In part one of this article, we discussed the manuscript evidence for the Bible, and how the allegation of wholesale editing in the fourth century (which is a very popular argument) does not hold any water. Yet, this is just the shallow end of the pool when it comes to the textual issues of the Bible. There have been more scholarly and nuanced attacks upon the integrity of the New Testament, which carry more weight to their arguments than the average layman who has only heard of Michael Baigent or Dan Brown. To this, we shall now turn.

Textual Criticism and Alleged Corruption

Anybody who knows anything about textual criticism of the New Testament has undoubtedly heard of Bart Ehrman and his bestselling book, Misquoting Jesus. When he published his book back in 2005, Ehrman became one of the oft-cited textual scholars by both atheist and Muslim critics of the bible because of the case that he attempts to present against the textual reliability of the New Testament. Ehrman’s case can be summed up in what he wrote in his introduction to the book:

It is one thing to say that the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we don’t have the originals—so saying they were inspired doesn’t help me much, unless I can reconstruct the originals. moreover, the vast majority of Christians for the entire history of the church have not had access to the originals, making their inspiration something of a moot point. Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have the copies of the copies of the originals, or the copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places. As we will see later in this book, these copies differ from one another so many places that we don’t even know how many differences there are. Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.[1]

This is the man who is often lauded these days as the one who has “exposed” the secrets of textual criticism to the light of day. However, most of the arguments in the book have more to do with shock value (sadly, most Christians are ignorant about these issues, so its easy to shock them with these kinds of things) and misinterpretation of facts (which we will be delving more into as we go along). Most of the things Ehrman says is really nothing new for those who are familiar with textual criticism. Many textual critics, such as the Alands, Nicholas Perrin, Daniel Wallace, and Bruce Metzger (whom was actually Erhman’s mentor), have known about these issues for decades, and they do not interpret the facts the way Ehrman does. Dr. Daniel Wallace, one of the few textual scholars who can hold a candle to Ehrman in terms of influence in the field of New Testament textual criticism, wrote a comprehensive revew of his work entitled, The Gospel According to Bart. Here, Dr. Wallace shows the various flaws in Ehrman’s thinking, especially the unbalanced view that he holds concerning the reliability of the Bible:

What strikes me as most remarkable in all this is how much Ehrman tied inerrancy to the general historical reliability of the Bible. It was an all-or-nothing proposition for him. He still seems to see things in black and white terms… There thus seems to be no middle ground in his view of the text. In short, Ehrman seems to have held to what I would call a ‘domino view of doctrine.’ When one falls down, they all fall down.

…it seems that Bart’s black and white mentality as a fundamentalist has hardly been affected as he slogged through the years and trials of life and learning, even when he came out on the other side of the theological spectrum. He still sees things without sufficient nuancing, he overstates his case, and he is entrenched in the security that his own views are right.[2]

Aside from this, it should also be pointed out that he does not even go as far as many who wish to use his writings to attack the reliability of the Bible go, as evidenced by certain portions of his own writings where he shows a bit more conservatism in his view of the Scriptural text:

These are questions that plague textual critics, and that have led some to argue that we should abandon any quest for the original text—since we can’t even agree on what it might mean to talk about the “original” of, say, Galatians or John. For my part however, I continue to think that even if we cannot be 100 percent certain about what we can attain to, we can at least be certain that all surviving manuscripts were copied from other manuscripts, which were themselves copied from other manuscripts, and that it is at least possible to get back to the oldest and earliest stage of the manuscript tradition for each of the books of the New Testament. All our manuscripts of Galatians, for example, evidently go back to some text that was copied; all our manuscripts of John evidently go back to a version of John that included the prologue and chapter 21. And so we must rest content knowing that getting back to the earliest attainable version is the best we can do, whether or not we have reached back to the “original” text. This oldest form of the text is no doubt closely (very closely) related to what the author originally wrote, and so it is the basis for our interpretation of his teaching.[3]

Many critics of the Bible (such as the majority of Muslims) would like to think that the text of scripture has been so badly corrupted that its original form cannot even be discerned anymore. Yet, as we can see, this is a totally unwarranted assumption. The amount of resources textual critics have to work with is great enough that the original reading of the whole Bible can be derived from them.

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 the marginal note: “Fool and knave! Leave the old reading, don’t change it!” Certainly, copyists did alter the text from time to time—but the consistency of the available manuscripts of the New Testament demonstrates that these alterations were exceptions, not the rule.[4]

It is interesting to note that Ehrman mentions the same incident in his book, saying that to him, it is “a constant reminder about scribes and their proclivities to change, and rechange, their texts.”[5] This shows how one’s paradigm can affect the way one sees the evidence. What ought to be seen as an example of how the scribes took the accurate transmission of the text seriously, Ehrman uses to lampoon the reliability of the textual transmission of the New Testament. After all, it should be a wonder why the later copyist would even bother to preserve the original reading if he did not regard such accurate transmission as important. Ironically, Ehrman himself admits that the

It is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christian texts was by and large a “conservative” process. The scribes—whether non-professional scribes in the early centuries or professional scribes of the Middle Ages—were intent on “conserving” the textual tradition they were passing on. Their ultimate concern was not to modify the tradition, but to preserve it for themselves and for those who would follow them. Most scribes, no doubt, tried to do a faithful job in making sure that the text they reproduced was the same text they inherited.[6]

Now, the reason why every manuscript differs is because the scribes copying them are human. They may make slips every now and then and make a spelling error, miscopy a word or leave out a phrase. This is true of every ancient document, which is why every writing that exists before the invention of the printing press has a textual history (even the Qur’an, but that is to be a discussion for a future article). In The King James Only Controversy, Dr. James White talks about the difficulties early scribes faced when they copied out:

The scribes of old made errors… Even the best professionals had bad days. They made mistakes in what they were copying, even when they were copying the Scriptures. They worked under much more difficult situations—often in the cold or the heat, almost always with inferior lighting. Today we have glasses, or even Lasik surgery, and other accessories of which the men of old could not even dream. Many of them had to work long, arduous hours. Fingers cramped, and backs ached. You may think of one of those long essay tests from college to get a slight idea of the rigor of the work. All of these things contributed to the simple fact that there is not a single handwritten manuscript of the Bible, in Greek or Hebrew, that does not contain, somewhere, an error, an oversight, a mistake. Such is true, of course, of all ancient handwritten documents, including those that are claimed to be Scriptures (such as the Qur’an).[7]

Now, how about the claim by Ehrman that there are four hundred thousand textual variants? to the untrained ear, that sounds like a pretty big claim to make. However, Ehrman is only giving a part of the story. Many of those textual variants are not what they sound like at first glance. As Dr. Wallace points out how misleading this figure is:

Ehrman overplays the quality of the variants while underscoring their quantity. He says, “There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” Elsewhere he states that the number of variants is as high as 400,000. That is true enough, but by itself is misleading. Anyone who teaches NT textual criticism knows that this fact is only part of the picture and that, if left dangling in front of the reader without explanation, is a distorted view. Once it is revealed that the great majority of these variants are inconsequential—involving spelling differences that cannot even be translated, articles with proper nouns, word order changes, and the like—and that only a very small minority of the variants alter the meaning of the text, the whole picture begins to come into focus. Indeed, only about 1% of the textual variants are both meaningful and viable. The impression Ehrman sometimes gives throughout the book—and repeats in interviews—is that of wholesale uncertainty about the original wording, a view that is far more radical than he actually embraces.[8]

It is worth taking a serious look at the claim that there are so many variations in the manuscripts that we have of the New Testament. Since every scribe is fallible, and since we have so many thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament, then it is to be expected that we should find thousands of places where fallible scribes have made copying errors. But quantity does not equal quality, as Dr. Wallace has already pointed out. Also, Dr. White provides us with a sober and critical analysis of how significant these textual variations really are, when faced with the overall manuscript evidence:

…If we only had a single manuscript of the New testament, how many variants would we have? Well, none, of course! That sounds more like it. Or does it? If we only had one manuscript, we would have very little confidence that it accurately represents the original. A single manuscript could have been changed, and how would we know? We would have nothing with which to compare it. While the idea of having no variants may sound great, variants actually are a natural byproduct of having lots and lots of handwritten manuscripts. And the more manuscripts you have, the better, as far as making sure what you have today accurately reflects what was originally written.

Next, let’s put that huge “four hundred thousand” number in a meaningful context. If we have more than fifty-seven hundred Greek manuscripts, and these average two hundred pages each, we have nearly 1.2 million pages of text—a very substantial amount of handwritten material. The four hundred thousand number includes every single possible variation over the course of fifteen hundred years prior to the printing press.

Next, we must emphasize that 99 percent of the four hundred thousand variations are irrelevant to the proper translation and understanding of the Greek text. Even the most liberal textual critic agrees here. Unlike in the English language, difference in word order, especially in Greek, often are completely irrelevant. In fact, in Greek, one can say the same thing in more than a dozen different ways, using differences in word order, cases, etc. Combine this with differences in spelling and other minor variations, and the number of meaningful New Testament variants drops to a more realistic number of four thousand. This represents about 2.9 percent of the text, or one meaningful variant every three pages or so of the New Testament.[9]

Thus, only 2.9 percent of the text contain any real meaningful textual variants, and if we bring up the question of which of these textual variants are both meaningful and viable, then the number drops even lower to only 1 percent. Some scholars go even higher than this. For example, Drs. Norman Geisler and William Nix would point out that the text of the New Testament “has survived in a purer form than any other great book—a form that is 99.5 percent pure.“[10] It should be added to this that in the remaining 0.5 percent where there is any signficant doubt concerning the original reading, not a single cardinal Christian doctrine is affected.

So ultimately, it is not a question of whether manuscripts of the bible have errors in them, but whether these errors prevent us from knowing what the original text of the bible actually says. You can have thousands of manuscripts that all have errors in them, but unless every single manuscript has mistakes in the exact same spot (and really, this is where the “they all differ from one another” argument falls flat on its face), this is does not provide any evidence that the bible has been corrupted. There is a concept in textual criticism called tenacity, which means that when a textual variant enters into the manuscript tradition, it does not simply disappear. Even if it is an insignificant variant with no chance of being the original, it will nonetheless persist in a few manuscripts over the centuries.[11] Now, if such variants manage to survive, how much more with the original readings? We can be certain that the original reading has survived; it is simply a matter of distinguishing it from the textual variants (and most of the time this is actually quite easy, as there are relatively few passages where there is considerable doubt on which reading is the original, none of which are of any consequence to Christian doctrine).

Funny enough, even Bart Ehrman would substantiate the point by pointing out that the excellent documentation of the New Testament means that the existence of these textual variants do not automatically make the Bible corrupt, and that we are in a unique position to determine the text of the New Testament due to the wealth of manuscript evidence that textual critics have to work with:

Bentley, an expert in the textual traditions of the classics, goes on to point out that one would expect to find a multitude of textual variants whenever one uncovers a large number of manuscripts. If there were only one manuscript of a work, there would be no textual variants. Once a manuscript is located, however, it will differ from the first in a number of places. This is not a bad thing, however, as a number of these variant readings will show where the first manuscript has preserved an error. Add a third manuscript, and you will find additional variant readings, but also additional places, as a result, where the original text is preserved (i.e., where the first two manuscripts agree in an error). And so it goes—the more manuscripts one discovers, the more the variant readings; but also the more the likelihood that somewhere among those variant readings one will be able to uncover the original text. Therefore, the thirty thousand variants uncovered by [John Stuart] Mill do not detract from the integrity of the New Testament; they simply provide the data scholars need to work on to establish the text, a text that is more documented than any other in the ancient world.[12]

However, is Ehrman correct in saying that the existence of these textual variants provides evidence that God has not kept his word in preserving the Holy Scriptures and that the doctrines of Biblical Inspiration and Inerrancy are thereby proven false? This shall be point of discussion for the final part of this article.

Textual Criticism, Inspiration and Inerrancy

As he points out in Misquoting Jesus, what drove Bart Ehrman to lose his faith in the reliability of the text of scripture is the idea that God had not preserved the text of scripture:

This became a problem for my view of inspiration, for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them (and possibly, even given them the words in a language they could understand, rather than Greek and Hebrew). The fact that we don’t have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn’t perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words.[13]

It would seem that the bit where Ehrman complains about the language the Bible written in is a momentary lapse in logic on his part. He asks why God would give the words of scripture in Hebrew and Greek rather than in a language the people could understand, when in fact, Hebrew and Greek were the languages the people who the biblical books were originally written to could understand. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew because that was what the Jews to whom it was revealed to understood, and the New Testament was written in Greek because that was the common language of much of the near and middle eastern world at the time of the New Testament (Koine Greek is basically the first century equivalent of English today).

To make the point clear, think of a hypothetical scenario where the official language of the United States of America changed from English to Spanish. The vast majority of people would no longer be able to read the Constitution in the original English it was written in, but would have to rely upon a Spanish translation of the American Constitution. And suppose that there were different Spanish translations of the Constitution, which function on different translation principles or whose translators thought certain Spanish words conveyed the meaning of the original English better. Now, would it be fair to accuse the founding fathers of the United States of having been so inconsiderate as to have written the Constitution in English rather than Spanish, which is what most people can understand? Well of course not, because English was the common language of the American people when the Constitution was written!

That being said, has the existence of textual variation compromise the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy? Not at all. Now, perhaps if the original reading of the scriptural text has been lost, this argument might hold water, but since it are still with us, this does not pose any problems for the doctrine of inerrancy. As Dr. Wallace points out,

Inspiration relates to the wording of the Bible, while inerrancy relates to the truth of a statement. American evangelicals generally believe that only the original text is inspired. This is not to say, however, that copies can’t be inerrant. Indeed, statements that bear no relation to scripture can be inerrant. If I say, “I am married and have four sons, two dogs, and a cat,” that’s an inerrant statement. It’s not inspired, nor at all related to scripture, but it is true. Similarly, whether Paul says “we have peace” or “let us have peace” in Rom 5.1, both statements are true (though each in a different sense), though only one is inspired. Keeping this distinction in mind as we consider the textual variants of the NT should clarify matters.

Regardless of what one thinks about the doctrine of inerrancy, the argument against it on the basis of the unknown autographs is logically fallacious. This is so for two reasons. First, we have the text of the NT somewhere in the manuscripts. There is no need for conjecture, except perhaps in one or two places. Second, the text we have in any viable variants is no more a problem for inerrancy than other problems where the text is secure. Now, to be sure, there are some challenges in the textual variants to inerrancy. This is not denied. But there are simply bigger fish to fry when it comes to issues that inerrancy faces. Thus, if conjectural emendation is unnecessary, and if no viable variant registers much of a blip on the radar called ‘problems for inerrancy,’ then not having the originals is a moot point for this doctrine.[14]

Even in the two cases where there are conjectural emendations involved (which are Acts 16:12 and Revelation 21:17), there is hardly any difference. In Acts 16:12, the emendation involves the inclusion of a single word that has very little impact on the meaning of the text.[15] In Revelation 21:17, the emendation concerns a variation in spelling that has zero impact on the meaning of the text at all. Apart from those two very minor emendations, the text of the New Testament can be deduced from all the manuscripts that we have available to us. As Dr. Bruce Metzger states in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament,

During the twentieth century, with the discovery of several New Testament manuscripts much older than any that had hitherto been available, it has become possible to produce editions of the New Testament that approximate ever more closely to what is regarded as the wording of the original documents.[16]

And finally, it must be remembered that even with the most significant textual variations, we do not end up with radically different books handed down to us. The Gospel of Matthew is still the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Philippians is still the Epistle to the Philippians, etc. In other words, our biblical faith remains perfectly intact. In the words of Dr. White,

The reality is that the amount of variation between the two most extremely different manuscripts of the New Testament would not fundamentally alter the message of the Scriptures!… No textual variants in either the Old or New Testament in any way, shape, or form materially disrupt or destroy any essential doctrine of the Christian faith. This is a fact that any semi-impartial review will substantiate…[17]

Conclusion

The attack upon the reliability of Scripture by arguing that it has not been preserved for us and has been corrupted over the centuries is one that is very popular in this day and age, yet we can see that there is no firm basis for believing this claim. We can see that God has kept His word from passing away through the sands of time. Dr. White concludes rather nicely when he points out how great our case is for the reliable preservation of the scriptures:

There is no question… that it was God’s intention to preserve the biblical text in a particular fashion, one that would safeguard it against the primary attacks of its critics. The objection that “We just can’t know what was originally written; it may have been changed” is ruled out by the means God used to distribute the text explosively in the first few centuries, resulting in its multifocality. Combined with the tenacity of the text…, we have been given great confidence in the face of the faith’s adversaries.[18]

The Lord Jesus Christ has promised to us that His words shall never pass away (Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31); not one jot, not one tittle. And we see that He has kept His promise. The means by which He has done this may not be the means that we would desire Him to (for it is a means that requires careful study and research on the part of those involved), but it has been most profitable in keeping our Biblical text preserved amidst the forces that seek to corrupt it (or, in this case, claim that it has been corrupted). Thus, the Christian who opens up his or her Bible, reads and benefits from it must be thankful that it has come down to us as it has, for the Lord God was providentially at work in its preservation.

All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.
(Isaiah 40:6-8, ESV)

End Notes

  1. Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2005. pp. 10-11.
  2. Wallace, Daniel Baird. The Gospel according to Bart. Bible.org. <http://bible.org/article/gospel-according-bart#P74_24380>.
  3. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, p. 62.
  4. Jones, Timothy Paul. Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus. Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. p. 50.
  5. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, p. 56.
  6. Ibid., p. 177.
  7. White, James Robert. The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations? (Second Edition). Minneapolis, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 2009. pp. 60-61.
  8. Wallace, The Gospel According to Bart.
  9. White, The King James Only Controversy, pp. 63-64
  10. Geisler, Norman L. Aand William E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago IL: Moody Press, 1980. p. 367.
  11. Aland, Barbara and Kurt Aland. The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (Second Edition, Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes). Grand Rapids MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995. p. 56.
  12. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, p. 87.
  13. Ibid., p. 11.
  14. Wallace, The Gospel According to Bart.
  15. Metzger, Bruce Manning. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Second Edition). Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994. pp. 393-395.
  16. Ibid., p. 10.
  17. White, The King James Only Controversy, p. 67.
  18. Ibid., p. 87.

Further Reading

Other related Aristophrenium articles: