I just wanted to press start on the thing.
We'll jump in online a little earlier.
So, what this means is that only later manuscript copies exist,
and these copies sometimes are separated by hundreds or thousands of years from the original.
So, given all this, given that we only have later manuscript copies remaining of the New Testament,
how can we be confident that the original wording of the Scriptures has been preserved for us?
How do we trust that errors haven't crept in this process?
Well, there are certain skeptical scholars, like this guy right here.
His name is Bart Ehrman, and they don't believe that the New Testament has been preserved.
In fact, he claims that this process of copying the New Testament out by hand
introduced so many mistakes and errors and corruptions
that we cannot trust that we have the original text of the New Testament.
So, look what Bart Ehrman says here in his famous book.
This is a quote from his book, Misquoting Jesus.
He says,
What good is it to say that the autographs, i.e. the originals, the original manuscript copies,
what good is it to say that they were inspired?
We don't have the originals.
We have only error-ridden copies.
And the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals
and different from them evidently in thousands of ways.
There are more variations among our manuscripts
than there are words in the New Testament.
Ouch.
So, is he right about this?
Do we only have error-ridden copies?
Are the vast majority centuries removed from the originals
and different from them in thousands of ways?
Are there more variations among our manuscripts of the New Testament
than there are words in the New Testament?
It's important that we get to the bottom of this,
not only because it affects our faith,
but also because we as Christians are followers of Jesus,
and he calls us to follow the truth wherever it might lead.
So we should never be afraid to examine
and test the factual claims of our faith.
And I want you to know that whenever you come across claims like this,
if they happen to crop up in your classroom or at work,
whenever you encounter claims like this that are challenging to your faith,
don't be afraid to investigate these things.
In fact, I urge you to do so.
And you'll find that you don't need to be afraid
to test your faith in Jesus against the facts,
because the facts are always on Jesus' side.
And that's what we're going to find out tonight with this quote from Bart Ehrman.
We'll see that Bart Ehrman here is being very tricky.
Some statements that he's saying are misleading,
and some are just plain wrong,
because the fact is we do have very good reasons to be confident
that the manuscripts of the New Testament are of excellent quality,
and that we can identify any errors that happen to have slipped in,
and therefore we can be confident
that we possess the original wording of the New Testament.
Now, to show you why this is true,
I'm going to describe to you what scholars do
to determine the original wording of an ancient publication.
And then I'll show you what this process looks like for the New Testament.
So when scholars want to determine the original reading,
the original wording of an ancient text,
the very first thing they do is they gather all of the surviving manuscripts
and textual witnesses.
And then they group these together into lines of transmission
that lead back to the autographs.
And the idea here is to group textual witnesses together
that are related to one another
in order to build a genealogy of transmission lines.
And this grouping of textual witnesses is called the manuscript tradition.
Sometimes it's also called a manuscript stemma.
You can see a picture of an example of one of an ancient text on the screen.
It's a chart of how all these textual witnesses and manuscripts fit together,
and it leads back chronologically to the original autograph manuscript.
And in this way, scholars can reconstruct the transmission history of a text.
They can check for errors in its transmission,
and then ultimately zero in on the original reading.
Now, the best manuscript tradition is one where scholars are the most confident
in finding the original reading of an ancient publication.
And the best manuscript tradition has the following four characteristics.
The first thing that it has, that the best manuscript tradition has,
is a large number of manuscripts.
This gives scholars a large number of opportunities to check for errors.
The second thing that scholars hope for
is to find a large number of early manuscripts.
These are manuscripts that are close in date to the original.
And this limits the number of generations of copying
that separate the early manuscript from the original,
and thus it limits the number of errors that can creep in.
In other words, the closer a manuscript is to the original chronologically,
the more accurate it tends to be.
So having a lot of early manuscripts is very important.
The third thing scholars look for is
they look for a large number of ancient translations.
Back in the ancient world, books were often translated,
just like they are today.
And these ancient translations give scholars many opportunities
to check for how a text has been transmitted over the centuries,
and therefore it gives them many opportunities to check for errors.
So if a work was written in ancient Greek,
it's very helpful to look at an ancient Latin translation
that was done in the West,
or an ancient Syriac translation that was done in the East,
in order to identify errors.
Now the fourth thing, and the last thing,
that scholars look for in a good manuscript tradition
is a large number of quotations.
Quotations are quotes of the work they're interested in
that are made by another ancient work.
Just like today, when authors back then were writing books,
they're often quoted from other books.
And you can go back to those quotations
and see if they line up with the manuscripts we have today
in order to check for errors.
And scholars do this
so that they can increase their confidence
about identifying the original reading.
So let's review.
For scholars to be most confident
in finding the original reading of an ancient publication,
they want to find a large number of manuscripts,
a large number of early manuscripts,
a large number of ancient translations,
and a large number of quotations.
So what I want to know is how the New Testament
stacks up in these four categories,
and how we would evaluate the quality
of the New Testament's manuscript tradition
up against these four categories right here.
So let's do that right now.
We'll start at the bottom.
We'll start with the last category of quotations.
Does the New Testament have a large number of quotations
that scholars can use
to check its transmission history?
Well, yes, in fact it does.
There are so many quotations
that no one has been able to count them all.
We don't even know how many there are
because no one has had the time to do it.
In fact, there are so many
early and medieval Christian writings
that quote the New Testament
that if you go to Yale Divinity School
and you go to a certain aisle of books,
you'll find that an entire aisle of books
still does not contain all the writings.
And in these writings,
there are hundreds of thousands
of quotations of the New Testament,
and every single one of them
can help scholars identify any errors
that have happened in the transmission process.
And these quotations come from Christian writings
that date back to the very beginning of Christianity,
all the way up to the medieval era,
and spread throughout the entire Christian world,
from Western Europe and Eastern Europe,
from the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, Persia,
everywhere the church was
are where these writings come from.
This is extraordinary.
There is not a single ancient publication
that even remotely approaches this number.
And in fact, it seems that if we were to lose
every single New Testament manuscript in existence,
we could still reconstruct the entire thing
simply based off of these quotations.
And in fact, I used to not actually believe that.
I thought that was an exaggeration,
but then when I started realizing
how many hundreds and hundreds
of verse-by-verse commentaries
were written on the New Testament,
I realized it was true!
You just go to these commentaries
and you can find the quotations.
But we're not done yet.
Aside from quotations,
scholars can also check for errors
in the New Testament
by looking at ancient translations.
And the more translations the text has,
and the earlier these translations are,
the better.
Now, most ancient texts
were never translated into any language.
You had to have a really special text
for someone to take the time
to do a translation.
And as far as I'm aware,
the classical text
that has the most translations
is probably some of the works of Aristotle.
He made it into four or five
different ancient languages,
which is an extraordinary number.
Aristotle has the most, that is,
except for the New Testament,
which has far, far more than Aristotle.
And this is actually because
many ancient languages
only now exist
because missionaries went there,
learned the language,
and created an alphabet
for these people,
which is why we still have
these ancient translations.
Let me give you some examples
of what I'm talking about.
Here we have
an ancient Latin translation
of the four Gospels.
It's just one page here.
And this particular manuscript
is very famous.
It comes from the 4th century.
It's extraordinarily early.
But the translation that it has
is even earlier.
It probably goes back
to around the year 200.
And so with just this manuscript,
you have this extraordinary witness
for the New Testament text
that scholars can use
to see how the New Testament text
has been translated
over the centuries.
But we're not done yet.
This is a different Latin translation.
It was done by St. Jerome
around the year 400.
This is a 5th century manuscript.
Again, it's another opportunity
to check for errors.
And we can just keep
going on down the list.
This is a Syriac manuscript.
It comes from the year 586.
It's very famous.
But the translation
comes even earlier.
It comes from the 4th century.
It's called the
Peshittis Syriac Translation.
Here's another Syriac translation.
It's called the Curatonian.
It probably comes
from the 3rd century.
This manuscript
comes from the 5th.
Here's another one.
Another Syriac translation.
It's called
the Sinaitacan Translation.
Again, it's very early.
And we can just keep
on doing this.
This is Bohairic Coptic.
Coptic was the native
language of Egypt.
This manuscript
comes from the 4th century.
But the translation
comes even earlier.
From the 2nd or 3rd century.
Here's a different
Coptic translation.
Sahidic Coptic.
Sahidic was in the south.
Bohairic was in the north.
This comes from
the 2nd or 3rd century.
The translation
and the manuscript
comes from the 3rd century.
Totally extraordinary.
And we can just keep
right on going.
And this is a Latin manuscript
but those little marginal notes
you see on the side,
that's actually in Old English.
This is the earliest
Old English document
in existence.
And it's a translation
of the Gospels.
And you can go back
and use this
to see the Gospel text
in England
at this time.
In the 7th or 8th centuries.
And then,
oh, this is a beautiful one.
This is called
the Silver Bible.
This is in Gothic.
It was made in the 4th century
by a missionary
named Volfila.
Very beautiful story.
This guy was a slave
of the Goths
and he escaped
and felt called
to go back
to preach them
the Gospel of Jesus.
And then he came
and he translated
the Bible for them
and created their alphabet.
And this manuscript
comes from the 6th century.
We can keep on going.
This is an Armenian Bible.
Here we have
a Georgian translation.
Here we have
a Caucasian Albanian translation.
We didn't even know
this language existed
until a couple decades ago.
when we found
this manuscript
and we realized
that someone
had translated
the Bible
into this language.
It's north of Iran
where these people lived.
This is Old Nubian.
This is from
modern day Sudan.
They had the Bible
in their language.
This is Ethiopic.
This manuscript
is one of the most
extraordinary manuscripts
in existence.
Scholars dated it
to the 13th century.
The Ethiopian church
kept saying,
no, no, no, no.
This is from like
the 5th or 6th century.
Scholars ignored them
and then they radiocarbon dated
the manuscript.
They found out
the Ethiopian church
was right.
It's probably
the earliest illuminated
manuscript in existence.
The New Testament
was translated
into more languages
in the ancient world
than any other publication.
And many of these
translations
are extremely early.
They're quite
widespread geographically.
this gives scholars
an unprecedented opportunity
to check for the accuracy
of the New Testament
at every single verse.
Sometimes even down
to individual words.
Quite literally
hundreds of thousands
of locations.
And this is totally
unprecedented
amongst ancient writings.
So, we've talked
about quotations.
We've talked about
translations.
But we still haven't
even touched on
the actual Greek manuscripts
of the New Testament.
That's the language
that the New Testament
was originally written in.
And of course,
the original language
is far more important
than translations
when it comes to
establishing the text.
And of course,
the more manuscripts
you have,
the better.
Because then you have
more witnesses
to the original
and more opportunities
to check for errors.
Now, it's difficult
to come up
with an estimate.
But it seems as though
a typical ancient publication
has about 20 or 30
manuscript witnesses
remaining.
And the ancient public,
that's like a typical number.
And the ancient publication
with the most manuscripts
is the Iliad of Homer.
It has about 2,000 manuscripts
remaining,
an extraordinary number.
But like I said,
that's the most
except for the New Testament,
which has 5,500
New Testament manuscripts
in Greek
and thousands
and thousands more
in other languages.
This number
is totally staggering.
By this measurement,
the New Testament
ranks not just very high,
but far and away
has the most number
of manuscripts
of any other ancient text.
Now, I need to say
that having a lot
of manuscripts
is a good thing,
but it doesn't necessarily
mean that a text
has been reliably preserved.
Because after all,
many or even most
of those manuscripts
could be very,
very, very, very
late copies.
Many of them
could potentially
even be poor copies
that have a lot
of mistakes.
And in fact,
this is exactly
what happens
with the Iliad of Homer.
The Iliad of Homer
has the most manuscripts
of any book
outside the New Testament,
but it doesn't have
the best manuscript tradition
because its copies
are very, very late
and they're not very good.
There's a lot of mistakes.
So let's go
to our last category.
Our last category,
we talked about
quotations,
translations,
total number of manuscripts.
Let's talk about
early manuscripts
of the New Testament.
We want to get
as ancient as possible,
as close as we can
to the originals
of the New Testament.
And this is important
because these can help us
eliminate the number
of generations of copying
and therefore eliminate
the number of opportunities
for errors to creep in.
Now, if we look
at the number
of manuscripts
that date
from within 300 years
of the publication
of an ancient text,
we find that
the vast majority
of ancient publications
have no manuscripts
from this time frame.
None.
All of those
are much later.
But with the New Testament,
we find that
we have over 60 manuscripts
that date
from within this
narrow time frame.
This number is,
as far as I'm aware,
far beyond
any other
ancient publication.
And I want to give you
some examples of these.
So perhaps
the most famous
biblical manuscript
in existence
is this one.
It's called
Codex Sinaiticus.
It dates to around
the year 350.
It contains
the entire New Testament.
This manuscript
is so early
that if we lost
every single manuscript,
except for this one,
then the New Testament
would still have
one of the best
manuscript traditions
of any ancient text,
just with this one,
because it is
so extraordinary.
It is completely
unprecedented.
But we can do
better than that.
Why don't we go
a little earlier?
This is Papyrus 47.
It's of the book
of Revelation.
My dissertation
is on Revelation.
I love this manuscript.
This dates
from the year 200
to 300,
even earlier,
and it contains
a very large portion
of the text of Revelation.
This is just one leaf
of the manuscript.
There's a lot of leaves there.
But we can go
even earlier.
This is Papyrus 45.
It has large portions
of Matthew, Mark, Luke,
John, and the book of Acts.
And it dates
a little earlier,
200 to 225 AD,
200 to 250 AD.
And we can just
keep on going earlier.
This is Papyrus 46,
extremely famous.
It contains almost
all of Paul's letters.
Again, this is just
one leaf.
And it dates
to around the year
200 to 225.
We have a lot
of manuscripts
that date
from the 3rd century.
But I want to go
even earlier.
Let's go to the 3rd
to the 2nd century.
This is Papyrus 98.
It's of Revelation.
This is Papyrus 104.
It's of the Gospel
of Matthew.
This is Papyrus 52.
It's of the Gospel
of John.
All three of these
plausibly date
to the 2nd century.
Perhaps even
the early part
of the 2nd century.
Meaning that
these manuscripts
may have been copied
within 40 or 50 years
of the original publication.
Or even earlier.
This is extraordinary.
No ancient publication
has so many early manuscripts
attesting to it.
In fact,
there are so many
early New Testament manuscripts
that we discover
a new one
just about
every year.
What this means
is that every year
we can confirm
the original text
of the New Testament
with greater
and greater certainty.
Several years ago
I gave a version
of this talk
and I mentioned
how in the year 2015
we discovered
this manuscript
of the Gospel of John.
It was found on eBay.
Some guy died.
He had a collection
of manuscripts.
People put it on
and oh look at that.
It's really, really,
really, really early.
We found that in 2015.
But I keep having
to update my slides.
Last year
I gave a version
of this talk
and I said in 2018
we found not one,
not two,
but three
early New Testament manuscripts
and the one you see here
is the earliest fragment
of the Gospel of Mark
ever discovered.
That was found last year.
And now in 2019
I have to update them again
because it was announced
in March
that the Egyptian
Exploratory Society
had identified
20 New Testament manuscripts
that it was going
to be publishing
in the coming years
some of which date
extremely early.
So there's no expectation
that this pace
of discoveries
will pause
at any time soon.
And what this means
is that every year
our knowledge
of the original
New Testament text
gets more and more certain.
So let's sum up.
The New Testament
has the most manuscripts,
the most translations,
the most quotations,
and the most early manuscripts
of any ancient text.
And these numbers
increase and get better
every single year.
So according to these categories
and the New Testament
has an extraordinarily
reliable manuscript tradition.
But let's go back
to our friend here,
Bart Ehrman.
Remember that quote
I said in the beginning, right?
Now actually,
Bart Ehrman would agree
with probably every single
thing I just said.
And I've heard him
do things like that.
But he would have
a reply to this.
He would have an objection.
And this objection
is contained
in his original quote.
Remember that he said,
yes, but these manuscripts
are error-ridden.
It might be hard for you
to see the underline there.
But he says these are
full of errors.
And they're different
from the originals
in thousands of ways.
And then at the bottom
he says there are more
variations among our manuscripts
than there are words
in the New Testament.
That's what he would say.
He'd say, yes, yes, yes,
you have all these things.
But they stink.
They're bad copies.
They're full of errors.
We don't know
what the New Testament says.
Well, is this true?
Well, Bart Ehrman
is being very sneaky here
with what he's saying.
He is right.
There are more variations
in manuscripts
of the New Testament
than there are words
in the New Testament.
But the only reason
why this is the case
is because we have
so many manuscripts
of the New Testament.
In fact, every time
we discover a new manuscript,
the number of variants
goes up
because the scribe
who made the manuscript
may have skipped a word
or misspelled something
and we chalk it up
to a textual variant.
And indeed, I can show you
ancient works
like this one
by Athanas
that have very, very,
very few variants
because we only have
one manuscript.
Obviously, having only
one manuscript
is not a good way
to guarantee
the preservation of a work
because then you have
nothing to compare it against.
So criticizing
the New Testament
for having a large number
of total variants
is very disingenuous
because the total number
of variants
is really just a signifier
that the New Testament
has a lot of manuscripts.
And that's a good thing
to have.
Another issue
that Bart Ehrman
doesn't tell you
in his quotation,
though he will admit it
elsewhere when he's forced to,
is that the vast, vast,
vast majority
of all these variants
he's talking about
are inconsequential differences
in spelling, grammar,
or obvious errors
that occur
when a scribe
accidentally skips
a word or a line.
In other words,
well, well over 99%
of all these variations
are either completely meaningless
or are very easy
for scholars to detect.
And this is totally different
from other ancient works.
Other ancient works
have manuscripts
whose errors
are so severe
and so pervasive
that we can no longer
recover the original reading.
In these instances,
scholars have to do something
called conjectural emendation.
That's a fancy word
for making an educated guess
about what the original reading said
because the original reading
is gone
from every single
ancient manuscript.
And this is the case
with, as far as we know,
every single ancient publication,
at least those of significant length,
require this.
Where there's a part
that just is gone.
And if it's a big part,
scholars just leave a blank.
If it's a little part,
maybe they can make a guess
about what was there.
This is not true, though,
for the New Testament.
For the New Testament,
we have no locations
where scholars are required
to conjecturally amend the text.
And the ironic part
in all of this
is that even our very skeptical
Bart Ehrman
acknowledges this
in one of his publications
that he co-did
with a very famous scholar
named Bruce Metzger.
He said,
the amount of evidence
for the text of the New Testament,
whether derived from manuscripts,
early versions,
that's translations,
or patristic quotations,
is so much greater
than that available
for any ancient classical author
that the necessity
of resorting to emendation
is reduced
to the smallest dimensions.
And then he leaves a footnote.
And he goes on to say,
well, if we wanted
to conjecturally amend the text,
maybe we could do it
in this one location.
And then he concludes,
quote,
even this cannot be accepted.
And thus,
even the most skeptical
scholar around
admits that the New Testament
does not require
conjecturally amend the text.
And because conjecturally amend
are not required
to restore the text
of the New Testament,
this inescapably means
that the original
still exists.
Now,
the only caution
I will say to this
is that scholars
are sometimes confronted
with multiple
reasonable variants
for a wording
of a particular
New Testament passage.
And they're unsure
of which variant
is authentic.
They're confident
that one of the variants
is authentic,
but sometimes they have
trouble deciding
between them.
And in important cases,
most English translations
of the Bible
will insert a note
explaining this uncertainty
and then list
an alternative manuscript
variant so the reader
will be aware of it.
Fortunately,
it is very rare
that this happens
with any significant
part of the text
and by far the two
most important instances
of this
are with the last verses
of the Gospel of Mark
and I've got a little
picture up here of that
and the woman
caught in adultery
in the Gospel of John.
These two are
by far and away
the most important areas
where this happens.
But I need to tell you
that it's also possible
that our New Testament
authors wrote multiple
editions of their work.
Ancient authors
did this all the time.
Remember back then
everything was done by hand
so it was a less formal
process to have
something disseminated.
You read something out,
people start copying it,
you go back,
you make some changes
or you update it.
That happened all the time
in the ancient world.
So it could be the case
with certain variants
that actually both
are authentic.
That could potentially
be the case.
But these places
of uncertainty
should not trouble you
because they're so minor
that no Christian doctrine
is affected
by these variants.
And do you know
who effectively agrees
with us?
Our friend
Bart Ehrman.
He says
in one of his publications
essential Christian beliefs
are not affected
by textual variations
in the manuscript tradition
of the New Testament.
Yeah.
Now I would go
even farther than that.
I would say it's not just
essential Christian beliefs
but pretty much anything
that we would identify
as a Christian doctrine
is not affected
by any of these
potential variants.
And furthermore,
there's no expectation
that any manuscript discovery
will change this
because since the advent
of modern textual criticism,
which is about 130 years,
no manuscript discovery
has provided a new
authentic variant
for any New Testament passage.
Every single one
of the many discoveries
that we have made
over the past 130 years
have only confirmed readings
we already knew about.
And I suspect
that this will continue
for the future.
So if we gather
all these points together,
the New Testament
wasn't just
accurately preserved,
it was extraordinarily preserved.
And this is because
it has the most manuscripts,
the most quotations,
the most ancient translations,
the most early manuscripts
of any ancient text.
And these combine
to make the manuscript tradition
of the New Testament
of such high quality
that no conjectural
emendations are needed
because simply put,
the entire text
has been preserved.
And those locations
where scholars find
several variants
and can't be completely sure
which one is authentic,
these are so inconsequential
that no Christian doctrine
is affected by any of them.
And every year
more discoveries are made
and every year
these discoveries
do not add
any new authentic readings,
but instead they confirm
what we already
have long known.
So given this,
we can trust
that the New Testament
has been reliably preserved.
But in all of this,
I want us to remember
the purpose of Scripture.
The purpose of Scripture,
the purpose of the New Testament
is not to testify to itself.
Its purpose is to testify to Jesus.
Our faith is ultimately
not in the New Testament.
It's in the one
the New Testament talks about,
in Jesus.
And this is what
the New Testament itself says.
The Gospel of John
describes how Jesus
was talking to the Pharisees
and he said,
you search the Scriptures,
for in them you think
you have eternal life.
These are which testify about me,
but you are not willing
to come to me
so that you may have life.
So we should never make
the New Testament
the goal,
the ultimate goal
and object of our faith.
It does not have
eternal life in it.
It points to our Lord
and Savior Jesus.
And so all this information
that I've shared with you today,
it can help bolster
your faith in Jesus,
but remember that
all these statistics
about manuscripts
and translations
and quotations
and things like that,
they're useful for that purpose,
for growing someone's faith,
for witnessing to others,
but the greatest
and most powerful testimony
that you can have
with your coworkers
or classmates
or professors
is not any of this information.
It's the power of a life
that has been changed
and forgiven by Jesus
and overflows
with his love
for that person
and points that person
to him.
So why don't I just
close in prayer real quick
and then we'll see
if we have any questions.
Father in heaven,
we thank you so much
that you saw fit
to preserve your word for us
and we just give you
glory and honor for that
and we pray, Lord,
that you would boost
our confidence
in the New Testament.
You would increase our faith
so that we can share
with others,
that we can better love others,
that we can forgive
those who've wronged us,
that we can confess
our sins when we've
wronged others,
that we can share
your gospel message
with this world.
And we pray all this
in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Alright, so I think we have
time for questions, right?
Alright, yeah.
10 minutes.
So today,
many translations
are accused
of having an agenda.
Presumably that's based on
there's a couple choices
that are made
in the given translation
and the translators
have to make a choice
and then through
systematic decision-making,
you know,
an agenda is inferred.
Yeah.
Does that,
did that happen
in the ancient world
or did they just,
like in your genealogy chart,
you show that,
I think,
every translation
had, like,
a single parent.
Like,
was that the case?
Like,
were there agendas
of any sort?
And if so,
can you,
I don't know,
try to back,
infer what that agenda
was and back that out?
Great question.
Yeah,
so I'll say two things.
One is that
some of these
translations that I showed you
and some of the manuscripts
I showed you also,
they might have had,
like,
a single parent,
but many of them didn't.
Many of them,
scribes would reference
multiple manuscripts.
And so,
the word genealogy
actually isn't always
the best term
because a genealogy
implies you just have
two parents
or one parent,
but with manuscripts,
you can have multiple parents
because you can line up
multiple texts.
And we know that
some translators did that.
Like,
St. Jerome did that.
It was Latin.
Thomas of Harkle
with Syriac did that.
So,
that's one thing.
So,
that helps get out,
you know,
an agenda that might have come in.
The second thing
about an agenda
is sometimes you do see.
I mean,
sometimes you will see.
In my dissertation,
I went through
the book of Revelation
and I looked for precisely
this thing you were talking about
in some of these translations
and in some of the copying.
And what I found
is that you could sometimes
find a place
where a scribe
or a translator
seemed to be a little
uncomfortable with something
and tried to just
tweak it a little bit.
But in the vast majority
of cases,
this doesn't happen.
And I can give you
an example.
So,
in the book of Revelation,
there's a passage
that says that Jesus
is the beginning
of God's creation.
Now,
that word beginning
can also be translated
ruler.
Ruler or beginning.
So,
you can say he's the ruler
of God's creation
or you can interpret it
and he's the beginning
of God's creation
which could imply
that he is part of creation.
He's not divine.
He's subordinate
to God the Father.
It's an ambiguous verse.
And so,
what I did is
I went to ancient translations.
I went to about
six or seven of them
and I wanted to see
how do they handle this?
Do they try to disambiguate it
to make it seem
like he's the ruler
of creation?
What do they do?
And I thought
this is a great test case
because you can make
a legitimate translation
and just say ruler
of creation
and just move on.
And then the reader
doesn't even know
this ambiguity is there.
And I was shocked
because every single one
of the translations
except for one of them
preserved the ambiguity.
They went into their language.
They found a word
that preserved this ambiguity
even though they knew
that someone could mistake
what the intention
of this verse might mean.
They still did that.
And so,
I thought that's a beautiful testimony
that yes,
occasionally you'll find
a manuscript
where someone has clearly
been tweaking something.
But that by no means
seems to be ordinary.
It seems to be that
when there were mistakes,
they're unintentional.
Scribes are doing
their very best.
And what that means
is that we have
greater confidence
in what they have before us.
So,
I've read some Ehrman
and I think
the lack for a need
of
scholarly adjustments
to the manuscript
for clarity,
the fact that
there's no need
for doctrinal variance
within Christianity
is probably
a thorn in his side
though you would admit it.
I feel like other scholars
kind of reluctantly
kind of give in
that point.
But,
I myself have noticed
a renewed interest
in the last few years
among scholars
in a lot of those
4th century
and 3rd century
Gnostic texts,
extra-biblical gospels,
you know,
Peter,
Mary,
Thomas.
And do you think
that it is
calculated on their part
to say,
well,
let's pull this
into the scholarly
conversation,
specifically,
you know,
the reliability
of the New Testament
as a whole
because of that
coincidence,
if you will,
or just the fact
that most of the
datings of those
Gnostic texts
kind of fall into
that same,
you know,
glut of,
you know,
rich manuscripts
that we have
from around
the same period
and within
similar geographical
regions.
Yeah.
That's a great question.
The question
is about,
okay,
so the
manuscripts
of the New Testament
are good,
they're reliable,
but what about
all these other
false gospels
out there?
What about those?
So what if the New Testament
is reliably preserved?
Maybe these should be
in there,
or maybe
certain New Testament
texts shouldn't be there
and should be thrown out.
That's a great question.
We're going to talk
about that week three,
the canonicity
of the New Testament.
We'll be talking
about the false gospels
of, you know,
Peter, Mary, and John.
Just to give you
a quick preview,
you know,
this is also,
I think,
going to disappoint
the hopes
of skeptical scholars
because when you go back
and you look at these,
they really have
no historical backing
to them
like the four gospels do.
They have
very, very weak
ancient attestation.
There's numerous reasons
why these are dismissed.
And you do hear
loud voices
in the academy,
you know,
trumpeting this,
Elaine Pagels does
and stuff like that.
But most scholars,
even ones who are
not devout Christians,
they don't think
these really have
anything to do
with the historical Jesus.
They will argue
these should be considered
as variants
of Christianity.
And sure,
we can consider them
a variant of Christianity.
I mean,
I don't have a real problem
with that.
I don't think
they're orthodox
variations of Christianity.
Or variants that go
back to the apostles.
But,
I'm sure,
if you want to class them
that way,
you can.
But,
we'll be talking
about that week three.
So stay tuned.
Is there an estimate
of the number
of ancient translations
that the Bible
is translated into?
So the question is,
is there an estimate
for the number
of ancient translations
the Bible is translated into?
I have not seen one.
I've tried to come up
with one myself.
And there's a lot.
First,
it depends on what
you count as ancient.
So you have to have
a cutoff time.
And then we have
to work backwards.
And then we have
to decide,
you know,
for instance,
there's a translation
that seems to have
been done
into an African language
called Baja,
which is now
in Sudan.
And we only know
about it
because it exists
on a clay ostracon,
a fragment of a pot.
It's a version
of the Psalms
in Baja.
And,
do we count that?
I mean,
it's a scrap.
It's someone clearly
was ministering
with these people.
So,
I would estimate
that if you want to say,
like,
let's say before the year
900 or something,
I would say,
you know,
at least two dozen
were made
that we have
some witness of.
There may have been more,
like,
Jerome talks about
a Dalmatian translation
that we have no scrap
at all of.
Who knows if that
actually existed.
People wonder
if a Punic translation
existed.
It seems likely,
but we don't have it.
We didn't have
the Caucasian-Albanian
translation,
and then we found it
20 years ago.
So,
who knows what we'll dig up.
But that's an estimate,
so someday I want to sit down
and just try and get it all out.
You said new fragments
are being discovered
all the time.
Where are they coming from?
So,
most new fragments
are coming from
a collection of papyri
called the Oxyrnchus papyri.
About a hundred
something years ago,
a group of scholars
went to a garbage dump
in the sands of Egypt,
and this was an ancient
garbage dump
where people were just
throwing out manuscripts.
And they,
you know,
1,500 years ago,
and so they collected
all of these
into boxes,
tons and tons of boxes,
brought them back
to Great Britain,
and they are still
going through these.
So,
actually,
that fragment of Mark
I said
was from that collection.
Those 20 more manuscripts
that have been found
are from that collection,
and it's because
they found hundreds
of thousands
of manuscripts.
And most of these
are little fragments,
and most of them
are like tax receipts,
bills of sale,
things like that.
But,
you know,
sometimes you find
a little piece
of the New Testament
in there.
some of the,
most of the early
manuscripts that we have
actually are from
that one,
that location,
Oxyrnchus,
has been very fertile
for finding manuscripts.
What are the ways
you think that the
New Testament
has got inspired?
What are some of the ways?
Yeah,
what are the
reasons
or like that?
What do you think?
I'm going to be talking
a lot about this
next week,
but there's numerous,
there's numerous reasons.
One,
the most fundamental
reason is that
there's this
self-authenticating
nature of it.
The New Testament
changes lives.
People are redeemed,
they're forgiven,
they're brought into
new life through the
writings and teachings
of the New Testament.
But there's many others.
There's historical
veracity,
there's a lot of
historical reasons
why what the New Testament
says can be considered
to be true and accurate,
which we'll talk about
next week.
And this even goes
to the miracles of Jesus,
that we have lots of
reasons for trusting
what the documents say
about his miracles
and about his statements.
And there's other
prophecies also that
I'll mention next week
too,
that we can confirm
today are accurate,
that Jesus made,
that points to him
having some divine
inspiration,
that increases our
reliability for things
like when he says,
I'm the way,
the truth,
and the life.
Well,
this guy just said
something no one
could ever know.
And then he knew it.
So he probably knows
what he's talking about.
But we'll talk more
about that next week.
Do other religious texts
have the same reliability?
Very good question.
Do other religious texts
have the same reliability?
I've done,
I've tried my best
to look into this.
Certainly the Old Testament
is much older,
so if you want to talk
about the Jewish scriptures,
they have very good arguments,
but they don't,
we don't have as early
manuscripts because
they're very,
the documents are much
later.
or much earlier.
In terms of other religions,
like let's take the Quran.
The Quran,
the sacred text for Islam,
was written early 600s,
and it has a big advantage
because it was written
500 years after the New Testament.
That's 500 less years
of variation.
It also was written
in a climate
where Muslims were in charge,
where they had the political
and financial means
to preserve this.
It was also written
in a very arid environment,
which is ideal
for preserving manuscripts,
but I would say
the New Testament
is still far better
than the Quran.
The Quran has a lot
of problems with it
textually.
If you go to
Zoroastrian texts
in Iran,
it's like,
you know,
the earliest Zoroastrian texts.
We have Zoroastrianism
as a very ancient religion.
It's older
than the New Testament,
not as old
as the Old Testament,
but older
than the New Testament,
and their manuscripts,
you know,
come from like
the 16th century.
Like, you know,
and then if you go
to Buddhism,
Buddhist texts,
unfortunately,
India is very hot,
wet climate.
Manuscripts just deteriorate
like crazy there
and that means
that their stuff
is really recent.
And so Buddhism,
you know,
the Buddha lived,
you know,
we don't really know
500 BC,
400 BC,
something like that.
The earliest life
of the Buddha
was written in Sanskrit
several hundred years
after he lived
and the earliest manuscript
in Sanskrit
we have of it
comes from the 1800s
in Nepal.
Now,
in China,
you do have
some early manuscripts
like the Tao Te Ching.
We've got some very early manuscripts
of the Tao Te Ching.
That's really the only
even possible comparison,
I would say,
for an ancient document
would be the Tao Te Ching
but I haven't been able
to look into it.
I know there are
some issues there also.
So when I say
ancient publications,
I'm talking about everything.
The Quran usually
is considered medieval
and usually we have,
like for instance,
we have documents
from the time
when the Quran was written
and we have
the original documents.
The Quran doesn't have that.
We don't have the originals.
We have later copies
and things like that.
So certainly relatively
to other medieval documents
the Quran is not,
would not be considered
well preserved
by medieval standards.
It's 9.50.
I don't know
if we should wrap up.
Okay.
Why don't we wrap up?
Come next week
and the next two weeks
and I'd be happy
to answer more questions
you guys have.
Thanks.
Thank you.