The message over the precise words 2

continuing my series on Unexamined Assumptions... 

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2. The Spirit versus the Letter

1. I was raised on the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. This English translation was a tremendous work of the English language that first came out in the year 1611. For the longest time, when I would quote a verse from the Bible, the words would come out King James. To this day, this version of the Bible continues to have my great respect and delight.

However, like the overwhelming majority of experts, I do not think the KJV gives us the most original wording of the Bible. I do not know how much you know about the history here, so I want to take a moment to explain what I mean. I am not talking about the fact that the KJV uses archaic English that we do not use anymore. That is one thing. I am talking about something else.

When you pick up a Bible, chances are you are picking up one book that is all in English. This observation brings us to the very first "paradigm shift" I want to mention. A paradigm shift is when you change the way you look at something in a fundamental way. Your "paradigm" or framework for thinking about something changes. So you may look at the Bible as one book today. In a way it is, now.

But it was not one book when those books were written. The books of the New Testament were written over a fifty-year period at various times and places. The books of the Old Testament came together over around a thousand-year period. These books were written by different authors. They have different styles. They use words in different ways. They were write in three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). 

English did not even exist as a language when this library of books was written. Unless you know the original languages of the Bible, you cannot read its actual words. All translation involves interpretations. Words do not go word for word from one language to another. Christians are not like Muslims who insist you must read scriptures in the original language, like Arabic. The very fact that we allow for translation implies that it is the message of Scripture that is important, not the precise wording.

2. So the King James Version (KJV) is a translation of a library of books now put together into one book. We do not have the original scrolls on which these books were first written. We have copies of copies of copies. None of these hand-written copies or "manuscripts" would seem to be perfect. They all have mistakes from copying, it would seem. Most of the time, it is not hard to figure out where the mistakes are. There is no need to be worried.

But it reiterates a point just made above. It seems like God is far more interested in the message of Scripture than the precise wording of the books of the Bible. 

When the KJV came out in 1611, the original documents were thousands of years in the past. In the 1600s, they had not yet rediscovered very old manuscripts. The copies of the Bible on which the KJV was based were all medieval, from the 900s and beyond. They did the best they could. 

However, since then, we have discovered manuscripts that are much older. They mostly read the same way as those medieval manuscripts. However, there are some interesting places where they differ. For example, the ending of Mark (16:9-20) is not present in the oldest manuscripts discovered of Mark.

Modern translations of the Bible almost all follow the wording that the majority of scholars thinks is most original. Only the KJV and the New King James Version have kept with the Greek and Hebrew wording used in the 1600s. The others go with the wording that seems more original based on the manuscripts that have since been discovered. 

3. I understand the alarm of many when the New International Version (NIV) came out in the 1970s. Having grown up on the KJV, people thought they were cutting things out of the Bible. They immediately thought of Revelation 22:19 and warnings about taking things out of the scroll of prophecy.

By the way, another paradigm shift is to realize that Revelation 22:19 originally referred to the scroll of Revelation by itself. No other book of the Bible was attached to Revelation when it was first written. It was a lone, self-standing scroll that was initially copied and sent to seven churches in what is now western Turkey. The "book of this prophecy" was the scroll of Revelation.

What most experts would say today is that the NIV did not take words out. Rather, the manuscripts on which the KJV was based added words in. It can be hard to get your head around what we are saying here. All English translations are based on Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. Although in English, the KJV is older than the NIV, the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts behind modern translations are hundreds of years older than the manuscripts behind the KJV.

In terms of the wording of the underlying text, the King James is a baby, and the NIV is much older.

4. Take the Lord's Prayer in the King James of Luke 11:2-4:

     Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
     Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.
     Give us day by day our daily bread.
     And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.
     And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

Now here is Luke 11:2-4 in the NIV:

     Father, hallowed be your name,
          your kingdom come.
     Give us each day our daily bread.
     Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.
     And lead us not into temptation.

If you were raised on the KJV, the NIV's version will look very suspicious indeed. It looks like a mangled version of the Lord's prayer. Where is the commitment for God's will be to be done? Where is the prayer for God to deliver us from evil?

It is only natural that many would see a sinister conspiracy here. You look at Mark 16:8, and the NIV suggests that verses 9-20 do not belong there. You look for Acts 8:37 and cannot find it in the NIV. Someone appears to be chopping verses and words out of the Bible!

5. This reaction is perfectly natural. If you were raised reading and hearing sermons from the King James Version, you likely formulated your faith around those words. Those words are the Bible for you. For someone to change them or "take words out" naturally seems like someone desecrating the Bible.

And it is no surprise that there have been a small number of very smart people who have rejected modern versions of the Bible. In the 1800s, there was John Burgon (1813-88), who argued strongly against the developing science of textual study. In the 1900s, there was Edward Hills (1912-81). I know a very smart scholar today who knows the details of the ancient texts far better than I do who would argue that the text behind the King James Version is far more original than that used by modern translations.

Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of those who are experts on this subject disagree with them. I would go further and say that all scholars of the text with an open mind to the evidence disagree with them. Are those with the minority view intelligent? I would say they are sometimes extremely intelligent. They have to be ingenious in order to argue against what seems to be the most obvious read of the evidence.

6. Here we arrive at a point from the introduction to which we will return over and over again. The pursuit of truth requires that we are actually willing to change our minds given enough evidence or good enough reasoning. Truth is not about finding a way to fit the evidence into my preconceived notions. It is not about finding a way to support the beliefs of my tribe or denomination.

Truth is not about whether it is possible to argue for what I want to believe. The pursuit of truth is about what the most probable reading of the evidence is.

For some, these statements will seem obvious. For others, they are not obvious at all. In fact, to many Christians, these statements are just plain wrong. We need to take a moment to address this perspective. And, ironically, if I really believe in reason and evidence, then I will need to be willing to give them up if reason and evidence so require...

Seminary - Textual Criticism 3

previous post
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12. I think I had Wang in my second year. He and Oswalt taught the courses that exposed us to scholarship on the New and Old Testament, respectively. I'll return to them after some more thoughts on my first year at Asbury.

I mentioned earlier that learning about different personality types and Myers-Briggs was very beneficial to me. Today everyone is into Enneagrams, but they seem much more of a pop phenomenon to me, like a horoscope. To me, they are like Star Wars and Myers-Briggs is more like Star Trek. :-)

That some people recharge by getting alone (introverts) and others by getting around people (extroverts) seems to match reality. I have found the N (intuitive) - S (sensing) distinction incredibly descriptive of me and of others who are not like me. The N is more big picture and abstract. The S is more detailed and concrete.

Thinkers (T) and feelers (F) again aptly describes people who make decisions based on what they think is logical and those who follow more their values. That some people insist on closure (J - judging) and others are more open-ended (P - perceiving) is again very descriptive.

I have found these categories immensely helpful in describing human behavior. I do not take it as absolute. These letters just give labels to the way people tend to behave.

13. I believe it was also in my first semester that I had Stan Beck as something like a psychological mentor. I don't remember what they were called but I think there was a kind of psychological assessment that was part of every student's path through the MDIV.

We used to joke about his frankness on personal matters. It was like he would bluntly say sensitive words to see how we would react. In the dorm (I was in Grice) we would imitate him. "Why do you laugh when I say ...?" I think his assessment of me was that my development was a little slower than average. Then again, he also reminded me a little of the "Stuart Smalley" skit on SNL with Michael Jordan.

I did three supervised ministries while at Asbury, I think. At least one needed to be in a church. At least one needed to be in some other sort of ministry context. I think I did the one as youth minister for my home church in Fort Lauderdale in the summer. I believe Everett Putney was still pastor, although my sister Sharon would soon take over.

As a fun side note, there were some in my church that had convictions about eating in the sanctuary. I don't remember the basis but it might have been 1 Corinthians 11. The church in Fort Lauderdale had added on its back section as an expansion. So there was actually a step-down hall way that marked the barrier between the sanctuary and the Sunday school rooms and children's church.

Growing up, we had fellowship meals in the children's church area. Since it was set apart by the hallway, that seemed to satisfy the need for separation. But some were still uncomfortable, I believe, because it was still under the same roof. In the end, a duplex was purchased behind the church. When I was youth pastor, it was still two apartments. Eventually they would make it into an ACE school and my brother-in-law Dalbert would be the principal.

14. I did another supervised ministry at Harrodsburg Nursing Home. Those were some interesting days. I remember a 104 year old woman who always sat in the hallway. I tried to ask her historical questions but she said, "Honey, I hurt all over. I don't remember anything." Incidentally, while I'm thinking of it, I rode next to a Russian woman on the Eurostar in the spring of 1995 who had been the son of an Russian ambassador to Britain in the early days of communist Russia. [2] She had memories of seeing Anastasia and the Czar's family inside the grounds before they were executed.

I remember one lady who wasn't quite all there. She asked me once if I had time for a "quicky." On another occasion, I happened to be passing by her room when I heard her talking to herself scooting across the floor. "I'm going to the bathroom. I'm going to the bathroom. Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me."

I did my case study on the question of whether one should play along with a person with dementia or if you should correct them. I decided in general to play along. I think Beck may have been my supervisor for this one.

That reminds me of a Deep Thought by Jack Handy, something like "When John told me that he was on a deserted island enjoying a beautiful sunset, it took me quite a while to convince him that, no, he was in a straight jacket in a padded room in an insane asylum." When I was a teaching fellow, Bill Patrick and I used to read deep thought after deep thought. Bill used to make fun of me because of one lunch at Ramses in Lexington when, after a deep thought I exclaimed in the despondency of my inferiority, "He's a master."

15. I took textual criticism my second semester with Bob Lyon. I believe Dave Smith was in that class with me. I would never really become part of Lyon's "LO society." By the time I decided to join, it had become popular, which wasn't really what he was going for. The idea was the British concept of "loyal opposition," those who push back against the majority. A trendy LO society was of no interest to Lyon.

I was still in the early stages of my journey out of fundamentalism. Except for Cinderella in the fifth grade, the first movie I ever attended in the cinema was in my first year at Asbury. I went with my roommate Stewart Fowler and a couple others to see Dream Team.

Lyon was quite the champion of social justice. He was pushing compassion toward gay individuals before there was much discussion. I knew a student at Asbury, by the way, that came out of a gay background and ended up marrying and having children.

There was a team Lyon had for intermurals, the NeRPs (non-recruitable players). I did basketball intramurals and was a dangerous person to have on the floor. I was very fast and I could do a lay up on a fast break, but I could also accidentally knock someone out of the air in a dangerous way. I was on the floor when someone else caused Chris Bounds to break his ankle with similar antics.

Chris, of course, should never have been playing for the NERPs. He was an incredibly good basketball player. With him on the team, they began winning games. Before, the expectation was that they would lose every game.

16. Bob was a known textual scholar. I was impressed that he was footnoted as the pre-eminent scholar of Codex Ephraemi in Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament. His course in textual criticism marked my transition from the King James Version to modern translations of the Bible.

Frankly there was a little peer pressure involved. After class one day, I asked Lyon a question once that revealed my background and he casually asked, "Are you a closet Textus Receptus man?" Like Peter, I denied it. :-) [1]

Textual criticism looks at two types of evidence. The first is external evidence based on manuscripts. The second is internal evidence that uses common sense--which original reading would best explain how other variations arose. I was not convinced in the end by external evidence. Families of manuscripts like Alexandrian, Western, Caesarian seemed like somewhat of a circular argument.

But the logic of internal evidence seems unassailable. Applying the logic of internal evidence to the variations of the manuscripts generally leads to the readings of modern versions. That is to say, using common sense tends to go against the text of the King James. The grouping of manuscripts seems to align with the results of internal evidence. The so called "Alexandrian" tradition tends to be older and to align with the cumulative results of following the internal evidence. The Byzantine tradition is later and looks like the end result of a long process of textual tidying.

Indeed, the textus receptus is a cleaner, more tidied text. It is a text fit for worship, like what results after something has been perfected for long term public consumption. This is what we would expect at the end of a process of standardization. We expect history to comb the hair of the material, not to mess it up. Thus the position of the vast majority of textual scholars fits the big picture common sense of internal evidence.

17. Take the ending of Mark. The oldest manuscripts don't have the verses after 16:8. Modern textual criticism would say that the best manuscripts do not have 16:9-20. But what convinced me was the internal evidence. The story starts over at 16:9 and it is told in a different way than before. It looks like different material.

I am acquainted with some very smart people who believe 16:9-20 was original. They have very sophisticated and ingenious arguments. But the most likely answer, the one that tries to be objective and follows the evidence to its most obvious conclusion, is that these verses were added later because 16:8 didn't seem like an appropriation conclusion. We can understand why someone would add 16:9-20. It is much harder to imagine why someone would remove it.

[1] The textus receptus refers to the "received text" that was based on the text of Greek New Testament that Erasmus put together in 1516. It is the Greek text behind the King James Version.

[2] The Eurostar is the train that goes through the chunnel back and forth between London and Paris. That particular trip, I believe, was back from Paris to London.

Patrons Only: The Case of the Missing Verse (Acts 8:37)

This week's "patron only" podcast and video on my Patreon page explain why Acts 8:37 is missing from modern translations of the Bible. At the end I also ask how a Jew living around the year 500BC might have understood Isaiah 53.

To become a patron only asks for a $5 a month donation to my page.

Why modern versions are different from the KJV

I was explaining to a class what the issue is with regard to verses that are in the KJV but not in other versions. I decided to explain in story form:
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In my version of the story, in the first three centuries of Christianity, the books of the New Testament were copied everywhere. They were not all in one book but on separate scrolls (the precise contents of the NT were not fully agreed on yet). Churches copied these scrolls as they were able to get hold of them from other churches. Most people, of course, were illiterate and so only heard the text read or had passages memorized. The vast majority of Christians would not have had personal copies of these scrolls. Perhaps not even many house churches would have copies of them.

There were no doubt many minor variations between all these scrolls, although not nearly the free-for-all that some might make us fear. When Christianity became legal in AD313, the next century turned to the standardization of many things. It was in the 300s that the Trinity was settled. Near the end of the 300s Christians finally agreed on what books belonged in the New Testament. And, I would argue, there was increasing standardization of the wording of the New Testament text.

This standardized text focused on clarity, both in style and in meaning. The text that resulted was a magnificent text, more or less the Greek text behind the King James Version (KJV). It is the text used by Christians everywhere for the next 1500 years and is still used by those who read the King James Version or its offshoots. I want to make it clear that I think it is perfectly acceptable to read the Bible from this text. If God was okay with it for 1500 years, it must be okay!

It includes passages like Mark 16:9-20, which most think was added to fill out Mark's ending. It includes the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8, which many think may be a historical story even if it would prove not to have been in the original edition of John. It included a few other famous instances like Acts 8:37 and an extended 1 John 1:7.

It is no surprise that the majority of manuscripts read like this textual tradition. Most of the manuscripts we have date from the Middle Ages. We have only a handful of texts from the 300s and before. The discovery of much older copies of the NT than were available at the time of the KJV in the 1800s and 1900s prompted a re-examination of how the original texts might exactly have read.

So the earliest witnesses and internal evidence suggest that Mark 16:9-20 probably wasn't the original ending of Mark. But the verses mentioned above are the main differences. The overwhelming majority of the text is the same whether you use the KJV or a modern translation, almost all of which are based on the re-examination prompted in the 1700s and 1800s.
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So that's my storied version of what I think happened and why the underlying Greek text is slightly different between the KJV and almost all the other versions.

Sinaiticus: The Whole Bible in One Place

I took a fun class in seminary called New Testament Textual Criticism. It was with the late Bob Lyon, one of those professor personalities that becomes the stuff of lore. I think Dave Smith was in that class with me, although we didn't know each other then.

I reread yesterday and today about at the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two oldest complete Greek manuscripts of the Bible. It's a fun story.

Enter Constantin von Tischendorf, German professor from Leipzig. His version of the discovery is a little suspect. He told everyone that he had seen leaves of this great manuscript in a trash bin at St. Catherine's monastery at Mt. Sinai, destined to be fuel for the oven. This seems highly unlikely to me and the monks later disputed it. They gave or sold him 43 leaves to take with him, including portions of 1 Chronicles and Jeremiah in Greek. This was 1844.

It would take about 15 more years before he could get them to show him the rest of the manuscript. He stayed up all night pouring over it the night before he had to leave. What then ensued was some clever manipulation on Tischendorf's part. He apparently convinced the monks that they could influence the Czar's appointment of a new abbot if they presented him with the manuscript. But apparently, Tischendorf had told them they would get it back.

They never did. Once in the Czar's hands, Tischendorf got the Czar to have it published in honor of the thousandth anniversary of the Roman Empire in 1862. Of course the communists weren't interested in it after the revolution, so the British Museum purchased it in 1933 for 100,000 pounds. And there the majority of the manuscript remains to this day.

Sinaiticus largely read like Vaticanus and a number of other manuscripts that were beginning to be grouped as "Alexandrian" in type. Almost all modern translations follow this type now.

KJV Part 2

Here's the rest of that section of the lecture after the first bit:
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The King James Version of 1611 was based on the so-called “Textus Receptus,” of an editor named Stephanus, dated to 1550. “Textus Receptus” means “received text.” The Greek, in other words, the Greek text for the New Testament that had come to be accepted or received as the text of the New Testament. This text ultimately came from a Roman Catholic by the name of Erasmus, in the days before the Reformation. And Erasmus, of course, remained Roman Catholic after the Protestant Reformation. He was a humanist who argued against Martin Luther. Although he was friends with Martin Luther, he argued against Martin Luther when Luther began to protest and withdraw.

And so it is somewhat ironic in the sense that those who are most strongly in favor of the King James are also usually very anti-Catholic. And so it is interesting that the fountainhead of the Greek text behind the King James Version was somebody who opposed the Protestant Reformation. It’s true he was, you know he was more of a liberal than a dyed-in-the-wool Roman Catholic or papist, so to speak.

But more about the King James. Erasmus, in the late 1400s, only had about 12 Greek manuscripts from which to assemble the New Testament, the Greek New Testament from. The oldest copies he had were from the 900s. And, again, it is sometimes hard to realize that the manuscripts that modern scholars now use to reconstruct the original text, how it's worded, are over 700 years older than what Erasmus had.

I know when I first read the NIV, for example, I was a little annoyed by, for example, Mark 16. You come across a note that says something like, "The oldest and most reliable manuscripts don't have these verses." That's a little annoying, especially if you've grown up reading Mark 16:9-20.

But you have to realize that the manuscripts on which the NIV is based are, you know, 700, 800, 900 years older. So it defies our common sense. To us, the King James seems old and the NIV seems new. But in terms of the manuscripts (a manuscript is a handwritten copy—this is pre-printing press, in other words)… in terms of the manuscripts, the NIV tradition is about 1000 years older than the manuscripts behind the King James. So even though the King James is old and the NIV is new, in terms of the copies of the New Testament they're based on, the NIV is much older.

So what modern scholars would say is not that the NIV took words out. That's what you hear sometimes. But in fact, the King James reflects words that were added in over time. Again, you have to make up your decision on these things. Erasmus – I like Erasmus – Erasmus was an entrepreneur. You've probably heard of the Gutenberg Bible, but the Gutenberg Bible was in Latin. There was not at that time, in the late 1400s, there was no Greek, printing press version of the New Testament.

And there were some scholars in Spain, who were working on a very scholarly, parallel Bible, including the Greek New Testament. But Erasmus and a friend just thought that they could beat them, that they could be the first. I like this. I like this about Erasmus. It reminds me of Wesley Seminary and Indiana Wesleyan University. Erasmus began to scramble to put a copy together [of the Greek New Testament]. And he did, in fact, win. But, again, it's important to realize that he only had about 12, about a dozen manuscripts. He used six especially.

But the oldest one was from the 900s. He didn't actually use that one as much as the ones that were later medieval. We now have manuscripts from the 200s, the 300s, the 400s. We have two nearly complete copies of the New Testament from the early 300s. They're called 1) Codex ¬(a codex is a book) Sinaiticus, which was discovered in the East around Mt. Sinai, and 2) Codex Vaticanus, which was discovered in the Vatican. Both of these were discovered in the 1800s.

There were some – if you like Indiana Jones – Indiana Jones type stories of manuscripts. There was a guy named Tischendorf who went around finding these things in the 1800s. Again, those who oppose modern translations sometimes villanize Codes Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. But it's important to realize that since then, since that point in the 1800s, we've discovered older manuscripts than them. And so you know you can't malign Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and undermine modern translations anymore because we discovered older ones.

And guess what. The older ones pretty much agree with Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. So, again, you get all kinds of coping mechanisms with these new realities. You get individuals maligning the character of B. F. Westcott and Fenton Hort, two individuals who put together the method that I'm presenting, the method of how scholars go about deciding how the original text read. But just because you assassinate the character of Westcott and Hort, or assassinate the reliability of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work because these two, Westcott and Hort, really only systematized the science of textual criticism. The ideas that Westcott and Hort put in their famous book on the science of textual criticism, the message that they set down, they didn't come up with. The principles had been recognized by scholars of this area for well over a century before them. Also since then and the manuscripts that they used, we have found older manuscripts that basically agree. You're welcome to disagree. I certainly could be wrong.

But from a standpoint of objectivity, I do not see how anybody whose primary interest is in the truth, rather than reinforcing something that's an idea you're comfortable with, I do not see how anybody, who's approaching the evidence objectively, can conclude that the King James tradition is more likely to be the original tradition.

I didn't always think that way. I started off resistant to modern translations. It was only after finally admitting to myself that the evidence was against me, that I eventually changed my mind. Everyone has to take their own path. So, there will certainly be blind spots for generations. You'll have to think through the issues yourself and make your own decision.

Now, Erasmus, being such an entrepreneur, at times he translated back to Greek from Latin. So he did not have a complete copy of Revelation when he did his initial translation. And so, Revelation 22:14, I think, says something in the King James about the works of the righteous, whereas other versions say something about washing robes.

There are Greek manuscripts that have something about washing robes. I can't remember which is which. I think that "the works" is the King James and the robes are modern translations. There are Greek manuscripts that have both readings. Whether or not Erasmus would have gone with "works," or whether, whether he would have gone with, with "robes" if he'd had a complete copy of Revelation, I don't know. However, it is worth mentioning that, after his first printed Greek edition came out, he did eventually secure an actual copy of Revelation.

His initial version had some Greek readings that weren't in any manuscripts because he just freely translated back from Latin, which is kind of interesting. But this verse in Revelation 22 probably remains the way it is because of that situation, because the Latin version he used had "works."

But I really do admire Erasmus. He got the job done. People like Erasmus get the job done, while the more pedantic scholars ( and there's a place for pedantic scholars; I'm not saying they’re useless). But the more pedantic scholars have a tendency not to get things done.

Now Catholic politics may have gotten in 1 John 5:7. 1 John 5:7 is the most explicitly Trinitarian verse in the whole New Testament. The problem is, it doesn’t appear in any Greek manuscripts before about 1500 when Erasmus himself was compiling the Greek New Testament. It does appear in the margins of a few older manuscripts but in a later hand, as I understand the situation.

And, of course, this verse, this most Trinitarian verse in the whole New Testament, is never mentioned in the entirety of the Trinitarian debates of the early centuries. Now, to me, that means there's just not any chance at all that this is original. There's no chance, because in the Trinitarian debates of the 300s they would have mentioned the most Trinitarian verse in the Bible. There is clearly nothing wrong with the verse. That's another important thing to say. When we're asking how the original text read, what was its original wording, we're not asking which reading has the best theology.

The King James has great theology. In fact, maybe we should use it for its theology. We just shouldn't use it if our goal is to have the most original text. This is an interesting thing to ponder, that the King James might be a better theological text, from a Christian standpoint, regardless of the fact that it is not likely to be the most original text. That's something you might want to think about.

But the story goes that Erasmus was not going to put this Trinitarian verse in his Greek New Testament – in fact, I don't think it was in his first edition. But he was pressured by the Roman Catholic Bishop or a person of some authority to put it in. After all, it's a great verse on the Trinity.

And so Erasmus, so the story goes, claimed that he would put it in if they could show him one Greek manuscript that had it in it. And in his journal he notes that the ink was still wet when they presented him with one. Now, again, there's nothing wrong with 1 John 1:7. The question is strictly whether it was in the first copy of 1 John. And that does not at all seem likely...
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The lecture goes on to talk about internal and external evidence, as well as the Majority Text option.

The Greek text of the King James Version 1

I'm cleaning up a transcription of a video lecture for a class. It is on the text of the Bible. I thought I'd post some of my comments in it on the King James Bible.
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Let me talk for a second about the King James Version, because in some circles, the King James Version remains the version. Now in most churches, this is a debate of 40-50 years ago. Well, more like 30 or 40 years ago.

Most churches don't have an issue with what versions you use. Most churches would say, "Use whatever version in which you think you hear God's voice most clearly." Well, I don't know whether most would say that, but I would say most healthy churches have that view. Use the version of the Bible through which you hear God's voice the most. And if that's the King James, the New King James, that's great. If it's something else, that's great. You do hear people who are against The Message or against the TNIV. You do find a lot of that kind of version warfare out there.

And, and, some of that has to do with the philosophy of translation more than it has to do with the question of the text. Translation is a different subject. How do you translate? Do you translate very “woodenly,” or do you translate very freely. That's a different issue and one that will be covered elsewhere. This particular vidcast is about how the original text read. What were the words that were there and what were the words that weren't there? Of the variations among manuscripts, how did the original read?

And here, we basically only have two alternatives. There are two alternatives. To start off with, I'm going to call the old alternative the “King James alternative.” This is the textual tradition that has the ending of Mark, for example, Mark 16:9-20. This is the longer version. It has more verses, more words. Not a whole lot more. I mean, like I said, 90-plus percent the same.

You do have this one textual tradition that I'm going to call right now the King James tradition. And then the other one is everything else. That is, all the modern, pretty much all modern versions of the Bible. Basically you only have two choices when it comes to this question of how you think the original manuscripts of the Bible read.

And, and once you've made your decision as to which you buy into, then you're once again pretty clear about what the original text read, depending on which choice you make. If you go with the King James tradition, then you're pretty sure you know pretty much what the text read. If you go with the majority of modern translations, then you pretty much know what you think the original text read. But I want to, in this vidcast, explain what the issues are in making that choice.

The King James Version came out in 1611. If you were listening to this vidcast in 2011, that was the 400th anniversary of the King James Version. Of course, the King James Version that you would typically buy in a Christian bookstore is not the 1611 version. It was updated over the 150 years or so afterthe first King James came out. It was edited as many as five times. Not all of those were massive revisions, but now the King James Version that you would buy in a bookstore today is not the 1611 version.

So we want to make it very clear that the King James Version was never intended to be set in stone for all eternity. Now, over the first 200 years of its existence, there was an understanding that language changes, that things need to be updated. And so there are those who insist, "No, we must use the original King James Version in English. And we cannot even use the New King James Version." There are individuals who would say even the New King James Version shouldn't be used. That whole view reflects, just be honest, a, a pretty significant ignorance of how language functions.

Language changes. I mean the word, "Google," didn't exist in the English language 15 years ago, if you're listening to this in 2011. Language changes. Meanings change. Language doesn't mean the same thing. There are things in the King James Version that its readers probably think they understand, but don't, because the word doesn't mean the same thing. Now, when the King James Version says, "Let your conversation be known," it's not talking about speaking, like I'm doing now. The word “conversation” in 1789, or whenever the last King James revision was done, meant manner of conduct.

And so it's very easy to suppose that there are many King James Version users who think they understand what that verse means, when they don't even understand the English, because the English has changed meaning. Language has to be updated for it to be understood. And, eventually, of course, language changes to where you can't even understand the way people spoke before. Shakespearean English is very difficult for me to understand without some notes to explain. If you've ever read Beowulf, Beowulf is in English, but man, it's not an English that I speak.

Language changes. This the nature of things. And so it has to be updated if people are going to understand it. Either that or, eventually, you'll have to take a language class just to be able to understand the King James Version. We're at that now in terms of the everyday person on the street. They're not going to understand the King James for what it meant originally. So let’s just get that out of the way there.

But the King James Version was not the first English version by any means. In fact, it was a compromise translation between the Geneva Bible, which was actually the Bible of the Puritans, the Bible that was most popular among the English at the time, at least the English Puritans. And then there was the Bishops' Bible. The Bishops' Bible was resented by the Puritans because it had notes [they didn’t like]. Both of these Bibles had notes as I recall. The Geneva Bible had notes that were perceived to be against the king, anti-monarchist notes. The Bishops' Bible had notes that were perceived not to take the biblical text with enough authority.

And so King James, who was himself, probably not a particularly liked man, of course he didn't translate it. He just commissioned it. But King James commissioned this compromise translation. And it didn't catch on immediately. In fact, if I remember correctly, the Puritans who first came to America in the 1600s brought the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible so much to America. But the King James Version did catch on and did become the primary English version...

Implicit Theology of Using Translations

If you're interested, a quick glimpse into one discussion in one of my classes:

 

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...

2.4 Implications of Textual Criticism

1. My early realizations about context

and continued with last weekend's start of discussing issues of the biblical text:
2.1 Issues of the Biblical Text
2.2 Manuscripts, Manuscripts
2.3 Common Sense Textual Criticism

Now the last of this group of reminiscences:
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Those who wrote my church's statement on Scripture were careful to specify that they were talking about the "original manuscripts." In other words, they acknowledged the validity of textual criticism and legitimated modern translations for those who chose them. Stephen Paine, one of the primary influences on the Wesleyan Methodist's statements on Scripture, was actually involved in the translation of the original NIV.

There are theological implications here.  If we accept the majority position, then the version of the New Testament that dominated Christianity from around 400 to 1950 was not exactly the same text as the ones the New Testament authors wrote.  It was mostly the same to be sure, but perhaps as much as 5 percent different.  The bottom line: God was not particularly concerned that Christians use the exact wording of the original texts.  The message was what was important.

I might add that this is an implicitly fundamental value of Protestantism, implied by our fundamental sense that the Bible should be translated into the vernacular language.  You can't translate the particulars of wording.  Languages just don't do things the same way. So more than anything it is the message one translates.

Anyone who knows me will know my love of Greek and Hebrew and I am very interested in determining as much as possible the original wording of the Bible's books.  But the implication here is that God does not require the original text in the original languages to speak through Scripture, indeed that it is not a priority for him at all.  It implies that those who hate The Message because it is a paraphrase are out of touch with the way God has operated for the last 2000 years.  It implies that those who have opposed the NIV2011 because of switches from singular to plural, to capture an originally intended inclusiveness, are misguided--sincere but misguided. It implies that it is not a high priority for God that we "get back" to the original wording in the first place.

It may also have implications at the very least for arguments over verbal versus conceptual inspiration. I don't think God has a problem with any word in either the original texts of the Bible or the Byzantine textual tradition.  But it looks like God is really not so concerned with the precise wording. This at the very least tips the scales more toward "conceptual" rather than "verbal" inspiration. Conceptual inspiration is the idea that God breathed the fundamental message into the biblical authors and the precise words came more from them.

I'm not, by the way, saying that there may not be instances where God was very directive in the precise wording.  Nor do I mean to preclude the possibility of some mysterious duality of both human and divine verbal inspiration. It is probably best for us not to pin it down.

It is distressing that people have faith crises over textual criticism and that people fight over which version of the Bible they use. Looking at the example of the biblical texts, God apparently was not worried about such things. In fact, when you consider that we are so limited in our end of understanding, so prone to see our own meaning in the words, it is quite absurd to stake our faith on minor details of wording.

2.3 Common Sense Textual Criticism

My weekend series of hermeneutical biography.  It started with...

1. My early realizations about context...

and continued with last weekend's start of discussing issues of the biblical text:
2.1 Issues of the Biblical Text
2.2 Manuscripts, Manuscripts

We now join that show in progress...
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In the end, it was not the so called "external evidence" of the manuscripts that convinced me to switch sides on matters of the biblical text. I was nowhere near knowledgeable enough to know whether the majority model about manuscript traditions was correct when I took the course in textual criticism at Asbury with Bob Lyon. I still don't know all the details.  The consensus model is basically that at Alexandria, as especially embodied by manuscripts like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and even earlier papyri, there was a fairly conservative copying tradition, the Alexandrian tradition.  This is the most reliable manuscript tradition.

Then there is the Byzantine tradition, which generally corresponds to the Majority Text and what would become the Textus Receptus, the "received text" first put together when Erasmus first set the Greek New Testament to type. There was also the "Western" tradition of the Italic manuscripts and a few key Greek manuscripts like D, Codex Bezae. From time to time other textual traditions are also suggested.

This was all a fine story but I had no clue whether it was true or not when I went to seminary.  I remember Dr. Lyon asking me after class once if I was a closet textus receptus guy. ;-) It made sense to me in general that an older manuscript was closer to the original than a later one. But in the end, it was common sense that prevailed.  The basic rules of textual criticism, collected and perfected by Westcott and Hort, but originated in the years before them, made consummate sense. "Manuscripts must be weighed, not counted," because a thousand copies can be made of a bad manuscript.

Here's the mother of all rules: That reading is most likely to be original that best explains how the other variations would have arisen.  There it is, so simple, so commonsensical.  If one manuscript is missing a line other manuscripts have, and you can see that the same word would have been located about a line apart, then it's reasonable to assume that some copyist's eye skipped, from the end of one line to the end of the next, leaving out a line.

What this implies is that the "more difficult reading" is more likely to be original, because it is more likely that a copyist would smooth out roughness of some sort rather than mess it up.  So, ironically, the Byzantine tradition is a smoother, more harmonized text than the Alexandrian.  The majority of manuscripts at Colossians 1:14 read, "in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins."  The fact that modern translations omit the italicized phrase is no conspiracy, some lack of faith in the blood (after all, the blood is mentioned in 1:20). Rather, the earliest manuscripts lack the phrase and some scribe likely added it accidentally because he was thinking of Ephesians 1:7 where all manuscripts, including the earliest ones, have the phrase.

Conspiracy theories about modern translators are thus pure nonsense, based on ignorance of the manuscript situation. Disagree with textual scholars you may, but don't vilify them.

Let me use as an example the most famous of manuscript issues, the longer ending of Mark, Mark 16:9-20.  The words of this text are attested early in some church fathers. However, it is not clear that those earliest church fathers were quoting Mark. They could have been drawing from something else. The earliest Greek manuscripts we have of Mark don't have these verses, and a couple key church fathers from the 300s and 400s indicate it was a minority reading at the time. The earliest manuscripts have nothing after 16:8 and there is another shorter ending in some manuscripts.

It was not the preceding paragraph that convinced me that 16:9-20 were not in the original.  It was simply reading the flow.  In Mark 16:1-8 the women, including Mary Magdalene, come to the tomb and find the stone rolled away. A young man appears to them, announces Jesus' resurrection, and instructs the women to go tell Peter to go to Galilee to meet him. But they don't. They tell know one because they were afraid...

And then it begins all over again: "Now after he had risen early on the first day of the week..."  Now he is appearing to Mary Magdalene (with no mention of the earlier scene), who did you know he had cast seven demons out of? She goes and tells the disciples. Wait, what about the earlier statement that the women told no one?  The verses that follow read like a summary of stories from other gospels (e.g., the men on the road to Emmaus from Luke 24 are in Mark 16:12. The Great Commission from Matthew 28 is in 16:15).

In short, Mark 16:9-20 know nothing about Mark 1:1-8. It reads like someone has inserted this summary of resurrection appearances from somewhere else. It is thus the "internal evidence" that convinced me that the vast majority of textual scholars were right on this issue.  And it was the consistent alliance of the internal evidence with the textual traditions of the so called Alexandrian tradition that brought my secondary confidence in the prevailing sense of the external evidence. If you apply the commonsense model to the variations in the text, it consistently aligns with the manuscript tradition Westcott and Hort considered most reliable.

So in the case of Mark, the best explanation of the situation, in my opinion, is that the original ending of Mark was lost very, very early. It's possible Mark originally ended at 16:8 but I suspect there was originally more here. Two endings were added over time to try to make up for the abrupt sense of ending. The longer ending was taken from some early second century synopsis of the gospels, but a shorter one was created as well.

Since the longer ending is a more pleasing ending than an abrupt ending with the women telling no one, it was the reading that gained currency in worship and in copying. Thus the majority of manuscripts--mostly medieval since the older ones wore out--have the longer ending. But the older and more reliable ones don't. There's no conspiracy to take words out. There's no fiendishness to try to end the gospel on a dubious note. There is simply the following of the evidence to its most likely conclusion...

2.2 Manuscripts, Manuscripts

My second weekend post in my hermeneutical autobiography series.  Yesterday I started writing on my pilgrimage on the subject of the biblical text.

Incidentally, this is my first Father's Day without my father on the earth. May God allow me to stay on the earth with my children for as long as I had him with me. But come what may, may they never have any doubt of my love for them and of my earnestness for them to have blessed lives.
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Here are some of the things I learned in my last two years of college and my first year of seminary.  We do not have any of the original "autographs" of the New Testament (let alone the Old Testament).  All we have are copies of copies of copies (it's possible that a couple of the oldest fragments could be copies of the original or copies of copies of the original, but this is pure speculation and in the end we're talking about a couple fragments smaller than a driver's license).

I don't remember ever worrying about the fact that we don't have the original Mark or Romans or Isaiah.  Indeed, my questions were on the other end of things.  Are the many medieval manuscripts that basically read like the King James more original or are the older manuscripts that were discovered in recent centuries more reliable?

I was introduced to Bishop Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton J. A. Hort and their 1881 edition of the Greek New Testament that, for the first time, printed their "eclectic" Greek text as the main text and put the "textus receptus," the Greek text behind the KJV, in the notes.  An eclectic text is one where the editor has tried to make a decision on what the most likely original wording of the text was instance by instance.  Accordingly, their Greek text--or the one behind modern translations of the Bible--does not follow any one Greek manuscripts but picks what it thinks are the best variations among all the existing manuscripts.

I actually wrote a paper for Bob Black's church history class at Southern Wesleyan University (SWU) arguing that the two key manuscripts Westcott and Hort favored (Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus), dating to the early 300s, might have been ones commissioned by Constantine under the supervision of Eusebius (2 of 50 some manuscripts).  And since Eusebius did not take the orthodox position in the Arian controversy (he favored that Christ was of similar substance to the Father--homoiousios--as opposed to what became the orthodox position by Athanasius that Christ was of the same substance of the Father--homoousios) I argued that perhaps these two manuscripts were faulty.  Indeed, perhaps the reason they had survived was the fact that they were bad manuscripts.

I am now embarrassed at how illogical the paper's argument was.  It is a great example of how something that sounds rather smart to an outsider--and may even involve some smarts in putting together--can be completely misguided.  It is an example of the conclusion driving the argument, rather than the evidence driving the argument.  It is an example of trying to argue for something that is possible (but fits with one's preconceptions) rather than trying to argue for the probable.

Don't criticize me if I don't always adopt convenient arguments for possible conclusions that we find desirable.  I know what special pleading is because I used to do it.

Dr. Black was as gracious in his grade as he was insightful in his comment.  Most of the variations do not smack of theological conspiracy.  They are more a matter of spelling and grammatical variation.  Indeed, there is only one variant I can think of that anyone might argue would have had a bearing on the Arian controversy--1 John 5:7.  If the KJV version of this verse is original, then we would indeed be losing the most Trinitarian verse in the Bible: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one" (KJV).

But it is more likely you'll be hit by an asteroid this evening than that this verse was original.  Funny how the most potentially Trinitarian verse in the Bible never came up in the Trinitarian controversies of the 300s and 400s!  Indeed, it appears in only about 8 of the 5500+ Greek manuscripts of the NT that exist, often in the margin, and never in a hand that is older than the 1400s. In fact, the primary editor of the Greek text behind the KJV wouldn't even have put it into his Greek text if the Roman Catholic Church had not produced a manuscript with it present.  His comment was that the ink was still wet.

Not only do the variations between Sinaiticus and Vaticanus have nothing to do with Eusebius' theology, but we now have papyrus manuscripts that are older than these two.  In other words, the variations of these manuscripts pre-date Eusebius.  He and Constantine thus cannot be the "fiends" who altered the text. In the end, I would conclude with those who think that it is the text behind the KJV that has been altered, not that behind most modern translations.

It can be hard to get one's head around what most textual scholars are claiming here. To us, it looks like the KJV is old and modern translations are new.  But in reality, the KJV was based on a small number of late medieval manuscripts, most of which dated after the year 1000.  Modern translations are based on manuscripts that go back to the 100s and 200s.  In terms of the Greek text, the NIV is about 800 years older than the KJV.

In the end, it was not the so called "external evidence" of the manuscripts that convinced me to switch sides...

2.1 Issues of the Biblical Text

For the last few weekends, I have been sharing a little of my own pilgrimage in the understanding of Scripture.  Last Sunday I finished a first group of posts I called, "Reading Out of Context."  This weekend I want to start a second group I'm calling "The Original Text."
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I was raised on the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible.  But as I approached my teen years, the New International Version (NIV) made its debut, and some in my denomination began to advocate for using it. I remember one camp meeting in Indiana when my parents were taken aback by someone who suggested they were potentially hurting the faith of their children by not using the NIV. My sense of our response was that we understood the Bible just fine in the King James.

I was in high school in the early 80s when Christian radio and engagement in public and church related issues began to rise. We lived in Florida near Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and Dr. D. James Kennedy, one of the early Christian activists of the sort we now consider the norm of Christian Republican politics. Dobson was on the rise. I went to hear creationist-evolutionist debates in high school, interestingly at the same time I was learning how to think critically and objectively in an excellent public high school.

I felt God was calling me to be a minister in the middle of my first year of college at Southern Wesleyan and soon I found myself learning Greek.  Over the next three years I would learn about "textual criticism," the branch of biblical studies that tries to determine the original wording of the biblical texts. I believe somewhere in that process, my mother bought me a copy of Edward Hills' The King James Version Defended. I'm sure I could still find it if I did a bit of searching.

In those days I felt like a pilgrim without a guide. I wanted to read so much but almost no book could hold my attention.  In college I would often read the same sentence over and over and over again and my mind would run from the page faster than the period at the end of a sentence. I was not like those I envy who can't put a book down and seem to be able to read Kant or Heidegger without a guide.

For the next 10 years I would find myself uncertain on many things.  I would read Donald Guthrie's New Testament Introduction and he would give one side to an issue so well I would find it convincing. Then he would give the other side and I would find it convincing as well. (By the way, what a tribute to objectivity, that he could convince me for a moment of a position to which he did not himself hold!) It seemed as if there were so many possible variations and it was never quite clear to me which was the most likely. It was the same on issues of the biblical text.

I remember thinking that at some point you begin to draw some conclusions. Somewhere in the vast sea of scholarly uncertainty you find something convincing. Once you have made one decision, then other decisions become more likely. I remember thinking of it in these terms. Of course now the big consensuses of scholarship seem rather obvious to me. But one could argue that I have only become comfortable with them.

I hope that is not true. In any case, because in effect I had to start from scratch and generally started from the minority position in most things, I believe I know the most convincing arguments for the majority positions.  And because it has taken me so much effort to get my head around such issues--and because I am so easily bored--I am more likely to communicate the reasons for majority positions in a palatable way...

Passages in Atlanta

I'm about to get back on a plane this morning with Jerry Pattengale and head back to Indiana.  I had a great time in Atlanta yesterday and gave a presentation last night entitled, "Are Differences in Manuscripts a Problem for Christian Faith."  The visit started with a very long taxi ride by a young man from Ethiopia who was on his third day or so. I knew Atlanta better than he did.

Then I got to see the amazing collection the Green Foundation (owner of Hobby Lobby) has here.  They have on display everything from the oldest Greek manuscript of Samuel (200s) to a strip of p39 (part of John from 200s) to copies relating to Luther, original Erasmus Greek New Testament, the Wicked Bible ("thou shalt commit adultery"), Stephanus, original KJV...  If I were teaching a course on the text of the Bible in Atlanta, this would be on the schedule to be sure.  The exhibition is off to Charlotte at the end of the month.

The paper went well, I thought, not least because I decided to paraphrase the second half of it.  I had initially assumed the audience would be something along the lines of Dan Wallace, who is fairly mainstream when it comes to textual criticism. But I began to sense I would probably have some King James supporters in the room, so decided to move my sensitivity lines a little.

If you're a Bible scholar and in the Atlanta area, come up to Dunwoody and see the exhibit (it's within walking distance of the Marta stop). Thanks to the Green Foundation for a fun night!

Excerpt from Paper: "Charismatic" Copyists

Finishing my paper for Atlanta tomorrow night.  Here's a brief excerpt.
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...But I digress again. The original manuscripts of the New Testament were quite possibly around for some time, long enough for a significant number of pretty accurate copies to be made and for their keepers, whoever they were, to recognize early variations. I’m not saying that the earliest Christians had a culture of double-checking. When I look at how New Testament authors use the Old Testament, I feel quite confident that the message was far more what they were interested in than the precise wording or even the historical meaning as we think of it today.

The most radical example that comes to mind of this dynamic of Scripture use in the New Testament is Matthew 2:23: “And he [that is Joseph] went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.” It is hard to know exactly what Old Testament verse Matthew is referring to. Judges 13:5 comes close: “the child shall be a Nazirite.” But of course this verse was referring to Samson, and a Nazirite is something quite different from Nazareth. Nazareth was a village in Galilee. A Nazirite was someone who vowed not to drink wine or cut his hair for a lifetime. Jesus was not a Nazirite.

On the other hand, Isaiah 11:1 uses a Hebrew word that looks somewhat similar to Nazareth. “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.” This passage is often taken messianically as a prophecy about to Jesus, and the Hebrew word for branch is nēzer. In seems to me that the best explanation of Matthew’s quote is a combination of something like these two passages, the form somewhat coming from Judges and the substance coming from Isaiah 11. The hypothesis seems confirmed by the fact that Matthew doesn’t say that this prophecy comes from a "prophet," singular. Instead, he says it was spoken “by the prophets,” plural.

By the way, this was the issue I was talking about that troubled me after my first year of seminary. I concluded that the New Testament authors read the Old Testament more like charismatics than like my seminary professors were telling me to read it. This is why that, even though I myself prefer a more “wooden” or what some call a more “literal” translation, I don’t have a problem with those who prefer The Message or biblical paraphrases. Ironically, one of the factors in Bart Ehrman losing his faith is that he found the variety among manuscripts problematic to his view of Scripture. For him, it was “wild copying,” and it was a major problem. Maybe if he had been a charismatic, he wouldn’t have lost his faith.

Manuscripts not a Problem for Faith

Thought I'd give the quick outline of the paper I'm giving Tuesday night at 7pm in Atlanta. Tickets are free but necessary through the box office at (770) 804-9427. While they may tell you it's sold out, I hear they often have about 100 at the door.

The event is at the "Passages" lecture hall at the Green exhibit, 1201 Hammond Dr. on the northeast side of Atlanta.  The exhibit has more than 30,000 biblical antiquities, and this is the initiative that has in its possession several new New Testament newly discovered manuscripts from the second century (not on display yet ;-).

1. The NT manuscript situation
It is true that we do not have any of the original manuscripts of the Bible. It is true that of the 5500+ Greek NT manuscripts no two are exactly alike.  It's true that there are between 300,000 and 400,000 individual variations among the manuscripts. With regard to the OT, we are separated from the time of writing by many centuries.  Individuals like Bart Ehrman suggest that it is pointless even to talk about the "original manuscripts" because we don't have them.

The situation with regard to the New Testament is, however, far superior to any other ancient text. If we are not troubled by the situation with regard to Homer or Plato, then we certainly can't be troubled about the NT. The vast majority of differences are simple spelling variations.  There are only a handful of really significant NT passages and none of them change any Christian doctrine or practice.

Is there a place for "conjectural emendations," places where we might suggest that the original text read differently from any text we now have?  It is quite possible but methodologically problematic. Moffatt once suggested that Romans 7:25b was originally at 7:24b.  It would sure read a lot more smoothly if that were the case, but there is no manuscript evidence. Best not to go there.

One good possibility for such a conjectural emendation, however, is 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1.  This passage does not fit the train of thought of that section of 2 Corinthians and the passage reads more smoothly if it is removed. 2 Corinthians in general is often suggested to be more than one letter of Paul that has been joined together.  More on this passage later.

2. The OT manuscript situation
With regard to the OT, the situation is much more difficult. The Masoretic text is something like the Byzantine text of the NT (think KJV). It is a standardized text that represents the end of a long process of editing. The Septuagint translation into Greek (LXX) also underwent significant changes over time and exists in multiple forms. The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) help where they exist and are substantial.

Basically, the situation is varied. Different sources seem more reliable for different parts (e.g., the LXX of the Pentateuch is helpful, the DSS are helpful for Isaiah, the Old Greek for Samuel, etc...). These sources probably get us to a century or two before Christ. There are still some gaps (e.g., how old was Saul when he began to reign, 1 Sam. 13:1).

3. Problems with the idea of an "original text"
Recent times have seen increasing reflection on the very idea of what an "original text" might be. For example, you often hear scholars talk about the prophets growing as documents over time.  Is Isaiah in its current form the result of several centuries of addition, with chapters 40-55 coming from around the time of the exile and 56-66 from just after, when the whole document reached something like its current form?  Is the Gospel of John something like the final form of a community document that was composed in stages with, for example, John 21 representing a later stage than John 20?

As troubling as such hypotheses can be to the uninitiated, there is still something like a "final form" that might be considered to be something like an "original text."  If so, it would still be possible that some variations would continue forward from different stages of composition. One thinks of Matthew and Mark.  Most think that Matthew used Mark as a primary source, but did Matthew use Mark in something like a "final form"?

For example, what are we to make of Matthew's omission of Mark 7:19 that Jesus declared all foods clean?  Is this an indication of Matthew's theology, that he did not consider all foods clean, at least not for Jewish Christians?  Or was this a clarifying remark that was added to Mark in a later version than Matthew used as a source?

If we return to 2 Corinthians, it is possible that we can speak of a time when different components of this text were independent letters or parts of independent letters (e.g., chaps. 10-13; 6:14-7:1). But at some point, 2 Corinthians took on its current form, which we would then consider to be the "original text" or the "final form." Whether previous versions then influenced the textual history of the later composite document would then be a fascinating question.

Similarly, if when New Testament letters were produced, a copy was made both to send and to keep at the point of origin, is it possible that there could be minor differences between the two copies from the very beginning? Was one copy of Ephesians created for Ephesus with the words "at Ephesus" on it while other copies for the rest of Asia Minor created without those words?

And what of 1 Corinthians 14:33-35, the famous "let women be silent" verses, which appears in more than one place in the manuscripts?  Was this in one original copy of 1 Corinthians but then not in the other?  I personally suspect it is a late first century/early second century addition to the margin of some central copy of 1 Corinthians.

4. The focus of Faith
So, it does get a little more complicated when you dig into it more. Are differences in manuscripts a problem for Christian faith?  Not in the slightest. For one thing, we are really only talking about a certain uncertainty and fuzziness around the edges. We are not talking about any fundamental confusion about what the "original" or final forms of these texts basically said.

Take 1 Samuel 11:1.  The DSS add a good deal of information here about Nahash the Ammonite. The NRSV has included it in its translation.  The ESV, NIV, and other translations have not. What does it change?  It neither adds nor takes anything away from faith.  Practically all variations are of this sort.

In fact, in regard to the Hebrew Bible, many Christians would argue that it is not the Hebrew text by itself but the Christian reading of the OT that is important for Christian faith. Hebrews 10:5-7 provides us with an interesting case study. Here the form of the OT text that Hebrews uses is different from the likely original Hebrew form of Psalm 40:6-8. (By the way, this is a real conundrum for a KJV only person, since both forms of the text cannot be original, implying that one of the readings in the KJV text is not the original text... it is an incontrovertible validation of the science of textual criticism).

So which is more central to Christian faith, the original form of Psalm 40 in Hebrew or Hebrews' Christian version of the text?  Surely the latter is more central to Christian faith (this does not mean that the Hebrew wording cannot play a role as well).

In the end, any version of faith that is so strongly connected to individual verses is an out of focus faith.  This is true not only because God the Father and Christ must be at the center of our faith (rather than the "little books" [biblia] or Bible that gives witness to them, the books through which they have spoken and continue to speak).  It is true because the Bible must be read as a whole, as a fullness of revelation, where all the parts are read together (e.g., we don't apply Leviticus as Christians without having also read Hebrews).

It is even more crucially true because no verse comes to us without interpretation. When one looks at the tens of thousands of Christian denominations and groups, it is quite clear that the question of what interpretation of Scripture is appropriate has a far greater impact on us as believers than the question of the precise wording of the original text. The wording is the question of what the text says.

But that is just the beginning of the process.  Most variations on what the text said do not significantly impact the question of what the text meant.  Then the individual teachings of individual texts have to be integrated into a biblical theology that we appropriate for today, finding points of continuity and discontinuity between their time and our time, bringing the insights the Spirit has unfolded about Scripture throughout the ages.

By the time we reach this stage of hermeneutics, there are no textual variations of the original biblical texts that are significant in the slightest for faith.

Dale Martin - Theology and Manuscripts

Today I read a chapter by Dale Martin in a volume co-edited by Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace called The Reliability of the New Testament.  His chapter is called "The Necessity of a Theology of Scripture."

Let me just say that I am frequently impressed with Martin's work. I don't think I introduced myself to him in 1995 when he was at Tübingen on sabbatical and I was there working on my dissertation.  He was working at that time on what I consider a tour de force on 1 Corinthians, The Corinthian Body.  His work in that book on our presuppositions about the soul were really paradigm-changing for me.

Perhaps the sentence that captures his chapter in Reliability best for me is this one: "Just as the church is embodied in particular, visible, physical groups of people but must not be identified with any of those groups or even with all those groups gathered together, so scripture is embodied in particular texts, manuscripts, editions, and translations but cannot be identified with any of them, including the imagined 'original autographs'" (88).  This may seem vague, so let me give a few more quotes.

"In the modern world since the dominance of the printing press, we are used to thinking that there is one right edition of every document, and that in most cases we (or at least the experts) can produce it. Realizing that Christian scripture cannot be so published--that no editor or group of editors can deliver 'the' right version, edition, or translation--may surprise modern people, but that is a reflection of the confusion about texts and textuality befogging modern people.  It is also a result of the fact that most modern people, including most Christians, are living with what is an immature and untrained theology of scripture" (87).

He goes on: "the Bible isn't scripture simply in and of itself. It is scripture, the word of God, when it is read in faith by the leading of the Holy Spirit."  He certainly is not opposed to historical readings of the Bible. He just thinks they are vastly incomplete when we are trying to talk about the Bible as Christian Scripture.

It goes without saying that Martin believes that if our faith is focused on being able to know the precise wording of the text, we're way off the mark. But he's saying much more than that. He's saying the whole theology of Scripture that pushes in this direction is way off.

I won't go into much detail. He prefers a theology of Scripture that sees us "entering a space where our Christian imaginations may be informed, reshaped, even surprised by the place scripture becomes for us" (90). He thinks models of the Bible as an "answer book" or a "user's manual" or even as an "authority" are incredibly vague and thus inadequate. The model of the Bible as the narrative of God's people comes closer for him, but he prefers his "space" analogy.

He ends with some interesting thoughts.  He quotes Elizabeth Johnson of Columbia Theological Seminary as saying, "the problem with evangelicals is that they don't have enough faith in God" (92). He says, "The text won't save us. God will save us."  And finally, "Ehrman allowed textual criticism to destroy his faith in scripture because he had an inadequate theology of scripture" (93).

Interesting...

"Orthodox Corruption" of Biblical Text

I'm trying to read through the collection of essays called Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament in preparation for a talk I'm giving in a week. The second chapter caricaturizes Bart Ehrman's text critical rule as "The least orthodox reading is to be preferred."  The claim, which seems generally valid, is that Ehrman functions, for all intents and purposes, with the sense that if when you are faced with variation among manuscripts where one text has wording that is "orthodox" and another has a wording that is problematic for faith, then the problematic one is more likely to be original.

I want to start off with my conclusions. First, Ehrman does seem to function in this way.  It is his consistent practice. Second, there is actually a kind of common sense to his practice, although ironically he probably is wrong on some of his conclusions on individual texts.  Thirdly, it is completely irrelevant to Christian faith. This is an issue of no importance whatsoever to Christian faith (which is why, sadly but understandably, our streamlined 75 hour MDIV at Wesley spends all of an afternoon on the question of the text of the whole Bible, the cost of majoring on the major).

The real rule, set forth by J. A. Bengel (1687-1752), is that the more difficult reading is to be preferred. I'll put it a different way.  A good decision on how an original text read has a good hypothesis on how the other variations in the manuscripts arose.  The idea that later scribes intentionally made manuscripts less orthodox makes little sense, while Ehrman's hypothesis--that scribes intentionally or inadvertantly made the text more orthodox--is a more likely explanation in theory.

A less orthodox reading might be a "more difficult reading" and therefore a more likely original reading. But interestingly, in my opinion, it doesn't turn out to be the case with most of Ehrman's key examples.  Orthodoxy doesn't seem to have been a primary factor in the copying practices of scribes (harmonization of the details, interestingly, was much more significant).

We need to get concrete probably for this discussion really to make sense. Did John 1:18 originally say, "No one has ever seen God, but the only begotten, [who is himself] God... has made him known." Some manuscripts read here "the only begotten, a Son... has made him known."  Ehrman believes that a copier of John intentionally changed "Son" to "God" to make the text fit better with orthodox theology.

Is this possible? Sure? Does it matter? Not in the slightest as far as Christian theology is concerned.  John 1:1 already identifies Jesus as God and even then, we have to interpret what that means.  If single verses cause you to break out into faith sweats, your faith is out of focus. This goes to a contention I've made elsewhere that Ehrman's childhood fundamentalism is still setting the agenda for him as a scholar today. Me? I'm good with either reading.

To put on the scholar's hat, though, I think Ehrman is probably wrong on this one. I consider "the only begotten, God" to be the more difficult reading. For one thing, "only begotten, the Son" is very Johannine.  It's the kind of reading we can see a copier accidentally putting down because they weren't paying close enough attention. There's no theological issue with "only begotten Son." It fits fine with Christian theology. A scribe wouldn't have found it theologically problematic in the first place.

The "external evidence," the lay of manuscripts, soundly favors "only begotten, God."  The second century papyrus p75 has it, as do Vaticanus and Sinaiticus from the early 300s.  In other words, the "oldest and most reliable" manuscripts in this case support "only begotten, God."

Did scribes ever make texts more orthodox?  I'm sure they did.  It's possible, for example, that Mark 1:41 originally read that Jesus was angry rather than compassionate. The chapter has a nice footnote list of possible examples (88, n.129).

Does it matter for theology?  Not in the slightest.  And it's not as if there isn't enough evidence to sort most of it out, even if one does have some neurotic fixation that compels you to know for certain what the precise wording likely was. But this can approach bibliolatry at some point for a fundamentalist--or neurosis if you are an ex-fundamentalist doing his own version of scholarly therapy.

Manuscripts and Faith

I'm giving a paper in 9 days in Atlanta titled, "Are Differences in the Manuscripts a Problem for Christian Faith?" I actually thought this was a rather lame topic, since the answer is so obviously, "No, differences aren't a problem for Christian faith in the slightest."  The answer hasn't changed from the beginning of textual criticism to Bruce Metzger's verdict in The Text of the New Testament to now.

However, in preparation for the paper I've been reading a bit about Daniel Wallace's ongoing debate with Bart Ehrman.  My impression is that Ehrman is quite the showman and plays with the ignorance of audiences to 1) make them think the original text is more uncertain than it is, when 2) he doesn't even actually think that himself.  The first chapter of Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament gives the essence of this debate.

From what I can tell, the more things change the more they are the same.  I find nothing in Ehrman troubling that is valid.  And there are a few things in Ehrman that probably aren't valid... and which one wonders if even he believes. So I feel just as up to date on "textual criticism and faith" today as I did when I finished seminary.