New Testament Manuscripts Week 8: Manuscripts and Trustworthiness – What we’ve learned

philosophies & challenges modern English translations translation philosophies & challenges

philosophies & challenges history of the English translations modern English translations translation philosophies & challenges

philosophies & challenges ancient Bible translations history of the English translations modern English translations translation philosophies & challenges

philosophies & challenges originals authorship divine qualities ancient Bible translations history of the English translations modern English translations acceptance / canonicity translation philosophies & challenges

philosophies & challenges originals authorship divine qualities ancient Bible translations history of the English translations modern English translations acceptance / canonicity copying & manuscripts translation philosophies & challenges

philosophies & challenges originals authorship divine qualities ancient Bible translations history of the English translations modern English translations acceptance / canonicity copying & manuscripts translation philosophies & challenges

thousands of manuscripts translation

thousands of manuscripts translation

Greek New Testament thousands of manuscripts translation

Textual Criticism “The study of the copies of any written document whose original (=the autograph) is unknown or non- existent, for the primary purpose of determining the exact wording of the original.”

The NT compared to the average classical work x8 average classical work New Testament

How many manuscripts do we have, exactly? 2013: 5,824 + 10,000+ Latin manuscripts of the NT + 5,000-10,000 ancient versions of the NT

Textual Variants Everything counts as a variant

Textual Variants Everything counts as a variant There are 138,000 words in the New Testament

Textual Variants Everything counts as a variant There are 138,000 words in the New Testament There are nearly 6,000 manuscripts to compare

“The NT is by far the best-attested work of Greek or Latin literature from the ancient world.” (Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, ed. Daniel B. Wallace, 30)

“Let us not forget that the distinctive challenges in our field [biblical textual criticism] are actually the result of enormous quantities of data (unavailable for other documents whose originality we take for granted!).” (Moises Silva in Rethinking NT Textual Criticism, p.150)

How many manuscripts do we have, exactly? 2013: 5,824 + 10,000+ Latin manuscripts of the NT + 5,000-10,000 ancient versions of the NT

How many manuscripts do we have, exactly? 2013: 5,824 + 10,000+ Latin manuscripts of the NT + 5,000-10,000 ancient versions of the NT + over 1 million NT quotations from the church fathers

“To date, more than one million quotations of the NT by the [early church] fathers have been recorded. ‘[I]f all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, [the patristic quotations] would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament,’ wrote Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman.” (Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, ed. Daniel B. Wallace, 28)

400,000

400,000 1,000-1,500

400,000 1,000-1,500 A few hundred?

How many Christian doctrines are questionable due to textual variants? “Essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.” (Bart Ehrman, pages 252-253 of the HarperSanFrancisco 2005 edition of Misquoting Jesus)

“No essential doctrine of the Christian faith is jeopardized by any viable variant.” (Credo Courses – Textual Criticism, Daniel B. Wallace, 216)

“In the appendix to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman says about his disagreements with Bruce Metzger, whom Ehrman described as his doctor-father and to whom he had dedicated Misquoting Jesus, ‘[E]ven though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands.’ (252).” (Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, ed. Daniel B. Wallace, 20)

“Even though we are looking at the same textual problems and arriving at the same answers most of the time, conservatives are still conservative, and liberals are still liberal. What is the issue then? The text is not the basic area of our disagreement; the interpretation of the text is.” (Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, ed. Daniel B. Wallace, 21)