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SeanG
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 278
| Posted 4/8/2003 7:26 PM (GMT -6) |   | Great question $$%%##@@! Most people will just come out and say:The New Testament is nearly 2,000 years old! It has been changed, corrupted, and lost (parts of).” People will make an analogy of a circle of children that passes a story on quietly – ear to ear – until the final child stands up and repeats the “story,” which has been changed, corrupted, and lost - to make their point. However, your questions, real questions, show a learning curve that most do not have. In fact, most that tell me the above have merely heard it from a colleague, friend, or campus skeptic… rarely checking the validity of said statement. I say this only as a gracious thank you for being respective and thoughtful in how you approach a subject such as this.Dr. John A.T. Robinson was a distinguished lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge and developed a reputation as a great scholar. Naturally, he accepted the academic consensus universally held since 1900, that denied the disciples and Paul wrote the New Testament and concluded that it was written up to a hundred years after Christ. However, an article in Time magazine, March 21, 1977, reported that Robinson decided to personally investigate for himself the arguments behind this scholarly “consensus” against the New Testament’s reliability because he realized that very little original research had been completed in this field in this century. He was shocked to discover that much of past scholarship against the New Testament was untenable because it was based on a “tyranny of unexamined assumptions” and what he felt must have been an “almost willful blindness.”
To the amazement of his university colleagues, Robinson concluded that the apostles must have been the genuine writers of the New Testament books in the years prior to A.D.64. He also noted that if you were to reject the evidence of the before mentioned research and throw out the conclusions of original authorship of the New Testament. You would also have to throw out every ancient writing of antiquity as well as historical writings of recent and ancient origin. You asked:“so...how much possibility for error was there?” I will start with an example, then talk briefly of how the Bible was transcribed.
quote:
Example
The Book of Isaiah! The Christian church’s earliest manuscript, of the book of Isaiah in complete form, it held in its grasp was dated at 900A.D.. But thanks to a shepherd boy, the Qumran caves coughed up a load of Biblical manuscripts and papyri fragments. One was a complete book of Isaiah that was dated at 100B.C. After many textual scholars and critics went through this particular scroll, they found eleven letters different than the manuscript dated at 900A.D. All the changes in the letter style did not change any of the meanings of the words they were found in. so after more than 1,100 years; a perfect example of the unchanging Word of God is exemplified.
How?
The Jewish Masoretic scribes who would copy, say the book of Genesis, would know how many letters were in that book (76,064 Hebrew letters), he would literally count out the precise number of times each of the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet occurred in the text. He would also make notations on the margin of the page to assure that no letters were added or taken away. If even one letter was missed or added improperly, the master scribe would destroy the imperfect copy, lest an error creep into the holy text of the Word of God. This same process is still used in Israel to this day.
Some think that the Bible has been translated into one language, into another, into another, until it finally has reached our current modern English version – much like the child analogy at the start. The truth of the matter is that current versions are based on the oldest manuscript evidence from the original Hebrew and Greek. In fact, our bibles today are even better than the one’s, say, a hundred years ago. Not in content mind you, but in manuscript evidence, as, archaeology has exploded in the past hundred years. Before going on, I will give some examples of this.
quote:
Dr. Nelson Gleuck, president of Hebrew Union College and the leading Palestinian archaeologist of the twentieth century said: “it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible.”
William Ramsay, the English scholar, traveled as a young man to Asia Minor over a century ago for the sole purpose of disproving the Bible’s history as described by Luke in his Gospel and in the book of Acts. Ramsey and his professors were convinced that the New Testament record must be terribly inaccurate. He believed that Luke could not be correct in his history of Christ or in his account about the growth of the Church during the first decades following Christ. Dr. Ramsay began digging in the ancient ruins of sites throughout Greece and Asia Minor, searching for ancient names, boundary markers, and other archaeological finds that would conclusively prove that Luke had invented his history Christ and His Church.
To his amazement and dismay, William Ramsay discovered that the statements of the New Testament Scriptures were accurate in the smallest detail. Finally, the overwhelming evidence proving the Bible’s accuracy convinced Dr. Ramsay. Consequently, he accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior (based on the evidence alone).
A.N. Sherwin-White, was a great (actually, one of the greatest ever, of Roman culture) classical historical scholar at Oxford University who studied the extensive evidence for and against the historical accuracy of the Book of Acts. Sherwin-White wrote his conclusion after studying the evidence: “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming… any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd.”
I know I am going off the beaten trail a little bit, but this is all part of the same subject… has the Bible been corrupted. The date given in Robinson’s quote above, A.D. 64, is dated (old), I will included a portion of a paper I did for a friends Women’s Study class at a local university here, it is updated with more recent info. Before I do that though, I want to compare some versions, so you get a feel for what some view as proof of corruption.
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Bible Translations
Let me comment some on this matter by first showing nine verses from different translations, side by side. They will be from John 3:16 – you know, the one at all the sports games:
King James Version – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Today’s English Version – “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.”
Living Bible – “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
New International Version – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
Phillips Modern English – “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost, but should have eternal life.”
Jerusalem Bible – “Yes, God loved the world so much that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.”
Revised Standard Version – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
New English Bible – “God loved the world so much that he gave his only son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life.”
Amplified Bible – “For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life.” (all words in the [ ] and ( ) are in the original.)
All these versions say essentially the same things. But you’re choosing one of these or another version/translation should be defined by some particular things. For example, if I bump into someone at my work that has never read the Bible, I recommend for him or her The Living Bible… Why? Because it is a paraphrase and reads smoothly and much more like a novel of sorts. I also tell them to read the Gospel of John and Romans first. This is for the simple fact that most people start at Genesis and as soon as they make it to the “so and so begat so and so”, they quite reading it. I don’t blame them either.
Now let’s say you want to do some serious studying and you are familiar with the Bible. A paraphrase wont match up with the Greek and Hebrew dictionaries, and the like. So for the serious Bible student the New American Standard, King James or the New King James would fit the bill just fine. Why? Because these are what is called a word for word translation. They take the original Hebrew and Greek and translate it into English word for word separating them with the proper “the, a, for”, etc.
I promised a portion of that paper, and I will give it below. Mind you, it is only a portion, being that my friends teacher was a rabid anti-Christian, and into neo-feminism and Gnosticism, he needed a paper to “rock” his teachers world. So I apologize if some parts of the portion below do not fit into our conversation, but the main body of it does relate.
quote:
Too Young to Date
Not only did the Dead Sea Scrolls yield portions of, and even entire books from the Old Testament, the scrolls offered up some New Testament fragments as well [footnote #1]. (The following chart uses the numbering system established for manuscripts, for example, “7Q5” means fragment 5 from Qumran cave 7:)
Mark 4:28___7Q6?___Dated to A.D. 50
Mark 6:48___7Q15___A.D. ?
Mark 6:52,53___7Q5___A.D. 50
Mark 12:17___7Q7___A.D. 50
Acts 27:38___7Q6?___A.D. 60
Romans 5:11,12___7Q9___A.D. 70[+]
1 Timothy 3:16; 4:1-3___7Q4___A.D. 70[+]
James 1:23,24___7Q8___A.D. 70[+] [#’s 2 and 3]
There are also illusions to the Gospel of Luke in 4Q246, which date to A.D. 49 [#4]. A little-known papyrus of Matthew has opened the trained eye as well. The Magdalen Papyrus, named after the university that houses it, corroborates three traditions: that St. Matthew actually wrote the Gospel bearing his name; that he wrote it within a generation of Jesus’ death (dated to A.D. 60); and that the gospel stories are true [#5]. This portion of Matthew is a Coptic translation; the original Aramaic version pre-dates this, obviously, placing Matthew around A.D. 50. Not to mention that almost all Bible critics place Paul’s first epistle at A.D. 52-57 [#6], and the creed in that epistle (1 Cor. 15:3) is dated about ten years earlier than that, “Paul had not invented it but had been the one who transferred to them what he had received” (4:1) [#7]. 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 reads:“I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me—that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. After that, he was seen by more than five hundred of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles.” (NLT) [#8] “Handed on to you … what I had received” (NRSV) is the language of what scholars call “traditioning:” [#9] – Jewish teachers would pass on their teachings to their students, who would in turn pass them on to their own students. The students could take notes, but they delighted especially in oral memorization and became quite skilled at it; memorization was a central feature of ancient education. The early Christian community had already memorized, codified, and passed on creeds within about ten years of Jesus death, this is very important. Evidence of this comes also from early Christian tombs with reference to who Jesus was understood to be, further confirming the Gospels [#10]. One tomb I wish to focus on, as an example (there are many others [#11]), is one found by professor Sukenik as reported in American Journal of Archaeology:“When the ossuary with four crosses on its sides was found there was not the slightest possible doubt as to the antiquity of the cross [marks], because it was clear that these [ossuaries] had not been touched from the moment they had been placed inside until the day we took them out…. I noticed the inscription on one of the ossuaries in which the name ‘Jesus’ was clearly discernable, followed here not by the usual [second] name, but by a description or an exclamation.” [#12] After the name “Jesus,” the exclamation or dedication read “y’ho,” meaning “Jehovah” or “the Lord.” The full inscription of the ossuary reads: “[To] Jesus, the Lord.” In light of the A.D. 42 date for the sealing of this tomb, the presence of this dedication to “Jesus, the Lord” attests to the Christians’ acceptance of Jesus Christ as God within ten years of the death and resurrection of Jesus. These are merely a few of the many evidences for an early date for the Christian faith. This is important because most historians observe that in order for a historical event to be metamorphosed into myth, it needs to be at least three to four generations removed from the time it occurred whereas the New Testament is within one generation of the actual event.
New Testament Documents vs. Ancient Documents
The earliest partial copy of Caesar’s The Gallic Wars, which historians accept, dates 1,000 years after it was written. The first complete copy of the Odyssey, by Homer, dates 2,200 years after it was written. When the interval between the writing of the New Testament and earliest copies is compared to other ancient works, the New Testament proves to be much closer to the time of the original. There are over 5,500 Greek copies of the Gospels; this is far and away the most we have of any ancient work. Many ancient writings have been transmitted to us by only a handful of manuscripts, but these are accepted as reliable commentary on the events they describe (Catullus – three copies; the earliest one is 1,600 years after he wrote; Herodotus – eight copies and 1,300 years apart) [#13].
Not only do the New Testament documents have more manuscript evidence and close time interval (which no other writing of antiquity shares) between the original writing and its earliest copy, but they were also translated into several other languages at an early date. Translation of a document into another language was rare in the ancient world, so this is an added plus for the New Testament as one could compare for errors between the many versions and copies. This ability to compare and search for grammatical errors within the plethora of early New Testament text is nonexistent in other ancient documents [#14] – Homer’s Iliad [somewhat] excluded.
The number of copies of the versions of the Greek New Testament is in excess of 18,000, with possibly as many as 25,000. This is further evidence that helps us establish the New Testament text. Even if we did not posses the 5,500[+] Greek manuscripts or the almost 25,000 copies of the versions, the text of the New Testament could still be reproduced within 250 years from its composition! How? merely by the writings of the early Christians in commentaries, letters, and the like. These ancient writers quote the biblical text, thus giving us another witness to the text of the New Testament. John Burgon has catalogued more than 86,000 citations by the early church fathers who cite different parts of the New Testament. Thus we observe that there is so much more evidence for the reliability of the New Testament text than any other comparable writings in the ancient world. We can reconstruct the entire New Testament just with these early quotes, except for eleven verses. They were quoting from manuscripts that were written prior to their citing them, obviously then, exemplifying the plethora of widely distributed copies of the early Gospels [#15].
Footnotes
[#1] Jeffery L. Sheler, Is the Bible True? How Modern Debates and Discoveries Affirm the Essence of the Scriptures, Harper, San Francisco: CA [1999].
[#2] Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Books, Grand Rapids: MI [1999], p. 188.
[#3] Grant R. Jeffrey, Jesus: The Great Debate, Frontier Research, Toronto: Ontario [1999], pp.66-68.
[#4] Grant R. Jeffrey, The Signature of God: Astonishing Biblical Discoveries, Tyndale House, Wheaton: IL [1996], pp. 100-103.
[#5] Carsten Peter Thiede & Matthew d’Ancona, The Jesus Papyrus: The Most Sensational Evidence on the Origins of the Gospels Since the Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Galilee Doubleday, New York: NY [1996], back cover.
[#6] Norman Geisler & Paul Hoffman, Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe, Baker Books, Grand Rapid: MI [2001], p. 158.
[#7] Carson, D. A. (1994). New Bible commentary : 21st century edition. Rev. ed. of: The new Bible commentary. 3rd ed. / edited by D. Guthrie, J.A. Motyer. 1970. (4th ed.) (1 Co 15:1). Leicester, England; Downers Grove: IL, USA: Inter-Varsity Press.
[#8] Holy Bible : New Living Translation. (1 Co 15:3-7). Tyndale House, Wheaton: IL [1997].
[#9] Craig S. Keener, IVP Background Commentary New Testament, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove: IL [1993], 1 Cor. 15:3.
[#10] See for instance: Josh McDowell, More than a Carpenter, Living Books, Wheaton: IL [1977]. Chapters 1 & 2; Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Thomas Nelson, Nashville: TN [1999], chapters 5-10.
[#11] Grant R. Jeffrey, Jesus: The Great Debate, Frontier Research, Toronto: Ontario [1999], pp.79-92.
[#12] Quoted in the Jerusalem Christian Review, vol. 7, issue 6
[#13] Josh McDowell, More than a Carpenter, Living Books, Wheaton: IL [1977], pp. 47-49
[#14] F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Leicester, England; InterVarsity Press [1943/1998].
[#15] Some good books that elucidate on this matter are: John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity: A Vigorous, Convincing Presentation of the Evidence for a Historical Jesus, Bethany House, Minneapolis: MN [1964]; Norman Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakeable Foundations: Contemporary Answers to Crucial Questions about the Christian Faith, Bethany House, Minneapolis: MN [2001]; Gary R. Habermas, The Verdict of History: Conclusive Evidence for the Life of Jesus, Thomas Nelson, Nashville: TN [1988]; Norman L. Geisler & Paul K. Hoffman, Why I am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe, Baker Books, Grand Rapids: MI [2001]; William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston: NY [1989]; Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, InterVarsity Press, Wheaton [1987]; Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Thomas Nelson, Nashville: TN [1999]
The reason for this portion of the paper was because my friend’s teacher believed that the early church hadn’t thought of Jesus as “God,” and that this was added to Christianity in the mid-third-century, and that the Bible was written in the late-second to late-third-century to reflect this view. Obviously she was practicing and believing a “‘tyranny of unexamined assumptions’, and what he felt must have been an 'almost willful blindness’,” as Robinson said. Not only that, she used her influence as a professor to get easily swayed students to believe the same. They then go out into the world preaching the “unexamined assumptions” as if they were fact.
Sorry for the length, but I feel that the above is important for you to understand when I say that the Bible hasn’t been corrupted, lost, changed, or the like. That’s the simple answer, however, you asked an important questions and I gave an important answer. Let me know if you need more input on this, or you wish to ask about something else.
Edited by - SeanG on 04/10/2003 2:12:03 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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