and cannot be fully resolved here). Certainly we cannot regard a variant as "unresolved" simply because there is some disagreement about its originality amongst scholars—after all, it seems that some sort of argument could be made for almost any variant reading if someone really wanted to try. Instead, we are talking here about a situation where there are two (or more) possible readings and the evidence for each reading (whether external or internal) is relatively equal, or at least close enough that it is reasonable to think that either reading could have been original. Again, a few examples may help.
Unfortunately, it seems the agenda in Misquoting Jesus is forcing Ehrman not only to deny the overall reliability of the field of textual criticism—the very field to which he has committed his life's work—but to deny even his own prior scholarly works.
What, then, is driving these inconsistencies in Ehrman's text-critical approach? Inevitably, it goes back to his commitment to the Bauer thesis and, in particular, his application of the Bauer thesis to the field of textual criticism. Even though the field of textual criticism has historically argued that some variants really are more original than others, the Bauer thesis implies that, in one sense, all textual variants are inherently equal. After all, why should one form of the New Testament text be considered genuine and not another? Who is to say which text is right? Different Christians in different regions experienced different textual variants (and to them these variants were the word of God). It seems, then, that Ehrman is being pulled back and forth between these two competing positions—historical textual criticism that privileges one reading over another and the Bauer thesis, which suggests no reading can really be regarded as superior. The latter position seems to be prevailing when Ehrman declares, "It is by no means self-evident that [reconstructing the original text] ought to be the ultimate goal of the discipline . . . there may indeed be scant reason to privilege the ‘original' text over forms of the text that developed subsequently."59
Thus, Ehrman's Bauer-driven approach to textual criticism is more radical than one might first realize. His claim is not simply that the battles over heresy and orthodoxy altered the original text, but he goes one step further to say that the battles over heresy and orthodoxy imply that there is no original text. Put differently, the Bauer hypothesis does not just explain the cause of textual variants, but it determines what our attitude should be towards textual variants. They are all equal. Once again, it is clear that Ehrman's conclusions are driven less by the discipline of textual criticism and more by his prior commitment to the Bauer thesis and the pluralistic nature of early Christianity.
Thesis 4: The Impact of Unresolved Variants: the remaining number of truly unresolved variants is very few and not material to the story/ teaching of the New Testament
The prior section has argued that even "significant" variants do not present a problem for the integrity of the New Testament because our text-critical methodology allows us to determine, with a reasonable degree of certainty, which is the original text. However, a very small number of significant variants remain where our methodology is not always able to reach a certain conclusion in either direction. In such a case, we may have two (or more) different readings and not know for sure which one is the original. Although these "unresolved" variants are quite rare, they are the only legitimate places where the New Testament text is genuinely in question, and therefore they need to be addressed.
Examples of Unresolved Variants
Needless to say, the question of what constitutes an "unresolved" variant is not always easy to answer (and cannot be fully resolved here). Certainly we cannot regard a variant as "unresolved" simply because there is some disagreement about its originality amongst scholars—after all, it seems that some sort of argument could be made for almost any variant reading if someone really wanted to try. Instead, we are talking here about a situation where there are two (or more) possible readings and the evidence for each reading (whether external or internal) is relatively equal, or at least close enough that it is reasonable to think that either reading could have been original. Again, a few examples may help.
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 2
How should we assess Ehrman's arguments with regard to intentional scribal changes? Let it be said at the outset that Ehrman's detailed textual work in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture is where he is at his best. Overall, this is a very impressive monograph with much to offer the scholarly community in its assessment of the history of the New Testament text. Surely Ehrman's overall thesis is correct that, on occasion, scribes did change their manuscripts for theological reasons. That being said, there are two issues that need to be raised. First, although Ehrman is correct that some changes are theologically motivated, it seems he too quickly passes over equally (if not more) plausible explanations that are not nearly as provocative. For example, in 1 Timothy 3:16 above, the scribal switch to "God was manifested in the flesh" can be naturally explained by the fact that the word for "who" (OΣ) is very close to the abbreviation for "God" (ΘΣ). A simple scribal slip would easily turn one word into the other. However, Ehrman still maintains that the change was theologically motivated because four of the uncial witnesses (א A C D) show that OΣ ("who") was actually corrected by the scribe to read ΘΣ ("God")—meaning the scribe did it consciously. But the fact that these four scribes did it consciously is not the same as saying they did it for theological reasons. These are not the same thing. These scribes may have simply thought the prior scribe got it wrong; or maybe they simply corrected it according to what was in their exemplar. Moreover, a number of other majuscules have ΘΣ ("God") but not as part of a correction (K L P Ψ), so there is no indication that they did it intentionally. In the end, the explanation for the variant in 1 Timothy 3:16 is likely a very boring one. Simply a mistake.
A second issue with Ehrman's work has to do with the overall conclusions that can be drawn from it. Let us assume for a moment that Ehrman is correct about the motivations of the scribes in every single example he offers—they all changed the text for theological reasons. But how does this change our understanding of the original text of the New Testament? What is the real payoff here in terms of assessing the New Testament's integrity? Not much. Ehrman's study may be helpful to assess scribal habits or the nature of theological debates in early Christianity, but it has very little effect on our recovery of the original text because in each of the instances he describes we can distinguish the original text from the scribal changes that have been made. In other words, even theologically motivated changes do not threaten the integrity of the text for the simple reason that our textcritical methodology allows us to spot them when they occur.57
It is here that Ehrman finds himself in somewhat of a conundrum. On the one hand, in Misquoting Jesus he wants the "original" text of the New Testament to remain inaccessible and obscure, forcing him to argue that text-critical methodologies cannot really produce any certain conclusions. On the other hand, in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture he needs to argue that text-critical methodologies are reliable and can show you what was original and what was not; otherwise he would not be able to demonstrate that changes have been made for theological reasons. Moisés Silva comments:
There is hardly a page in [The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture] where Ehrman does not employ the concept of an original text. Indeed, without such a concept, and without the confidence that we can identify what the original text is, Ehrman's book is almost unimaginable, for every one of his examples depends on his ability to identify a particular reading as a scribal corruption.58
A second issue with Ehrman's work has to do with the overall conclusions that can be drawn from it. Let us assume for a moment that Ehrman is correct about the motivations of the scribes in every single example he offers—they all changed the text for theological reasons. But how does this change our understanding of the original text of the New Testament? What is the real payoff here in terms of assessing the New Testament's integrity? Not much. Ehrman's study may be helpful to assess scribal habits or the nature of theological debates in early Christianity, but it has very little effect on our recovery of the original text because in each of the instances he describes we can distinguish the original text from the scribal changes that have been made. In other words, even theologically motivated changes do not threaten the integrity of the text for the simple reason that our textcritical methodology allows us to spot them when they occur.57
It is here that Ehrman finds himself in somewhat of a conundrum. On the one hand, in Misquoting Jesus he wants the "original" text of the New Testament to remain inaccessible and obscure, forcing him to argue that text-critical methodologies cannot really produce any certain conclusions. On the other hand, in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture he needs to argue that text-critical methodologies are reliable and can show you what was original and what was not; otherwise he would not be able to demonstrate that changes have been made for theological reasons. Moisés Silva comments:
There is hardly a page in [The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture] where Ehrman does not employ the concept of an original text. Indeed, without such a concept, and without the confidence that we can identify what the original text is, Ehrman's book is almost unimaginable, for every one of his examples depends on his ability to identify a particular reading as a scribal corruption.58
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 1
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A second example is Mark 16:9-20, known as the long ending of Mark.49 Most modern English translations bracket off this portion of the text and note that two of our earliest manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B), do not contain the long ending. Moreover, the long ending was unknown in a number of early versions (including a number of Latin, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts) and was not mentioned by prominent Greek fathers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. There is also the problem of non-Markan vocabulary in the long ending, as well as the awkward transition between 16:8 and 16:9. In short, most scholars agree that the long ending of Mark was not original to his Gospel. So, what is the impact of this particular variant? There is no doubt this textual change is "significant" both in regard to its scope (twelve verses) and also its content (resurrection, drinking poison, picking up snakes). But, since we can clearly see that these verses are an addition, they bear no impact on our ability to recover the original text of Mark. There may be residual questions regarding why Mark would end his Gospel in verse 8 (which we cannot enter into here), but the textual evidence is quite clear that he did not write verses 9-20.50
Theologically Motivated Changes
There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the New Testament to better conform to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes,"51 there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts.52 Ehrman joins this chorus in a number of his recent books, but most notably The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued "writing" the New Testament text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day.53 Thus, argues Ehrman, these scribal changes need to be understood within the context of the early church battles over heresy and orthodoxy—battles that not only affected the development of the New Testament canon but affected the development of the New Testament text itself.
Because these theologically motivated changes can affect the meaning of a passage (though just how much is in doubt), they are rightly considered to be "significant" textual variants. A few examples may be helpful. In Luke 2:33, after Simeon blesses the baby Jesus, we read, "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him." However, a number of later manuscripts read, "And Joseph and his mother marveled at what was said about him" (K X Δ Θ Π Ψ). Ehrman argues that this scribal change is designed to bolster the doctrine of the virgin birth—an issue that was often challenged by some heretical groups like the Ebionites—by making sure no one can (mis)use this passage to argue that Jesus had a human father.54 A second example comes from 1 Timothy 3:16 which, speaking of Christ, declares, "He was manifested in the flesh." However, other manuscripts show a scribal change which then makes the verse declare, "God was manifested in the flesh" (אe A2 C2 Dc K L P Ψ). Ehrman again argues that this scribal change was intentional and designed to state the divinity of Christ in more explicit terms.55 In the midst of all the Christological debates in early Christianity, scribes may have wanted to make sure this verse expressly affirmed that Christ was God come in the flesh. A third example is found in John 19:40 where Jesus' body is being prepared for burial. We are told there that "they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths." But the fifth-century codex Alexandrinus (A) reads, "So they took the body of God and bound it in linen cloths." This very obvious Christological change again appears to have been introduced for theological reasons—perhaps to keep Docetists from arguing that since Jesus was God he could not have had a real flesh-and-blood body.56
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A second example is Mark 16:9-20, known as the long ending of Mark.49 Most modern English translations bracket off this portion of the text and note that two of our earliest manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B), do not contain the long ending. Moreover, the long ending was unknown in a number of early versions (including a number of Latin, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts) and was not mentioned by prominent Greek fathers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. There is also the problem of non-Markan vocabulary in the long ending, as well as the awkward transition between 16:8 and 16:9. In short, most scholars agree that the long ending of Mark was not original to his Gospel. So, what is the impact of this particular variant? There is no doubt this textual change is "significant" both in regard to its scope (twelve verses) and also its content (resurrection, drinking poison, picking up snakes). But, since we can clearly see that these verses are an addition, they bear no impact on our ability to recover the original text of Mark. There may be residual questions regarding why Mark would end his Gospel in verse 8 (which we cannot enter into here), but the textual evidence is quite clear that he did not write verses 9-20.50
Theologically Motivated Changes
There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the New Testament to better conform to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes,"51 there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts.52 Ehrman joins this chorus in a number of his recent books, but most notably The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued "writing" the New Testament text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day.53 Thus, argues Ehrman, these scribal changes need to be understood within the context of the early church battles over heresy and orthodoxy—battles that not only affected the development of the New Testament canon but affected the development of the New Testament text itself.
Because these theologically motivated changes can affect the meaning of a passage (though just how much is in doubt), they are rightly considered to be "significant" textual variants. A few examples may be helpful. In Luke 2:33, after Simeon blesses the baby Jesus, we read, "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him." However, a number of later manuscripts read, "And Joseph and his mother marveled at what was said about him" (K X Δ Θ Π Ψ). Ehrman argues that this scribal change is designed to bolster the doctrine of the virgin birth—an issue that was often challenged by some heretical groups like the Ebionites—by making sure no one can (mis)use this passage to argue that Jesus had a human father.54 A second example comes from 1 Timothy 3:16 which, speaking of Christ, declares, "He was manifested in the flesh." However, other manuscripts show a scribal change which then makes the verse declare, "God was manifested in the flesh" (אe A2 C2 Dc K L P Ψ). Ehrman again argues that this scribal change was intentional and designed to state the divinity of Christ in more explicit terms.55 In the midst of all the Christological debates in early Christianity, scribes may have wanted to make sure this verse expressly affirmed that Christ was God come in the flesh. A third example is found in John 19:40 where Jesus' body is being prepared for burial. We are told there that "they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths." But the fifth-century codex Alexandrinus (A) reads, "So they took the body of God and bound it in linen cloths." This very obvious Christological change again appears to have been introduced for theological reasons—perhaps to keep Docetists from arguing that since Jesus was God he could not have had a real flesh-and-blood body.56
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 1
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A second example is Mark 16:9-20, known as the long ending of Mark.49 Most modern English translations bracket off this portion of the text and note that two of our earliest manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B), do not contain the long ending. Moreover, the long ending was unknown in a number of early versions (including a number of Latin, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts) and was not mentioned by prominent Greek fathers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. There is also the problem of non-Markan vocabulary in the long ending, as well as the awkward transition between 16:8 and 16:9. In short, most scholars agree that the long ending of Mark was not original to his Gospel. So, what is the impact of this particular variant? There is no doubt this textual change is "significant" both in regard to its scope (twelve verses) and also its content (resurrection, drinking poison, picking up snakes). But, since we can clearly see that these verses are an addition, they bear no impact on our ability to recover the original text of Mark. There may be residual questions regarding why Mark would end his Gospel in verse 8 (which we cannot enter into here), but the textual evidence is quite clear that he did not write verses 9-20.50
Theologically Motivated Changes
There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the New Testament to better conform to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes,"51 there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts.52 Ehrman joins this chorus in a number of his recent books, but most notably The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued "writing" the New Testament text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day.53 Thus, argues Ehrman, these scribal changes need to be understood within the context of the early church battles over heresy and orthodoxy—battles that not only affected the development of the New Testament canon but affected the development of the New Testament text itself.
Because these theologically motivated changes can affect the meaning of a passage (though just how much is in doubt), they are rightly considered to be "significant" textual variants. A few examples may be helpful. In Luke 2:33, after Simeon blesses the baby Jesus, we read, "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him." However, a number of later manuscripts read, "And Joseph and his mother marveled at what was said about him" (K X Δ Θ Π Ψ). Ehrman argues that this scribal change is designed to bolster the doctrine of the virgin birth—an issue that was often challenged by some heretical groups like the Ebionites—by making sure no one can (mis)use this passage to argue that Jesus had a human father.54 A second example comes from 1 Timothy 3:16 which, speaking of Christ, declares, "He was manifested in the flesh." However, other manuscripts show a scribal change which then makes the verse declare, "God was manifested in the flesh" (אe A2 C2 Dc K L P Ψ). Ehrman again argues that this scribal change was intentional and designed to state the divinity of Christ in more explicit terms.55 In the midst of all the Christological debates in early Christianity, scribes may have wanted to make sure this verse expressly affirmed that Christ was God come in the flesh. A third example is found in John 19:40 where Jesus' body is being prepared for burial. We are told there that "they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths." But the fifth-century codex Alexandrinus (A) reads, "So they took the body of God and bound it in linen cloths." This very obvious Christological change again appears to have been introduced for theological reasons—perhaps to keep Docetists from arguing that since Jesus was God he could not have had a real flesh-and-blood body.56
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A second example is Mark 16:9-20, known as the long ending of Mark.49 Most modern English translations bracket off this portion of the text and note that two of our earliest manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B), do not contain the long ending. Moreover, the long ending was unknown in a number of early versions (including a number of Latin, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts) and was not mentioned by prominent Greek fathers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. There is also the problem of non-Markan vocabulary in the long ending, as well as the awkward transition between 16:8 and 16:9. In short, most scholars agree that the long ending of Mark was not original to his Gospel. So, what is the impact of this particular variant? There is no doubt this textual change is "significant" both in regard to its scope (twelve verses) and also its content (resurrection, drinking poison, picking up snakes). But, since we can clearly see that these verses are an addition, they bear no impact on our ability to recover the original text of Mark. There may be residual questions regarding why Mark would end his Gospel in verse 8 (which we cannot enter into here), but the textual evidence is quite clear that he did not write verses 9-20.50
Theologically Motivated Changes
There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the New Testament to better conform to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes,"51 there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts.52 Ehrman joins this chorus in a number of his recent books, but most notably The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued "writing" the New Testament text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day.53 Thus, argues Ehrman, these scribal changes need to be understood within the context of the early church battles over heresy and orthodoxy—battles that not only affected the development of the New Testament canon but affected the development of the New Testament text itself.
Because these theologically motivated changes can affect the meaning of a passage (though just how much is in doubt), they are rightly considered to be "significant" textual variants. A few examples may be helpful. In Luke 2:33, after Simeon blesses the baby Jesus, we read, "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him." However, a number of later manuscripts read, "And Joseph and his mother marveled at what was said about him" (K X Δ Θ Π Ψ). Ehrman argues that this scribal change is designed to bolster the doctrine of the virgin birth—an issue that was often challenged by some heretical groups like the Ebionites—by making sure no one can (mis)use this passage to argue that Jesus had a human father.54 A second example comes from 1 Timothy 3:16 which, speaking of Christ, declares, "He was manifested in the flesh." However, other manuscripts show a scribal change which then makes the verse declare, "God was manifested in the flesh" (אe A2 C2 Dc K L P Ψ). Ehrman again argues that this scribal change was intentional and designed to state the divinity of Christ in more explicit terms.55 In the midst of all the Christological debates in early Christianity, scribes may have wanted to make sure this verse expressly affirmed that Christ was God come in the flesh. A third example is found in John 19:40 where Jesus' body is being prepared for burial. We are told there that "they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths." But the fifth-century codex Alexandrinus (A) reads, "So they took the body of God and bound it in linen cloths." This very obvious Christological change again appears to have been introduced for theological reasons—perhaps to keep Docetists from arguing that since Jesus was God he could not have had a real flesh-and-blood body.56
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)...Continued from page 1
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A second example is Mark 16:9-20, known as the long ending of Mark.49 Most modern English translations bracket off this portion of the text and note that two of our earliest manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B), do not contain the long ending. Moreover, the long ending was unknown in a number of early versions (including a number of Latin, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts) and was not mentioned by prominent Greek fathers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. There is also the problem of non-Markan vocabulary in the long ending, as well as the awkward transition between 16:8 and 16:9. In short, most scholars agree that the long ending of Mark was not original to his Gospel. So, what is the impact of this particular variant? There is no doubt this textual change is "significant" both in regard to its scope (twelve verses) and also its content (resurrection, drinking poison, picking up snakes). But, since we can clearly see that these verses are an addition, they bear no impact on our ability to recover the original text of Mark. There may be residual questions regarding why Mark would end his Gospel in verse 8 (which we cannot enter into here), but the textual evidence is quite clear that he did not write verses 9-20.50
Theologically Motivated Changes
There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the New Testament to better conform to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes,"51 there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts.52 Ehrman joins this chorus in a number of his recent books, but most notably The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued "writing" the New Testament text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day.53 Thus, argues Ehrman, these scribal changes need to be understood within the context of the early church battles over heresy and orthodoxy—battles that not only affected the development of the New Testament canon but affected the development of the New Testament text itself.
Because these theologically motivated changes can affect the meaning of a passage (though just how much is in doubt), they are rightly considered to be "significant" textual variants. A few examples may be helpful. In Luke 2:33, after Simeon blesses the baby Jesus, we read, "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him." However, a number of later manuscripts read, "And Joseph and his mother marveled at what was said about him" (K X Δ Θ Π Ψ). Ehrman argues that this scribal change is designed to bolster the doctrine of the virgin birth—an issue that was often challenged by some heretical groups like the Ebionites—by making sure no one can (mis)use this passage to argue that Jesus had a human father.54 A second example comes from 1 Timothy 3:16 which, speaking of Christ, declares, "He was manifested in the flesh." However, other manuscripts show a scribal change which then makes the verse declare, "God was manifested in the flesh" (אe A2 C2 Dc K L P Ψ). Ehrman again argues that this scribal change was intentional and designed to state the divinity of Christ in more explicit terms.55 In the midst of all the Christological debates in early Christianity, scribes may have wanted to make sure this verse expressly affirmed that Christ was God come in the flesh. A third example is found in John 19:40 where Jesus' body is being prepared for burial. We are told there that "they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths." But the fifth-century codex Alexandrinus (A) reads, "So they took the body of God and bound it in linen cloths." This very obvious Christological change again appears to have been introduced for theological reasons—perhaps to keep Docetists from arguing that since Jesus was God he could not have had a real flesh-and-blood body.56
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A second example is Mark 16:9-20, known as the long ending of Mark.49 Most modern English translations bracket off this portion of the text and note that two of our earliest manuscripts of Mark, Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Vaticanus (B), do not contain the long ending. Moreover, the long ending was unknown in a number of early versions (including a number of Latin, Syriac, and Armenian manuscripts) and was not mentioned by prominent Greek fathers such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. There is also the problem of non-Markan vocabulary in the long ending, as well as the awkward transition between 16:8 and 16:9. In short, most scholars agree that the long ending of Mark was not original to his Gospel. So, what is the impact of this particular variant? There is no doubt this textual change is "significant" both in regard to its scope (twelve verses) and also its content (resurrection, drinking poison, picking up snakes). But, since we can clearly see that these verses are an addition, they bear no impact on our ability to recover the original text of Mark. There may be residual questions regarding why Mark would end his Gospel in verse 8 (which we cannot enter into here), but the textual evidence is quite clear that he did not write verses 9-20.50
Theologically Motivated Changes
There has been a long-standing discussion in the world of textual criticism concerning the degree to which scribes intentionally altered passages of the New Testament to better conform to their own theological preferences. Ever since the well-known statement from Westcott and Hort that "there are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes,"51 there has been a steady chorus of scholars intending to show the opposite to be the case. The idea of theologically motivated scribal changes can be traced back to Kirsopp Lake and J. Rendel Harris and more recently to scholars like Eldon J. Epp and his well-known book The Theological Tendency of Codex Cantabrigiensis in Acts.52 Ehrman joins this chorus in a number of his recent books, but most notably The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where he argues that scribes in the early church were not merely disinterested copyists who mechanically transmitted the text in front of them, but, in one sense, continued "writing" the New Testament text by changing it to adapt to the theological and social challenges of the day.53 Thus, argues Ehrman, these scribal changes need to be understood within the context of the early church battles over heresy and orthodoxy—battles that not only affected the development of the New Testament canon but affected the development of the New Testament text itself.
Because these theologically motivated changes can affect the meaning of a passage (though just how much is in doubt), they are rightly considered to be "significant" textual variants. A few examples may be helpful. In Luke 2:33, after Simeon blesses the baby Jesus, we read, "And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him." However, a number of later manuscripts read, "And Joseph and his mother marveled at what was said about him" (K X Δ Θ Π Ψ). Ehrman argues that this scribal change is designed to bolster the doctrine of the virgin birth—an issue that was often challenged by some heretical groups like the Ebionites—by making sure no one can (mis)use this passage to argue that Jesus had a human father.54 A second example comes from 1 Timothy 3:16 which, speaking of Christ, declares, "He was manifested in the flesh." However, other manuscripts show a scribal change which then makes the verse declare, "God was manifested in the flesh" (אe A2 C2 Dc K L P Ψ). Ehrman again argues that this scribal change was intentional and designed to state the divinity of Christ in more explicit terms.55 In the midst of all the Christological debates in early Christianity, scribes may have wanted to make sure this verse expressly affirmed that Christ was God come in the flesh. A third example is found in John 19:40 where Jesus' body is being prepared for burial. We are told there that "they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths." But the fifth-century codex Alexandrinus (A) reads, "So they took the body of God and bound it in linen cloths." This very obvious Christological change again appears to have been introduced for theological reasons—perhaps to keep Docetists from arguing that since Jesus was God he could not have had a real flesh-and-blood body.56
Tampering with the Text: Was the New Testament Text Changed Along the Way? (part 2)
Thesis 3: The Reliability of the Text Critical Method: of the small portion of variations that are significant, our text-critical methodology can determine, with a reasonable degree of certainty, which is the original text
In part 1 of this article series, it was demonstrated that the vast majority of textual variations are insignificant and irrelevant to determining the original text of the New Testament. However, that leaves a small portion of textual variants that can be deemed "significant." The definition of this term has two aspects: (1) "significant" textual variants are simply those that are not included in the "insignificant" category discussed above; and (2) "significant" variants are those that in some sense affect the meaning of the passage (though the effect can range from fairly minimal to more substantial).
Even though the quantity of these significant variants is quite small in comparison to insignificant variants, some of them can still make an impact on our understanding of New Testament passages (as we shall see below). Thus one might conclude that these sorts of changes present a real challenge to the textual integrity of the New Testament. However, such a conclusion would be built upon an assumption that we have no way to determine which of these significant variants were original and which were not. Put differently, significant variants would be a problem if we could assume that every one of them was as equally viable as every other. The problem with such an assumption, however, is that it stands in direct contradiction to the entire history of textual criticism—indeed, to the very existence of the field itself—which has consistently maintained that not all textual variants are equally viable and that our methodology can determine (with a reasonable degree of certainty) which is the original text.44 If that is the case, then these few "significant" textual variants do not materially affect the integrity of the New Testament because, put simply, we can usually spot them when they occur.
Examples of Significant Variants
It may be helpful for us to review some examples of significant variants, though we can only scratch the surface of the issue here. For instance, in Mark 1:14 we are told that Jesus came preaching the "gospel of God." However, some fifth-century (and later) manuscripts—such as Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Codex Bezae (D)—read the "gospel of the kingdom of God." The cause for this slight change is obvious: the phrase "kingdom of God" is quite common throughout Mark (and the other Synoptic Gospels) and the scribe was likely harmonizing 1:14 with these other passages (a very common cause of scribal variations). Is there a difference in meaning between "gospel of God" and "gospel of the kingdom of God"? Perhaps. But the difference is hardly a cause for concern. And even if the difference were substantial, it matters little because the textual evidence is clear that Mark originally wrote "gospel of God."45 Mark 1:14 is a very typical example of a "significant" variant.
However, there are other "significant" variants that have a more substantial impact on the meaning of a text. Two examples will suffice. One of the most commonly mentioned variants is found in 1 John 5:7-8 and is known as the Comma Johanneum.46 The italicized portion of the following verses is found in only a handful of manuscripts: "For there are three that testify: in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree." Out of hundreds of Greek manuscripts, only eight contain this variant reading—and four of those have the variants added by the scribe into the margin—and the earliest of these is tenth century.47 Moreover, the variant is attested by none of the Greek fathers and is absent from almost all our early versions. In the end, despite the fact that this variant found its way into the Textus Receptus (and thereby the King James translation), the text-critical evidence is decidedly against it being original to John's epistle. What, then, do we make of this variant? No one can doubt that it is "significant" in that it affects the theological understanding of this verse. However, it simply has no claim to originality and therefore does not impact our ability to recover the original text of the New Testament.48 Nor is our understanding of the Trinity in the slightest dependent on this verse—indeed, the orthodox conception of the Trinity can be derived from many other New Testament verses and was well in place for centuries before this variation would have been widely known.
In part 1 of this article series, it was demonstrated that the vast majority of textual variations are insignificant and irrelevant to determining the original text of the New Testament. However, that leaves a small portion of textual variants that can be deemed "significant." The definition of this term has two aspects: (1) "significant" textual variants are simply those that are not included in the "insignificant" category discussed above; and (2) "significant" variants are those that in some sense affect the meaning of the passage (though the effect can range from fairly minimal to more substantial).
Even though the quantity of these significant variants is quite small in comparison to insignificant variants, some of them can still make an impact on our understanding of New Testament passages (as we shall see below). Thus one might conclude that these sorts of changes present a real challenge to the textual integrity of the New Testament. However, such a conclusion would be built upon an assumption that we have no way to determine which of these significant variants were original and which were not. Put differently, significant variants would be a problem if we could assume that every one of them was as equally viable as every other. The problem with such an assumption, however, is that it stands in direct contradiction to the entire history of textual criticism—indeed, to the very existence of the field itself—which has consistently maintained that not all textual variants are equally viable and that our methodology can determine (with a reasonable degree of certainty) which is the original text.44 If that is the case, then these few "significant" textual variants do not materially affect the integrity of the New Testament because, put simply, we can usually spot them when they occur.
Examples of Significant Variants
It may be helpful for us to review some examples of significant variants, though we can only scratch the surface of the issue here. For instance, in Mark 1:14 we are told that Jesus came preaching the "gospel of God." However, some fifth-century (and later) manuscripts—such as Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Codex Bezae (D)—read the "gospel of the kingdom of God." The cause for this slight change is obvious: the phrase "kingdom of God" is quite common throughout Mark (and the other Synoptic Gospels) and the scribe was likely harmonizing 1:14 with these other passages (a very common cause of scribal variations). Is there a difference in meaning between "gospel of God" and "gospel of the kingdom of God"? Perhaps. But the difference is hardly a cause for concern. And even if the difference were substantial, it matters little because the textual evidence is clear that Mark originally wrote "gospel of God."45 Mark 1:14 is a very typical example of a "significant" variant.
However, there are other "significant" variants that have a more substantial impact on the meaning of a text. Two examples will suffice. One of the most commonly mentioned variants is found in 1 John 5:7-8 and is known as the Comma Johanneum.46 The italicized portion of the following verses is found in only a handful of manuscripts: "For there are three that testify: in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree." Out of hundreds of Greek manuscripts, only eight contain this variant reading—and four of those have the variants added by the scribe into the margin—and the earliest of these is tenth century.47 Moreover, the variant is attested by none of the Greek fathers and is absent from almost all our early versions. In the end, despite the fact that this variant found its way into the Textus Receptus (and thereby the King James translation), the text-critical evidence is decidedly against it being original to John's epistle. What, then, do we make of this variant? No one can doubt that it is "significant" in that it affects the theological understanding of this verse. However, it simply has no claim to originality and therefore does not impact our ability to recover the original text of the New Testament.48 Nor is our understanding of the Trinity in the slightest dependent on this verse—indeed, the orthodox conception of the Trinity can be derived from many other New Testament verses and was well in place for centuries before this variation would have been widely known.
torsdag 23 september 2010
What the Old Testament Prophesied About the Messiah
He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. (Psalm 118:22)
He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth. (Isaiah 25:8)
EXCERPTED FROM www.whoisjesus-really.com:
The Old Testament was completed hundreds of years before Jesus was born. A large number of prophecies were made in astonishing detail by many people throughout these books. In fact, fulfilled prophecy is one of the distinguishing marks of the Bible, authenticating its claim to be the inspired Word of God.
For example, the Old Testament indicated Jesus would be betrayed by someone he trusted. "Even my close friend whom I trusted, he who has shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me" (Psalm 41:9). The New Testament, which records Jesus' life and resurrection, reveals that one of the 12 people Jesus chose to be part of his inner circle betrayed him: "Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them" (Mark 14:10).
More than 300 Messianic prophecies like this were made in the Old Testament and then fulfilled through Jesus' life, death and resurrection. The chances of one person fulfilling a mere eight of these prophecies are one-in-100,000,000,000,000,000. For one person to fulfill 48 of these prophecies, the number becomes staggering – one chance in 10-to-the-157th power. Add to that the 250 other prophecies, and it becomes impossible for any other person except Jesus to ever fit that particular sequence of time and events.
A FEW EXAMPLES
Messiah to be born of a virgin: Prophesied – Isaiah 7:14; Fulfilled – Matthew 1:18-25
Messiah to be accursed and crucified: Prophesied – Deuteronomy 21:22-23, Psalm 22, Psalm 69:21; Fulfilled – Matthew 27:34-50; John 19:28-30, Galatians 3:13
Messiah to be raised from the dead: Prophesied – Psalm 16:10; Fulfilled – Acts 13:35-37
The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. (Psalm 118:22)
He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth. (Isaiah 25:8)
EXCERPTED FROM www.whoisjesus-really.com:
The Old Testament was completed hundreds of years before Jesus was born. A large number of prophecies were made in astonishing detail by many people throughout these books. In fact, fulfilled prophecy is one of the distinguishing marks of the Bible, authenticating its claim to be the inspired Word of God.
For example, the Old Testament indicated Jesus would be betrayed by someone he trusted. "Even my close friend whom I trusted, he who has shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me" (Psalm 41:9). The New Testament, which records Jesus' life and resurrection, reveals that one of the 12 people Jesus chose to be part of his inner circle betrayed him: "Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them" (Mark 14:10).
More than 300 Messianic prophecies like this were made in the Old Testament and then fulfilled through Jesus' life, death and resurrection. The chances of one person fulfilling a mere eight of these prophecies are one-in-100,000,000,000,000,000. For one person to fulfill 48 of these prophecies, the number becomes staggering – one chance in 10-to-the-157th power. Add to that the 250 other prophecies, and it becomes impossible for any other person except Jesus to ever fit that particular sequence of time and events.
A FEW EXAMPLES
Messiah to be born of a virgin: Prophesied – Isaiah 7:14; Fulfilled – Matthew 1:18-25
Messiah to be accursed and crucified: Prophesied – Deuteronomy 21:22-23, Psalm 22, Psalm 69:21; Fulfilled – Matthew 27:34-50; John 19:28-30, Galatians 3:13
Messiah to be raised from the dead: Prophesied – Psalm 16:10; Fulfilled – Acts 13:35-37
Return of the King
Christ, the Anointed Son, sits on a throne. His rule stretches to the corners of creation. Every trickle of authority in heaven and on earth is now under his rule. No one--no pharaoh, no king, no president--is outside his reign. The Sovereign authority of the Son encompasses all people—from every racial origin, from all the continents of the globe. All have been created to serve and worship and glorify Him, and to enjoy the rich blessings of an eternal kingdom.
The Anointed has cast his rope of authority over all men.
But man rages against God, thrusting knives at the ropes of authority—as if the chords were an ambush, like a net contracted around a trapped animal, hanging helplessly in the air for its hunter.
Man forms alliances to build strength against the Anointed.
The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s rage.
No less a rebel is the man who ignores God. He refuses to pursue God. The fool says in his heart that God is nothing, a phantom, an impotent and imagined delusion. God is to him an unnecessary distraction from the banquet of selfish desires (Ps. 10:4, 14:1-3, Rom. 3:11). The fool has become His enemy by intentional ignorance.
The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s delusions.
The kings of the world conspire together to murder the Anointed Son. False accusations, slander, violence, spit, lashes, nails–all reveal the hatred. Cold death descends with the darkness. But Christ’s murder breaks a pathway down into the ground that opens upward to enthroned exaltation. The throne is a reward for His death.
The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s wisdom.
The kings of the earth rage against the gospel, persecute believers, threaten violence, destroy families, kill, disband churches, imprison leaders, refuse the distribution of bibles, silence preachers.
The Lord laughs. The church grows. Convictions strengthen. The gospel spreads (Acts 4:19-31).
The Lord laughs because the Anointed is returning. Soon Christ will end the mutiny. He will step down from his throne with an iron scepter in his fist to shatter his enemies like glassware (Rev. 2:27). He will step back into this world to tread his enemies with the sole of His feet, thrusting down on his enemies the winepress of his wrath, crimson blood soaking the bottom of his white robe (Isa. 63:3).
This is the Jesus we never knew—or the Jesus many would like to forget. But this is the real Jesus, the anointed King who will return to fulfill thousands of years of expectations and anticipations of God’s people. He will fix every injustice, dry every tear, and remove the handcuffs of evil from his people and his world.
But before the Son returns with His scepter in his fist, He stretches out mercy in his hand. The Anointed bids sinners to come, to kiss the ring of His Lordship, to find refuge from the wrath.
The King’s heart throbs with love towards sinners. The Anointed takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather hopes that sinners turn and live.
Captured in Psalm 2 are life-shaping realities:
The only refuge from the wrath of the King is to find refuge in the King.
The day of wrath upon His enemies is also the day of deliverance for His people.
His return is meaningless for none.
Perhaps you kick violently against God’s authority, thrusting knives at the bonds of His authority. Perhaps you plug your ears, unwilling to pursue Him. Perhaps you find your heart somewhere in the middle. It matters little. The King’s return is imminent.
Kiss His hand. Bow under His rightful authority. Humbly and joyfully take up His yoke. And find in Him a place of refuge where sinners are given forgiveness in His blood, safety, justice, salvation, spiritual riches and eternal joy. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.
The Anointed has cast his rope of authority over all men.
But man rages against God, thrusting knives at the ropes of authority—as if the chords were an ambush, like a net contracted around a trapped animal, hanging helplessly in the air for its hunter.
Man forms alliances to build strength against the Anointed.
The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s rage.
No less a rebel is the man who ignores God. He refuses to pursue God. The fool says in his heart that God is nothing, a phantom, an impotent and imagined delusion. God is to him an unnecessary distraction from the banquet of selfish desires (Ps. 10:4, 14:1-3, Rom. 3:11). The fool has become His enemy by intentional ignorance.
The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s delusions.
The kings of the world conspire together to murder the Anointed Son. False accusations, slander, violence, spit, lashes, nails–all reveal the hatred. Cold death descends with the darkness. But Christ’s murder breaks a pathway down into the ground that opens upward to enthroned exaltation. The throne is a reward for His death.
The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s wisdom.
The kings of the earth rage against the gospel, persecute believers, threaten violence, destroy families, kill, disband churches, imprison leaders, refuse the distribution of bibles, silence preachers.
The Lord laughs. The church grows. Convictions strengthen. The gospel spreads (Acts 4:19-31).
The Lord laughs because the Anointed is returning. Soon Christ will end the mutiny. He will step down from his throne with an iron scepter in his fist to shatter his enemies like glassware (Rev. 2:27). He will step back into this world to tread his enemies with the sole of His feet, thrusting down on his enemies the winepress of his wrath, crimson blood soaking the bottom of his white robe (Isa. 63:3).
This is the Jesus we never knew—or the Jesus many would like to forget. But this is the real Jesus, the anointed King who will return to fulfill thousands of years of expectations and anticipations of God’s people. He will fix every injustice, dry every tear, and remove the handcuffs of evil from his people and his world.
But before the Son returns with His scepter in his fist, He stretches out mercy in his hand. The Anointed bids sinners to come, to kiss the ring of His Lordship, to find refuge from the wrath.
The King’s heart throbs with love towards sinners. The Anointed takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather hopes that sinners turn and live.
Captured in Psalm 2 are life-shaping realities:
The only refuge from the wrath of the King is to find refuge in the King.
The day of wrath upon His enemies is also the day of deliverance for His people.
His return is meaningless for none.
Perhaps you kick violently against God’s authority, thrusting knives at the bonds of His authority. Perhaps you plug your ears, unwilling to pursue Him. Perhaps you find your heart somewhere in the middle. It matters little. The King’s return is imminent.
Kiss His hand. Bow under His rightful authority. Humbly and joyfully take up His yoke. And find in Him a place of refuge where sinners are given forgiveness in His blood, safety, justice, salvation, spiritual riches and eternal joy. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.
The Witness of Matthew...Continued from page 1
If we were to look, however, for one single theme that seems to be the most central and most important theme of the entire gospel of Matthew, it would be the theme of the coming of the kingdom. We see in the first instance that the term gospel refers to the gospel of the kingdom — the good news of the announcement of the breakthrough of the kingdom of God. In Matthew’s case, he uses the phrase “kingdom of heaven” rather than the terminology “kingdom of God.” He does this not because he has a different view of the meaning or content of the kingdom of God; rather, out of sensitivity to his Jewish readers, he makes common use of what is called periphrasis, a certain type of circumlocution to avoid mentioning the sacred name of God. So for Matthew, the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven is the same kingdom that the other writers speak of as the kingdom of God.Matthew talks about the breakthrough of the kingdom and the arrival of Jesus in His incarnation. He announces the coming of the kingdom at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and at the end of the book Matthew speaks about the final consummation of the coming of that kingdom in the Olivet Discourse. So from the first page of Matthew to the last page, we see the unifying theme of the coming of the kingdom of God in the appearance of the king Himself, who is the Messiah of Israel and the fulfillment of the kingdom given to Judah.The gospel of Matthew is rich in detailed information about the teaching of Jesus and particularly in His parables, which are not always included in the other gospels. Again, the central focus of the parables of Jesus is the kingdom, where He introduces parables by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto this…” or “the kingdom of heaven is like unto that….” If we are to understand the significance of the appearance of Jesus in the fullness of time to inaugurate the kingdom and the whole meaning of redemptive history, we see that focus come into clear view in the Gospel According to Saint Matthew.
The Witness of Matthew
In the history of biblical studies, we have seen in the last two centuries the rise of so-called “higher criticism.” So much of higher criticism is fueled by skepticism with respect to the reliability of the biblical texts. Since orthodox Christians stand opposed to many of the arguments of higher critics, they sometimes overlook valuable insights that can be gained through critical analysis of the text. Some of these analyses can be very helpful to our endeavor of seeking an accurate understanding of the Bible. One element of critical scholarship that can do this is that dimension known as source criticism. As the title suggests, this type of criticism attempts to reconstruct the way in which the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) came to be written.The general assumption among source critics is that Mark was the first written gospel. This is seen by an analysis of Matthew and Luke — both Matthew and Luke have material in their gospels that is common to the gospel of Mark. At the same time, there is common material found in Luke and in Matthew that is not found in Mark. The scholars then try to account for this common information found in these two gospels that is absent from Mark’s gospel. The working hypothesis is that Matthew and Luke, in addition to having Mark as a source for their information, had a second independent source that Mark did not use. This second independent source is called simply the “Q-source.”
That letter Q is used since it is the first letter of the German word quelle, which is simply the word for source. That is to say, the Q-source is a source that is unknown to us but known to the gospel writers Matthew and Luke. Much of this analysis is speculative and hypothetical. Scholars differ as to whether the alleged Q-source was a written source shared by Matthew and Luke, or simply an oral tradition they both had access to. Wherever we land in our conclusions about the method by which the gospel writers compiled their texts, the very analysis that we have seen gives us one clear benefit. By isolating material that is found in Matthew and only in Matthew, or isolating material that is found in Luke and only in Luke, or isolating material found in Mark and only in Mark, we get clues as to the audience to which the author was directing his information and also his major themes in the particular gospel. For example, in looking at the gospel of Matthew, we find more citations and allusions to Old Testament Scriptures than in any of the other gospels. This fact alone lends credence to the idea that Matthew was directing his gospel primarily to a Jewish audience to show how Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.We also see in Matthew’s gospel a strong condemnation of the Jewish clergy of that period of history who were responsible for seeing to the destruction of Jesus. The scribes and the Pharisees are particularly singled out, as Matthew records for us the judgment of woes spoken against the scribes and the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. On a somewhat related matter, we also find in Matthew more information concerning Jesus’ teaching on hell than we find anywhere else in the four gospels.
That letter Q is used since it is the first letter of the German word quelle, which is simply the word for source. That is to say, the Q-source is a source that is unknown to us but known to the gospel writers Matthew and Luke. Much of this analysis is speculative and hypothetical. Scholars differ as to whether the alleged Q-source was a written source shared by Matthew and Luke, or simply an oral tradition they both had access to. Wherever we land in our conclusions about the method by which the gospel writers compiled their texts, the very analysis that we have seen gives us one clear benefit. By isolating material that is found in Matthew and only in Matthew, or isolating material that is found in Luke and only in Luke, or isolating material found in Mark and only in Mark, we get clues as to the audience to which the author was directing his information and also his major themes in the particular gospel. For example, in looking at the gospel of Matthew, we find more citations and allusions to Old Testament Scriptures than in any of the other gospels. This fact alone lends credence to the idea that Matthew was directing his gospel primarily to a Jewish audience to show how Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, fulfilled Old Testament prophecy.We also see in Matthew’s gospel a strong condemnation of the Jewish clergy of that period of history who were responsible for seeing to the destruction of Jesus. The scribes and the Pharisees are particularly singled out, as Matthew records for us the judgment of woes spoken against the scribes and the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. On a somewhat related matter, we also find in Matthew more information concerning Jesus’ teaching on hell than we find anywhere else in the four gospels.
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