Chapter 11: The Documentary Evidence [237] Chapter 11: The Documentary Evidence The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Sir Frederic Kenyon, expert on ancient manuscripts 54 To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament. John Warwick Montgomery, lawyer and Christian apologist 55 In order to determine whether and how much the New Testament has changed over the centuries, we are finally ready to put the New Testament through the bibliographical test of historicity. To run this test, historiographers first identify the earliest existing copies (or extant manuscripts) of the document in question and ask how long after the originals these copies were made. Second, they determine the quantity of early extant manuscripts of the document. Finally, they compare all of the extant manuscripts to one another in an effort to most accurately determine the content of the original document. Let s get started. 54 Sir Frederic Kenyon, The Bible and Archeology (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940), 288-289. 55 John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Bethany House Publishers, 1986), 29.
[238] The Shortest Leap: The Rational Underpinnings of Faith in Jesus Proximity of Manuscripts to the Originals The original New Testament documents were written on papyrus, a paper-like material made from the pith of the papyrus plant. Because papyrus becomes brittle and disintegrates with age, none of the originals, called autographs, still exist. Amazingly, however, there are more than one hundred copies of portions of the New Testament that still exist on papyrus, more than fifty of which date between AD 125 and 200. Many of these came from Egypt, where the dry climate facilitated their preservation. The oldest extant manuscript of any Gospel text on papyrus dates to circa AD 125 and is known as P 52 (for Papyrus 52 ). 1 This small fragment contains verses 31, 32, 33, 37, and 38 from chapter 18 of John s Gospel. (Of particular note, the discovery of this early fragment put the nail in the coffin of arguments that the Gospel of John was composed later in the second century.) The other papyri manuscripts include a significant portion of each of the four Gospels, as well as many portions of the other books of the New Testament. From the third century on, copies of the New Testament documents were made on parchment (or vellum, a higher quality parchment). Because it was made of animal skins, parchment lasted much longer than papyrus. The most significant parchment copy of the Bible that exists today is called the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates to AD 330-350. It contains all of the New Testament, as well as portions of the Old Testament in Greek. Another important early parchment manuscript is the Codex Vaticanus, which contains nearly the entire 1 Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 53-61. Bible and dates to AD 325-350. 2 In summary, much of the New Testament can be reconstructed from early papyri manuscripts that date between AD 125 and 200. The rest can be filled in by parchment manuscripts that date before AD 350. Therefore, using the widely accepted date range for the composition of the four Gospels (AD 60 to 100), the earliest manuscripts date between 25 to 290 years of the originals. While this lapse between the earliest extant manuscripts and the originals may seem huge, it is a very brief span of time for an ancient document. When compared to other reliable ancient historical documents, it s the winner by a huge margin. For example, the oldest extant copies of the manuscripts of Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, are from the eleventh century, nine hundred years after the originals. The oldest extant manuscript of Caesar s Gallic Wars, written between 58 BC and AD 17, also date to nine hundred years after the original. The oldest extant manuscripts of the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, who also wrote around the same time, are from the ninth century, eight hundred years after the originals. The earliest extant manuscript of the History of Thucydides, originally composed circa 460-400 BC, is dated circa AD 900. The oldest extant manuscript of the History of Herodotus (c. 488-428 BC) was also written down approximately 1,300 years later than the originals. After the New Testament, the ancient document with the next shortest span of time between the originals and the first complete copy is Homer s Iliad, with a four hundred year span. Written in 800 BC, the first complete copy of the Iliad dates to circa 400 BC. (See Appendix E for a more 2 Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), 39-40.
[240] The Shortest Leap: The Rational Underpinnings of Faith in Jesus detailed comparison of the New Testament manuscripts with other ancient documents.) F. F. Bruce, widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on the biblical manuscripts, makes these statements regarding the superiority of the New Testament documents compared to other ancient historical documents: The evidence for our New Testament writing is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning But we do not quarrel with those who want more evidence for the New Testament than for other writings; firstly, because the universal claims which the New Testament makes upon mankind are absolute, and the character and works of its chief Figure so unparalleled, that we want to be as sure of its truth as we possibly can; and secondly, because in point of fact there is much more evidence for the New Testament than for other ancient writings of comparable date. 3 Let s take a closer look at the abundant evidence that historians have at their disposal as they assess the reliability of the New Testament documents. Multiplicity Of Manuscripts And The Counting Of Variants Not only were the earliest extant manuscripts of the Gospels recorded only 25 to 290 years after the originals, we can get a good idea of what the original documents actually said because we have a huge collection of manuscripts. Currently, there are a total of more than 5,600 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, both partial and 3 F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), 10. Chapter 11: The Documentary Evidence [241] complete. 4 As mentioned earlier, these Greek manuscripts include dozens of very early papyri manuscripts, as well as very early parchment manuscripts of the entire New Testament. In addition to the Greek manuscripts, there are 9,000 manuscripts in other languages, including Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and Arabic, many of which were written down in the first few centuries of the Christian church. There are also 36,289 quotations of the earliest New Testament documents in the works of the early church Fathers of the second through fourth centuries: Justin Martyr (100-165), Irenaeus (second century), Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-211/216), Origen (c. 185-c. 254), Tertullian (155-222), Hippolytus (early third century), and Eusebius (c. 265-c. 339). 5 These quotations cover all but eleven verses of the New Testament. 6 In comparison to the wealth of manuscript and quotation resources for the New Testament, there are 133 manuscripts of Josephus works, three manuscripts of Tacitus works (none of which contains all of his writings), and two hundred manuscripts of Suetonius works. 7 We also only have eight early manuscripts of Herodotus History, eight copies of Thucydides History, and ten copies of Caesar s Gallic Wars. Again, the next best ancient document is Homer s Iliad, with 643 copies. 8 (Refer to Appendix E for a summary of these details.) By comparing the thousands of early manuscripts of the New 4 McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 34. 5 McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 43. 6 Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999), 532. 7 Mark D. Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 31. 8 McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 38.
[242] The Shortest Leap: The Rational Underpinnings of Faith in Jesus Testament, as well as the quotations from the early church fathers, text critics can get a very good idea of the content of the original documents. The well-founded assumption of text criticism is that it is highly unlikely for copyists across a broad geographic area to make the exact same changes at the exact same time. Therefore, by comparing the many manuscripts to one another, text critics can deduce when changes were made and thereby reconstruct the original document. To illustrate this concept, consider the diagram below. The box at the very bottom is the original document, and each row above it is a generation of copies. For our example, let s assume that only two copies are made of each document. After four generations, there are a total of sixteen copies. Now let s assume that the original no longer exists, nor do any of the other copies for the next three generations. We only have the sixteen latest copies to compare with one another. If a change was made at point A let s call it Difference A only two documents would be affected, so we can assume that Difference A is not in the original. If a change was made at point B, four documents of the sixteen documents would contain Difference B. Again, we can assume it isn t in the original. If a change is made at point C, half of the documents would contain Difference C, and it would be difficult to discern whether it was in the original or not. Now assume we find an earlier copy, identified as X in the diagram. We see that the change made at point C doesn t appear in this earlier copy. We can therefore determine that C was not in the original. Although this is a very simplistic analogy, it is helpful for understanding the process that text critics use to determine the content of the original documents of the New Testament, except that instead of sixteen or seventeen manuscripts, they have thousands, in addition to the quotes from the early church leaders. New Testament Chapter 11: The Documentary Evidence [243] text critics also have much earlier sources, analogous to the second and third rows of our example. Therefore, any changes made in later centuries can easily be identified, and even changes made early on, especially if they are errors, are readily discovered. The result: we can be confident that the New Testament we read today is remarkably similar to the original documents, even though we no longer have those original documents. But some skeptics claim that the New Testament isn t reliable, since we don t have the originals and since there are many differences between the numerous manuscripts. In his recent book, Misquoting Jesus, text critic Bart Ehrman has discredited the accuracy and reliability of the New Testament by making such apparently devastating claims as: There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. 9 Because there are between 200,000 and 400,000 variants between the manuscripts of the New Testament, Ehrman claims that we have little reason to trust what the Bible tells us about Jesus. 10 But despite the book s title, one of the world s foremost authorities on biblical text criticism, Daniel Wallace, claims that Ehrman actually never provides a single example of when Jesus was misquoted. 11 Moreover, he never proved that any central doctrine of Christianity was compromised because of textual variants. 12 Another scholar with expertise in text criticism, Timothy Paul Jones, makes this statement in response to Ehrman s book: 9 Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), 90. 10 Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 89-90. 11 From an interview with Daniel B. Wallace in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 67. 12 As quoted in Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 88.
[244] The Shortest Leap: The Rational Underpinnings of Faith in Jesus As I examine Misquoting Jesus, I find nothing that measures up to the title or to the promotional copy. What I find is a great deal of discussion about a handful of textual variants none of which ultimately changes any essential belief that s presented in the New Testament. 13 Not only does Ehrman exaggerate the impact of variants on the meaning of the text, but his claim that there are more variants than the number of words in the New Testament is also completely misleading, since even this very large number of variants doesn t necessarily mean we can t trust the Bible s portrait of Jesus. Let s take a look at why 200,000 to 400,000 variants is not such a terrible number. There are two main reasons why this number is so huge, neither of which detract from the accuracy of the New Testament. First, any tiny difference is counted as a variant, even if it s a single letter that makes no difference to the meaning of the text. Second, each manuscript that contains this tiny difference is counted as one variant. Thus, if one thousand manuscripts contain the same tiny difference, it counts as one thousand variants. For example, the name John appears in the New Testament at least 150 times. Some manuscripts spell the Greek version of John with one n, while other manuscripts spell it with two n s. Therefore, if 100 Greek manuscripts each contain 150 occasions when the Greek word for John uses only one n, the total variants would be 15,000. Another common source of variants is the movable nu. The Greek letter nu, the equivalent of the English letter n, was sometimes used at the end of a word when the following word began with a vowel, much like the English use of the indefinite article an 13 Timothy Paul Jones, Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman s Misquoting Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 77. instead of a before a word beginning with a vowel (for example, an apple versus a banana ). Many manuscripts left off this additional nu, resulting in many thousands of variants, even though it didn t affect the meaning of the text. For example, if one hundred Greek manuscripts each left off one hundred nu s, that would count as ten thousand variants. According to Daniel Wallace, spelling variations such as with the name John and the movable nu, account for seventy to eighty percent of the textual variants. 14 In addition to these spelling variations, another common source of variants among the manuscripts is unintentional and obvious copying errors. For example, instead of kyrios, the Greek word for Lord, the scribe may have absentmindedly written kai, the Greek word for and. In such cases, text critics can easily determine from the context of the passage what the scribe intended to write. In addition to spelling differences and copying errors, a third source of variants can be due to synonyms, such as the occurrence of the Lord in place of Jesus. Also, the definite article is often used in front of proper names in Greek, but sometimes manuscripts don t include the definite article. Thus, the Mary would be counted as a variant of Mary, even though the two variants are obviously referring to the same person. This is also extremely common in manuscripts called lectionaries, of which there are approximately 2,200. Lectionaries divide the text into sections that could be read daily or weekly over the course of a year. Because the listener would only hear a little section each day, if the reading started with a reference to Jesus as he, the lectionary instead used the name Jesus. Otherwise, the he would be ambiguous. When you multiply 2,200 lectionaries by the total number of times the name Jesus was 14 As quoted in Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 86.
[246] The Shortest Leap: The Rational Underpinnings of Faith in Jesus inserted in place of the pronoun he, you arrive at a very large number of variants. 15 Differences in the order of words in sentences are a fourth common source of multiple variants, even though changing the word order in a Greek sentence doesn t compromise the understanding of the text. This is because Greek is an inflected language. The subject of a verb and the object of a verb take on different forms in Greek, so if they exchange places in the sentence, it is still possible to determine which word is the subject and which is the object. For example, there are sixteen different ways to say Jesus loves Paul in Greek, but each would be translated into English the same way. 16 But even when the meaning of a sentence is unaffected, any difference in word order would still count as a variant. Timothy Paul Jones summarizes the nature of the vast majority of the variants: In the end, more than 99 percent of the 400,000 differences fall into this category of virtually unnoticeable variants! 17 Once you understand the nitpicky way that variants are counted among the thousands of manuscripts, you can better appreciate the response Daniel Wallace had to Ehrman s claims about the large number of variants: If we have 200,000 to 400,000 variants among the Greek manuscripts, I m just shocked that there are so few!... What would the potential number be? Tens of millions! Part of the reason we have so many variants is because we have so many manuscripts. And we re glad to have so many manuscripts it helps us immensely in getting back to the original. 18 15 As quoted in Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 86. 16 As quoted in Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 87. 17 Jones, Misquoting Truth, 44. 18 Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 87. Chapter 11: The Documentary Evidence [247] Given the way variants are counted, and given the plethora of extant manuscripts from more than a dozen centuries, it s surprising there are only 200,000 to 400,000. The vast majority of these variants are easy to weed out as spelling differences, obvious slips of the pen, synonyms, differences in word order, and other slight variations that don t affect the meaning of the text. However, there are still a few differences between manuscripts that lead text critics to conclude that a section of the New Testament most likely wasn t in the original, and there are certain situations in which scholars debate over a couple of alternatives for what the original contained. There are two main sections of verses in the first category: the last twelve verses of Mark s Gospel (Mark 16:9-20) and the story of Jesus and the woman accused of adultery in John 7:53-8:11. In the oldest complete manuscripts of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, Mark ends after the women discover the empty tomb and an angel tells them Jesus has risen. But even without the twelve contested verses, the tomb is still empty and the angel has pronounced Jesus risen. Though Mark doesn t mention Jesus appearances, the angel instructs Mary to tell the disciples to expect him to meet them in Galilee. Moreover, the other Gospels, as well as the Book of Acts and the Pauline Epistles, mention that Jesus appeared to many people after his crucifixion. Therefore, Jesus resurrection does not stand or fall on the last twelve verses of Mark alone. On top of this, many scholars have made the case that the original ending of Mark, which most likely did mention Jesus appearances, may have been lost, not only because it was common for the endings and beginnings of scrolls to be damaged because they were on the outer edge, but also because there are many themes in Mark, such as the numerous predictions by Jesus that he would appear to them after his death, that indicate that the
[248] The Shortest Leap: The Rational Underpinnings of Faith in Jesus author intended to conclude with those appearances. 19 Many people love the story of John 7:53-8:11. The Jewish leaders accuse a woman of adultery and sentence her to die by stoning. When they ask Jesus what they should do with her, he tells them, If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. They then disperse, leaving the woman alone with Jesus. The story is consistent with Jesus ministry, especially the insinuation that even the most moral people are not free of sin, and this event still may have happened. The fact that this story doesn t appear in the earliest manuscripts of John does not invalidate Jesus overall message. While most New Testaments still include these verses, they usually include a note to clarify that they are not in the earliest manuscripts. While there are a number of instances when scholars debate the original text of a verse, none affect any essential doctrine of the Christian faith. That is, they never affect issues of orthodoxy, or right belief, although they may affect issues of orthopraxy, or right practice, which describe the correct way to live out the Christian faith. 20 Let me give a couple of examples of how debated differences affect only orthopraxy, but not orthodoxy. First, in Mark 9:29, Jesus explains to the disciples that they cannot cast out a certain type of demon except by prayer. Some manuscripts add and fasting to the instruction. This is hardly an issue with which most people today are concerned. There is another debate relating to a verse that women should be silent in the church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), with some scholars claiming it was a later insertion. 19 For example, see N. T. Wright s case in The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 617-24. 20 Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, 89. Chapter 11: The Documentary Evidence [249] While this is a sensitive and emotional topic, the outcome of the debate doesn t affect the core doctrines of Christianity, which are the deity and resurrection of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins through his substitutionary atonement, and eternal salvation through faith in him. Mark Roberts, who earned his doctorate in New Testament studies from Harvard University, makes this point in his comments on the tiny percentage of variants that have an uncertain interpretation: If you actually took out of the Gospels every word that was text-critically uncertain, the impact on your understanding of Jesus would be negligible. 21 In response to Ehrman s claim that the meaning of entire books of the Bible is affected by the disputed variants, Timothy Paul Jones reacts this way: It is at this point that I must respectfully disagree with Ehrman. Here s what I find as I look at the textual evidence. In every case in which two or more options remain possible, every possible option simply reinforces truths that are already clearly present in the writings of that particular author and in the New Testament as a whole; there is no point at which any of the possible options would require readers to rethink an essential belief about Jesus or to doubt the historical integrity of the New Testament. 22 Benjamin Warfield, late professor of systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, describes the accuracy of the New Testament text as follows: If we compare the present state of the New Testament text with that of any other ancient writing, we must declare 21 Roberts, Can We Trust the Gospels?, 34-35. 22 Jones, Misquoting Truth, 55.
[250] The Shortest Leap: The Rational Underpinnings of Faith in Jesus it to be marvelously correct. Such has been the care with which the New Testament has been copied a care which has doubtless grown out of true reverence for its holy words The New Testament [is] unrivaled among ancient writings in the purity of its text as actually transmitted and kept in use. 23 The surprise, therefore, is not that there are as many as 400,000 variants, but that there are so few compared to what we would expect for an ancient document that has been copied thousands upon thousands of times over the centuries. Based on the extensive collection of thousands of early manuscripts and the remarkable similarity between them, if someone claims that we can t trust the biblical record of what Jesus taught because the New Testament was altered over the centuries, he or she either doesn t know the facts or exaggerates the number of variants and their impact on the meaning of the text. Amazingly, the documents we read today are virtually identical to the original documents recorded almost two thousand years ago. And in the few cases where the variants do affect the meaning of the text, there is no impact on the central beliefs of Christianity. But some scholars may claim that the New Testament Gospel accounts don t tell the full story. In the next chapter, we will specifically address the theories of scholars who claim that other documents, such as those found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, provide additional insight perhaps more accurate insight into Jesus authentic teachings. Are there really other documents that might shed more light on who Jesus really was and what he really taught? 23 Benjamin B. Warfield, Introduction to Textual Criticism of the New Testament (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1907), 12-13.