This picture of Codex Vaticanus (circa 4th century C.E.) contains the latter part of 2 Thessalonians and the first two chapters of Hebrews. The oval-shaped addition at the bottom of the center column reads “Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don’t change it” because a redactor changed the verb pherwn (“bears”) to phanerwn (“manifests”) in Hebrews 1.3, which was subsequently changed back to the original reading by the later redactor who added this note.
Technorati Tags: Bart Ehrman, Book Review, Misquoting Jesus, Textual Criticism
In the second proper chapter of his book, Ehrman traces the activity of Christian copyists of the New Testament in the early church period. By quoting a passages from early Greek philosophers and church fathers, he proves that scribal errors were not something new or rare in this time period. One of the quotations comes from the Roman philosopher Senaca who, when speaking of different types of anger, writes that he can get angry at:
certain inanimate things, such as the manuscript which we often hurl from us because it is written in too small a script or tear up because it is full of mistakes.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, producing copies of manuscripts involved scribes who labored over the manuscripts copying them by hand. This was time consuming, expensive, and did not always guarantee a word-for-word copy. Many people would simply hire a scribe or train a slave to do all their scribal work, whether it be for business transactions or for pleasure. The result was that many of the people who were working as scribes had no attachment to the work that they were doing; it was simply a job.
Not so for the early Christians. Because it was expensive to hire scribes, the early manuscripts of the New Testament were done by the most educated people within a certain Christian community. This meant that the people who were responsible for transmitting the early Christian manuscripts were (1) not professionally trained scribes and (2) had an attachment to the texts that they were producing. These two facts separated them from other scribes and copyists of the time.
While he doesn’t spend much time on the fact, Ehrman does mention that
Far and away the most changes are the result of mistakes, pure and simple—slips of the pen, accidental omissions, inadvertent additions, misspelled words, blunders of one sort of another. p.55
Even though these changes are small, Ehrman’s point is that one must know what a person’s words actually were in order to understand what the person was attempting to say.
He then focuses on the problem of knowing the “original text,” probably because many doctrinal statements and creeds speak of the “original text” as being inspired (the WCF 1.8 uses the phrase, “being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical”). His main point is that, because of the act of dictation (see Galatians 6.11ff) and because of the many textual variants, we do not have access to the “original text,” so, it follows, what is the use of saying that it was inspired? He does state that we do have the ability to get back to the oldest and earliest stage of the manuscript tradition for every book of the New Testament, but that does not mean that those oldest and earliest texts are a pure form of the original (p. 68).
He ends the chapter with a discussion on John 7.53-8.11 and Mark 16.9-20, showing that these two passages were not part of the oldest and earliest manuscript traditions, but were added on by scribes (sometimes in different places and different gospels) later in history.
Anyone who has a copy of the Greek New Testament can see that there are many textual variants to deal with. Ehrman makes sure to mention that fact, but does so in a way that conjures up more doubt in the reader’s mind than should necessarily be there. He follows his mention of the many variants in the texts of the New Testament with a discussion on the two largest and most profound variants in the extant New Testament manuscripts. These variants are well known and well documented throughout the history of the church. Besides the pentecostal snake handlers in the back woods of West Virginia, I’m not aware of any thinking Christian who would build a doctrine on these two texts (John 7.53-8.11 and Mark 16.9-20). I’m also not aware of any serious evangelical scholar who takes these texts to be authentic. But by shaping this chapter in the way that he has done, it leaves the uniformed reader with the idea that there are hundreds or even thousands of these types of variants in the extant New Testament texts that we base our English translations upon. This is simply not true, and Ehrman knows that (I’m not suggesting that Ehrman is saying that there are hundreds, or even dozens….or even ten, of these variants; this is just how a person without knowledge of textual criticism would read this chapter).
While I do agree with Ehrman about the inauthenticity of John 7.53-8.11 and Mark 16.9-20, this does not lead me to the (natural?) conclusion that I should simply throw my hands up in the air and give up on any form of the doctrine of inspiration or the ability of textual critics to obtain a form of the text that is very, very close to the original reading. For instance, I just opened up my NA-27th to 2 Corinthians 11.7b-25a (p 488 for those following along at home). There is not one textual variant in verses 7b-13, 15-16, 19-20, 22, or 24. Ehrman does not deal with issues like this. What would he say about these verses? Are they not “inspired” because some of the verses around them have variants in them? I would find that argument very hard to swallow.
It is also misleading how the variants are numbered. For instance, on the page that I opened up to (same page, still, as above) some texts add tnv (“the”) in verse 18 before sarka (“flesh”). There are 8 manuscripts that do this. The reading in the text, without the tnv inserted, is supported by 23 texts. This would mean that this one variant would actually be recorded as 184 variants (because each of the 8 texts that add tnv would differ from the 23 texts that do not have tnv). The impact of saying, “In 2 Corinthians 11.18 alone there are 184 variants in the extant manuscripts of the New Testament!” can be very large for those who don’t have the actual facts in front of them. What this really means is that there are 8 texts that read “according to the flesh” and 23 that read “according to flesh.” Of course, the English translation would always be “according to the flesh” even if the tnv were not present because “a flesh” does not make any sense. Therefore, this textual variant (all 184 of them!) makes absolutely no difference to the syntax, grammar, or meaning of the text. Variants like this make up a very large majority of the variants in the New Testament. So don’t be fooled by the numbers!
To conclude, the fact that there are textual variants in the New Testament texts is not a new discovery that renders all biblical scholarship and theologizing invalid. Yes, there are variants in the New Testament texts. But the mass amount of texts that are available to us make it possible to get very, very near to the actual texts of the first century. Many verses and passages (like noted above in 2 Corinthians 11) do not have a single variant in them. Ehrman has proven his point that there are variants in the New Testament and concludes that they are neither trustworthy nor inspired. What he has not dealt with are the verses and passages that do not contain variants. Has he simply chosen to throw the baby out with the bathwater?
