Why is there a need for another English translation of the Bible?

 Why is there a need for another English translation of the Bible?

There are several good reasons why Holman Bible publishers invested its resources in a modern language translation of the Bible:

1. Each generation needs a fresh translation of the Bible in its own language.

The Bible is the world’s most important book, confronting each individual and each culture with issues that affect life, both now and forever. Since each new generation must be introduced to God’s Word in its own language, there will always be a need for new translations such as the Holman Christian Standard Bible. The majority of Bible translations on the market today are revisions of translations from previous generations. The Holman CSB is a new translation for today’s generation.

2. English, one of the world’s greatest languages, is rapidly changing, and Bible translations must keep in step with those changes.

English is the first truly global language in history. It is the language of education, business, medicine, travel, research, and the Internet. More than 1.3 billion people around the world speak or read English as a primary or secondary language. The Holman CSB seeks to serve many of those people with a translation they can easily use and understand.

English is also the world’s most rapidly changing language. The Holman CSB seeks to reflect recent changes in English by using modern punctuation, formatting, and vocabulary, while avoiding slang, regionalisms, or changes made specifically for the sake of political or social agendas. Modern linguistic and semantic advances have been incorporated into the Holman CSB, including modern grammar.

3. Rapid advances in biblical research provide new data for Bible translators.

This has been called the “information age,” a term that accurately describes the field of biblical research. Never before in history has there been as much information about the Bible as there is today—from archaeological discoveries to analysis of ancient manuscripts to years of study and statistical research on individual Bible books. Translations made as recently as 10 or 20 years ago do not reflect many of these advances in biblical research. The translators have taken into consideration as much of this new data as possible.

4. Advances in computer technology have opened a new door for Bible translation.

The Holman CSB has used computer technology and telecommunications in its creation perhaps more than any Bible translation in history. Electronic mail was used daily and sometimes hourly for communication and transmission of manuscripts. An advanced Bible software program, Accordance^®, was used to create and revise the translation at each step in its production. A developmental copy of the translation itself was used within Accordance to facilitate cross-checking during the translation process—something never done before with a Bible translation.^[1]

 

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CSB Christian Standard Bible

CSB Christian Standard Bible

CSB Christian Standard Bible

CSB Christian Standard Bible

CSB Christian Standard Bible

^[1] Cabal, Ted, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen, Paul Copan, J.P. Moreland, and Doug Powell. 2007. The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.

Has the Bible Been Accurately Copied Down Through the Centuries?

 Has the Bible Been Accurately Copied Down Through the Centuries?

by Norman L. Geisler

The Bible is the most accurately transmitted book from the ancient world. No other ancient book has as many, as early, or more accurately copied manuscripts.

Old Testament

Old Testament manuscript reliability is based on three factors: their abundance, dating, and accuracy. Most works from antiquity survive on only a handful of manuscripts: only 7 for Plato, 8 for Thucydides, 8 for Herodotus, 10 for Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and 20 for Tacitus. Only the works of Demosthenes and Homer number into the hundreds. Yet even before 1890 a scholar named Giovanni de Rossi published 731 OT manuscripts. Since that time some 10,000 OT manuscripts were found in the Cairo Geniza, and in 1947 the Dead Sea caves at Qumran produced over 600 OT manuscripts.

Further, the Dead Sea Scrolls, containing at least fragments of all OT books except Esther, all date from before the end of the first century a.d. and some to the third century b.c. The Nash Papyrus is dated between the second century b.c. and the first century a.d.

The manuscripts’ accuracy is known from internal and external evidence. (1) It is well known that Jewish scribal reverence for Scripture led to its careful transmission. (2) Examination of duplicate passages (e.g., Pss 14 and 53) show parallel transmission. (3) The early Greek translation of the OT, the Septuagint, substantially agrees with the Hebrew manuscripts. (4) Comparison of the Samaritan Pentateuch with the same biblical books preserved within the Jewish tradition shows close similarity. (5) The Dead Sea Scrolls provide manuscripts dating a thousand years earlier than most used to establish the Hebrew text.

Comparative studies reveal word-for-word identity in 95 percent of the text. Minor variants consist mostly of slips of the pen or spelling. Only 13 small changes were discovered in the entire Dead Sea Scrolls copy of Isaiah, eight of which were known from other ancient sources. After 1,000 years of copying, there were no changes in meaning and almost no changes in wording!

New Testament

The reliability of the NT is established because the number, date, and accuracy of its manuscripts enable reconstruction of the original text with more precision than any other ancient text. The number of NT manuscripts is overwhelming (almost 5,700 Greek manuscripts) compared with the typical book from antiquity (about 7 to 10 manuscripts; Homer’s Iliad has the most at 643 manuscripts). The NT is simply the best textually supported book from the ancient world.

The earliest undisputed NT manuscript is the John Rylands Papyrus, dated between a.d. 117 and 138. Whole books (e.g., those contained in the Bodmer Papyri) are available from around the year 200. And most of the NT, including all the Gospels, is available in the Chester Beatty Papyri manuscripts, dating to about 250. Noted British manuscript scholar Sir Frederick Kenyon wrote, “The interval then between the dates or 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.” Thus both “the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the [NT] may be regarded as firmly established.” No other ancient book has as small a time gap between composition and earliest manuscript copies as the NT.

Not only are there more and earlier NT manuscripts, but also they were more accurately copied than other ancient texts. The NT scholar and Princeton professor Bruce Metzger made a comparison of the NT with the Iliad of Homer and the Mahabharata of Hinduism. He found the text of the latter to represent only 90 percent of the original (with 10 percent textual corruption), the Iliad to be 95 percent pure, and only half of 1 percent of the NT text to remain in doubt. The Greek scholar A. T. Robertson estimated that NT textual concerns have to do with only a “thousandth part of the entire text,” placing the accuracy of the NT text at 99.9 percent—the best known for any book from the ancient world. Sir Frederick Kenyon noted that “the number of [manuscripts] of the NT, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the older writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or the other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.”

In summary, the vast number, early dates, and unmatched accuracy of the OT and NT manuscript copies establish the Bible’s reliability well beyond that of any other ancient book. Its substantial message has been undiminished through the centuries, and its accuracy on even minor details has been confirmed. Thus the Bible we hold in our hands today is a highly trustworthy copy of the original that came from the pens of the prophets and apostles.^[1]

 

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^[1] Geisler, Norman L. 2007. “Has the Bible Been Accurately Copied Down Through the Centuries?” In The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith, edited by Ted Cabal, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen, Paul Copan, and J. P. Moreland, 468–69. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.

Bible Translations before KJV 1611

 Bible Translations

•  Septuagint (second century bc): a Greek version of the Hebrew Old Testament that was used for many Bible translations.

•  Vulgate (Jerome, 383–405): Latin translation of the Bible; became the official text of the Roman Catholic Church.

•  Harclean Version (Thomas Harkel, 616): Syriac translation of the New Testament; included in the Syriac Bible.

•  Wycliffe’s Version  (John Wycliffe, 1380–1384): English vernacular translation based on the Latin Vulgate; used by English Catholics in the sixteenth century; it is unclear what Wycliffe’s exact role in this translation was, whether he was responsible for translating, provided supervision, or merely inspired the translation.

•  Gutenberg Bible (Johann Gutenberg, 1453–1456): first printed Bible using the Latin Vulgate.

•  Mentelin Bible (Johann Mentelin, 1466): first printed German Bible and first printed Bible in any language other than Latin.

•  Malermi Bible (Niccolò Malermi, 1471): first Italian printed Bible.

•  Luther Bible (Martin Luther, 1522–1534): German translation of the Bible based on Textus Receptus and Masoretic Text.

•  Tyndale Bible (William Tyndale, 1525–1530): English translation of the Pentateuch and New Testament based on Textus Receptus.

•  Gustav Vasa Bible (Laurentius Andreae, Laurentius Petri, and Olaus Petri, 1541): commissioned by Gustav I of Sweden; the first Swedish Bible printed.

•  Christian III Bible (1550): commissioned by Christian III of Denmark and Norway; the first Danish Bible printed.

•  Geneva Bible (1560): English translation of the Bible with Calvinist influences; translated by a team of English Protestant scholars who were in exile during the reign of Mary I; it was the primary English Protestant Bible during the Reformation; the English rendering was dependent on the Tyndale Bible; the New Testament was dependent on the Textus Receptus; first English Bible to use verse numbers.

•  King James Version (1611): English version authorized by King James I based on Textus Receptus.

Bible Translators

 Bible Translators

    •      Jerome (347–September 30, 420): Latin church father; translator of the Vulgate, which became the official text of the Roman Catholic Church.

    •      Bede the Venerable (672–May 26, 735): English monk and scholar; he translated the Gospel of John into Old English.

    •      John Wycliffe (1330–1384): English scholar and theologian; he advocated for, and possibly played some role in the translation of, an English vernacular version of the Bible which resulted in the Wycliffe Bible (English); he was declared a heretic after his death.

    •      Niccolò Malermi (c. 1422–1481): Italian biblical scholar; translator of the Malermi Bible, which was the first printed Italian translation.

    •      Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455–1536): French humanist; he was the first to translate the Bible into French.

    •      Desiderius Erasmus (October 27, 1466–July 12, 1536): Dutch Roman Catholic theologian, scholar, and humanist; he translated the New Testament into Latin based off the Vulgate and included a collation of Greek texts which became known as the Textus Receptus.

    •      Martin Luther (November 10, 1483–February 18, 1546): German Protestant Reformer; translator of the Luther Bible (German).

    •      William Tyndale (1494–October 6, 1536): English Protestant Reformer; translator of the Tyndale Bible, which was the first Bible printed in English; he was burned at the stake after being charged with heresy.

    •      Antonio Brucioli (c. 1498–December 6, 1566): Italian writer, publisher, and humanist; first to translate the Bible into Italian.

    •      Casiodoro de Reina (c. 1520–March 15, 1594): Spanish theologian; he translated the first complete Spanish Bible.

    •      Giovanni Diodati (June 6, 1576–October 3, 1649): Italian theologian; adhered to Calvinism; translator of Diodati Bible, which was used by Italian Protestants.

Parks, Jessica. 2022. “The Christian Bible Is Translated Into Many Languages.” In Church History Themes, edited by Zachariah Carter. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

English Bibles by Publication Date

 English Bibles by Publication Date

•  Tyndale Bible (Published: 1522 – 1536) — The Tyndale Bible generally refers to the body of biblical translations by William Tyndale into Early Modern English made from 1522 to 1536.

•  King James Version Apocrypha (Published: 1611) — The King James Version (KJV), also the Authorized Version, is an English Bible translation, which was commissioned for the Church of England in 1604 and published in 1611 by sponsorship of King James VI and I.

•  Young’s Literal Translation (Published: 1862) — Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) is an English Bible translation published in 1862 by Robert Young, compiler of Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible and Concise Critical Comments on the New Testament.

•  Darby Bible (Published: 1867 – 1890) — The Darby Bible refers to the Bible as translated from Hebrew and Greek by John Nelson Darby and first published in 1867.

•  Cambridge Paragraph Bible of the Authorized English Version (Published: 1873) — The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible was an edition of the King James Version published in 1873 and was edited by F.H.A. Scrivener, a noted scholar of the text of the Bible.

•  King James Version, 1900 (Published: 1900) — The King James Version 1900 (KJV 1900), also the Pure Cambridge Edition, is the stable edition of the King James Version used in most modern print editions. The original King James text of 1611 has had numerous variants giving rise to the need for a stable text.

•  American Standard Version (Published: 1900 – 1901) — The American Standard Version (ASV), officially Revised Version, Standard American Edition, is an English Bible translation that was completed between 1900 and 1901.

•  Tanakh, 1917 (Published: 1917) — The Jewish Publication Society of America Version of the Tanakh (JPS) was the first Bible translation published by the Jewish Publication Society of America and the first translation of the Tanakh into English by a committee.

•  New American Standard Bible, 1995 (Published: 1960 – 1971) — The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is a translation of the Bible published by the Lockman Foundation between 1960 and 1971. The NASB is a revision of the American Standard Version (ASV).

•  New Testament: An Expanded Translation (Published: 1961) — The Wuest Expanded Translation (1961) is a literal New Testament translation by Professor Kenneth S. Wuest that strictly follows Greek word order.

•  Amplified Bible (Published: 1965) — The Amplified Bible (AMP) is an English Bible translation produced by Zondervan and The Lockman Foundation in 1965. It revises the American Standard Version of 1901 and is designed to amplify, or clarify, the biblical text by using additional features, such as multiple translation values.

•  Revised Standard Version, 2d Catholic Ed. (Published: 1966) — The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE) is an English Bible translation first published in 1966, which includes the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament in the traditional Vulgate order.

•  Good News Translation (Published: 1966 – 1976) — The Good News Bible (GNB), also called the Good News Translation (GNT), is an English Bible translation by the American Bible Society. It was first published as the New Testament under the name Good News for Modern Man in 1966 and was completed in 1976.

•  New American Bible (Published: 1970) — The New American Bible (NAB) is an English Bible translation for Roman Catholics first published in 1970. It is the Catholic translation approved for use at mass.

•  Living Bible (Published: 1971) — The Living Bible (TLB) is a personal paraphrase of the Bible in English by Kenneth N. Taylor first published in 1971. It is not considered a translation.

•  New International Version, 1984 (Published: 1973) — The New International Version (NIV) is an English Bible translation published in 1978 by Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society). It was translated into broadly understood modern English using the earliest and highest quality source manuscripts.

•  New American Standard Bible, 1977 (Published: 1977) — The New American Standard Bible 1977 (NASB 1977) is an update of the New American Standard Bible (NASB) originally published by the Lockman Foundation between 1960 and 1971.

•  New King James Version (Published: 1982) — The New King James Version (NKJV) is a translation of the Bible published in 1982 by Thomas Nelson. It attempts to remain true to the text of the King James Bible while providing better readability.

•  New Century Version (Published: 1983 – 1987) — The New Century Version (NCV) is a revision of the International Children’s Bible (ICB), an English translation aimed at young readers and those with low reading skills or limited vocabulary.

•  New Jerusalem Bible (Published: 1985) — The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is an English Bible translation published in 1985 by Darton, Longman and Todd and Les Editions du Cerf. It is approved for use for study and devotion by Roman Catholics.

•  New Revised Standard Version (Published: 1989) — The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is an English Bible translation published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches to serve the needs of a broad range of Christians.

•  New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Ed. (Published: 1989) — The New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (NRSV-CE) is a Bible translation closely based on the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) but including the deuterocanonical books and adapted for Catholic usage.

•  Contemporary English Version (Published: 1991 – 1995) — The Contemporary English Version (CEV), also known as the Bible for Today’s Family, is an English Bible translation published by the American Bible Society between 1991 and 1995.

•  The Message (Published: 1993 – 2002) — The Message is a translation of the Bible by Eugene H. Peterson published in segments from 1993 to 2002. It falls on the dynamic end of the dynamic and formal equivalence spectrum.

•  GOD’S WORD Translation (Published: 1995) — The God’s Word Translation (GW) is an English Bible translation published by the God’s Word to the Nations Society in 1995.

•  NET Bible (Published: 1996) — The New English Translation (NET Bible) is a free online English Bible translation sponsored by the Biblical Studies Foundation and published in 1996 by Biblical Studies Press. It includes thousands of translator notes as an aid to study.

•  New International Reader’s Version (Published: 1996) — The New International Reader’s Version (NIrV) is an easy reader version of The New International Version (NIV) published in 1996.

•  New Living Translation (Published: 1996) — The New Living Translation (NLT) is an English Bible translation published in 1996. The NLT originally aimed to revise The Living Bible (TLB), but became a translation in its own right by relying on original language texts of the Bible where The Living Bible did not.

•  Complete Jewish Bible (Published: 1998) — The Complete Jewish Bible (CJB) is an English Bible translation by David H. Stern published in 1998 by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. It consists of Stern’s revised translation of the Old Testament and his original Jewish New Testament translation.

•  International Standard Version (Published: 1998 – 2011) — The International Standard Version (ISV) is an English Bible translation completed in 2011.The texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls provide a textual apparatus for understanding the Old Testament.

•  Holman Christian Standard Bible (Published: 1999 – 2004) — The Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) is an English Bible translation from Holman Bible Publishers. The New Testament was published in 1999, followed by the full Bible in March 2004.

•  English Standard Version (Published: 2001) — The English Standard Version (ESV) is a Bible translation published in 2001 by Crossway based on the work of more than 100 evangelical scholars and pastors.

•  Lexham English Bible (Published: 2010 – 2011) — The Lexham English Bible (LEB) is a Bible released by Logos Bible Software in 2011 and intended to be used alongside original language texts of the Bible.

•  New American Bible, Rev. Ed. (Published: 2011) — The New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 2011. It was the first major update to the New American Bible (NAB) of 1970.

•  New International Version, 2011 (Published: 2011) — The New International Version 2011 (NIV 2011) is an update of the New International Version (NIV) published in 1978 by Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society).

•  Lexham English Septuagint (Published: 2012 – 2013) — The Lexham English Septuagint (LES) is a translation of the Greek version of the Old Testament writings used from around the 2nd century BCE onwards. The translation was published by Lexham Press between 2012 and 2013.^[1]

 

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^[1] Thompson, Jeremy. 2022. Lists from Church History. Faithlife Biblical and Theological Lists. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife.

Of The Making Of Translations There Is No End

 Of The Making Of Translations There Is No End

As difficult as translation is, however, godly scholars through the ages have labored diligently to bring the Word of God to His people in languages they can read and understand. Even before the time of Jesus, devout Jews in Alexandria had translated the Old Testament into Greek for the growing number of people who no longer spoke, or read, Hebrew. The Roman scholar Jerome rendered the Greek and Hebrew into the Latin of the common people in the fourth century a.d. Wycliffe and Tyndale performed the same service for the English-speaking world. The German translation of Martin Luther has held the same place of honor among German speakers as the Authorized, or King James Version has among English speakers.

Through the work of translators on the committees that gave us the New American Standard Bible, the New King James Version, Today’s English Version (Good News Bible), and the New International Version, believers today have access to God’s revelation in language they can understand and trust. Beyond our English-speaking world, numerous Bible Societies, teams of Bible translators, and men and women from a multitude of mission boards strive to reduce non-written languages to written forms so that residents of the Third World can also read the words of God.

In many ways, the process of Bible translation testifies to one of God’s great, on-going miracles. He not only inspired Scripture, but He continues to oversee the faithful transmission of His Word. An infallible original would be of little value if the copy we read is riddled with error. Our Bibles are so faithfully preserved that we can read our English translations with nearly the same confidence and reverence as the first century church read its personal letters from the apostles. No important doctrine or teaching of Scripture is subject to question because of the problems with translation that I’ve mentioned earlier. The ideas that God taught His prophets and apostles are accessible to us today, even though we are sometimes unable to fine-tune our interpretation the way we’d like.

Problems in interpretation usually arise out of isolated passages dealing with obscure issues. When it comes to knowing how to be saved, how to live the Christian life, or what God requires of us, we need have no doubts about the reliability of our Bibles.

Think of it! God’s self-revelation took place over thousands of years, to people who spoke at least three different languages, and lived lives as foreign to us as the lives of an Afghan nomad or a Vietnamese rice farmer. Yet we and others from all over the world can read that revelation, learn from it, grow by it, and meet the God whose book it is!^[1]

 

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^[1] O’Brien, David E. 1990. Today’s Handbook for Solving Bible Difficulties. Minneapolis, MN: David E. O’Brien.

The Best Bible Translated From 5800 Manuscripts ?!!

 

TWO ATTITUDES, THREE QUESTIONS

 TWO ATTITUDES, THREE QUESTIONS^[1]

To begin with, there are two attitudes that we should try to avoid: absolute certainty and total despair. On the one side are King James Only advocates; they are absolutely certain that the KJV, in every place, exactly represents the original text. To be frank, the quest for certainty often overshadows the quest for truth in conservative theological circles and is a temptation that we need to resist. It is fundamentally the temptation of modernism. To our shame, evangelicals have too often been more concerned to protect our presuppositions than to pursue truth at all costs.

On the other side are a few radical scholars who are so skeptical that no piece of data, no hard fact, is safe in their hands. It all turns to putty because all views are created equal. If everything is equally possible, then no view is more probable than any other view. In Starbucks and on the street, in college classrooms and on the airwaves, you can hear the line “We really don’t know what the NT originally said since we no longer possess the originals and since there could have been tremendous tampering with the text before our existing copies were produced.”

But are any biblical scholars this skeptical? Robert Funk, the head of the Jesus Seminar, seemed to be. In The Five Gospels he said,

Even careful copyists make mistakes, as every proofreader knows. So we will never be able to claim certain knowledge of exactly what the original text of any biblical writing was.⁷

The temporal gap that separates Jesus from the first surviving copies of the gospels—about one hundred and seventy-five years—corresponds to the lapse in time from 1776—the writing of the Declaration of Independence—to 1950. What if the oldest copies of the founding document dated only from 1950?⁸

Funk’s attitude is easy to see: rampant skepticism over recovering the original wording of any part of the NT. This is the temptation of postmodernism.⁹ The only certainty is uncertainty itself. It is the one absolute that denies all the others. Concomitant with this is an intellectual pride—pride that one “knows” enough to be skeptical about all positions.

Where does Ehrman stand on this spectrum? I do not know. On the one hand, he has said such things as the following:

If the primary purpose of this discipline is to get back to the original text, we may as well admit either defeat or victory, depending on how one chooses to look at it, because we’re not going to get much closer to the original text than we already are.

… [A]t this stage, our work on the original amounts to little more than tinkering. There’s something about historical scholarship that refuses to concede that a major task has been accomplished, but there it is.¹⁰

In spite of these remarkable [textual] differences, scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament with reasonable (although probably not 100 percent) accuracy.¹¹

The first statements were made at the Society of Biblical Literature in an address to text-critical scholars. The last is in a college textbook. All of this sounds as if Ehrman would align himself more with those who are fairly sure about what the wording of the autographic text is.

But here is what Ehrman wrote in his immensely popular book Misquoting Jesus:

Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later—much later.… And these copies all differ from one another, in many thousands of places.… [T]hese copies differ from one another in so many places that we don’t even known how many differences there are.¹²

We could go on nearly forever talking about specific places in which the texts of the New Testament came to be changed, either accidentally or intentionally.… [T]he examples are not just in the hundreds but in the thousands.¹³

And here is what he wrote in another popular book, Lost Christianities:

The fact that we have thousands of New Testament manuscripts does not in itself mean that we can rest assured that we know what the original text said. If we have very few early copies—in fact, scarcely any—how can we know that the text was not changed significantly before the New Testament began to be reproduced in such large quantities?¹⁴

The cumulative effect of these latter statements seems to be not only that we have no certainty about the wording of the original but that, even where we are sure of the wording, the core theology is not nearly as “orthodox” as we had thought. According to this line of thinking, the message of whole books has been corrupted in the hands of the scribes; and the church, in later centuries, adopted the doctrine of the winners—those who corrupted the text and conformed it to their own notion of orthodoxy.

So you can see my dilemma. I am not sure what Ehrman believes. Is the task done? Have we essentially recovered the wording of the original text? Or should we be hyperskeptical about the whole enterprise? It seems that Ehrman puts a far more skeptical spin on things when speaking in the public square than he does when speaking to professional colleagues.¹⁵

These two attitudes—total despair and absolute certainty—are the Scylla and Charybdis that we must steer between. There are also three questions that we need to answer:

1.   What is the number of variants—how many scribal changes are there?

 

2.   What is the nature of variants—what kinds of textual variations are there?

 

3.   What theological issues are at stake?

 

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^[1] Wallace, Daniel B. 2011. “Lost in Transmission: How Badly Did the Scribes Corrupt the New Testament Text?” In Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence, edited by Daniel B. Wallace, 22–26. Text and Canon of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic & Professional.

KJV King James Version

NT New Testament

⁷ Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 6 (italics added).

⁸ Ibid.

NT New Testament

⁹ Those whose writings are very influential in the marketplace of ideas but who are not biblical scholars make even more unguarded statements. For example, Earl Doherty declared in Challenging the Verdict (Ottawa: Age of Reason, 2001), “Even if we had more extensive copies of the Gospels from within a couple of generations of their writing, this would not establish the state of the originals, nor how much evolution they had undergone within those first two or three generations. It is precisely at the earliest phase of a sect’s development that the greatest mutation of ideas takes place, and with it the state of the writings which reflect the mutation” (39).

¹⁰ Bart D. Ehrman, “Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior: An Evaluation,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism (1998), revision of a paper presented at the Textual Criticism Section of the 1997 Society of Biblical Literature conference in San Francisco. He goes on to argue (in point 20 of his review), “We can still make small adjustments in the text in place—change the position of an adverb here, add an article there—we can still dispute the well known textual problems on which we’re never going to be agreed, piling up the evidence as we will. But the reality is that we are unlikely to discover radically new problems or devise radically new solutions; at this stage, our work on the original amounts to little more than tinkering. There’s something about historical scholarship that refuses to concede that a major task has been accomplished, but there it is.” This sounds, for the most part, as though he thinks the primary task of textual criticism—that of recovering the wording of the autographic text—has been accomplished.

¹¹ Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 481. All quotations are from this edition.

¹² Misquoting Jesus, 10.

¹³ Ibid., 98. Elsewhere Ehrman says, “Given the problems, how can we hope to get back to anything like the original text, the text that an author actually wrote? It is an enormous problem. In fact, it is such an enormous problem that a number of textual critics have started to claim that we may as well suspend any discussion of the ‘original’ text, because it is inaccessible to us. That may be going too far” (58); “In short, it is a very complicated business talking about the ‘original’ text of Galatians. We don’t have it. The best we can do is get back to an early stage of its transmission, and simply hope that what we reconstruct about the copies made at that stage—based on the copies that happen to survive (in increasing numbers as we move into the Middle Ages)—reasonably reflects what Paul himself actually wrote, or at least what he intended to write when he dictated the letter” (58; italics added).

¹⁴ Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 219.

¹⁵ Part of the evidence for this is what he says in interviews. In one posted on September 25, 2006, on the Evangelical Textual Criticism website (http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/), he was asked by host P. J. Williams, “Do you think that anyone might ever come away from reading Misquoting Jesus with the impression that the state of the New Testament text is worse than it really is?” Ehrman responded, “Yes I think this is a real danger, and it is the aspect of the book that has apparently upset our modern day apologists who are concerned to make sure that no one thinks anything negative about the holy Bible. On the other hand, if people misread my book—I can’t really control that very well.” The cynicism and implicit condemnation of apologists, coupled with a denial of his own radical skepticism about the original text, clearly suggests that Ehrman feels that he has not contributed to this false impression. Further, in his final chapter of Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman declares, “The reality, I came to see, is that meaning is not inherent and texts do not speak for themselves” (216). But if he really believed this, would he have the right to complain about how people are reading his books?

The reality seems to be that Ehrman has had the opportunity to alter such a false impression in his many radio, TV, and newspaper interviews. But instead of tempering the misimpression, he usually feeds it. For example, in an interview in the Charlotte Observer (Dec. 17, 2005)—nine months before his interview by P. J. Williams—he said, “When I talk about the hundreds and thousands of differences, it’s true that a lot are insignificant. But it’s also true that a lot are highly significant for interpreting the Bible. Depending on which manuscript you read, the meaning is changed significantly.” No quantitative distinction is made between insignificant variants and significant variants; both are said to be “a lot.” But a qualitative distinction is made: “a lot are insignificant,” while “a lot are highly significant.” Further, in many of his interviews, he leads off with what appears to have a calculated shock value, viz., denial of the authenticity of the pericope adulterae.

One other comparison can be made: Both Ehrman and KJVers have a major point in agreement. They both view the early scribes as having almost a conspiratorial motive behind them. (Webster’s defines the word conspire in three ways: “1 a: to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement <accused of conspiring to overthrow the government>[;] 1 b: scheme[;] 2 to act in harmony toward a common end.” Ehrman does not necessarily see what the proto-orthodox scribes did as a “secret agreement,” but he certainly sees them as doing more than acting in harmony toward a common end. And if what became the orthodox view started out in a minority camp struggling for survival, then the fact of the changes the scribes made could certainly not be made public.) The basic difference is that KJVers think that heretics corrupted the text, while Ehrman thinks that orthodox scribes did. (Of course, Ehrman is not adamantly against the early Alexandrian manuscripts. But it does seem that his overriding criterion for determining the wording of the original [as seen in Orthodox Corruption] is that if a reading even gives off a faint scent of perhaps being an orthodox corruption, that trumps all other considerations, both external and internal. In addition to my discussion later in this chapter, see Philip Miller’s “The Least Orthodox Reading Is to be Preferred: A New Canon for New Testament Textual Criticism,” also in this book.)