"Interpretation" Who's right with the biblical text?

When it comes to the Biblical text and understanding what it says, can we know for sure? The question has been posed like this: 

1. The Bible: how do we know the interpretation of scripture is correct when you have different denominations/cultures/history, all interpreting differently. Who is to say who is “right”?

For example: Growing up in a Pentecostal church (Church of God, Assembly of God, 1st Baptist and some non-denominational) most had different interpretations of scripture. 

From Hebrew to English/languages then century to century and culture/cultures, how do we know who is right?

It is true most of us just follow where we are and avoid the question. Others simply think it doesn't matter, others believe they are right, and it's their calling in life is to convince you of your ignorance. But is that the best we can do? I truly believe there is a satisfactory answer and in this post I will attempt to examine this issue in a thoughtful and reasonable manner. 

The Bible is a collection of ancient text, thousands of years old of which we do not have any original extant documents. To address this subject we must first start with what we have, which is copies. Within these copies are hundreds of thousands of variant readings. So arriving at a correct interpretation of the text is no simple task. I don't mean to discourage you, but simple make you aware of the task set before us. 

Now is a good time to address inerrancy. Scripture inerrancy from a Reformed perspective is the belief that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is complete and without error in everything it affirms, whether doctrine, history, science, or ethics, because it is the very Word of God. In clarification, certain distinctions are made. Not Dictation: God did not dictate mechanically; human authors were active. Not Modern Precisionism: Ancient standards of accuracy (e.g., rounded numbers, phenomenological language like “the sun rises”) are not “errors.” Phenomena of Scripture: Apparent difficulties (harmonization challenges, scientific descriptions) are resolved through careful study, not by limiting inerrancy to spiritual matters. 

However, this inerrancy is restricted to the original manuscripts, of which we no longer have, so where does that leave us? Some groups will claim that certain translations are inerrant, being inspired by the Holy Spirit. But all they can do is claim, there is no evidence for claiming such inspiration would occur. Of necessity, this inspiration would have had to occur in modern history, for it is certain that our ancient manuscripts are full of variant readings. If you apply logical and reasonable thinking to the assertion that the originals were inerrant, and for decades those documents were copied by hand, sometimes by unskilled scribes in not so favorable conditions. Those copies were copied and recopied, one would expect to have exactly what we have now, thousands upon thousands of ancient text with various readings, spelling mistakes and all kind of grammatical errors. 

What do we conclude from these facts? It depends on what you are trying to prove. If you are Bart Ehrman, who is an excellent scholar and biblical critic, this is enough to convince you that God does not exist.  He argues that if God wanted to give us his exact words, he would have miraculously preserved them, but the textual variations in the New Testament suggest this didn't happen. (Bart Ehrman) 

However, Mr. Ehrman is assuming for his part what God would do. I'm not sure Mr. Ehrman would know what God would do in bringing revelation into world. We notice almost every book of the New Testament warns about false teachers and deception. Yet we read not a word concerning how God was going to preserve His word in perfection throughout all history. To do so God would have to supernaturally work a miracle every time an individual picked up a pin to copy a scriptural text. He would also have to work a miracle to keep false teachers from purposely corrupting the text as the centuries passed. To demand this kind of miraculous preservation as proof for scriptural integrity exceeds reasonable expectations. 

The fact is, everything that enters into this world becomes subject to decay. Entropy (decay) is not just an abstract principle tucked away in physics textbooks. It is a concept that permeates every facet of reality, shaping the flow of time, the behavior of systems, and even the structure of information and life itself. To understand entropy is to glimpse the arrow of time, to perceive why decay is more likely than perfection, and to come to terms with the inexorable tendency of the universe to fall apart.

This concept reveals an intimate connection between entropy and information. To store or transmit information, we must reduce uncertainty, decrease entropy, in our signals. But doing so often requires energy, which in turn increases entropy somewhere else. Even the act of erasing a bit from memory, clearing a 1 or a 0, has an entropic cost, as shown by Rolf Landauer in the 1960s.

Thus, in our digital age, entropy is everywhere, in our computers, our smartphones, our data networks. Every click, every upload, every calculation dances to the tune of thermodynamic constraints. Information is not abstract. It is physical. And it is costly.(ScienceNewsToday) This decay was also in the pins of the scribes, thus reality would have errors induced into the sacred text. If indeed the text was perfect when it arrived, the moment it entered the time domain, it would began to decay. The paper it was written on would begin to rot, the scribes who copied would naturally err. As time passed the errors would increase. Time, it said, flows in only one direction: from order to disorder, from usable energy to waste, from structure to chaos.

So that explains why we have what we have in our ancient manuscripts. This brings us back to the question of can we know what the Bible says? Can we know if it has been faithfully transmitted? Dr. Dan Wallace says yes, and he does so quite compellingly. Because providence has delivered to us over 5 thousand manuscripts in the original languages, we have an enormous amount of data. Along with multiple thousands of Latin manuscripts and other ancient languages, it is possible through scientific processes to determine the most likely reading of any particular text. Through todays technologies and error correcting methods, we are getting closer to the original reading rather than further from it. 

Of all the errors induced into the text over the past two thousand years, less that 1% affect the reading adversely. There are no errors that affect or change any major Christian doctrine. In one sense Dr. Ehrman is correct, there are errors in the text, on the other hand, Dr. Wallace is correct, the Christian faith has faithfully been transmitted to us accurately. 

Here is one example: Papyrus 52, Date: 100-125 A.D. is a fragment old enough to be a copy of an orginal, or perhaps a second generation copy.

Discovered: Fayum or Oxyrhynchus, Egypt Location: Manchester England; John Rylands University Library

Contents: John 18:31-38 Notes: This papyrus is usually considered to be the earliest New Testament manuscript still in existence. 

It is in the orginal language, it was written around 60 years after the orginal documents pinned. This is the english reading of the text on the parchment. 

Pilate therefore said to them, “Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.” Therefore the Jews said to him, “It is illegal for us to put anyone to death,” that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spoke, signifying by what kind of death he should die. Pilate therefore entered again into the Praetorium, called Jesus, and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
Pilate therefore said to him, “Are you a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I have been born, have come into the world, that I should testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”                                                                                              When he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no basis for a charge against him.

Here is the reading of this text in our modern ESV translation.

[Jhn 18:31-33 ESV] 31 Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” 32 This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. 33 So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  [Jhn 18:37-38 ESV] 37 Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world--to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” 38 Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.”

As you can see, the 1,900-year-old fragment reads the same as our modern translation. It is true there are grammatical errors in the fragment, but the content has been faithfully transmitted. There are no secrets or hidden conspiracies in the history of the Biblical text. Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. Handwritten well over 1600 years ago, the manuscript contains the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Sinaiticus has its own website and is available for anyone to access online and read in the original language. 

The resources we have containing the Biblical text is enormous. We know what the variant reading are and approximately when they were introduced. There is no doubt what we are reading now is what Christians were reading in the second century. Dr. Ehrman would accuratly argue perhaps that there is no evidence the second century manuscripts were copied accuratly from the 1st century original autographs. That would be true since we no longer have them. However, it seems that would be a weak argument to make since we do have evidence it has been transmitted faithfully for the past 1,600 years in its complete form and 1,900 years in its fragmented form.  

In our next post we will look into the method of intreptation.

David