History of the New Testament Text

I had a great time last night in Colorado Springs with the Passages exhibit that Steve Green of Hobby Lobby has been putting together over the last few years. The exhibit is truly breathtaking if you’re someone who likes the history of the Bible.

New additions this time included the microfiche of the Bible that went to the moon on Apollo 14 (they tried to get it there with Apollo 13. But as you know, they never made it down to the surface). They also have the original scribbled text of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which the woman who wrote it jotted down in the dark in the middle of the night. That is in addition to all the manuscripts and early printed Bibles. Amazing stuff if you’re a person like me.

And I got to talk about manuscripts to a popular audience that loves manuscripts. That’s gold for someone like me. I have to think that, as ancient manuscripts go, I have to be one of the more entertaining speakers. Some people laughed at my jokes… others looked like that old man at the wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

In any case, something coalesced in my mind as I prepared for last night that, for some reason, had never really clicked for me about the most likely scenario for how the early manuscript traditions developed in the first few centuries. I’ve always glazed over at the mention of “Alexandrian,” “Western,” “Caesarean,” and “Byzantine” textual traditions. But here is my current “coalesced” understanding.

1. The Original Texts (the “Alexandrian” tradition)
The NT books were written at varying places and times. After their authors began to pass from the scene, they were shared within the network of early believers. This copying immediately introduced not only normal types of errors in copying but the dynamic I mention in #2 below. However, one strand of copying, often associated with the Egyptian city of Alexandria, was apparently more meticulous about preserving the text as it stood.

The two most famous manuscripts of this sort are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, which perhaps date from the early 300s. Nevertheless, the basic reading of these manuscripts have more or less been corroborated by even more ancient papyri that have surfaced in the last century. In my mind, what confirms the more likely originality of this “tradition” is the fact that its readings more consistently correspond to the readings that seem more original when you apply common sense to the variations among all manuscripts. If its readings are more original, it is generally easier to account for how the other readings might have arisen in copying.

2. The “Western” Texts
Ancient texts were “oral documents.” Most people were illiterate in the ancient world and we can easily suspect that the vast majority of Christian assemblies in the year AD100 did not have a written copy of the Bible. The books were read aloud and almost certainly more recited than read from a scroll in the earliest days in most house churches.

The evidence suggests that the message of the biblical texts was far more the point of bringing Scripture into worship times than reading the precise original wording. The result is what I like to think of as the “Eugene Peterson effect.” That is to say, the text was paraphrased in the interest of communicating the message as clearly as possible. Textual scholars, somewhat derogatively, sometimes call this period of textual transmission in the early second century the “wild” period, but this betrays anachronistic values. The purpose was clarity in the message, like Eugene Peterson’s famous translation, The Message.

3. The Byzantine Tradition
After Christianity became a legal religion there was a movement toward standardization in the 300s and early 400s. It is in this period that we get the Trinity, the New Testament canon, the Vulgate in Latin and, arguably, the origins of the Byzantine tradition in Greek. This is the clean, standardized text that Christians would use in worship all the way to the late twentieth century.

4. The Modern, Eclectic Text
Although the Greek text used in all modern translations but the New KJV roughly coincide with the "Alexandrian" text, it is really an "eclectic" text in which the translators and editors have gone verse by verse, making decisions variation by variation.  It thus would have readings from all of the so called traditions above.

So there you have it… much clearer than I remember hearing it from Bob Lyon in Textual Criticism class in seminary. But then again, I was probably dozing off.

Are the Ancient Manuscripts of Acts Reliable?

Delighted to give a presentation on Tuesday night at Passages in Colorado Springs.  Most of the paper is really on which manuscripts of Acts are most reliable.  If you're in Colorado Springs and don't have anything to do Tuesday night at 7pm...

Here's the paper's train of thought.

1. Nothing to worry about

• Despite the sensationalism of some like Bart Ehrman, even he isn't really too worried about whether we pretty much know what the original text of the New Testament actually said.
• I'll review the basics of our situation in regard to manuscripts

2. Better question - Which textual tradition is more reliable?

• The one in all our Bibles ("Alexandrian" text)
• One that is 10% longer, the so called Western text?  It's not really in any translation out there, so everyone can relax.  KJV and NIV fans alike will pretty much be on the same page on this one--the Alexandrian one.

3. The most famous variation - Acts 8:37

• Not in modern translations, not because some conspiracy to take it out but because it isn't in the "oldest and most reliable" manuscripts.  In this regard, the NIV is based on manuscripts that are about 700 years older than the KJV used (Actually, it wasn't even in the text of the manuscripts Erasmus used to compile the Greek behind the KJV.  It was in the margin of one of them and Erasmus figured some copyist had carelessly omitted it). 
• Best explanation is that it was added out of the sense that the Ethiopian eunuch would have made some verbal confession of faith at his baptism.

4. Lesser known Western interpolations

• Omission of "strangling" and addition of the Golden Rule in Acts 15 to the list of things the Gentiles need to do.  In general, some (clearly Gentile) reviser has universalized what was originally a list about table fellowship between Jew and Gentile believer.  Big clue.
• Addition of details about Paul's detainment at Caesarea in Acts 25.  This material further exonerates Paul and perhaps added details of Paul's legal process that seemed reasonable to the copyist.

5. Where does the "Western" tradition come from?

• Some variations are like all the variations in the New Testament.  There was some freedom felt in the earliest church to clarify the biblical texts when copying them.  We can make sense of this phenomenon in that these were "oral texts," texts meant to be read aloud to Christian assemblies in worship. In some contexts, the goal was apparently more clarity than preservation of exact wording.  The Bible was God's living word, not an artifact. I do this sometimes when I am reading the Bible to my children, paraphrasing the text to help them understand. Eugene Peterson did this on a much more extensive scale than we are talking about here in The Message.
• The text of Acts has a strand of revisions that are unlike what we have in relation to any other NT book.  One explanation is a very educated, early second century, Gentile reviser who clarified the text somewhere on a quite significant scale. This position is at least superior to the alternatives: 1) that Luke made two versions (Leclerc at first, Blass, Strange) or 2) that the Western text was original and the Alexandrian a shortened version (e.g., Clark).
• Finally, the most significant manuscript of the Western tradition, Codex Bezae, may have added another layer of variations that were particular to it and passed on from it.  Bezae dates to around AD500.

6. Conclusion
I put a lot of faith in scholarly consensus, especially those that have stood for as long as this one has. The consensus is at least that the Western is not original. We should welcome the occasional outlier like W. A. Strange to keep us honest.  But usually these consensuses hold.  For further reading, see Peter Head's excellent treatment of this issue. The current majority probably does not see a single editor for the second bullet...

I might add that working on this paper confirmed in my mind that my own church, The Wesleyan Church, might be intentional about guiding a small cadre of biblical and theological students to be our "reference works" in Bible, theology, and church history.  These would be individuals "on call" when we get into contemporary issues.  For example, when my denomination looks at issues like divorce or alcohol or homosexuality, we really need experts in Scripture, theology, and church history as part of the input. 

The number we need of such scholars is relatively small.  There is a sizable minority of individuals whose personalities are interested in these areas but who are not necessarily gifted in them.  Thus the benefit of coaching a few who are truly gifted (and objective) with the mechanics, yet who are also Spirit-filled and local church loving.

But we do need a few, a small number, that are actually experts in Greek, Hebrew, textual criticism, critical scholarship, the history of interpretation, contemporary theology, historical theology, philosophical theology. We need them on retainer for when we are talking doctrine and ethics as a denomination. None of our schools is in a position to train scholars on this level or are likely to be so for the foreseeable future.

Where are good places for this very small number to train?  I continue to think that the British schools are quite good and faith-friendly, places like St. Andrews, Edinburgh, King's College-London, Durham... We have a Nazarene connection in Manchester.  Asbury now has a PhD in Biblical Studies. Duke will do, although it's not really training so much these days in historical exegesis.

Something at least someone should be thinking about, I think...