If you have followed this blog for a while, you know I sometimes preached sermons that treated issues involving the defense of the faith. This is one of them. Not everyone will agree with my conclusions--some will suggest I am too conservative, some will suggest I am too liberal. Most of us, whether we will admit it or not, tend to be mixtures of each perspective.
John 20:30-31
We’re going to begin with a little exercise of the
imagination. I’m going to pick on Ravi
and Anna for this illustration. [I’ve changed the names I used when I preached
this message.] Let’s imagine Ravi and Anna were visited by a cousin from India
during the weekend prior to Thanksgiving.
This cousin had been visiting all over the US, seeing such places as
Disneyland, the Alamo, the Grand Canyon, and other famous sites. He faithfully writes a letter home to family
and friends after each part of his journey.
Let’s further imagine that we have a copy of the letter he wrote to his
parents about his visit here.
My dear family,
In this letter I want
to tell you about my visit to Ravi and Anna and their beautiful children. It was a wonderful visit. It is hard to believe Mili was only an infant
when I last saw them.
As you know, Ravi and
Anna live near the city of Columbus which is the capitol of the state of
Ohio. I now know Ohio better than
before. I am told that many American presidents came from Ohio. It is the coldest place I have visited. I actually saw ice on the grass one
morning. This ice is called frost. Where I grew up I never saw frost. Of course, in much of our country it is never
so cold as it is during the winter in Ohio.
Sudakhar and Anna
took me to their church, the Ravineside Baptist Church. [I have changed the church name though discovering it wouldn't be difficult.] On this Lord’s Day they served refreshments
before the church service. I was told
the church does this once each month to encourage people to invite friends to
the church. This “Friendship Sunday”—as
it is called—was special because the refreshments were from the country of
Moldova. The people of the Ravineside
Baptist Church are studying Moldova to help remind them of the importance of
sending the gospel to other lands. I
found the people of the Ravineside Baptist Church to be friendly and kind. I felt very welcome and glad that someone
brought the gospel to our land so long ago.
My visit was just
before the American holiday called Thanksgiving. It is one of most important holidays in
America. People often travel great
distances to spend the day with their families. They eat a great deal of
turkey. A turkey is a large bird that
seems to have nothing to do with the country of the same name. I was told that for more than a century
Americans have watched football games on Thanksgiving. Remember, this is “American” football. I was told that after some of these games
many people will forget why they are thankful.
(I think that is an American joke.)
Speaking of football,
the people of Columbus were very excited about a game that took place during my
visit. I was told that many consider it
to be the most important game of the entire year. It is the game between the Buckeyes of the
Ohio State University and the Wolverines of the Michigan State University. I was told that a wolverine is a small fierce
animal. When someone told me what a
buckeye is, I did not believe them. I
think they were “pulling my leg,” as the Americans say.
I will write you
soon,
Now, imagine our traveler’s parents
taking the letter to their church in India.
They are happy he is having such a great trip and they want to read it
to their friends. Everyone finds the
letter interesting and they are especially impressed with what he had to say
about the Ravineside Baptist Church.
Some of them even say they would like to visit a church that is so
friendly and so interested in missions.
But, then, in the midst of all this
discussion, someone speaks up, a newcomer to the church. This person has also been to the states,
perhaps even visited Columbus or Ann Arbor.
He says, “I am not believing a word of it. I doubt there is even such a place as the
Ravineside Baptist Church.”
When asked why he would say such a
thing, he says, “Because the Wolverines are from the University of
Michigan. If he made such a mistake, we
can’t trust anything he says.”
You might find it hard to believe
that anyone would take such a hardline position, denying our visitor’s
truthfulness because of one understandable mistake. Yet, there are those who are willing to say
the same thing about the writers of the New Testament.
Is the New Testament “Full” of Mistakes?
Is the New Testament “full” of
mistakes? A recent best-selling author
seems to think so. He says flatly, “We
have only error-ridden copies of [the New Testament].” Echoing the thinking of other writers, he
even suggests we can never know what the original New Testament documents said.
Bart Ehrman, currently the
best-known of these critics, says there are more mistakes in the New Testament
documents than there are words in the New Testament. Can this be right?
In one sense, yes. It’s estimated that there are between 200,000
and 400,000 “errors” in the New Testament manuscripts we possess. There are only 184,000 words in the New
Testament. But, you need to remember
several things.
These errors are most often
variations of spelling or word order.
Few of these variations change the meaning of the text.
The way the so-called errors are
counted is misleading. For example, if a
scribe misspelled a word and that word is copied into another manuscript, and
then into another, each misspelling is counted as a mistake. As a result, “…a variant of one letter of one word in one verse in
2,000 manuscripts is counted as 2,000 ‘errors.’”[1]
Most important, not one of these
variants or “errors,” if you will, changes any fundamental doctrine of
Christianity. Yet, the critics of the
New Testament and of Christianity continue to claim these variations in the
manuscripts are significant.
Can We Know What the New Testament Originally Said?
With so many variants, can we know
what the New Testament originally said?
I hope this doesn’t shock anyone,
but we don’t have the original manuscripts of any of the books in the New Testament. They have long ago crumbled into dust or were
snatched up and burned in the dark days of persecution the church faced.
Why didn’t God preserve the
originals? Why can’t we travel to Rome,
Geneva, or Dallas to see these writings—under glass, no doubt, because of their
age—safely there for us? I don’t know,
but I have a theory. It may be that the
all-wise God knew that if we had a piece of parchment actually touched by Paul,
John, or Luke, that piece of parchment would have become an object of worship. Perhaps we don’t have the originals because
it is better if we don’t.
Still, it’s possible for us to
reconstruct the New Testament documents with an amazing accuracy. How?
·
We have many copies of the originals. There are nearly 5,700 whole or partial
copies of the New Testament documents.
Some of these date very near the time of writing, compared to other
ancient documents.
While we have some fragments
that date from about AD 120, there are nearly complete copies dated 250 years
after the time of writing. That may seem
a long time but consider this: The
earliest copy of Caesar’s The Gallic Wars
is dated 1,000 years after its composition.
Having nearly 6,000 whole or
partial copies of any ancient book is remarkable. The works of the Roman poet Gaius Catullus is
known because we have three copies of his work, the earliest dated some 1,600
years after he wrote. He was a
contemporary of Julius Caesar.
The fact that so many copies of
the New Testament exist shows how important it was to the early
Christians. It was costly to copy a
book. They believed its message needed
to be known.
Before I move on, let me
mention one other development. In 1970,
a Spanish Jesuit priest named Jose O’Callahan (honest) published the results of
his study of a handful of manuscript fragments.
An expert in ancient documents, he identified them as being from the
Gospel of Mark, Acts, and some of the Epistles.
While his conclusions have been challenged, no one has successfully
shown what other ancient works they could have come from. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Those fragments came from Cave 7 at Qumran,
making them part of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1947. The archeologists who discovered the
fragments insist the cave was sealed no later than AD 70 and remained sealed
until almost seventy years ago. If the
late Father O’Callahan’s conclusions are correct, the notion that major
portions of the New Testament weren’t composed until hundreds of years after
the events is in question.
·
In addition to the many Greek manuscript
portions of the New Testament available, there are also many translations
of the New Testament. It was unusual to
translate any books in the ancient world so this, again, shows the importance
to the NT for the Christian community.
Anyway, there are between 18,000 and 25,000 translated copies of the
NT—whole or in part—dating from very early times. These also help in reconstructing the original
text.
·
Finally, because the New Testament was so
important for Christians, early leaders, theologians, and other writers often
quoted it in their works and some even wrote commentaries on the books. If we extract those quotations from the
writings of just those authors living from the second to the fourth centuries,
we can reconstruct the entire New Testament, except for eleven verses.
So, can we know what the New
Testament originally said? What do you
think?
When Pat and I visited London a
couple years ago, it was a trip we had looked forward to for years. One of the sites we visited was the British
Museum. Some of the great treasures of
history are there.
[On our second trip to the UK, our
son and daughter-in-law treated us to a trip to Dublin and a visit to the
Chester Beatty Library where we saw fragments of Luke’s gospel dating from the
early third century. We were reminded
that the John Rylands Library at Manchester had fragments that are even older,
early second century by some estimates.]
Sir Frederic Kenyon, former
director and principal librarian of the British Museum, was one of the foremost
experts on ancient manuscripts and their authority. Shortly before his death,
he wrote this concerning the New Testament:
“The interval between the dates of original composition (of
the New Testament) and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be
in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures
have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.
Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New
Testament may be regarded as finally established” (The Bible and Archaeology,
pp. 288-89). [2]
For those of you who like numbers,
students of the issue say the reconstructed New Testament is about 99.5%
accurate. Again, the half percent that
is uncertain affects no major teaching of Christianity.
To put it yet another way, writers
like John, Paul, Luke, and others would look at the reconstructed New Testament
we have today and say, “Sure, I remember saying that.”
Where Did the Variations Come From?
With all this talk about
reconstructing the New Testament, you might ask, “Where did the variations come
from?”
The nature of the mistakes suggests
some of what happened.
There may have simply been
miscopying. Though the ancient copyists
aimed to be as accurate as possible, they still made mistakes. Some of you can remember copying a recipe for
someone, only to later discover you’ve left out a major ingredient. Pat was once given a recipe for a chocolate
cake a friend of ours regularly made.
The friend left the chocolate off the list of ingredients.
This probably explains why some
copies of the New Testament have misspellings, changed word order, or omitted
words.
A few copyists tried to help
clarify the originals. For example, in
the story of Philip and the Ethiopian official some copies portray the
evangelist saying, “if you truly believe in Jesus, you may be baptized.” That wasn’t in the original. The copyist may have feared some readers
would think Philip minimized the role of faith.
Therefore, to keep Philip’s reputation intact, he added the words.
Some scribes may have tried to make
the text more “politically” correct. In
Acts 17:4, for example, a scribe changed the reference to “some prominent
women” to “wives of some prominent men.”
Some may have been uncomfortable with the role women had in early
Christianity.
[Another example is the interesting translation history
of Acts 18:26 is interesting. The
Authorized Version says “Aquila and Priscilla” corrected Apollos. Most other translations follow the Greek
text and list Priscilla first. Were the
translators of the AV concerned a woman might appear too prominent in
correcting and instructing Apollos? That
cannot be proven with certainty; nor does the order of names necessarily prove
Luke wanted her remembered as the more articulate and effective partner. Nevertheless, nothing suggests Priscilla
simply allowed Aquila to do all the talking.]
Some copyists may have added words
to the text, which had been written in margins the documents from which they
were copying. For example, if the
previous owner of the document made a personal note on a page—like you and I
sometimes do in the margins of our own Bibles—the later copyist may have
assumed the words in the margin had been omitted from the original. Thinking he was restoring the text, he adds
them to the copy he is making.
Most copyists worked very hard to
faithfully preserve the original text.
Those copying the New Testament documents had a greater incentive; they
believed they were passing along God’s word.
Even a critic like Bart Ehrman admits this: “Most scribes, no doubt, tried to do a
faithful job in making sure that the text they reproduced was the same text they
inherited.”[3]
Timothy Paul Jones tells an
interesting story of a scribe who forgot that goal.
When one copyist changed the wording of a text in a
fourth-century manuscript known as Codex Vaticanus, a later copyist rewrote the
original word and added this marginal note:
‘Fool and knave! Leave the old
reading, don’t change it!’[4]
Is Bias a Deal
Breaker?
Some argue that the New Testament
can’t be trusted because it was written by insiders, by the converted. Their biases would have robbed them of
objectivity, so they cannot be trusted to tell the truth. So, is bias a deal breaker?
Without doubt Paul, John, and the
other writers were biased in favor of Jesus.
But does that necessarily imply their words about him can’t be trusted?
If their biases affected their
ability to tell the truth, we would expect them to avoid those stories that
might cast doubt on Christianity. But
they didn’t. They portrayed some of the
most important leaders of early Christianity with major flaws. Peter was seen as brash and impulsive—hardly
leadership material. John and James were
seen as hot-tempered and self-centered.
They unnecessarily raised suspicions about Jesus’ legitimacy by saying
he was virgin-born. They said the first
witnesses to the resurrection were women; that alone would have caused some in
the first century to doubt their preaching.
If they had been inclined to tweak the story to make it more believable,
they would have left these and other things out.
At the same time, it might be
worthwhile to explore the very fact that they had been converted. From almost the beginning they suffered for
that conversion. Why did they buy so
much trouble for themselves? Then, too,
remember that those early Christian leaders were raised in Judaism. At least one of them—Paul—was highly educated
in the theology and traditions of the Jews.
Yet, they abandoned the faith their families had held for
centuries. Why?
As Frank Turek writes, “The New
Testament writers had to have witnessed some very strong evidence to turn away
from those ancient beliefs and practices that had defined who they and their
forebears were for nearly 2,000 years.”[5]
Above all, the very notion that
bias renders a writer incapable of telling the truth is questionable. If it were true, then we could scarcely
believe anything anyone has ever written.
Writing is hard work and most people would not take on the task of
writing unless they have at least some passion for what they are saying. Anyone who has ever read a term paper or a
book review written by a student who was just trying to meet course
requirements, knows just how dull passionless writing can be. While some writers unquestionably omit,
distort, and invent facts to sell their point of view, many attempt to be
particularly scrupulous to protect their credibility and assure a hearing for
their message.
One New Testament writer tells of
his attempt to be careful in reporting the story of Jesus. In the prologue of his gospel, Luke writes:
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of
the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed
on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the
word,
I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very
first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that
you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been
instructed. [6]
Luke researched his gospel. He wrote early enough to have spoken to some
of the eyewitnesses. Certainly he spoke
to those who had heard the stories of Jesus from those “eyewitnesses” who were
“servants of the word.” I’ll talk a
little more about Luke the historian in the next message, but for now let’s
remember that Luke’s prologue reminds us that the early Christians had a
commitment to tell the story of Jesus often and accurately.
Is It All or Nothing?
Remember our imaginary visitor from
India and his letter home, the letter which made that mistake confusing
Michigan State and the University of Michigan?
The critic who overheard the letter said the mistakes were enough to
cast doubt on everything the writer said.
Was he right? Are those who say
the same thing about the New Testament right?
Is it all or nothing?
Bart Ehrman’s discovery of what he
considers mistakes in the New Testament led him to become what he calls “a
happy agnostic”. Did his pilgrimage have
to end there? This is no forum to judge
him, but I’m going to say I don’t think a person has to make that leap.
Unfortunately, I think some well
meaning conservatives have defined the doctrine of inerrancy in such a way that
they leave people thinking that just one unresolved problem or error destroys
the integrity of the entire Bible.
That’s too bad. My own view of the Bible has changed over the
years. I’m not as dogmatic as I used to
be. Don’t get me wrong. From what we know of the nature of God and
the Scripture’s own testimony about itself, I still believe it’s reasonable to
expect that one day all the Bible affirms will be demonstrated to be true. If you choose to define that as inerrancy, I
have no problem with that.
Over the years, I haven’t so much
changed what I believe as I have changed what I believe about what I
believe. I’m much more comfortable with
those who disagree with me on the matter of inerrancy than I once was. I don’t worry about them as much. I’m sure they don’t have to end up as
agnostics, happy or otherwise. [Practically, this means I am not going to
jettison my faith because Stephen—in the midst of a somewhat stressful
sermon—couldn’t remember the exact number of servants Abraham took with him.]
I still believe you can still hear
the voice of God speaking to you in the New Testament. You can still discover what God was doing in
Jesus and what God will do for you through Jesus.
I also believe there are those who
would like to undermine your faith in the New Testament. Whatever their motives may be, they want to
keep you from reading it.
Years ago, New Testament scholar F.
F. Bruce observed something of a double standard when some people approached
the New Testament.
“The evidence for our
New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many
writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of
questioning. [I]f the New Testament were a
collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded
as beyond all doubt”[7]
Don’t let the latest book,
presenting what some of newsmagazine describes as ground-breaking insights,
keep you from looking into this book which early Christians were so intent on
preserving and which some of them were willing to die protecting. Most of these groundbreaking discoveries
aren’t that new anyway.
It’s been evangelical Christians
who have been at the forefront of wrestling with the variants in the ancient
manuscripts. These Christians who take
the Bible so seriously created the science of textual criticism and produced a
reconstructed New Testament that is remarkably reliable. No one has been trying to hide this from
anyone, there’s all kind of books available that tell the story. We just know there’s no reason to jettison
our faith because of a slip of a pen.
[1]
Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t
Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004, p.229. (emphasis in
original)
[2]McDowell,
Josh ; Stewart, Don Douglas: Answers to Tough Questions. Nashville : T.
Nelson Publishers, 1993
[3] Quoted in Timothy Paul Jones, Misquoting Truth, Downers Grove: IVP Press, 2007, p. 48. [p. 177 of Misquoting Jesus.]
[5]
Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t
Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004, p.234.
[6] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version.
Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1996, c1989, S. Lk 1:1
