Chapter 6: Manuscript Evidence
Did you notice in previous chapters that many of our arguments centered around verb tenses, precise words defining creation, the meaning of words such as "visible likeness," and more?
Why is there so much concern with this detailed accuracy in the original Greek text?
Several years ago, I, the writer, had an interesting encounter with an articulate young man on a college campus. He described himself as being an agnostic who did not know if God even existed. He had come to that conclusion after having been a practicing Catholic who converted to charismatic Protestant Christianity as a young adult. He was quite knowledgeable regarding the theological issues and history of Christianity, and had come to his position as an agnostic after considerable thought.
Our discussion was cordial with mutual respect for each other's viewpoint.
Toward the end of our conversation, I told him that there was one area on which my faith was entirely dependent. I explained that if this one area could be discredited, I would no longer be committed to Christianity. I asked him if he could identify one comprehensive foundational necessity for the Christian faith.
He suggested a number of theological positions which are regarded as essential truths. After each suggestion, however, I assured him that as important as the particular doctrine he mentioned was, it was not the foundation on which my faith ultimately depended.
In time he conceded, and I gave him my answer:
My faith is entirely dependent on having a Bible with irrefutable manuscript reliability. I explained that statement to mean that the Hebrew and Greek texts used in modern translations of the Bible must be essentially a word-for-word reproduction of that which was written in the original autographs[1]. These original-language texts are the Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament) texts from which an English (or any other language) translation would be made.
[1]The term autograph identifies the original document written by the Bible writer himself. John would have written an original document (on a scroll made of papyrus) containing what is now known as the Gospel of John. That single document is now called the autograph. Immediately after the autograph was given to the first Christian churches, Christian groups began copying and recopying it so that they would have John's account of Jesus' life for their own study. Since all of the copies were handwritten, there would presumably have been copying errors in all of them. However, because they were individual copies, the mistakes would have been randomly scattered throughout each copy unless a subsequent copy had reproduced a mistake found in an earlier copy. Thus, the autograph was written exactly as the author intended and was error free. However, any subsequent copies probably contained copying errors. No autographs of any part of the Bible exist today. Only copies of copies have survived. These copies are called manuscripts and range in date from the early second century (from approximately 125 AD) to the advent of printing.
The essential question
The question then is this: can we be certain today that the text on which we base our faith is a precise reproduction of the original autographs? Can we be assured that uncertainty in the text is reduced to only inconsequential words or phrases which would make no change in the meaning of our Bible?
Let's use an example. In chapter 4 we said that the translated English phrase, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" uses a tense for the Greek verb eimi (to be) with the meaning that the "Word being with God," and the "Word being God," were both a continuous action. It is not important that you know grammatical terms other than to know that this phrase has the English meaning of was continually existing. On the other hand, this meaning is entirely different than it would have been had this Greek verb used a different common tense which would have had the English meaning existed at a point in time.
When the Apostle John used the construction meaning continuous action, he meant that the Word was continually existing, thus stating that the Word was eternal. On the other hand, if John had used the tense meaning existence at a point in time, he would have been saying that "During the time of the beginning the Word existed," which could be true if the Word came into existence sometime before the beginning that John just described. However, since John used the construction of the verb to be as he did, he was unequivocally stating that the Word (Jesus) was eternal.
If we did not have a Greek text which was an exact reproduction of that which was originally written in the autographs, we could not be certain of the exact wording of many important passages. It is only when we have an exact Greek text that we can know what the original writers of the New Testament were saying.
A comparison of Old and New Testament manuscripts
The Old Testament was written between approximately 1450 BC and 400 BC. Any manuscript tradition this old would normally contain many errors. However, the care that was taken in making copies of the Hebrew Scriptures offset many of these difficulties.
Hebrew copyists were meticulous in their reproduction of the text. The copies were often made as exact facsimiles of the manuscript being copied. Thus, for example, lines could be counted and comparisons of the last word on each line could be made. Any errors of either omission or addition of words could change the appearance of the original manuscript from that of the new copy.
Other techniques were also used in order to find and correct mistakes. Even though fewer copies of the Hebrew Old Testament were made as time went on, extreme care was always taken to ensure that the copies were as error free as possible. As a result, the manuscript evidence for the Old Testament in Hebrew is a remarkably faithful reproduction of the autographs. This is true even though verification with a large number of manuscripts is not possible as it is for the New Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls which were found near the Dead Sea in 1947[2] have confirmed the accuracy of the Hebrew text used for our present Old Testament. Other very old Hebrew manuscripts have also been found in ancient Egyptian synagogues.
[2]The Dead Sea Scrolls which produced almost 200 biblical manuscripts contained every Old Testament book but Esther. They were hidden just prior to the Roman invasion of Jerusalem in 69-70 AD in several caves in the craggy hills overlooking the Dead Sea. Because they were copied sometime between 200 BC and 69 AD, they provide scholars with a very early group of Hebrew manuscripts for study.
The New Testament Greek manuscripts have quite a different history. They were primarily written for—and circulated among—Gentile (non-Jewish) converts to Christianity. (A large number of the early Christian churches were established in Greece, Rome, and what is present-day Turkey.) There was often far less care taken to ensure accurate copying. Nonetheless, as the church grew during its first 1,000 years, large numbers of manuscripts were circulated throughout Palestine, Asia Minor, North Africa, and even Europe. The result is that over 5,000 ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament have been discovered and are available for study today.
The dry climate in North Africa and Palestine is largely responsible for the preservation of a large number of extremely old manuscripts. The oldest known copy was found in Egypt. It is a very small fragment of the Gospel of John, which was produced about 125 AD. This means that it was probably copied within 30 or 40 years after the original autograph was written in about 98 AD. Most of the earliest New Testament manuscripts come from 200 to 300 AD. The remaining manuscripts date to as late as 1200 AD. Some of these manuscripts contain almost the entire New Testament. The majority, however, contain only a few pages or a single book. Nonetheless, this large number of manuscripts has allowed scholars, using textual criticism techniques, to reproduce the Greek text of the New Testament with an amazing degree of accuracy.
New Testament textual criticism defined
Textual criticism is the art and science of determining the most probable wording of the original text. This is done by comparing multiple ancient manuscripts of an identical text when each manuscript contains slight copying variations. This can be illustrated with an actual example.
From Chapter 4 we are already familiar with the phrase "In him was life, and the life was the light of men," from John 1:4. We have also discussed the meaning of the continuous action stated in the Greek verb translated into English as was.
The majority of the oldest Greek manuscripts containing this verse use the same Greek verb tense in both was life and was the light. However, five manuscripts use a present tense verb in the first instance, so it would be translated into English as, "In him is life, and that life was the light of men." Consequently, a committee of textual critics determined which of the two possibilities (is or was when translated into English) was the most probable wording as written by John[3]. Since a large majority of the oldest Greek manuscripts use was, and since the sentence would be grammatically awkward with two different verb tenses, the textual critics determined that the most probable text written by John was, "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." Consequently, that is the verb tense used in the published Greek text from which our English New Testament translations would be made today.
[3]Every instance of textual uncertainty in the entire New Testament is catalogued in Bruce M. Metzger's book entitled, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by the United Bible Societies, New York, 1971. In every case, the ancient manuscripts which have the variant reading are listed. Every entry has a discussion of the words used in all manuscripts and the degree of certainty for the word or phrase finally selected. Thus, any reader may precisely determine every instance in the entire New Testament in which there is any uncertainty regarding the wording of the autograph and, further, may determine what all other alternate readings would be.
New Testament textual criticism in use
For the example we just used, the committee of textual critics had approximately 440 Greek manuscripts from as early as 200 AD to as late as the 14th century which included this verse from John 1:4. From those 440 manuscripts, one fourth century Greek manuscript and one sixth century Greek manuscript used the present tense is. In addition, there were three very old translations which used the present tense is. These translations included one Latin translation, one Syriac translation, and one Coptic translation. (The Latin, Syriac, and Coptic translations do not contain the Greek verb, but they translated the verb into their respective languages in the present tense. This is a good indication of the tense of the Greek verb in the text used by the translator.)
From this information, we see that approximately 438 Greek manuscripts used the verb in question in a past continuous tense and only two Greek manuscripts and three ancient translations used it in the present tense. Since the number of texts showing that it was in the past tense so far outweigh the evidence that it was written in the present tense, and since the evidence for the past tense was from older manuscripts, the textual critics concluded that John originally wrote the sentence with both verbs in the past tense. Hence, the Greek text uses the past tense and the English translation from that Greek text says, "In him was life, and the life was the light of men."
Over the years, biblical textual critics have made this kind of decision each time new manuscript evidence showed discrepancies in early Greek manuscripts. The accumulated corrections have resulted in a reliable Greek text that today reflects almost the exact wording used by the original authors.
Other aspects of textual criticism
There are many other considerations concerning textual criticism. Usually, the oldest manuscript is considered to be the most accurate because there are fewer copies between it and the autograph. (There are, however, exceptions to this rule.) Ancient manuscripts can often be dated quite precisely. At times, a scribe may have dated a manuscript by inserting the name of an emperor in the margin just as we would use a calendar date. At other times, the manuscript may be dated by comparing the color of the ink, penmanship style, or the writing material used (reed paper called parchment or animal hide called vellum) with other secular manuscripts which bear a specific date. A few New Testament manuscripts have been dated very precisely. Most manuscripts, however, can only be dated to the particular century in which they were copied.
There are often classes of copying mistakes that textual critics can identify in order to explain what the Greek text should have been. Among the typical mistakes are repeated words or phrases. A mistake often occurred when a copyist would inadvertently skip the phrase between two similar words or phrases. The reverse could happen when similarities caused something to be incorrectly copied twice. Another kind of copyist error occurred when another passage in the New Testament was similar and the scribe wrote from memory rather than directly copying the text. Whatever the type of error, when a variant text can be classified as having a common copyist error, it gives the textual critic good reason to make a calculated judgment that the manuscript with the common copyist error is the faulty manuscript.
The objective of textual criticism
The objective of textual criticism is always to determine the reading which best represents that which the original author would have written. That is accomplished by examining the same verse in a number of manuscripts and explaining why the variant words or phrases in one manuscript are different from other manuscripts. In almost all cases, the words or phrases which are used in the largest number of manuscripts as well as in the oldest manuscripts are considered the preferred reading while the words or phrases used in fewer manuscripts are identified as the variant reading. There are very few instances in the New Testament in which there is significant doubt regarding the words or phrases which were originally written in a given passage. In those relatively few instances, however, there is almost always the possibility of a choice between one of two words or phrases. In addition, the exact location of the error is always known.
On the other hand, it must be clearly stated that the objective of textual criticism is never to alter the Greek text to promote a particular doctrine. The field of New Testament criticism has largely been developed over just the past 400 years. The key people in the field have come from a wide variety of church backgrounds and from many countries. Some of those working in New Testament textual criticism have not even claimed to be Christians. This wide range of people and faiths assures the New Testament reader today that the Greek text has not been modified in order to promote particular doctrines[4].
[4]However, this same statement is not true of Bible translations. Disappointingly, there have been many cases where Bible translations were produced in order to promote a certain doctrine.
An application of manuscript evidence
Today we know that the Greek text of the New Testament is almost exactly the same as that which was written by the original authors. This is important to know because Christianity is not merely a philosophy. It is a precise faith which requires knowing who Jesus is as well as having a knowledge of specific information regarding the Christian way of life. It would be impossible to have any certainty in the Christian faith if the text on which it was based was not completely accurate.
Mere accuracy does not ensure, however, that the text is inspired of God. We are able to verify the reliability of the text with textual criticism. But the decision to accept that text as being a revelation from God is a personal decision made by faith.
Remember, however, our comment from the first chapter where we said that we are presenting information, but that we will leave it up to you to decide what you will do with it. This is what we mean. The Bible, and particularly the New Testament, can be verified as reporting Jesus' life exactly as the original authors described it. On the other hand, it is your decision as to whether or not you will acknowledge that information as being true because you believe that it comes from God.
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