As he is building his thesis, he instructs his readers that the Christian religion is a written religion with the Apostles and followers of Jesus studying the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament, and not long afterward the Chruch viewing the writings of the Apostles themselves as Scripture.
Ehrman reminds us again that many books were being written, competing accounts of the Gospels, and other letters claiming to have been written by the Apostles and early Church leaders. He suggests the average Christian was illiterate and not able to read and the question he says we must ask is, who is reading the books? Ehrman continues to build his thesis chapter after chapter on the difficulty of producing a written work and the great effort in producing copies at this time in history. Every copy would have to be handwritten, of course, the result of that would be no copy would be exactly alike. Different people with different skills and techniques would produce copies which varied, sometimes greatly.
All of what Ehrman describes is an accurate assessment of the facts as we know them. What we must determine is whether those facts and difficulties actually lead us to the conclusion he has arrived at. His conclusion it seems is that the Bible we have is a product of many rewritings and changes over the centuries resulting in manuscripts nothing like the original autographs. I have written several articles addressing various questions concerning textual criticism, you can review them at the following links.
Ehrman correctly establishes the fact the first copies of the scriptures were likely produced by unskilled scribes, at least for the most part. He even suggests some may have been produced by scribes who could not read. He gives the example of an Egyptian scribe named Petaus, who apparently had learned to sign his name, although he could not read what he had written. In other words, they learned to copy the characters without learning to read and understand them. Of course, there is no way to know if this was ever done with the scriptures, it is really not relevant anyway, we have so many ancient copies to compare and study, that any inaccuracy would be discernable. It does add a colorful addition to his synopsis nevertheless.
Fidelity to tradition was the legacy of ancient textual scholarship; the copyist was expected to reproduce his copy as exactly as he could, and the corrections were based on comparison with other copies, a practice that is continued today. A fact not mentioned by Ehrman, of the grouping of manuscripts originating from Alexandria, is that they have a textual accuracy of around 85% among that textual grouping. An explanation concerning the different textual groupings used in our Bible translations and why can be found at this link. Alexandrian Manuscripts vs. Textus Receptus
The majority of these variants are inconsequential differences involving spelling differences, articles with proper nouns, and word order changes. Only a very small minority of the variants alter the meaning of the text, when this is brought into consideration the whole picture begins to come into focus. Indeed, only about 1% of the textual variants are both meaningful and viable. The impression Ehrman sometimes gives throughout his book is that of wholesale uncertainty about the original wording, this is certainly not the view of the vast majority of textual critics. It is difficult to imagine that 1% of questionable variants warrant a defection from the Christian faith!
An illustration of this is given by scholar Daniel B. Wallace who gives the following example. [There are approximately 138,000 words in the Greek NT. The variants in the manuscripts, versions, and Fathers constitute almost three times this number. At first blush, that is a striking amount. But in light of the possibilities, it actually is rather trivial. For example, consider how the Greek can say “Jesus loves Paul”:
᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον
᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον
ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον
ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον
Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
τὸν Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
τὸν Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς ἀγαπᾷ
ἀγαπᾷ ᾿Ιησοῦς Παῦλον
ἀγαπᾷ ᾿Ιησοῦς τὸν Παῦλον
ἀγαπᾷ ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς Παῦλον
ἀγαπᾷ ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς τὸν Παῦλον
ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς
ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον ᾿Ιησοῦς
ἀγαπᾷ Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς
ἀγαπᾷ τὸν Παῦλον ὁ ᾿Ιησοῦς
These variations only represent a small fraction of the possibilities. If the sentence used φιλεῖ instead of ἀγαπᾷ, for example, or if it began with a conjunction such as δεv, καιv, or μέν, the potential variations would grow exponentially. Factor in synonyms (such as κύριος for ᾿Ιησοῦς), spelling differences, and additional words (such as Χριστός, or ἅγιος with Παῦλος) and the list of potential variants that do not affect the essence of the statement increases to the hundreds. If such a simple sentence as “Jesus loves Paul” could have so many insignificant variations, a mere 400,000 variants among the NT manuscripts seems like an almost negligible amount.]
You can readily see how the omission of such factual information can be both misleading and harmful to the reader. Especially if the data you have presented was done with such scholarly expertise. It is something we all must be aware of when considering any subject. A person skilled in his field can present statements of truth, whether scripture or otherwise, and present them in such a way as to load the scale on one side.
According to what Ehrman discovered concerning the text, and remember, he is an excellent scholar, it was so earth-shaking it has fractured and dismantled his Christian faith. I will assume since he wrote the book to expose the issue, the examples he gives are the ones most responsible for his defection. So what are these earth-shaking discoveries that are to change the way we read our Bibles?
One he mentions is John 7:53-8:11, this whole section of scripture is thought by many to almost certainly not be a part of the original text but has been added sometime between the 3rd and 5th Centuries. My ESV Bible contains the texts, but insert in brackets [THE EARLIEST MANUSCRIPTS DO NOT INCLUDE 7:53-8:11] then adds a foot not stating, "Some manuscripts do not include 7:53-8:11; others add the passage here, or after 7:36 or 21:25 or after Luke 21:38, with variations in the text." No Biblical manuscripts before the 3rd Century contain these verses. The KJV version and earlier English translations have no such notes identifying the reader of these facts. The reason for this is the material used in the early English translation process originated from source material of the 12th century. The older manuscripts had not been discovered yet and were not available to the translators. However, this verse is referred to as early as 100AD by some of the Paristic writers. So there still remains the possibility of its authenticity, so the inclusion of it with footnotes seems appropriate. Even if the exact location or even the exact book it was written in is not known, it seems the Patristic writers were aware of it and referred to it.
The question is, does its presence warrant a defection from the faith or place the authenticity of our Biblical texts into question? It seems, except for Ehrman, it doesn't seem to have affected the Christian faith at all. As to the Biblical text, the discovery of the older manuscripts not only revealed this possible scribal addition but has served to solidify the accuracy of the rest of the text. We are more certain now of its accuracy than we were before.
Another text of reference Ehrman mentions is what is called the long ending of Mark. Mark 16:9-20 is also missing from all the earlier manuscripts. David Guzik's commentary has this to say concerning this portion of the text:
a. The two oldest existing Greek manuscripts (dated from 325 and 340 A.D.) do not contain this section and neither do about 100 other ancient manuscripts translated into other languages. A few ancient manuscripts put asterisks next to Mar_16:9-20 to indicate that it is an addition to the original text.
b. According to their writings, almost all the Greek manuscripts known to Eusebius (who died in 339) and Jerome (who died in 419) did not have these verses.
c. In a few other manuscripts there are two other endings - one shorter, one with some additions.
d. About one-third of the vocabulary is totally different from the rest of the Gospel of Mark and there is a very awkward grammatical transition between Mar_16:8-9.
e. Most contemporary scholars reject these verses as original.
However, like the verses referred to in John, many very early Christian writers refer to this passage in their writings. So they were at least aware of its existence in some form and deemed it quotable.
Papias refers to Mar_16:18. He wrote around A.D. 100, Justin Martyr’s first Apology quoted Mar_16:20 (A.D. 151), and Irenaeus in Against Heresies quoted Mar_16:13 and remarked on it (A.D. 180).
Because of these verses, some confusion has arisen over the nature of baptism and a whole sect of Christianity arose promoting the practice of snake handling and the drinking of strychnine. One could argue that even that could have been avoided by good hermeneutical practice in interpretation, nevertheless, the problems do exist. However, these unbiblical practices don't seem to have existed till the emergence of the Pentecostal movement of the last Century. So the inclusion of these passages does not seem to have had any effect on the Christian faith until recent times. As mentioned before, the discovery of the older text not only revealed the possible issue with these texts but also strengthened the authenticity of the Scriptures as a whole.
Still, it seems Ehrman suggests these variants change what we believe as Christians, in effect change Christianity. Supposedly, if we had the original autographs, we would have a different Christianity. However, the variants he has offered here in discussion whether they were original or later added do not induce any new doctrinal belief or if removed alter a single Christian doctrine. Again, the discovery of these variants which has occurred in the last 100 years or so has only increased our confidence in the accuracy of the Scriptures.
Next time we will continue the examine some interesting variants in the textual reading and see what we can make of them. Hopefully, we can also take a look at a new technology that is developing that very well may deliver the most accurate reading we have had of the Scriptures since the Patristic age.
Until then,
David
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