Tag: How We Got the Bible

I. What is textual criticism?

“Textual criticism is the science and art that seeks to determine the most reliable wording of a text.” – Paul Wegner, A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible, 24

We have many manuscripts (mss) of biblical books, and no two manuscripts are exactly the same. They contain variants, or differences in wording.

II. How much of the Bible contains variant readings?

OT – one current critical edition has one textual note for each 10 words – meaning that 90% is without significant variation.

NT – one current critical edition has notes on 7% of the words.

III. How many manuscripts are there?

We have over 5,700 mss from the Greek New Testament (only 60 are of the entire NT, but the vast majority are of complete books). The earliest one is a fragment of the Gospel of John from the early second century.

We have another 10,000 copies in Latin

We have between 10,000 and 15,000 copies in other languages

We have more than one million quotations of NT writings from the church fathers

By comparison:

Thucydides’ History of the Pelopponesian War: 8 mss, the oldest dated to 900 AD. Also, a few fragments from 1st century AD

Livy, Annals of the Roman People: 142 volumes, but only 35 survive. We have 20 mss, the oldest from 4th century AD

Julius Caesar, Gallic War: only 9 or 10 mss of good quality; the earliest from 900 years after Caesar

IV. What kinds of variants are there?

A. Unintentional

1. Mistaken Letters – confusion of similar letters, as in I Tim. 3:16, where the Greek for “the one who is” was sometimes confused with “God.”

2. Homophones – substitution of similar sounding words. In Rom. 5:1, the Greek for “we have” and “we shall have” sound similar (there is only one letter difference, and those two letters are sometimes indistinguishable).

3. Haplography – the omission of a letter or word, as in Judges 20:13. 9 out of 10 times in the OT, people from the tribe of Benjamin are called “sons of Benjamin,” but here they are just called “Benjamin.” Probably some scribe skipped the word for “sons,” because it looks very similar to the beginning of “Benjamin.”

4. Dittography – writing a letter or word twice instead of once. Mark 3:16 contains the words “he appointed the twelve,” which may just be a repetition of the same phrase from verse 14.

5. Metathesis – a reversal in order of two letters or words. Most manuscripts of Deut. 31:1 read “and Moses went,” but one reads “and Moses finished.” The difference between the two in Hebrew is that two letters have switched places.

6. Fusion – two words that have incorrectly been joined together. Some manuscripts of Mark 10:40 read “but for whom,” and others read “for others.” The first variant is two words in Greek, and the second is those two words joined together.

7. Fission – one word that has incorrectly been split apart. A few manuscripts of Rom. 7:14 have “on the one hand I know”(oida men) instead of “we know” (oidamen).

8. Parablepsis – an omission caused by two words or phrases that begin or end similarly. In I Jn. 2:23 the phrase “has the father” appears twice. Some mss don’t have the words between the two, which means the scribe accidentally skipped from the first one to the second one.

9. Other omissions or additions – sometimes a word or phrase is left out or added and we can’t tell why. For example, some mss lack the words “in Ephesus” in Eph. 1:1.

B. Intentional

1. Spelling or grammar changes – in Matt. 1:7-8, the name “Asaph” was changed by some scribes to “Asa,” because Asa was a well-known king of Judah from the OT (I Kings 15:9-24)

2. Clearing up difficulties – In Mark 1:2-3, there is a combined quote from Malachi and Isaiah. Most early mss attribute it to Isaiah alone, but later scribes tried to clear this up by saying “in the prophets.”

3. Harmonization (commonly between the gospels) – the phrase “it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, in Greek” was added to mss of Luke 23:38, probably to make it sound like John 19:20.

4. Euphemisms – the substitution of a milder term for an unpleasant or more offensive one. In the OT, some writers did not want to write down the name of the god Baal, writing “shame” instead (2 Sam. 4:4).

5. Theological changes – in Luke 2:41, 43, some scribes changed the words “his parents” to “Joseph and Mary” or “Joseph and his mother.” Apparently this was to protect the doctrine of the virgin birth.

6. Additions – some mss of Luke 24:53 add the word “amen,” possibly because some scribes thought a gospel should end this way.

Bart Ehrman claims that there are between 200,000 and 400,000 variants in NT manuscripts, which is more than the 138,162 words in the NT. That is a startling figure. But what does it mean?

According to text critic Daniel Wallace, 70-80% of these variants are spelling differences that can’t even be translated into English and have no impact on meaning. For example, sometimes the Greek word for “John” is spelled with two n’s, and sometimes with one.

Some of the variants are differences in word order. But Greek is different from English, in that word order doesn’t matter. There are many ways to say the exact same thing, but all differences in word order are counted as variants.

“Only about one percent of variants are both meaningful, which means they affect the meaning of the text to some degree, and viable, which means they have a decent chance of going back to the original text.” – Daniel B. Wallace

In spite of what some say, not a single essential Christian doctrine is refuted by a plausible textual variant. Not one.

V. Examples of controversial text critical issues in the New Testament:

A. John 7:53-8:11 – The Woman Caught in Adultery

Most scholars believe that it was not originally in John, because it is not in the earliest and best mss, its writing style and vocabulary are different from the rest of the book.

What difference does it make?

B. Long Ending of Mark (16:9-20)

Most scholars believe that it was not originally in Mark, because it does not appear in the earliest and best mss, and also has a different writing style from the rest of the book.

What difference does it make?

C. 1 John 5:7-8 – the “Johannine Comma”

according to Daniel Wallace, it came from an 8th-century sermon. There are only four manuscripts that have it, and all are from the 16th-17th centuries. It is almost certainly not authentic; it is an intentional theological change.

However, the doctrine of the Trinity did not come from this verse. The Councils of Constantinople (381) and Chalcedon (451) affirmed this doctrine long before, and the NT is clear that the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and these three are one. See Matt. 28:18-20, Titus 3:4-6, 1 Peter 1:2, etc.

D. I Timothy 3:16

The best mss read “He was revealed in flesh,” but some others read “God was revealed in flesh.” The first one is probably correct. Ehrman argues that this undermines Christian belief in Jesus as God.

However, this is not the only place in the NT where Jesus is explicitly referred to as God. See John 1:1, John 20:28, and Hebrews 1:8, as well as other verses where it is not as explicit.

Recommended Reading:

Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus.
Paul Wegner, A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible.

This is the third in my series of posts which consist of the notes I distributed as part of the Sunday School classes I taught this fall. Today we have reached the middle point of the first class.

I. Criteria of Canonicity – the criteria used to determine whether a particular book should be in the canon or not. This list of criteria is not a list that we get from the early Christians. It is a list we came up with later, as we tried to understand why some books made it and others didn’t.

A. Apostolicity – not just that an apostle wrote a book, but that a book was associated with an apostle or an apostle’s teaching.

Apostolicity and the Gospels: All four gospels are anonymous; they don’t have anyone’s name on them. But Matthew and John, for as long as we can tell, have been associated with the apostles of those names. Mark and Luke were not apostles. But Mark was associated with Peter, and Luke was associated with Paul.
Apostolicity and Hebrews: Hebrews was not accepted by the whole church early on, partially because of concerns about who its author was. Some thought it was Paul, but others, including Origen, thought it was someone else, like Barnabas or Apollos.

There were other books, such as the Acts of Paul and the Apocalypse of Peter, that had apostles’ names on them, but were not traditionally associated with apostles and did not contain apostolic teaching. Thus, they didn’t make it (and they also didn’t meet the other criteria).

B. Orthodoxy – a book had to be in accordance with the teaching of the church that had been passed down from the apostles.

Some books of the NT appeal to received tradition explicitly: Gal. 1:9, 2 Thess. 2:15, 2 Thess. 3:6.
The “Rule of Faith” – a summary of the doctrines held in common by apostolic churches.

C. Widespread Use, or Catholicity – If a book, or collection of books, was used by many churches spread across a wide geographical area, that made it more likely that it would make it into the canon.

Even though Paul’s letters were written to particular churches, and Revelation was written to particular churches, they both grew in their influence over time (as we can see, in the case of Paul at least, from 2 Peter 3:15).
The Roman church had doubts about whether Hebrews was written by Paul. They eventually accepted it, however, because of widespread use (and antiquity and orthodoxy): the eastern churches used it, and attributed it to Paul. So Hebrews made it in because of its widespread use, despite the fact that there has always been disagreement about who wrote it.

D. Antiquity

This is closely related to apostolicity: if a book is written by an apostle or someone associated with an apostle, it must be old.

Even some orthodox books, like the Shepherd of Hermas, or the Didache, did not make it into the NT because they just weren’t old enough.

It is important to note as we conclude this section that this was not a bureaucratic move, or a power play. The canon wasn’t decided by one council, or one church. These four criteria were used over time, often several at the same time, to decide which books should be part of the canon.

II. A Book That Didn’t Make it: the Gospel of Thomas

III. Marcion (110?-160?)

He is the first person we know of to establish a canon of scripture, but he was rejected as a heretic.
He was anti-Jewish, thought that the God of the OT and Jesus’ father were not the same, and so disregarded the whole OT. His canon consisted only of 10 of Paul’s letters and an edited version of the Gospel of Luke.

IV. The Muratorian Fragment

This fragment was found in Italy, probably belongs to the second half of the second century, and is mutilated at the beginning. It is important because it is the earliest list of authorized books that we know of.

Lists all of our NT books except Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 3 John. Luke and John are listed as the third and fourth gospels, so it may be supposed that the missing first part of the fragment refers to Matthew and Mark. It also lists the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter, though it mentions “some of our people will not have [it] to be read in church.”

V. Eusebius (263?-339?), church historian

His list includes all of our current NT, but says a few books are “disputed, but recognized by the majority”: James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Revelation.

VI. Athanasius (293?-373), bishop of Alexandria

The first writer (367) who lists exactly our 27 NT books without making any distinction of status among them.

VII. Jerome (347?-420) and Augustine (354-430)

By the time these two near-contemporaries wrote, in the late fourth century, the NT canon was fixed at 27 books. No council had declared on the matter. Rather, these were just the books that were passed on within the community as authoritative.

The Council of Hippo (393) was not an all-church council, but it was probably the first to officially set the limit of the NT at 27 books.

We can see that the formation of the NT canon happened gradually, over time. First, a core of books was seen as authoritative, and then others were added to that core. By the fourth century, 300 years after most of the NT was written, it was complete.

VIII. John Calvin (1509-1564)

“For him the authority of the New Testament, like that of all scripture, rested not on any church decree but on the self-authenticating quality of what was written, attested in the receptive heart by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit.” — Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 246-7

Protestants still believe this about scripture. The authority of the NT is not based on the decision of a church council, but on the Holy Spirit, who prompted its authors to write and over time prompted churches all over the world to accept those writings as from God.

I. “canon”

Canon – comes from the Greek word kanon, which means “a rule, standard, or a firm criterion against which something is measured.” When talking about scripture, it means “the list of books contained in scripture, the list of books recognized as worthy to be included in the sacred writings of a worshipping community.” – F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 17
The first person to use this word to describe scripture, that we know of, is Athanasius (4th century AD)

II. The Old Testament Before Jesus

Three divisions of the Hebrew Bible as it has come down to us: Torah (law), Neviim (prophets) and Ketuvim (writings)

Law (also called the Pentateuch): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings
Latter Prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Book of the Twelve Prophets
Writings: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles.

Tanakh = Torah + Neviim + Ketuviim

The Hebrew Bible has 24 books, from which we get the 39 books in our OT (though in a different order)

Chronicles was most likely the last book in Jesus’ Bible (Luke 11:50 probably refers to 2 Chronicles 24:20).

This threefold division was probably referred to first in 132 BC, by an author who refers to the Hebrew sacred books as “the law and the prophets and the other books of our fathers,” and also as “the law itself, the prophecies and the rest of the books.”

But even though there is evidence that there was a threefold division before the first century, no definitive list was made until later.

III. The Old Testament and Jesus

In the gospels, the OT is quoted or alluded to about 120 times.

Jesus referred to 24 of our 39 OT books.

Jesus often appeals to the authority of the scriptures (“It is written…”), and the early Christians came to see the OT as bearing witness to Jesus.

Often, Jesus refers to the whole OT as “the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 5:17, Matt. 7:12, Matt. 11:13, Matt. 22:40, Luke 16:16, John 1:45)

One possible reference to the threefold division: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” – Luke 24:44

It is clear that there was some sort of collection in Jesus’ day, but we don’t know what the exact limits of that collection were – or whether there were different collections for different groups in first-century Palestine.

IV. The Old Testament After Jesus

1. The New Testament

Five OT books are not quoted in the NT: Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. But this does not mean they were not part of the canon. Likewise, books in the Apocrypha are referred to in the NT. This does not mean that they were part of the canon.

Most of the time, when NT authors quote the OT, they quote the Septuagint (e.g. Stephen in Acts 7). This sometimes explains the inexact nature of quotations.

2. The Septuagint (LXX)

A Greek version of the OT, prepared sometime between 250 and 150 BC for Jews who lived outside Palestine (in Alexandria) and did not speak Hebrew or Aramaic as their first language.

The order of the books in the Septuagint is different from the order in the Hebrew Bible, and this is why we have the order of books we have in our Bibles.

The “Apocrypha” are a series of books that appear in the Septuagint, but did not appear in the Hebrew Bible.

Eventually, Christians began to use the Septuagint so much that its use among Jews dropped off. For example, the Greek of Isa. 7:14 means “virgin,” but the Hebrew can mean either “virgin” or “young woman.” Most manuscripts of the Septuagint that we now have were produced by Christians, not Jews.

3. Jewish canon: Jamnia (or Jabneh)

This was a meeting of Jewish rabbis after the destruction of Jerusalem (and the temple) in 70 AD. This wasn’t really a council, they simply reviewed the tradition they had received and left it as it was: 24 books of the Hebrew Bible.

4. Christian canon of the OT: The Greek East

Melito of Sardis – a list from about 170 AD, preserved by church historian Eusebius, contains all of our OT except Esther.
Origen of Alexandria (185-254) – a list also preserved by Eusebius corresponds to our OT, plus the Letter of Jeremiah.
Athanasius of Alexandria – Easter Letter 39 (367). The same as our current OT, but omits Esther, and includes Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah with Jeremiah.
Eastern Orthodox councils in 1642 and 1672 affirmed the Apocrypha as part of the OT. The Orthodox also use the Septuagint as their authorized version of the OT, rather than the Hebrew original.

5. Christian canon of the OT: The Latin West

Tertullian – thought that everything in the Apocrypha, plus a few others (like 1 Enoch) should be regarded as scripture. “Tertullian may stand for all the Latin fathers before the time of Jerome: the Bible which they used provided them with no means of distinguishing those parts which belonged to the Hebrew canon from those which were found only in the Septuagint.” F.F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture, 87

Jerome (346?-420) – Until Jerome’s translation of the OT in the fourth century, all Latin translations included the Apocrypha because they were translations of the Septuagint. Jerome, after studying Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, decided that the Apocrypha was useful for instruction, but shouldn’t be used to establish doctrine. But he included it in the Vulgate (his translation) by popular demand.

Augustine (354-430) – His list of scripture included the Apocrypha. Influenced by him, the Third Council of Carthage (393) drew up a list of the canon that included the Apocrypha.

Martin Luther later sided with Jerome, including the Apocrypha as an appendix in his translation of the Bible (1534), with the title: “The Apocrypha: Books which are not to be held equal to holy scripture, but are useful and good to read.” This set a precedent for those who came after him: Protestants.

The Council of Trent (1546) became the first general council to provide a list of the canon of scripture, and the Apocrypha was included.