Mondays I am writing about my journey with Scripture in college, seminary, and beyond. Earlier posts are at the bottom. The previous post started chapter 5, "Adventures with the King James Version."
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5. I did not change my mind about the King James version over night. I wrestled with the question for about a year and a half after that college paper before I finally accepted the scholarly consensus.
For one thing, I wasn't sure who to believe about the manuscripts. In the 1978 version of the NIV, there was a note in a couple places that went like this: "The earliest and most reliable manuscripts do not have verses..." It was a bold claim. It said that the further back in history you go, the less you find these verses in the handwritten copies of the New Testament.
More recent editions of the NIV have softened the tone a little. So with regard to John we now find this note: "The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11." This is the story of the woman caught in adultery. It does not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of John.
Whaat???
6. You can see how unsettling notes like these were at first. You'd grown up with the King James Version. You'd heard this story of the woman caught in adultery your whole life. As a pastor, maybe you'd preached from this story your whole ministry. And now some new Bible implies it doesn't belong in the Bible.
I heard a sermon on the woman caught in adultery this past year. And I still from time to time hear people quote the Great Commission from Mark 16:15 (as opposed to Matthew 28's version). I don't usually point out to them that the verse probably wasn't part of Mark originally. But there's the note in the NIV2011 of Mark 16: "The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20."
I get it. It looks sinister. "They're cutting verses out of the Bible," people said and then invoked the condemnations of Revelation 22:18-19 about removing things from the book. [1] A book came out in 1993 called New Age Bible Versions that was extremely convincing if you didn't know anything about the subject. [2] By the time it came out, I was starting my doctorate and knew a fair amount of the debate so I found it pretty funny.
For example, it tries to malign a famous Bible scholar from the late 1800s because he wrote in his journal that he liked to have evening strolls talking about "metaphysics." The author didn't know what metaphysics is in philosophy, which is clearly what this scholar meant. But she assumed he was talking about spirit guides and the kinds of spiritualist trends that were taking place in the 90s.
I had a really good laugh about that one. But on a much more serious note, she suggested some translators of the NIV got Alzheimer's as God's judgment on them. This book had immense impact among those who didn't really understand the subject.
7. What you should realize is that scholars are not trying to take verses out. They have concluded that verses like the longer ending of Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery were added in during the first few centuries of Christianity. It is natural for us to think of the King James Version (KJV) as old and the NIV as relatively young (not so much any more). But when we are talking about the handwritten copies they are translated from, the NIV Greek manuscripts are older than the KJV ones -- generally much older.
The 1611 King James Version was good scholarship for its day. But we now have manuscripts that are 1000 years older than the ones they used. This is just another example of tradition resisting change. You grow up with a faith that involves a mixture of gold and hay, but it's hard to realize which is which. You feel like someone is attacking your faith when they are only refining it. It's perfectly understandable.
The tradition of the Greek behind the KJV was so strong that it prevailed long after scholars realized that it wasn't likely as original as the older manuscripts that were being discovered in the 1800s. It was two individuals in particular -- B. F. Westcott and Fenton Hort -- who finally managed to dislodge the Greek "textus receptus" behind the KJV in Greek editions of the New Testament.
They did focus their argument on two key manuscripts that dated from the early 300s. One was found in the Vatican, called Codex Vaticanus. The other was found at a monastery on the Sinai peninsula -- Codex Sinaiticus. Mind you, even earlier Greek manuscripts have been discovered since then, and they largely support the readings of these two.
I grew up with these two men being demonized -- Westcott and Hort. Books like the New Age Versions of the Bible seemed to think that they could undermine the newer versions of the Bible if they could malign Westcott and Hort (and apparently the translators of the NIV). This is called the ad hominem fallacy -- where you attack the people rather than making an actual argument.
But Westcott and Hort only systematized what most experts of the biblical text already thought at the time. And, as I mentioned, even earlier manuscripts have since been found.
8. I should note, there were some very educated hold outs in favor of the traditional Greek text, the "textus receptus" or "received text." In the late 1800s, John Burgon argued that the manuscripts Westcott and Hort most relied on were corrupted manuscripts. F. H.A. Scrivener argued similarly. In the mid-1900s, E. F. Hills wrote a book called The King James Defended that I already mentioned.
In this present time, there are Majority Text scholars who are quite knowledgeable of the manuscripts and who have some very clever arguments against the majority. Indeed, in this reactionary moment in history with so much information at our fingertips, I sense a possible resurgence of cleverly argued "Greek behind the King James" support. We are living in an upside down time, a decade of unreason and irrationality.
9. Let me return to my own pilgrimage. After I became committed to the truth rather than tradition, I still didn't know what to make of the manuscript situation. After all, Burgon could have been right that Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were bad manuscripts. "Maybe that's why they have survived," it occurred to me. "Because no one used them."
Interestingly, modern manuscript studies that are based on computer analysis have seemed to undermine to some extent the families and grouping of manuscripts that I studied in college and seminary. [3] When I took a course in textual criticism with Bob Lyon at Asbury, we heard about the Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine manuscript traditions.
In my mind, I reduced them to 1) manuscripts that were like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, 2) manuscripts that were like Codex Bezae, including many Latin manuscripts, and 3) all the medieval manuscripts that pretty much read the same way. The first group, I would later concede, had readings that were most likely original.
But to be frank, I didn't put as much stock in it as many did. It seemed to me like some wanted to systematize things a little too much. It was more of a trendline than anything you could absolutely depend on.
Majority Text scholars like James Snapp argue extensively from quotations by the church fathers and from early translations of the New Testament into other languages. This is very clever. It is to say, "There may not be early Greek manuscripts that support the traditional reading, but here's an early quote of it from so and so, and here is an early Syriac manuscript with it." Of course, you have to do textual criticism on the manuscripts of the church fathers too. [4]
10. So, the manuscripts -- or external evidence -- did not convince me. The arguments were far too complicated, far too minute. I have found over the years that minutia is often a tool to try to undermine the most likely. "The evidence looks like it supports x, but let me bombard you with a web of intricate details that show it's really y."
Much of what is going around in political circles these days falls into this category. The result is that you feel really smart with secret knowledge when really it's just a smokescreen to wiggle out of the most likely conclusions. And you can smirk at your "uninformed friends" who think x seems right.
It was not the external evidence, which was very strong, but what is called the "internal evidence" that ultimately convinced me to change my mind.
Internal evidence is based on common sense. The most likely original reading is the one that would explain where the other readings came from. For example, take 1 John 2:23: "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either, but the one who acknowledges the Son has the Father as well." Some copies of 1 John only have the first part: "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either."
Was there some evil copyist who deliberately chopped this verse off? Not likely. The easiest explanation is an "eye skip." Two lines in the manuscript ended with "the Father." You copy the first line, looking from the original to the new copy. When you look back, your eye goes to the second line instead of the first (because they both end in "the Father"). Without realizing it, you have left a whole line of text out.
If you understand the scenario, this makes perfect sense. In fact, if you have ever copied something, you may have done this yourself. Most of the variations among the manuscripts are simple mistakes like this one. There was no evil fiend involved -- unlikely for someone whose job is to copy the Bible.
Here's another one. In later Greek, the letter upsilon and the letter epsilon were both pronounced the same. That means that the Greek for "our" and the Greek for "your" sounded exactly the same. So, it is no surprise that the original text of 1 John 1:4 is uncertain. Some manuscripts say "our joy" and others say "your joy." Clearly, some copyist misheard what word was being said because the two words sound the same.
11. It was thus common sense that won out in the end for me. Why would anyone remove the story of the woman caught in adultery? It is a magnificent story that most find to resonate deeply with the character of Jesus. It might even be based on a story that actually happened. It makes much more sense that it was added in as an oral tradition about Jesus in search of a home -- rather than a story someone took out very early in church history.
Westcott and Hort suggested two rules that are not absolutes but more like trends. "Choose the more difficult reading" as more likely to be original (the lectio difficilior). Why? Because copyists were more likely to try to "fix" the unclear than to mess up the clear. "Choose the shorter text" because material was more likely to be added for clarity than to be cut out (the lectio brevior). Again, the second one is less powerful than the first, but it does seem to work much of the time.
Take Mark 16:9-20. Verse 9 starts the chapter all over again in a different style. We had already heard about the women at the tomb. Mark 16:9 acts like the first 8 verses weren't even there, like the copyist stepped out to use the restroom while the first eight verses were being read.
We can have intricate arguments about the manuscript evidence (although not the Greek ones -- you have to bring in the fathers and the versions because the Greek tradition for this ending being early is very weak). But these verses don't read like they belong there. They summarize the resurrection appearances of the other Gospels. They don't continue the train of thought from 16:1-8.
Apparently, someone tacked an existing summary of resurrection appearances from elsewhere onto Mark 16:8. Why? Because otherwise the chapter ends saying, "The women told no one because they were afraid." It's a weird way to end the Gospel. You can see that someone would want to cap that tooth. In fact, there is another shorter ending as well among the manuscripts.
So choose the reading as original that would best explain how the other readings came about. Choose the more difficult reading. Well, the more difficult reading is for it to have ended at 16:8 with the women telling no one. It's obvious why the other readings would have arisen. 16:8 is just a strange way to end the story. It seems incomplete.
So amid all the intelligent sounding, clever arguments to the contrary, informed common sense time and time again comes out in support of the scholarly consensus and the text used in modern versions. There is no conspiracy here. In fact, it makes perfect sense that the church smoothed out the Greek text as the Bible was increasingly read as part of the liturgy of worship. In the 300s, as Christianity becomes legal and the church begins to standardize doctrine and canon, the text of the Bible becomes standardized as well.
12. Near the end of my textual criticism class at Asbury, Dr. Lyon asked me if I was a "closet textus receptus man." I was still a little unsure, but I fell off the log on his side in the moment. He was of course well-known in scholarly circles for his work with Codex Ephremi Rescriptus. Over time, my confidence in the scholarly consensus would only increase. Again, not because of the manuscripts but because of common sense.
Let me reveal the effect this pilgrimage had on me. I feel like I am particularly gifted at seeing the big picture and seeing connections and patterns. I have seen this pattern over and over again. There is a tradition. It is something a group has its identity strongly wrapped around. Then someone comes along with new evidence or a new perspective that seems to go against the tradition. That person perhaps has studied the subject more thoroughly. Perhaps they are somewhat of an expert on it.
Conservatism is, in its root meaning, a resistance to change, often in the name of preserving truth. But in my opinion, it is also often resistance to new insight. It is often the elephant that Jonathan Haidt writes about in The Righteous Mind. [5] The elephant is going to go where it wants to go. And when the stability of your world is based on the status quo, you're going to want to stick with the status quo. This is why the young are typically more open to new ideas than the old -- they have less invested in tradition and the status quo.
So, some very intelligent traditionalists -- perhaps I might even call them sentimentalists -- go to town trying to explain away the new data or the new evidence. It is an identity-preserving dynamic. It is exactly what Thomas Kuhn has said that "normal science" does in the face of new scientific theories. [6] It is entirely predictable and often ingenious.
I would see this pattern so often as I continued my education that I could smell it a mile away. Instead of pursuing the evidence to its most likely conclusion, one's intelligence is applied to try to argue for the traditional position. In Jonathan Haidt's imagery, the elephant rider comes up with smart-sounding reasons for why the elephant is going in the right direction.
I've called it "cooking the books." It's making arguments that might even seem silly to someone with an open mind. When you're in an echo chamber in a bubble, people are not looking necessarily for good arguments. You just need any argument that will give you an excuse to continue thinking what you already think. I would see this pattern over and over in seminary and in the years beyond.
13. There really aren't a lot of huge textual issues like the ending of Mark or the woman caught in adultery in John. No one need worry about losing their faith over this question of the text. Indeed, one of my takeaways from this journey is that God must be focused on the message of the Bible, not the minute details of the text.
Of course this goes against some of the teaching you hear about how meticulous the copyists of the Hebrew Bible were. I hate that sort of stuff because it sets people up for a faith crisis later -- when there was no need for it. The meticulous copyists were the Masoretes in the Middle Ages. From what I can tell, some earlier copyists were more like The Message in temperament. The "Western" text of Acts is way longer and for no ideological reason. Someone just added a mess of details.
I want to end with 1 John 5:7. The KJV of this verse is the most Trinitarian verse in the Bible. The problem is that there isn't a Greek manuscript before the 1400s that has it. It is never mentioned as far as we know in any of the Trinitarian debates of the 300s -- rather odd if it had existed at the time. Even the man behind the Greek text of the KJV -- Erasmus -- didn't think it was original.
There's nothing wrong with the content of the verse. It's good theology. It just wasn't at all likely in the original version of 1 John. That's what the evidence and common sense say.
Modern versions aren't part of some conspiracy to get rid of the Trinity. It's just that sometimes the facts don't say what we want them to say.
[1] Of course, that verse was about removing teaching from the scroll of Revelation. The Bible wasn't packaged together when those verses were written. The scroll of Revelation traveled on its own then. And it is about the message of Revelation, not individual words.
This is another example of what I have called a pre-modern or unreflective reading of the Bible. Our understandable default is to read the Bible as it appears to us, not as it actually is.
[2] G. A. Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions: An Exhaustive Documentation of the Message, Men & Manuscripts Moving Mankind to the Antichrist's One World Religion (A. V.. 1993).
[3] For example, by scholars using the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method or CBGM. My good friend Matt Whidden is deeply involved in such studies.
[4] I have worked a little with the Passion Translation of the Gospels. Its paraphraser, Brian Simmons, seems to consider the Syriac version of the Gospels almost a direct line to Jesus himself. By calling it the Aramaic text, he essentially claims to get behind the Greek to Jesus himself. It also allows him to consider original many of the traditional verses absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts. But ultimately, he is just finding a way to give priority to later Syriac manuscripts.
[5] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Vintage, 2013).
[6] Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago, 1962).
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2.1 Adventures in Interpretation
2.2 Adventures in Jewelry
3.1 Beginnings of Context
3.2 Adventures in Hair
3.3 What was 1 Corinthians 11 really about?
4.1 Keeping the Sabbath
4.2 The Sabbath as Conviction
4.3 The New Testament and Old Testament Law
1 comment:
Well said. Thanks.
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