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QUESTION
In _Misquoting Jesus_, Bart D. Ehrman implies that the New Testament documents may not have been copied accurately---that we do not have the original authors' words. Is he right or not? If he's wrong, how do you know that he's wrong?
REPLY
Do we have any way to gauge this that isn't pure speculation? It seems to me that the only way you can KNOW beyond guessing is to find, at least, one New Testament document that is original. Why weren't the originals kept, given how much they were valued? One would think that, if the first-century churches intended to pass the documents along with great care, they would have made master copies and then sealed the originals in dry jars. A couple hundred years later we know they were transcribed with great care, but the church was officially established by the government by then. It makes one wonder if the Catholic church or Orthodox church is hiding some original manuscripts. How could they have lost every single one of them?
REPLY
Is there some guesswork involved in the task of textual criticism? Sure, but there's a process in it that involves a lot more than guesswork. Here's what textual criticism assumes: It's impossible for all the copyists to have made the same mistake at the same time. In other words, since changes creep into the manuscripts one at a time in different times and places, it is possible to compare several manuscripts to discover when and where the error occurred. The textual critic can then, in most cases, figure out the original wording of the text.
Look at a simple example of this process. In most Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of John, chapter one, verse six, reads something like this: "There was a man, having been sent from God, whose name was John." But, in a manuscript known as Codex Bezae or simply as D, the text reads, "There was a man, having been sent from the Lord, whose name was John."
Like most differences between manuscripts, this variant doesn't affect the meaning of the text. Still, it's important for scholars and translators to determine which words appeared in the original text of the Gospel of John. So, how do they know which reading is closest to the original?
Codex Bezae is a vellum codex that includes not only Greek text but also Latin. Together, the style of writing, the use of vellum instead of papyrus, and the presence of Greek and Latin in the text suggest that Codex Bezae-the manuscript that reads "sent from the Lord"-was copied around A.D. 500 Codex Bezae also seems to have originated in the region of Europe now known as France.
The two primary manuscripts that agree on the other reading-"sent from God" instead of "sent from the Lord"-are a vellum codex known as "Codex Sinaiticus" and a papyrus codex that scholars have dubbed P66. Codex Sinaiticus was copied around A.D. 330. P66 probably dates from the late second century A.D., a century or less from the time when most scholars believe the Gospel of John was originally written! Codex Sinaiticus and P66 also seem to have been copied in two different areas of Egypt.
Given the agreement between Codex Sinaiticus and P66-manuscripts that were copied in two different places, more than a century apart-and the fact that these two codices are centuries older than Codex Bezae, nearly every textual critic has concluded that John 1:6 originally read "sent from God." At some point, probably somewhere in Europe in the fifth century, a tired or careless scribe wrote "Lord" (Greek, kyriou) when the word should have been copied was "God" (Greek, theou).
Now, I must admit to you that most textual issues are far more complicated than the scenario I've presented here. Still, there are certain principles that, with rare exceptions, allow textual critics to determine the original form of the text. Bart Ehrman is well aware of these principles. (In fact, one of Ehrman's former professors-Bruce M. Metzger-is responsible for refining many of the most important principles of textual criticism.) At one point in Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman even acknowledges, "I continue to think that even if we cannot be 100 percent certain about what we can attain to ... , 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." In another place, he admits:
"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 [eighteenth-century textual critic John] 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 amply documented than any other in the ancient world."
And yet it seems that Bart Ehrman wants-in the words of one reviewer-"to have his text-critical cake and eat it, too." Only a few pages after affirming that it is possible to recover the most ancient form of the manuscripts, Ehrman refers to Christianity as "a textually oriented religion whose texts have been changed." Despite admitting that it is possible to recover the "oldest and earliest" manuscript traditions, Ehrman finds space before the closing paragraphs of Misquoting Jesus to repeat his charge that, "given the circumstance that [God] didn't preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn't gone to the trouble of inspiring them." Yet Ehrman remains well aware that textual critics can, in his words, "reconstruct the oldest form of the words of the New Testament with reasonable (though not 100 percent) accuracy."
It is important, finally, to remember that the copyists were more concerned with preserving the words of Scripture than with promoting their own theological agendas. Despite his reservations about the earliest Christian scribes, even Dr. Ehrman acknowledges this fact in Misquoting Jesus: "It is probably safe to say that the copying of early Christian texts was by and large a 'conservative' process. The scribes ... 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."
In other words, early Christians wanted future generations to find the same truth in the New Testament documents that the first generations of believers had experienced. So, their intent was to hand on to their successors the same text that they received.
This is evident in a complaint from Origen of Alexandria. Even though significant differences between manuscripts accounted for no more than one percent of the variants, Origen of Alexandria considered the differences he saw in his own copies of the Gospels to be "great"! Why? He earnestly desired to see the oldest readings preserved. As a result, even small changes in the text troubled him.
Most copyists seem to have regarded the text with the same reverence as Origen. 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!" 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.
As for the original documents: Around A.D. 200, Tertullian of Carthage stated that the churches of Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, and Rome still possessed originals of certain New Testament texts. There's every reason to accept this as true---Tertullian basically says to his detractor, "If you don't believe me, go check it out yourself." In time, the autographs became worn; so, they were replaced and discarded. Ancient Romans (unlike Jews) didn't have the same concept of preserving the original document as we do. Once a writing was worn out, it was replaced with a good copy. If you want to do some reading on this, I suggest (in addition to my own upcoming book, _MISQUOTING TRUTH_, InterVarsity Press, 2007) taking a look at _READING AND WRITING IN THE TIME OF JESUS_ by Alan Millard.
And, by the way, the church wasn't established by the government until A.D. 381, under Emperor Theodosius. And there are hundreds of New Testament documents that predate Theodosius. In fact, the most important ones even predate Constantine's legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century.
Could churches be hiding documents? Of course, anything's possible, but the real question is, "Are they hiding anything that represents testimony from the first century A.D.?" The answer to this one would, from my perspective, have to be, no. Hidden documents would need to be hidden after the church had sufficient power to keep them hidden---and this sort of power doesn't even begin to emerge until the fourth century.
REPLY
I think there is no question that the manuscripts have been handed down with accuracy from the time of Constantine on. While there may be hundreds of documents that predate Theodosius, because the church was institutionalized prior to Theodosius under Constantine, there are very few documents that predate Constantine.
Unfortunately textual criticism only works to the extent that you have multiple manuscripts to compare, so it will not do anything to take us back much earlier than Constantine. That's where my question lay. We can know that the institutionalized church did a very good job of trying to stay true to the text, but we cannot know whether the early church did as good a job because we have almost nothing to work with.
As you've said in your own argument, the more pieces of manuscript we have with data, the better textual criticism works to extrapolate which version is original. Take things down to just a few manuscript fragments from a few books of the New Testament, however, and you really don't have enough data to draw any conclusions. The best you can do is say, "Well, since the church did a very commendable job from about 330A.D. on, it's likely they treated the texts with the same regard prior to that." Then you can find a few fragments and maybe one book prior that support that hypothesis.
It still strikes me as very odd that the original books have all been lost. If the early church was doing such a faithful job of trying to preserve their exact wording, why didn't they do an equally faithful job of preserving the original texts in dry jars for posterity? It doesn't seem those texts even lasted to the time of Constantine. I can understand how they might have been lost by our time, but I'm not aware of any references to their existence beyond the third century. Given that the church by Constantine's time was highly prone to save any first-century relic they could find in order to build a church on top of it, one would think they would have saved those books. Given how concerned they were about forming a canon of books to be included and books to be banned, one would think they would have preserved the originals if they had them. So, it's highly strange that NONE of the originals seems to have made it to the time of Constantine.
We also know that there must have been some problem with people in the days of the early church trying to change the wording of New Testament books because the book of Revelation (arguably the last book written) ends with a severe warning intended to scare off those who would change the words. "If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book." Such a strong curse upon anyone who would change a single word, indicates the author had reason to fear someone might try to do exactly that.
REPLY
What the curse in Revelation tells us is primarily the degree to which early Christians took seriously the texts that they were passing on.
Might I know where you're coming up with your evidence that pre-Constantinian New Testament manuscripts are not extant or available? Truth be told, many are available. Here's a partial list of pre-Constantinian papyri ...
P1: First chapter of Matthew
P5: Fragments of John
P9: 1 John 4
P13: Portions of Hebrews
P15: 1 Corinthians 7
P16: Philippians 3-4
P17: Hebrews 9
P18: Revelation 1
P20: James 2-3
P22: John 15-16
P23: James 1
P24: Revelation 5-6
P27: Romans 8
P28: John 6
P29: Acts 26
P30: 1 Thessalonians 4
P32: Titus 1-2
P37: Matthew 26
P38: Acts 18-19
P39: John 8
P40: Fragments from Romans
P45: Portions of Matthew and Acts as well as nearly all of Mark, Luke, and John
P46: Portions of Paul's letters and Hebrews
P47: Revelation 9-17
P48: Acts 23
P49: Ephesians 4
P52: Fragment of John 18 that dates from the late first century or early second century ... very likely a first or seocnd copy of the original
P53: Portions of Matthew and Acts
P64: Portions of Matthew and Luke
P65: 1 Thessalonians 1
P66: Most of John's Gospel, late 100s A.D.
P69: Latter portion of Luke
P70: Portions of Matthew
P75: Most of Luke and John, also from the late 100s
P77: Matthew 23, late 100s
P87: Philemon
P90: John 18
P91: Acts 2-3
P98: Revelation 1-2
P106: John 1
P107: John 17
P108: John 17-18
P109: John 21
P111: Luke 17
P113: Romans 2
P118: Romans 15-16
Whew ... Okay, I got tired of typing these---but these are just some of the pre-Constantinian manuscripts that I have scanned and so have available to me at this moment. There are a lot more. As you can see, a high percentage of the New Testament is available here.
Here's what's most important, though: When I compare the text of these documents to the codices of the fourth and fifth centuries---say, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus---there are no significant differences between pre-Constantinian and post-Constantinian manuscripts. With few exceptions, the differences have to do with spelling and word order. There are about a dozen added or deleted passages, but none of these relate to any essential issues of Christian faith or practice. What's more, every one of the passages that I've checked so far was added or deleted before the fourth century. So, the cause of the change still had nothing to do with the lamentable emergence of political power in the post-Constantinian church.
In answer to the thought that it's strange that the autographs were lost, it simply isn't strange at all. In the Greco-Roman world, documents were destroyed once they were worn out. This is well-attested, especially in Egypt.
Discussion on Amazon Christianity forum re reliablity of New Testament docs
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